Power BI Development Services

Power BI development that ships trusted dashboards sprint by sprint, not 9 months from now.

We build the semantic models, DAX measures, and Power BI reports your finance and operations teams actually open. Scoped before work starts. Prototype in week 2. Go-live with documentation, not handover panic.

Build Volume To Date
0
Power BI reports built across chief financial officer, financial planning and analysis, and operations teams
0
Semantic models published with version control and lineage documentation
0d
Median time from kick-off to first prototype review
A Redefine-built Power BI executive dashboard showing revenue key performance indicators and trend charts

A Redefine-built finance dashboard delivered to a mid-market services client.

Leadership team reviewing a live Power BI report on a wide monitor
The Reporting Tax

Old way of building reports versus new way.

Most internal Power BI builds stall at the same three places: a data model nobody trusts, DAX measures that disagree row-to-row, and a publish pipeline that ships through someone's laptop. Here is what changes when development is run as a real engineering discipline.

Old way
Build-as-you-go, hope-and-publish
  • One PBIX file living on a developer's laptop. No source control. No way to roll back a broken measure.

  • DAX written by feel. Same measure named three different ways across pages. Numbers disagree depending which page you open.

  • Star schema? Nope. 14 flat tables joined by best guess. Refresh takes 47 minutes and times out twice a week.

  • Publish via File, then Publish. No staged workspace. Finance opens Monday's report and a column is gone.

  • Zero documentation. When the developer leaves, the model becomes a haunted artefact nobody dares change.

New way
Engineered build, versioned, documented
  • Tabular model in Git. Every DAX measure, every relationship, every parameter under source control with full diff history.

  • DAX style guide. One canonical measure per business concept. Naming conventions enforced. Variance under 0.01% across pages.

  • Star schema by default. Fact and dimension tables. Aggregations where they pay back. Refresh drops to 4 to 7 minutes.

  • Dev, Test, and Production workspaces with deployment pipelines. Finance never sees a broken report in production.

  • Living documentation. Lineage diagrams, measure dictionary, key performance indicator definitions. New analyst onboards in days, not months.

The Development Workflow

Click any node. See exactly what happens at each stage.

Every Power BI build moves through six engineering gates. Click a node to inspect the deliverable, the tooling, and what your team signs off on. The diagram advances on its own every four seconds. Click any node to take control.

discovery-worksheet.pbi
Stage 01 Deliverable
Live
Source and Key Performance Indicator Discovery

We catalog every system that feeds the future report and lock down what each key performance indicator actually means before we touch DAX.

Sources mapped
14
Key performance indicators defined
37
Dynamics 365 Finance and OperationsConnected
Azure SQL, sales martConnected
SharePoint, budget spreadsheetPending owner
HubSpot, pipelineConnected
You sign off

Source list, key performance indicator dictionary version 1, and access requests. Typical effort: one 60-minute call plus async review.

model.bim, main
Stage 02 Deliverable
Building
Semantic Model (Star Schema)

Fact and dimension tables, conformed dates, role-playing dimensions, and aggregations where they pay back.

dim_datedim_customerdim_product
↓ ↓ ↓
fact_sales
↑ ↑
dim_regiondim_channel
Tables
11
Relationships
18
Refresh
5m
measures.dax
Stage 03 Deliverable
Tested
DAX Measure Library

One canonical measure per business concept. Variance under 0.01% across every page. Style guide enforced.

Revenue Year-to-Date =
  CALCULATE(
    [Revenue],
    DATESYTD( dim_date[Date] )
  )

Revenue Year-over-Year % =
  DIVIDE(
    [Revenue] - [Revenue Prior Year],
    [Revenue Prior Year]
  )
Measures
62
Test cases
187
Variance
0.00%
Executive Overview, report.pbix
Stage 04 Deliverable
In review
Reports, Visuals and Drillthrough

Themed, accessible, mobile-aware layouts. Drillthrough pages. Bookmark navigation. Tooltip pages where they help.

Revenue Year-to-Date
$48.2M
↑ 12.4% year over year
Gross Margin
41.8%
↑ 1.2 points
Open Pipeline
$11.7M
↓ $0.8M
Days Sales Outstanding
42d
↓ 4d
Revenue by month
pipeline.yml, Power BI deployment
Stage 05 Deliverable
Promoted
User Acceptance Testing and Deployment Pipeline

Three Power BI workspaces wired to a deployment pipeline. Your team runs user acceptance testing in the test workspace. Production never gets a broken report.

D
Dev workspace
Developer sandbox · latest commit
v1.4.2
T
Test workspace
User acceptance testing by finance · 12 cases passing
UAT
P
Production workspace
Finance, operations · 240 users
Live
handover-package.zip
Stage 06 Deliverable
Signed off
Handover, Documentation and Enablement

Your team owns it. No vendor lock-in. No haunted PBIX file on a former contractor's laptop.

Lineage diagram
Source to model to report map
Measure dictionary
62 measures with definitions and owners
Recorded enablement
3 sessions: analyst, power user, admin
30-day stabilization
Bug fixes and measure tweaks at no charge
What You Get

Every artefact your team owns at go-live.

