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Excel vs Power BI: Why Growing Companies Should Upgrade to Modern BI Tools

Excel vs Power BI: Why Growing Companies Should Upgrade to Modern BI Tools

Struggling with Excel’s limits? Discover Excel vs Power BI: learn how modern BI scales with real-time dashboards, seamless collaboration & AI-driven insights.

Struggling with Excel’s limits? Discover Excel vs Power BI: learn how modern BI scales with real-time dashboards, seamless collaboration & AI-driven insights.

Written By: Sajagan Thirugnanam and Austin Levine

Last Updated on July 7, 2025

Imagine it’s Q4 and your team is swamped creating reports for your Executive team and suddenly Excel crashes. Not only does this affect workflow but it is a very common scenario all growing small to mid sized companies face. 

In this article, we go over the limitations of Excel which gives rise to the growing demand for Power BI services with automated refreshes, no row limits and many other features which help turn data into decisions and not headaches. 

Keep reading to find out where Excel stops and Power BI excels!

Excel Limitations for Business Analytics

Data Volume & Performance

Excel has long been a powerful tool for data analysis, but growing businesses often find its limitations increasingly restrictive. We have now come to a stage where your business sales log can easily exceed the Excel limitation of 1 million rows within a few weeks or even days. 

As volume increases, your spreadsheet keeps getting more and more sluggish. Large spreadsheets with complex formulas or Power Query connections become sluggish or prone to crashing—wasting valuable analyst hours.

Collaboration & Version Control

Ever tried to reconcile an Excel report with your team and faced nightmares trying to do so? You wouldn’t be the only one to face this. Excel simply wasn’t built for seamless collaboration at scale. 

  • Multiple users emailing files leads to version chaos.

  • SharePoint syncing is often unreliable.

  • There's no native change history across versions.

When accuracy matters, this manual approach creates risk.

Manual Refreshes

With Excel, data refreshes are typically manual—triggered by someone clicking the “refresh all” button or running a VBA based macro. There's no built-in automated refresh option.

In contrast, organizations need:

  • Timely, accurate data without manual intervention to reduce errors.

  • Reliability, especially when KPIs inform leadership decisions.

Power BI’s Features for Growing Businesses

Source: Lits Services

Power BI is a Microsoft product aimed at solving the limitations of Excel for growing small to mid sized companies. 

You may ask how Microsoft achieved this? 

Microsoft created a tool which is rich in its data load capability including an in-memory engine allowing it to process billions of rows within seconds, live data connections & scheduled refresh along with many other top tier features. 

Here is a side by side comparison between Power BI and Microsoft Excel that highlights why your company should switch over to Power BI as soon as you can!

Feature

Excel

Power BI

Maximum Row Procession

Limited to 1 Million only

Billions via DirectQuery

Dashboard Refresh

Manual or VBA Macro

Automated / real-time

Sharing & Collaboration

Email attachments / SharePoint sync

Power BI Service & Apps

Advanced Analytics

Limited to VBA and add-ins

Integrated AI, R & Python 

Security & Governance

Sheet-level protection, file passwords

Advanced Role-level security, audit logs

Data Source Integration

No Direct Query connection type

Supports connectivity with hundreds of databases and cloud services unlike Excel 

To learn more about Power BI, you can refer to this Microsoft documentation page or visit the CaseWhen – Power BI Consultation site.

Case Study: Switching Over to Power BI From Excel

A mid-sized manufacturer (which we shall keep anonymous) used to rely on Excel to process a 10 GB network folder of Excel workbooks for operational reporting. This resulted in slow reporting, high error rate and loss in many man hours causing dissatisfaction among stakeholders. 

The management team promptly took the decision to switch over to Power BI from Excel. Yes, this meant hiring the proper personnel to handle this switch from Excel to Power BI efficiently but, in the long run, this resulted in auto-refresh hourly from a central SQL Server, 75% less time taken on monthly repetitive reporting and stakeholders having access to real time dashboards without data team’s manual intervention every time. 

The company had to spend money one time on the Power BI infrastructure but this meant faster decision making, better insights and lower costs in terms of wasted analyst hours creating and maintaining manual reports in Excel in the long run!

In Conclusion

Excel might be familiar and comfortable for most companies, but real growth comes from a place of not knowing and diving into new tech that is out there!

Ready to take the next big step? 

Book your free Power BI consultation with CaseWhen and see what modern business intelligence can do for your organization.

FAQs

Is Power BI better than Excel for data analysis?

Depending on your needs and business size, Power BI could be a better tool for data analysis than Excel. Power BI is capable of handling larger datasets with faster processing and more complex visualizations than Excel making it a more well rounded tool for data analysis.

Can Power BI replace Excel completely?

Not entirely. Power BI is designed for reporting and visualization, while Excel remains valuable for quick calculations, budgeting, and modeling. Many organizations still use both Excel and Power BI for a strong combination of data reporting.

Is Power BI difficult to learn for Excel users?

Not at all. In fact, knowing Excel can be a great way to jump into the world of Power BI. Power BI has a familiar interface and supports many Excel concepts like Power Query and pivot tables. Hence it is much easier for experienced Excel users to shift over to Power BI with minimal training period.

Can I import Excel files into Power BI?

Yes. You can connect to Excel workbooks directly in Power BI Desktop and import tables as required for your reporting needs. 

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