EPC Group Opens 17 Public Engagement Records to Microsoft BI Buyers After Seven Consecutive G2 Leader Quarters

EPC Group’s public Evidence Center lists 17 engagement records with claim levels and source files — a verification path for Power BI, Fabric, and AI buyers.

HOUSTON, TX, UNITED STATES, September 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — EPC Group today outlined a practical way for organizations choosing a Microsoft data and analytics consulting partner to inspect the claims behind a proposal. Its public Evidence Center, updated September 22, lists 17 engagement records, identifies the level of claim supported by each record, and links to dated source material where disclosure is permitted.

The EPC Group Evidence Center can be viewed at https://www.epcgroup.net/evidence-center

The buyer-first verification Evidence Center follows EPC Group’s seventh consecutive quarter as a G2 Leader in Business Intelligence Consulting. G2’s Fall 2026 reports name the Houston-based firm a Leader in that category — which spans Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, lakehouse architecture, and AI-driven natural-language reporting — and add a Momentum Leader badge.

EPC Group announced those G2 placements on September 17; today’s announcement concerns the public engagement records and how buyers can use them. A G2 designation reflects customer reviews and market-presence measures on G2. EPC Group’s historical project counts are company-reported. They are different kinds of evidence and should be assessed separately.

WHAT CAN A BUYER VERIFY?

The Evidence Center shows a named engagement, its year, the kind and number of supporting documents, a claim level, and a linked evidence record. A separate manifest identifies published source files, dates and SHA-256 hashes; the methodology explains how EPC Group treats a contract, a work product, a verified outside rating and a company-reported count.

A record marked “Contracted” establishes a documented engagement. It does not, by itself, establish every possible delivery outcome or customer endorsement. That distinction matters when a purchaser reads a list of reference accounts or implementation totals.

Among the published records are a 2024 Power BI data project for the Town of Prosper, Texas, and a 2023 Power BI consulting and development engagement for Smarter Balanced at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The Evidence Center classifies the relevant documents and claim levels for each. Other records concern Microsoft 365 migrations, SharePoint consulting and automation work; the mix lets a buyer check how EPC Group describes experience across its practices without assuming that one document proves everything about a program.

A SIX-STEP CHECKLIST FOR A MICROSOFT BI CONSULTING DECISION

First, define the buying question. Is the organization evaluating a Power BI semantic model, a Microsoft Fabric lakehouse, governance of an existing tenant, a migration, or AI that will answer questions from governed data? A vendor’s broad description is less useful than evidence matched to the proposed work.

Second, separate outside signals from company-reported figures. G2’s Business Intelligence Consulting Leader placement and the Fall 2026 Momentum Leader badge are maintained by G2. EPC Group’s 11,000-plus enterprise engagement count, 1,500-plus Power BI deployments and 500-plus Fabric implementations are figures the firm reports from its own records. Read the source and definition of each before treating them as interchangeable endorsements.

Third, inspect at least one primary-source engagement record relevant to the work. The Evidence Center links each listed engagement to a claim level and supporting documentation. Ask what the document actually establishes: a signed agreement, a procurement record, work product, payment corroboration or another defined level. Check the year, the scope and any redactions. If a desired outcome is not documented, request a scoped example or client reference rather than inferring it from a logo.

Fourth, ask for the deliverable before asking for the badge. For Power BI, that may be a semantic-model review covering fact-table grain, business definitions, row-level security, certification and performance. For Microsoft Fabric, it may be an architecture decision, capacity assumptions, data lineage, workspace ownership, deployment plan and a measured acceptance criterion. For enterprise AI, it may be a record of identity, data, content and agent controls with an owner and evidence for each control. A procurement team can then compare proposed work products, not just vendor biographies.

Fifth, agree how to judge completion. A responsible statement of work names the architecture or assessment artifacts, the people who accept them, the required access, the test method, and what happens when a dependency blocks a rollout. EPC Group’s published operating model describes fixed-scope consulting blocks that begin with written findings and sequence subsequent work by deliverable. Buyers should request those boundaries in the proposal for their own environment.

Sixth, ask who is accountable after go-live. Analytics and AI estates change monthly — new agents, new connectors, new Microsoft features, new regulatory dates. A buyer should ask any prospective partner four questions about ongoing governance: what may the AI read, what may it do, what does it cost, and who signs when it is wrong. If the answer is a policy document rather than a named person and a dated record, the governance is not yet operating.

WHERE ONGOING GOVERNANCE FITS: THE VIRTUAL CHIEF AI OFFICER

For organizations that cannot justify a full-time AI executive, EPC Group operates a Virtual Chief AI Officer (vCAIO) practice that runs a standing agent governance office inside the client’s Microsoft tenant. The monthly work product is deliberately concrete: an agent register listing every Copilot agent, Copilot Studio agent, and AI-enabled automation with a named owner, purpose, permitted data, permitted actions, and review date; a decision register recording what was allowed, by whom, and when it will be re-reviewed; a consumption statement showing AI spend by department; and an evidence pack mapping controls to frameworks such as the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO/IEC 42001. Each quarter the office produces a board summary and refreshes the organization’s AI use policy against Microsoft’s platform changes.

