Case Study: Reliable Electric halves estimating time, boosts accuracy and cuts costs with Microsoft Power BI

Contractor reduces costs and encourages growth with Microsoft Power Apps

Reliable Electric, a contractor specializing in high‑end custom homes and commercial builds, faced a costly, single‑seat estimating solution that created bottlenecks, required manual copy‑and‑paste into Excel, and could not scale as the company grew. To modernize estimating and operations the company turned to the Microsoft Power BI ecosystem—building apps with Microsoft Power Apps and automating workflows with Power Automate, while integrating Azure SQL and Excel to regain control of its data and processes.

Using Microsoft Power BI tools, Reliable Electric rapidly developed a Sales Tracker and an Estimating app that output to Azure SQL and automated data flows, eliminating manual transfers and reducing estimate creation time by 50%. The apps halved estimating-related manual work, cut licensing costs by CAD 10,000 per year, and delivered total annual savings of roughly CAD 80,000–100,000 compared with purpose‑built estimating products, while enabling six additional apps that improved field reporting, approvals, and inventory tracking.

Reliable Electric

Lars Peterson

General Manager