Power BI Integration
Power BI Integration
ERP data you can trust
Power BI & Excel unified
Zap transforms Power BI from a visualization tool into an enterprise reporting and analytics platform. Create a trusted foundation with automated data warehousing that ensures trust and accelerates performance.
Connect your Power BI and Excel to a pre-built data model that enables both visual analytics and formatted financial reporting. Deploy in days, refresh in minutes, and work with the same trusted numbers across all your tools.
decisions made simple
ERP data you can trust
Power BI & Excel unified
Zap transforms Power BI from a visualization tool into an enterprise reporting and analytics platform. Create a trusted foundation with automated data warehousing that ensures trust and accelerates performance.
Connect your Power BI and Excel to a pre-built data model that enables both visual analytics and formatted financial reporting. Deploy in days, refresh in minutes, and work with the same trusted numbers across all your tools.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s interactive data visualization tool for business intelligence. It connects to multiple data sources, enabling users to create dashboards and reports that support decision-making. Zap enhances this by ensuring trusted, ERP-ready data flows into Power BI effortlessly.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s interactive data visualization tool for business intelligence. It connects to multiple data sources, enabling users to create dashboards and reports that support decision-making. Zap enhances this by ensuring trusted, ERP-ready data flows into Power BI effortlessly.
The heart of a BI platform is the data warehouse.
Microsoft
Power BI's missing pieces
Star schema required
Star schema required
Microsoft recommends it for reliable, enterprise grade Power BI. It accelerates queries and simplifies reporting.
Microsoft recommends it for reliable, enterprise grade Power BI. It accelerates queries and simplifies reporting.
ERP conversion hazards
ERP conversion hazards
Transforming raw ERP data without the proper architecture creates duplicate risks and performance bottlenecks.
Transforming raw ERP data without the proper architecture creates duplicate risks and performance bottlenecks.
Prohibitive resources
Prohibitive resources
Traditional data warehousing requires specialist skills and significant Fabric investment.
Traditional data warehousing requires specialist skills and significant Fabric investment.
Zap provides
5x faster
with Zap’s proprietary Delta processing.
80%
reduction in implementation time.
1000's
of hours of embedded expertise.
Power BI foundations
done right
Trust deeper
Prevent duplicates — Power BI and OneLake don’t enforce primary keys. A Zap data warehouse protects your financial reports from silent errors.
Single source of truth — Power BI and Zap's Excel add-in share the same validated data model.
Historical integrity — Built in data retention enables point-in-time analysis and audit trails.
Go faster
Process faster — Zap Delta processing updates more than 5x faster than full partition reloads.
Query faster — Star schema optimization delivers blistering query performance.
Refresh more often — Warehouse buffering protects your ERP from performance strain, enabling near real-time data updates.
Build smarter
Build safer — Pre-built models cut implementation time by over 80% and reduce project risk.
Model smarter — ERP-aware optimizations reduce customization and maintenance effort.
Fabric ready — Switch on Microsoft Fabric sync for notebooks and lake-scale data when you're ready, not before.
What we deliver
Automated XMLA synchronization
Push data models directly to Power BI Premium, Fabric, and Azure Analysis Services with zero manual steps.
Pre-built ERP data models
Purpose-built models optimized specifically for Power BI with proven star schema design.
Intelligent data processing
Minimize refresh times and resource usage with smart detection of changed records.
Cross-platform data unification
Seamlessly combine ERP data with other business systems for complete visibility.
Enterprise versioning
In-application version tracking with history, rollback capabilities, and full audit trails for governance.
FAQs
How does Zap prevent duplicate records and ensure data integrity?
Power BI and OneLake cannot enforce primary keys, allowing duplicate records to silently corrupt financial reports. Even Fabric SQL Warehouse requires 'NOT ENFORCED' in all constraints. Zap uses Azure SQL Database or Fabric SQL Database with enforced primary keys, catching duplicates before they reach your reports. ERP financial data integrity is our specialty, not just another data source we connect to.
How exactly does Zap make Power BI refreshes faster?
Zap transforms each incoming source change as two transactions in the data warehouse: one to reverse the original value and another to add the new value, similar to ledger adjustments. When synchronized to Power BI via XMLA, this enables add-only processing rather than full partition reloads. Since Power BI processes additions much faster than updates, the result is refreshes >5x faster even for complex ERP data.
What are the licensing requirements for Power BI with Zap?
Zap works with all enterprise Power BI licensing options. For Power BI Premium Per User (PPU), you'll need one license per user accessing the data. For Azure Analysis Services, you can use the free Power BI license with an appropriately sized Azure service. Fabric capacity options are also supported. Our team can help determine the most cost-effective approach for your specific scenario and user count.
We've already built Power BI reports directly on our ERP. Will we lose that work?
No, but you'll need to redirect your reports to connect to Zap's data model instead of your ERP. Many customers run both solutions in parallel during transition, validating results while gaining performance benefits. Our consultants can assist with prioritizing which reports to migrate first based on business impact.
How does Zap Live (Excel add-in) connect to the same data as Power BI?
Zap Live connects to the same data model as your Power BI dashboards, ensuring a single source of truth while preserving financial statement formatting during hierarchical navigation. Finance teams can create their own calculations without IT assistance and refresh ERP data on-demand - true self-service for financial reporting.