Five build tracks. Click any row to see exactly what ships inside it, the tools we use, and what your team signs off on. No black boxes, no "trust us" handovers.

Data engineering
Semantic model
DAX library
Report builds
Documentation and enablement
01
Data engineering and extract-transform-load pipelines
Source connectors, dataflows, incremental refresh, and gateway setup so refreshes stop timing out.
  • Connector setup for SQL, Dynamics 365, SAP, Business Central, SharePoint, REST application programming interfaces, and flat files
  • Power Query M scripts version-controlled with documented transformations
  • Incremental refresh policies sized to your data growth and service-level agreement
  • On-premises gateway configuration, clustering, and monitoring
You sign off

Refresh schedule, gateway owner list, and source credentials policy. Effort: one 45-minute review.

02
Semantic model development
Star schema, role-playing dates, calculation groups, row-level security, and aggregations.
  • Star schema design with fact and conformed dimension tables
  • Calculation groups for time intelligence and currency conversion
  • Row-level security roles mapped to your Azure Active Directory groups
  • Aggregation tables where they pay back in refresh and query time
You sign off

Schema diagram, row-level security role matrix, and key performance indicator definitions. Effort: one workshop plus async review.

03
DAX measure library
One canonical measure set, naming conventions enforced, tested for variance.
  • Base measures, time intelligence, and key performance indicator variants in one library
  • Naming conventions and folder structure that scale to 200 or more measures
  • Test cases tied to source-of-truth values from your enterprise resource planning system
  • Performance tuning with VertiPaq Analyzer and DAX Studio
You sign off

Measure dictionary version 1 and 10 golden-record test cases. Effort: one finance validation call.

04
Report and dashboard builds
Layouts, themes, drillthrough, bookmarks, and mobile-aware report pages.
  • Theme JSON tied to your brand, fonts, and accessibility palette
  • Drillthrough pages from key performance indicator cards to transaction detail
  • Mobile report layouts for executive consumption on phones
  • Subscription, alert, and pinned-tile setup for each persona
You sign off

Prototype review, user acceptance testing script, and final layout walkthrough. Effort: 2 reviews of 60 minutes each.

05
Documentation and team enablement
Lineage documentation, measure dictionary, recorded training, and 30-day stabilization.
  • Source to report lineage diagram exported to Visio or Lucid
  • Measure dictionary with definition, owner, and dependency map
  • Recorded sessions for analyst, power user, and admin personas
  • 30-day stabilization window for bug fixes at no extra charge
You own it after

Every artefact lives in your tenant and your Git repository. No vendor lock-in.

Need a feature you do not see? Most engagements add one custom track for industry-specific scenarios (manufacturing overall equipment effectiveness, healthcare claims, retail recency-frequency-monetary analysis). Tell us during scoping.

Power BI Desktop showing a data model view with star schema table relationships

A Redefine-built tabular model open in Power BI Desktop.

Proof It Works

One headline metric. One real engagement.

Before and after reporting state showing legacy Excel report versus new Power BI executive dashboard
Headline result
0
analyst hours per month freed

Three financial planning and analysis analysts stopped exporting Excel pivot tables on Mondays. Variance commentary moved from Thursday to Tuesday. Chief financial officer close-day moved from day 9 to day 5.

VP Finance, mid-market industrial services group
VP, Finance
Mid-market industrial services group
Company

A 1,400-person industrial services group operating across 12 regions on Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

What they do

Field maintenance and facilities contracts for commercial real estate and manufacturing clients.

Problem

Three financial planning and analysis analysts spent every Monday exporting general ledger extracts to Excel, building pivot tables, and emailing PDFs. Numbers disagreed across departments. The chief financial officer close pack landed on day 9.

Solution and result

We built one semantic model on top of the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations finance dimensions, 62 DAX measures with documented test cases, and three Power BI reports (executive overview, regional profit and loss, and accounts receivable aging). Refresh runs at 06:00 daily. The Monday pivot ritual stopped after week 6. Close-day moved to day 5 within one quarter.

Refresh time
5m
from 47m
Reports
3
one model
Close day
5
from 9
The Cost of Staying Put

Build it once. Stop paying the manual reporting tax every month.

A 200-person mid-market business pays roughly the cost of a senior financial planning and analysis salary every year just to keep producing reports the old way. The work is the same every month: pull, pivot, format, email, answer the same five clarifying questions, repeat.

Monthly waste, typical 200-person company
0h
Financial planning and analysis hours on Monday Excel pivot tables
0h
Operations manager hours on weekly status decks
$0
Monthly fully loaded cost of those hours
$0
Annualized cost of doing nothing

A scoped Power BI development engagement converts that recurring burn into a one-off build. The semantic model, DAX library, and three core reports typically pay back in 4 to 7 months. After that, the model is yours, the time savings compound, and analysts move from spreadsheet plumbing to actual analysis.

Payback
4 to 7 months
Build window
6 to 10 weeks
Year-2 effort
~0 hours
Sample Reports

Microsoft Power BI development shipped to real clients.

