Applied Decision Analytics

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026): Applied Decision Analytics
Articles

Comparative Analysis of MS Excel and Power BI Tools for Business Reporting

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  • Ksenija Ćosić,
  • Mónika Imreh-Tóth
Ksenija Ćosić
Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia and Clarivate
Mónika Imreh-Tóth
Széchenyi Istvàn University, Hungary

Published 2026-03-25

Keywords

  • Business analytics,
  • Business reporting,
  • Power BI,
  • MS Excel

Copyright (c) 2026 Ksenija Ćosić, Mónika Imreh-Tóth (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Ćosić, K., & Imreh-Tóth, M. (2026). Comparative Analysis of MS Excel and Power BI Tools for Business Reporting. Applied Decision Analytics , 2(1), 204-243. https://ada-journal.org/index.php/ada/article/view/22

Abstract

The modern business environment is characterized by the need to make decisions based on data, and this is precisely the basis for achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage. The increasing amount and complexity of data impose the need for advanced business analytics tools that enable efficient processing, transformation, and interpretation of data. Among the most used tools are Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense, IBM Cognos Analytics, MS Excel, and others. Comparative analyses of the most widespread solutions in this area are often found in the literature. Despite their widespread use, direct comparative analyses of Power BI and Excel, as two Microsoft tools, are rare in the literature. The goal of this paper is to identify the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions based on a review of relevant sources and practical research; in order to determine in which business contexts their application can contribute to more effective decision-making and the improvement of business intelligence.

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