To be or not to be, to data warehouse or not. These age-old questions continue to circle in our minds. 

Some experts will tell you it’s better to connect directly to data sources so you can build Power BI reports quickly as soon as they are needed. Others will insist that it’s better to build those reports off an integrated, standardized data warehouse. 

Which option is right? The correct answer is: It depends. 

Why Some Companies Use Data Warehouses

Many BI experts continue to label the data warehouse as the primary engine behind business intelligence. While a data warehouse can be slow, it is reliable, able to serve compiled, standardized, and integrated data for reporting and analytics. But when it comes to speed, a data warehouse cannot help with immediacy. When you need to deliver a to-the-moment report and you need to deliver it five minutes ago, your data warehouse isn’t going to be much help. 

Building your data warehouse is also a slow and expensive process. On the other hand, once the data warehouse is constructed, it’s very easy to add data points and accommodate business changes. Your report authors will be able to leverage a rich set of dimensionality. 

Using a data warehouse also requires having someone on hand who has a deep understanding of data modeling and BI architecture who can maintain and augment your data warehouse. WIthout that knowledgeable resource, your data warehouse runs the risk of becoming stale, inaccurate, and cumbersome—and actually creating a worse reporting environment than you had before the data warehouse was built. 

Reporting without A Data Warehouse

The flip side of that experience is running business intelligence through Power BI without a data warehouse. The most immediate benefit you’ll see is how much faster you can get reports set up and out the door. With no immediate data store involved, the data flows directly from the system or record. Ditching the data warehouse as the middleman lets you respond quickly to shifting reporting needs and better support your business through the ebbs and flows of every day. Another perk of going data warehouse-free is that you can operate with a smaller and less highly technical team. 

However, going without a data warehouse isn’t the perfect solution for all organizations. Building a complex report by hand will come with a higher price tag to craft and maintain. And the more complex your measures, the slower your dataset refresh and report responsiveness. If your reporting brings multiple source systems together, not having a data warehouse can be tough when it comes to joining primary / foreign keys. This might mean some messy hacks in Power Query to make valid data joins. 

Choosing Whether or Not to Get A Data Warehouse

All of the above might lead you to conclude that you’ll need to suck it up and make the hefty investment—both monetarily and personnel-wise—in a data warehouse. 

Except . . . what if you don’t need to? 

There are pros and cons to both using and not using a data warehouse, but if your business doesn’t have the capital—either in funding, data volumes, or expertise—to support standing up a data warehouse, are there ways around the cons of not having one that can still produce solid, reliable reporting? 

The answer is, of course, YES! 

“What about report and data source sizes?” you may be asking. This is where the “it depends” answer comes into play again. If your reporting needs are minimal at the moment, it’s likely not worth it just yet to invest in a pricey data warehouse. Future plans on data sources such as new CRM or ERP systems are also relevant. There’s not much point in spending your time building a data warehouse based on a source that could soon be replaced. 

When it comes to the size of the data source, yes, a data warehouse can solve report performance issues. However, there’s no need to solve a non-existent problem. Look at the size of the data source you’ll be using, how quickly data grows, and in what quantity. Larger organizations that have multiple source systems or complex reporting requirements will likely benefit from standing up a data warehouse. But if that’s not your business, leveraging an integration like ExtendInsights to function in place of a data warehouse and serve Excel—and thereby Power BI—with single-source-of-truth data is going to serve you much better. 

Skip the Data Warehouse with ExtendInsights

ExtendInsights leverages a direct integration between Microsoft Excel and popular data sources such as NetSuite, HubSpot, Chargebee, Stripe, and Salesforce that enables users to pull saved searches and other data directly from the source into Excel. From there, you have the option to create custom reports from a common set of data sources. For the SMB and budget-conscious organization, this can be an ideal solution to keeping reporting fast and accurate, and based on a single source of truth, without having the huge pricetag of a data warehouse. 

Curious how ExtendInsights can save you money and improve your reporting with integration? We’d like to show you how with a free trial.