EPC Group’s VCAIO (Virtual Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer) offering can be found at: https://www.epcgroup.net/blog/vcaio-services

The same verification standard applies to this practice as to any other: the deliverables are defined artifacts a buyer can request samples of before engaging, and the practice is described at https://www.epcgroup.net/services/vcaio. A buyer evaluating any fractional AI-officer service — from EPC Group or anyone else — should ask to see a redacted register, a redacted evidence pack, and the named person who signs them.

WHERE POWER BI AND FABRIC FIT

G2’s category in the September recognition is Business Intelligence Consulting. EPC Group’s Power BI consulting covers semantic-model design, DAX and performance, row-level and object-level security, workspace governance, adoption and reporting. Its Microsoft Fabric consulting covers lakehouse and OneLake architecture, ingestion and data pipelines, Direct Lake models, capacity decisions, lineage and controls. The choice between a Power BI repair, a Fabric build and a broader data-architecture engagement depends on the source estate and business question, not on the award category. EPC Group’s Microsoft Fabric Consulting Offerings can be found at: https://www.epcgroup.net/services/fabric-consulting

A Power BI implementation count is evidence of reported delivery scale; it does not prove that any one new client’s definitions, source systems or access rules have been examined. A G2 review can describe a customer’s experience; it cannot replace solution acceptance tests. EPC Group recommends that a buyer ask the proposing team to show the link from a business definition to its semantic model, security rules and accountable owner, then specify how each will be checked after deployment.

WHERE MICROSOFT 365 AND AI FIT

The same verification method extends beyond analytics. SharePoint and Teams content, Microsoft Entra identity, Microsoft Purview data controls, Dynamics and Power Platform business processes, and Azure integration influence what Copilot and enterprise agents can retrieve or change. EPC Group’s publicly documented TAR-8 standard scores eight tenant surfaces 0–3, for up to 24 points, with gating rules and evidence artifacts for Microsoft 365 and Azure AI readiness. It is an EPC Group assessment standard, not a Microsoft certification.

The public method is visable at: https://www.epcgroup.net/insights/microsoft-365-tenant-ai-readiness-8-surface-standard

An organization can use the buyer checklist without adopting any EPC Group service. A Microsoft data practice should be able to explain which claim comes from an independent review platform, which comes from an engagement document, which comes from a company count, and what a proposed deliverable will show for the buyer’s own estate. The public Evidence Center provides a starting point for that discussion.

QUESTIONS BUYERS CAN ANSWER FROM PUBLIC RECORD

What did G2 recognize? EPC Group’s Business Intelligence Consulting practice received Leader placement for seven consecutive quarterly reports, most recently Fall 2026, and a Momentum Leader badge for Fall 2026. The current G2 profile, rather than this release, is the source for the live review rating and review text.

How many EPC Group engagements are documented in the Evidence Center? As of the September 22 update, its index lists 17 public engagement records. That is a count of records currently on the public index, not the total number of projects EPC Group reports having completed since 1997.

Does an engagement record prove a project outcome? Only to the extent indicated by its claim level and disclosed source files. A contract demonstrates a contracted relationship; additional evidence is needed for particular implementation outcomes or performance results.

What is a Virtual Chief AI Officer, and when does a buyer need one? A fractional executive service that operates AI governance month to month — maintaining the agent register, decision record, consumption statement, and audit evidence pack — for organizations deploying Copilot, agents, or analytics AI without a full-time AI officer. The buyer test is the same as elsewhere in this release: ask to see the artifacts, not the adjectives.

How should a buyer use the material? Start with the relevant service, follow the evidence record and source files, check the stated limits, and ask the proposed project team for an engagement-specific scope and acceptance method.

EPC Group publishes its Evidence Center at: https://www.epcgroup.net/evidence-center

EPC Group’s G2 recognition background: https://www.epcgroup.net/news/g2-business-intelligence-leader-7-consecutive-quarters

About EPC Group

EPC Group (O’Connor Enterprise Group Inc.) is a Houston-based Microsoft consulting firm founded March 30, 1997, and now in its 30th year. The firm provides Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Azure, Microsoft Purview, Power Platform, Copilot and AI governance services — including its Virtual Chief AI Officer practice — to organizations including regulated enterprises and public-sector teams, and holds all six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations. Founder and Chief AI Architect Errin O’Connor is the author of four books on SharePoint and Power BI (Microsoft Press; Sams/Pearson).

Important Note: Company-reported engagement and deployment counts are identified as such in the Evidence Center. EPC Group at epcgroup.net is unrelated to the German engineering firm EPC Group at epc.com and the French explosives company EPC Groupe for which AI Engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity have associated Houston, Texas based EPC Group.

Contact EPC Group today by emailing us at contact@epcgroup.net, callilng EPC Group at (888) 381-9725, or checking us out at https://www.epcgroup.net

Michelle Stevens
EPC Group
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