Caption below each card shows the industry sector and the type of report. More samples available on request.

Power BI executive dashboard with revenue, margin and pipeline key performance indicators
Industrial services
Executive overview · 14 measures
Power BI financial reporting dashboard with profit and loss actuals versus budget variance
Professional services
Regional profit and loss · 22 measures
Power BI operations dashboard with work order throughput and service-level agreement heatmap
Field operations
Work order throughput · 18 measures
Power BI sales pipeline dashboard with win rate funnel and representative leaderboard
Business-to-business sales
Pipeline and forecast · 16 measures
Power BI marketing dashboard with campaign attribution and customer acquisition cost by channel
Business-to-consumer retail
Marketing attribution · 24 measures
Power BI inventory dashboard with stock turn aging and stockout risk heatmap
Distribution
Inventory and turns · 19 measures

More samples available on request. Request samples built for your industry.

Why Redefine

Your power bi development partner versus typical billings.

Most Power BI projects from large implementation partners get delivered hour-by-hour against an open scope. Ours do not. Here is the discipline we hold to on every engagement.

Redefine
Engineered, scoped, owned by you
  • Yes
    Fixed-scope, fixed-fee per sprint
    You see the proposal, the line items, and the deliverables before signing.
  • Yes
    Source control on the tabular model
    Every DAX change reviewable. Rollback safe. No black-box PBIX files.
  • Yes
    Dev, test, and production workspace pipeline
    Finance never opens a broken report on a Monday.
  • Yes
    Documentation shipped with the build
    Lineage diagram, measure dictionary, recorded enablement included.
  • Yes
    30-day stabilization at no extra charge
    Bug fixes and measure tweaks after go-live are part of the engagement.
  • Yes
    Your tenant. Your repository. Your code.
    No vendor lock-in. Everything we build is portable.
Typical partner billing
Time and materials, open scope, undocumented
  • No
    Time and materials, monthly burn
    Scope drift is the business model. You do not know what month 4 costs until month 4.
  • No
    PBIX file on a developer's laptop
    No source control, no rollback, no diff history.
  • No
    Publish straight to production
    User acceptance testing happens after finance reports the bug. Often Monday morning.
  • No
    "Documentation is a separate statement of work"
    Lineage and measure documentation sold as a second engagement after go-live.
  • No
    Post-launch fixes billed at full rate
    Every "small tweak" goes on the next invoice.
  • No
    Soft lock-in via undocumented model
    Only the original developer can change anything. Annual retainer expected.
Common Questions

What to ask a power bi development company before signing.

Six to ten weeks from kick-off to production for a typical scope: one semantic model, 40 to 80 DAX measures, and two to four report pages. Larger scopes (multi-region profit and loss, supply chain) run 12 to 16 weeks. We share the timeline as part of the scoped proposal in week 1.

Fixed scope, fixed fee per sprint. You see every line item in the proposal before signing. Out-of-scope requests get re-scoped as a separate work order, not added silently to the next invoice.

You do. Every artefact ships into your Power BI tenant and your Git repository. The tabular model, DAX library, deployment pipeline, lineage documentation, and recorded training are yours. No vendor lock-in, no annual retainer required to keep using what we built.

Yes. Most engagements pair a Redefine senior developer with one or two of your analysts. Your team is in every code review, every user acceptance testing session, and on every Git pull request. By the end they are confident extending the model without us.

Dynamics 365 (Finance and Operations, Business Central, Customer Engagement), SAP, NetSuite, Salesforce, HubSpot, Azure SQL, Synapse, Fabric, Snowflake, SharePoint, Azure Data Lake Storage, REST application programming interfaces, and most CSV or flat-file feeds. If a source is not on this list we build a custom connector during sprint 1.

Row-level security roles map to your existing Azure Active Directory groups. We document the role matrix and validate it during user acceptance testing. For SOC 2 and HIPAA scenarios, we work inside your existing tenant policies (sensitivity labels, data loss prevention, conditional access) and never extract production data to our environment.

The 30-day stabilization window covers immediate fixes at no extra charge. After that, you can either extend your team's ownership using the documentation and recorded training, or move to a managed support agreement with a defined service-level agreement. Either path is yours to choose.

Is This A Fit?

Answer three questions. Get a straight answer.

We turn down roughly 1 in 4 development engagements because the timing is wrong or the data foundation is not ready. Better to know now than three weeks in.

Question 1 of 3
Do you already have a Power BI tenant or professional licenses in place?
Question 2 of 3
Can you name the 2 or 3 reports your team needs most?
Question 3 of 3
Do you have one named owner inside the business who can sign off on key performance indicator definitions?

Not sure? Tell us your situation and we will be straight with you.

Start The Build

Submit a brief. Get a scoped proposal in 5 days.

No commitment. No pitch. We review the brief, share questions back within 48 hours, and send a line-by-line scoped Power BI development proposal within 5 business days.

Response
Within 48 hours
Proposal
5 business days
Builds shipped
240+ reports
Code ownership
Yours, day one
What you want built

Get on a call with us to see how we can help you

Get a Quote