Power BI
Integration
Power BI
Integration
You bought Power BI.
Your finance team still exports to Excel.
It’s not their fault. Power BI is built for dashboards, not financial statements. So, finance exports to Excel, Ops live in Power BI, and the numbers diverge.
Zap is the missing layer: the data warehouse best practice demands, serving both Power BI and Excel. A pre-built star schema syncs with Power BI and goes live in days, not months. Duplicates are blocked, refreshes are faster, numbers are trusted. First trusted number on day 1.
decisions made simple
You bought Power BI.
Your finance team still exports to Excel.
It’s not their fault. Power BI is built for dashboards, not financial statements. So, finance exports to Excel, Ops live in Power BI, and the numbers diverge.
Zap is the missing layer: the data warehouse best practice demands, serving both Power BI and Excel. A pre-built star schema syncs with Power BI and goes live in days, not months. Duplicates are blocked, refreshes are faster, numbers are trusted. First trusted number on day 1.
Power BI's missing pieces
No key enforcement
No key enforcement
Nothing in the Power BI stack validates primary keys. Duplicates enter your reports unchallenged.
Nothing in the Power BI stack validates primary keys. Duplicates enter your reports unchallenged.
No star schema
No star schema
Microsoft calls it a ‘prerequisite’ for enterprise Power BI. Most ERP setups skip it entirely.
Microsoft calls it a ‘prerequisite’ for enterprise Power BI. Most ERP setups skip it entirely.
No warehouse
No warehouse
Building one takes months and data engineers you don’t have.
Building one takes months and data engineers you don’t have.
Free 14-day trial with guided setup. We can loop in your partner when you're ready.
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Zap provides
5x faster
with Zap’s proprietary Delta processing.
80%
less build time with pre-built star schema models.
100%
of keys enforced — Power BI can’t. Fabric can’t. Zap does.
Power BI foundations
done right
Trust deeper
Prevent duplicates — Power BI and OneLake can’t enforce primary keys. Even Fabric marks all keys ‘NOT ENFORCED’. Zap’s warehouse enforces them — duplicates get caught, not published.
Single source of truth — Ops dashboards in Power BI and finance statements in Excel query the same validated model. No reconciliation.
Historical integrity — Built-in data retention for point-in-time analysis and audit trails that hold up under scrutiny.
Go faster
Process faster — Delta processing via XMLA add-only sync — more than 5x faster than full partition reloads.
Query faster — Star schema optimization means complex financial queries return in seconds, not minutes.
Refresh more often — Warehouse buffering absorbs the load so your ERP doesn’t. Refresh hourly or faster, not overnight.
Build smarter
Build safer — Pre-built models cut implementation time by over 80% and reduce project risk.
Model smarter — ERP-aware mappings mean fewer customizations now and less maintenance later.
Fabric ready — Switch on Microsoft Fabric sync for notebooks and lakehouse analytics when you’re ready, not before.
What is Power BI?
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s reporting and visualization layer. It connects to data sources and turns them into dashboards — but it won’t enforce your primary keys, deduplicate your ERP transactions, or build the star schema Microsoft recommends for enterprise models. No connector or pipeline setting changes that. Zap automates what sits underneath.
What we deliver
Automated XMLA synchronization
Publish semantic models to Power BI Premium, Fabric, and Azure Analysis Services automatically. No manual steps.
Delta-only processing
Each change becomes two transactions: one reversal, one addition. Full reloads eliminated. More than 5x faster.
Pre-built ERP star schema
Purpose-built for your ERP, optimized for Power BI. Hundreds of expert hours so you don’t start from scratch.
Cross-source unification
ERP, CRM, and operational data in one warehouse. Primary keys enforced — something Power BI and Fabric can’t do.
Full version
control
Every model change tracked and reversible. Audit trails that survive regulatory scrutiny.
FAQs
How does Zap prevent duplicate records and ensure data integrity?
Power BI (and Fabric) cannot enforce primary keys. This means duplicate rows from pipeline retries, overlapping incremental windows, fan-out joins, or schema errors are silently absorbed. Zap uses Azure SQL Database or Fabric SQL Database with enforced primary keys. If a duplicate tries to load, it's rejected immediately. Across hundreds of tables and hundreds of loads, this isn't a nice-to-have – it's the only way to guarantee your totals are correct.
How exactly does Zap make Power BI refreshes faster?
Each incoming ERP change becomes two warehouse transactions: one reversal and one addition, like ledger adjustments. Synchronized to Power BI via XMLA, this means add-only processing instead of full partition reloads. Power BI handles additions much faster than updates — the result is refreshes more than 5x faster, even for complex ERP data.
What are the licensing requirements for Power BI with Zap?
Zap supports all enterprise Power BI licensing: PPU (one licence per user), Azure Analysis Services (free Power BI licence with a sized Azure service), and Fabric capacity. Microsoft handles all Power BI user pricing. Zap licences cover the data platform only — pipelines, models, and refresh. Once published, anyone with the right Power BI licence can view reports without a Zap licence. Our team can recommend the most cost-effective configuration for your scenario.
We've already built Power BI reports directly on our ERP. Will we lose that work?
No. You’ll redirect reports to Zap’s data model instead of the ERP. Most customers run both in parallel during transition — validating results while gaining the performance and trust benefits immediately. We help prioritize migration by business impact.
How does Zap Live (Excel add-in) connect to the same data as Power BI?
Zap Live queries the same semantic model as your Power BI dashboards. One source of truth, with financial statement formatting preserved through hierarchical navigation. Finance teams build their own calculations and refresh ERP data on demand. No IT tickets.
Why not just PivotTables against Power BI?
Try it. Slice a little. Watch the formatting break and performance crawl. Then talk to us about Zap Live.
Ready to simplify your data? Book a demo and see what Zap can do.
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