What Power BI Can’t Do (And What It Can)

Power BI is powerful—but it’s not magic.

Too many wholesale businesses get excited about dashboards, only to hit a wall when they realise Power BI can’t create data that doesn’t exist.

Here’s what Power BI can’t do:

• It won’t fix messy, inconsistent data in your systems.
• It won’t track things you don’t already log (e.g. picker errors if you never record them).
• It won’t connect to everything without effort—especially older systems.
• It won’t tell you what to do—it visualises, not strategises.

But here’s what Power BI can do brilliantly:

• Combine data from your ERP, website, CRM, and spreadsheets into one place.
• Create visual dashboards so you can see stockouts, margin trends, pick times, repeat orders—live.
• Let teams drill into what’s happening in real time, not rely on end-of-month reports.
• Turn raw data into actions—if you know what to look for.

The key? Power BI is a lens, not the engine. It reflects your business back at you—but only if the data underneath is clean, structured, and consistent.

Decide what you want to track. Sort your data. Then let Power BI bring it to life.