Service · Power BI & Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric implementation & Power BI dashboards for South African businesses.
Real-time dashboards, OneLake, Direct Lake and Sage / SYSPRO / Dynamics integration — delivered remotely from our team into your Microsoft 365 tenant. No travel fees, no on-site delays, senior consultants from day one.
Where we work
Remote Power BI & Fabric consulting across South Africa
We're a remote-first Microsoft Power Platform consultancy. Every engagement happens over Microsoft Teams, directly inside your own tenant — so the city you're in doesn't change the price, the team or the timeline.
Johannesburg & Gauteng
We run Power BI and Microsoft Fabric engagements for finance, manufacturing, logistics and retail businesses across Johannesburg, Sandton, Midrand and broader Gauteng — entirely remote, in your tenant, on your data.
Cape Town & Western Cape
Cape Town-based fintech, e-commerce, professional services and tourism clients work with us over Teams. Same delivery model, same senior consultants, no travel fees or onsite delays.
Durban & KZN
We support Durban, Pinetown and broader KZN clients on Power BI dashboards, Sage and SYSPRO integrations and Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse builds — all delivered remotely.
Rest of South Africa & remote-friendly
Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London — anywhere with a stable connection. We also serve clients in the rest of Africa, the UK, EU and North America on the same remote engagement model.
What it is
Power BI is the report. Fabric is the platform beneath it.
Most South African businesses know Power BI as a dashboarding tool — and it is. But in 2024 Microsoft unified the entire analytics stack under Microsoft Fabric: a single SaaS platform that holds your data (OneLake), processes it (Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory) and serves it back through Power BI without the traditional copy-and-move cycle.
The result is analytics that's actually real-time. With Direct Lake mode, Power BI reads directly from OneLake at Import-mode speed — no nightly refresh, no stale data, no waiting for the warehouse team. Your dashboards reflect the business as it is right now.
Power BI and Fabric are part of the broader Microsoft Power Platform we engineer — alongside Power Automate, Power Apps and Microsoft Copilot.
How they fit together
Two products, one stack
Power BI
The reporting and visualisation layer your business sees. Dashboards, reports, paginated outputs, mobile apps, embedded analytics. Power BI is included in many existing Microsoft 365 licences.
Microsoft Fabric
The unified data platform underneath. OneLake storage, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Engineering, Data Science, Data Factory and Real-Time Intelligence — all sharing the same data, all governed in one place.
Together
Fabric stores and processes the data; Power BI surfaces it. With Direct Lake mode, Power BI reads straight from OneLake at Import-mode speed — no ETL to a separate model, no refresh delay.
Capabilities
What we build with Power BI & Fabric
Power BI Reporting
Custom semantic models, DAX measures, Row Level Security, paginated reports, embedded analytics and pixel-perfect executive dashboards — designed around the decisions your leadership team actually needs to make.
Microsoft Fabric OneLake
A single, governed lake for every workload — Power BI, Data Engineering, Data Science, Warehouse and Real-Time Intelligence — all reading from the same copy of the truth. No more data duplication across silos.
Lakehouse & Warehouse
We design the right storage pattern for your data — Fabric Lakehouse for flexible semi-structured analytics, Warehouse for transactional SQL workloads, or a hybrid Medallion architecture (bronze / silver / gold) for enterprise scale.
Dataflows Gen2 & Pipelines
Low-code Dataflows Gen2 and Data Factory pipelines that ingest, transform and orchestrate data from SAP, Sage, SQL, Dataverse, Excel, REST APIs and on-prem systems — refreshed on the cadence your business demands.
Real-Time Intelligence
Event streams, KQL databases and real-time dashboards that surface operational data within seconds — IoT telemetry, transaction streams, web events and alerts the moment something matters.
Direct Lake Mode
Fabric's breakthrough storage mode that gives Power BI the speed of Import with the freshness of DirectQuery — no data movement, no refresh windows, sub-second queries on billions of rows.
OneLake · Fabric
One copy of the truth, every workload
OneLake is Fabric's tenant-wide data lake — the "OneDrive for data". Every Fabric workload (Lakehouse, Warehouse, Power BI, Data Science, Real-Time Intelligence) reads from and writes to the same underlying storage in open Delta-Parquet format. No duplication, no copying between systems, one governance model.
- Shortcuts to ADLS, S3, Google Cloud Storage and Dataverse — no data movement
- Open Delta-Parquet format — interoperable with Databricks, Snowflake and other engines
- Workspace governance with sensitivity labels, lineage and access control inherited from Microsoft Entra
- Domain-driven design — organise data by business domain, not by tool
Power BI
Dashboards your executives actually open
We design Power BI reports around the decision, not the data. Every visual earns its place by answering a question your leadership team is already asking — and the semantic model underneath is built for performance, security and self-service extension by your team.
