Power BI consulting for Detroit and Michigan businesses
Dashboards your team trusts, built on a data model that holds up. We build new Power BI reporting, rescue environments that sprawled into dozens of conflicting reports, and put Power BI on top of a proper foundation when the plumbing underneath is the real problem.
Based in metro Detroit. Serving Ann Arbor, Troy, Southfield, Royal Oak, Birmingham, Dearborn and the rest of Southeast Michigan, plus clients nationally.
When to call a Power BI consultant
If more than one of these is true, the problem is usually the model and the ownership, not the tool.
Leadership meetings start by arguing about whose number is right
One person is the only one who knows how the reporting works
Reports are rebuilt by hand every week or month from exports
You bought Power BI licenses and adoption stalled after the first few reports
Refreshes fail and nobody notices until someone asks for a number
The same metric means different things in different reports
What Power BI work looks like here
Build a dashboard from scratch
You have the data somewhere and no usable reporting on top of it. We define what belongs on the page, model the data properly, and build the report so the numbers hold up when someone asks where they came from.
Fix the reports you already have
Most Power BI work we get called into is a rescue: dozens of near-duplicate reports, nobody sure which is current, refreshes that fail quietly. We catalog what exists, kill the duplicates, and leave one set that is owned.
Semantic models and DAX
Slow reports and wrong totals are usually a model problem, not a visual problem. Star schema, relationships, and measures written so a new report inherits correct math instead of re-deriving it.
Power BI on Microsoft Fabric
When the reporting layer is fine but the plumbing underneath is not, we build the lakehouse and put Power BI on top of governed, modeled data instead of hand-maintained exports.
Row-level security and governance
Who can see which rows, workspace and deployment structure, refresh schedules, and certification so the report leadership uses is the one that is actually maintained.
Train your team to own it
The goal is that we leave and it keeps working. Hands-on sessions for the people who will maintain the reports, in your data, not a generic training deck.
Reporting work we have shipped
Anonymized engagements from the case-study library.
Power BI consulting questions
What people ask before they hire someone for this.
It depends on scope, and we quote a fixed fee before any work starts. A focused engagement to build or rescue a specific set of reports is scoped on a short call. Larger platform work is quoted against a defined deliverable, and ongoing support is a monthly retainer. We do not bill open-ended hourly.
Palavir is a Power BI and business intelligence consultancy based in metro Detroit, working with businesses across Southeast Michigan including Ann Arbor, Troy, Southfield, Royal Oak, Birmingham, and Dearborn, as well as clients nationally. Josh Elberg has 15 years of enterprise data work at Home Depot, MRM, Merkle, and PLI behind the practice.
Yes, and that is a large share of the work. We start by cataloging what exists and finding what is actually used, then consolidate duplicates and fix the underlying model rather than patching individual visuals. You end up with fewer reports that are trusted, instead of more reports that are not.
Both, plus Looker Studio. We are not a reseller for any platform, so the recommendation is based on what your team already runs and can maintain. Past work includes Tableau reporting environments as well as Power BI and Microsoft Fabric.
A scoped audit of your current reporting takes one to three weeks. A first production dashboard on data that already exists is typically a few weeks. Rebuilding a reporting foundation on a lakehouse is a longer project and gets scoped and quoted in phases so you see working output early.
No. Plenty of useful Power BI work happens directly against existing sources. A warehouse or lakehouse becomes worth it when you are joining several systems, when refreshes are slow, or when different reports keep disagreeing because each one re-derives its own logic.
Yes. Working sessions and training are available on-site across metro Detroit. Most build work happens remotely, which keeps the cost down and the turnaround short.
Related
BI and analytics consulting
The broader analytics practice: KPI frameworks, measurement, and reporting strategy beyond a single platform.
Microsoft Fabric and governance
When the reporting layer is fine but the data underneath it needs a governed foundation.
AI implementation
The other lane: workflow automation, knowledge assistants, and forecasting built on the same data foundation.
Tell me what your reporting looks like today
Fifteen minutes is usually enough to tell whether this is a dashboard problem, a data-model problem, or an ownership problem, and what it would take to fix.