Crystal Reports to Power BI Migration: Free 3-Week Assessment

Crystal Reports has long been a legacy staple for operational reporting, but modern businesses require agility, interactivity, and real-time insights that traditional paginated reports fail to deliver. Power BI offers a modern, scalable, and interactive analytics platform that enables self-service business intelligence, real-time dashboards, and enterprise-grade governance.

At MAQ Software, we specialize in helping organizations like yours modernize legacy reporting infrastructure. Our free 3-week Crystal Reports to Power BI assessment offers a detailed evaluation of your current Crystal environment and how Power BI can unlock new business value.

Target customers

• Digital transformation & innovation leaders
• IT executives (CIO/CTO/CSO)
• BI/Analytics Team
• Power BI Admins
• Project/Program Managers

Agenda

Week 1: Discovery and Analysis

• Kick-off Meeting: Confirm scope, introduce teams, align expectations, and plan communication
• Crystal Reports Analysis: Review sample RPT files, database connections, parameters, and subreports
• Data Source Evaluation: Assess underlying data sources, query logic (SQL/stored procedures), and report generation performance
• Stakeholder Interviews: Understand business logic, usage scenarios, and data consumption needs
• Initial Power BI Overview: Introduce Power BI’s capabilities like interactive dashboards, row-level security, real-time data refresh, and cloud publishing

Week 2: Power BI Evaluation and Planning

• Feature Demonstrations: Show how Crystal functionalities (e.g., formulas, conditional formatting, grouping) map to Power BI features (e.g., DAX, bookmarks, filters)
• Power BI for Operational Reporting: Discuss options like paginated reports within Power BI Premium for regulatory or formatted reporting needs
• Data Architecture Planning: Propose how stored procedures, joins, and parameters in Crystal can be replicated via Power Query, DAX, and semantic models
• Migration Strategy: Define possible phased approaches—by business unit, report complexity, or usage priority
• Preliminary Effort Estimation: Estimate level of effort based on number and complexity of Crystal reports and database logic

Week 3: Roadmap and Recommendations

• Refined Migration Roadmap: Provide a phase-wise migration plan with key activities, responsible roles, dependencies, and timelines
• Cost Analysis: Outline expected licensing costs for Power BI (Pro, PPU, Premium Capacity) and projected implementation costs
• Risk and Gap Analysis: Identify potential blockers such as unsupported visuals, VB scripting, or print-format dependency
• Governance and Adoption Best Practices: Share guidelines for Power BI governance, workspace security, dataflows, and end-user enablement
• Final Presentation and Q&A: Present full findings, roadmap, estimates, and answer business and technical questions

Deliverables

• In-depth analysis of your Crystal Reports environment and mapped Power BI capabilities
• Phased migration plan with effort estimation, dependencies, and priority order
• Suggested Power BI structure for datasets, workspaces, access, and refresh models
• Recommendations for Power BI SKUs and total cost of ownership
• A clear guide for initiating a full migration project, with Power BI best practices and adoption strategies

Benefits

• Get a clear view of the feasibility and effort required for migrating from Crystal Reports to Power BI
• Learn how Power BI can address pain points like hard-coded logic, inflexible layouts, and developer-heavy maintenance
• Understand potential ROI from reduced licensing costs and improved reporting efficiency
• Receive a preliminary migration roadmap aligned with your business and technical goals
• Discover governance, security, and architecture improvements with Power BI

Why choose MAQ Software
Our team of Power BI-certified experts brings deep experience modernizing legacy platforms like Crystal Reports. We understand the technical differences—hard-coded SQL logic, heavy use of stored procedures, and print-oriented formatting—and guide clients through a structured transformation. Our proven methodology ensures accuracy, performance, and usability in your new Power BI environment. We don’t just assess—we build a roadmap that sets your team up for long-term success with modern, self-service analytics.

Ready to modernize your Crystal Reports environment with Power BI? Contact CustomerSuccess@MAQSoftware.com to schedule your free 3-week assessment and begin your journey to better business intelligence.