Custom DAX measures, governed semantic models, Row Level Security, paginated reports for finance, embedded analytics for customer portals, and mobile-optimised views for executives on the move.
Real-Time Intelligence · Fabric
When daily refresh is too slow
Fabric Real-Time Intelligence ingests event streams — IoT telemetry, transactional events, web analytics, application logs — and lands them in KQL databases queryable within seconds. We pair it with Power BI Real-Time dashboards and Data Activator triggers so the business sees and acts on events as they happen.
- Event Streams
- KQL Databases
- Data Activator
- Live dashboards
Governance & security
Built for the audit, not just the demo
Row Level Security and Object Level Security so every viewer sees only the data they're entitled to — enforced in the semantic model, not the report.
Sensitivity labels and Microsoft Purview integration for end-to-end data classification and lineage across OneLake.
Workspace lifecycle — dev / test / prod separation with deployment pipelines and Git integration for source-controlled artifacts.
POPIA-aligned design for South African businesses handling regulated personal information.
Use cases
What we've already built for clients
See real outcomes in our case studies.
How we work
A delivery model built for production, not demos.
01
Data Audit
We map your existing data sources, current reporting pain points and the decisions your team is trying to make. The output is a clear picture of what's worth building and where the highest-value insights are hiding.
02
Architecture
We design the Fabric / Power BI architecture — OneLake structure, Lakehouse vs Warehouse, semantic model design, refresh strategy, security model and licensing fit. You approve the blueprint before build.
03
Build
We engineer the pipelines, semantic models, DAX measures, reports and dashboards in your Microsoft tenant. Everything version-controlled, peer-reviewed and tested against real production data.
04
Adoption
We train your team, configure workspace governance, set up monitoring, refresh alerts and Row Level Security — then stay on for hyper-care so the reports actually get used, not just delivered.
Pairs well with
Analytics is rarely a single product
Most analytics engagements combine Power BI & Fabric with one or more of the surfaces below. Explore the broader Power Platform service catalogue.
Power Automate
Trigger actions from data thresholds — alerts, approvals, orchestrations driven by what your dashboards detect.
Explore →
Power Apps
Pair dashboards with custom apps users can act in — close the loop between insight and action.
Explore →
Microsoft Copilot
Natural-language analytics over your Fabric semantic models — ask questions of your data in plain English.
Explore →
FAQ
Power BI & Fabric — common questions from South African businesses
+What does Power BI consulting cost in South Africa?
Most Power BI implementations we run in South Africa land between R 80 000 and R 350 000 for the first production-ready release, depending on data source complexity, the number of reports, security model, and whether we layer Microsoft Fabric underneath. We price every engagement bespoke after a free scoping call — there are no fixed packages — and we share a fixed-fee quote before any build starts.
+Do you deliver Power BI consulting remotely across South Africa?
Yes. Preact Analytics is a remote-first Microsoft Power BI and Fabric consultancy. We work with clients in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Port Elizabeth and across the rest of South Africa — as well as international clients — over Microsoft Teams, with all builds happening directly in your Microsoft 365 tenant. We do not run on-site engagements; the remote model is what keeps our pricing and turnaround competitive.
+What is the difference between Power BI and Microsoft Fabric?
Power BI is the reporting and visualisation layer — dashboards, reports, paginated outputs and mobile views. Microsoft Fabric is the unified data platform underneath it: OneLake storage, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory and Real-Time Intelligence, all sharing the same copy of your data. With Direct Lake mode, Power BI reads straight from OneLake at Import-mode speed with no refresh cycle — which is why we increasingly recommend Power BI on top of Fabric for serious analytics.
+Can you connect Power BI to Sage 200, Sage 300, Sage X3 or SYSPRO?
Yes. We regularly integrate Power BI with Sage 200 Evolution, Sage 300, Sage X3, SYSPRO and Microsoft Dynamics — through direct SQL connections, the on-premises data gateway, custom Azure Functions or Fabric Data Factory pipelines. Sage finance and inventory reporting in Power BI is one of our most-requested South African engagements.
+How long does a Power BI implementation take?
A focused implementation — one or two data sources, a tested semantic model and a first set of governed dashboards — typically goes live in 4 to 8 weeks. A broader Fabric build (OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, multiple subject areas) usually runs 10 to 16 weeks. We work in two-week increments so you see production-ready output every fortnight, not at the end.
+Are you a Microsoft Power BI partner in South Africa?
Yes — Preact Analytics is a Microsoft partner specialising in the full Power Platform: Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Power Automate, Power Apps and Microsoft Copilot. Every engagement is built bespoke for the client and stays inside your own Microsoft 365 / Azure tenant.
Have a reporting problem in mind?
Tell us what your team is trying to see. We'll come back with a Power BI & Fabric architecture, a realistic delivery timeline and the dashboards your leadership will actually open.