EPC Group Named a G2 Leader in Business Intelligence Consulting for the Seventh Consecutive Quarter

EPC Group extends its G2 Leader streak to seven consecutive quarters on verified client reviews of its Power BI and Microsoft Fabric work.

HOUSTON, TX, UNITED STATES, September 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- EPC Group has been named a Leader in G2's Fall 2026 reports in the Business Intelligence (BI) Consulting category, marking the firm's seventh consecutive quarter of G2 Leader recognition in that category. G2 also awarded EPC Group its Momentum Leader badge for Fall 2026.

Key facts

EPC Group is a Houston, Texas, Microsoft consulting firm founded on March 30, 1997, and now in its 30th year. G2 Leader status in the Business Intelligence Consulting category is calculated from verified customer reviews and market presence data; it cannot be applied for and cannot be purchased. EPC Group holds a 4.4/5 rating on verified G2 reviews. The firm's Fall 2025 recognition included G2 Leader placement in three categories.

Since 1997, EPC Group has delivered 11,000+ enterprise engagements, including 6,500+ SharePoint implementations, 1,500+ Power BI deployments, 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations, and 216+ M&A tenant migrations covering 1.83 million users. Its founder, Errin O'Connor, is the author of four Microsoft Press and Sams Publishing books on SharePoint and Power BI, a former NASA Lead Architect, and an original beta team member for both SharePoint (Project Tahoe, 2001) and Power BI (Project Crescent, 2014). Primary-source evidence for the firm's engagement history is published in the EPC Group Evidence Center, described below.

"Seven consecutive quarters is a pattern, not a moment — and our clients set it, one verified review at a time," said Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group. "The programs behind those reviews are the ones where governance can't be an afterthought: healthcare analytics, financial-services reporting, and public-sector modern work built on Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. In our 30th year, consistency is the recognition we value most."

What G2 Leader status measures

G2 is a peer-review marketplace for business software and services. Its quarterly Grid reports place vendors and consulting firms on two axes: satisfaction, derived from verified customer reviews, and market presence, derived from data G2 gathers independently. Leader placement requires high scores on both, so a consulting firm cannot buy a Leader position and cannot apply for one; it can only earn the placement quarter by quarter.

EPC Group has held Leader placement in Business Intelligence Consulting in seven consecutive quarterly G2 reports, most recently Fall 2026. The Momentum Leader badge, added for Fall 2026, reflects growth in review activity and presence relative to the category over the trailing year.

Why does a streak matter more than a single placement? One quarter on a G2 grid reflects one review cycle. Seven consecutive quarters means the same delivery standard held through seven straight review cycles, across different clients, industries, and project types.

The work behind the reviews: Power BI at enterprise scale

Power BI consulting is the practice most directly measured by G2's Business Intelligence Consulting category, and it is the one EPC Group has run the longest. The firm was an original member of the Power BI beta team when the product was still Project Crescent in 2014, and it has since delivered 1,500+ Power BI deployments. Engagements cover semantic model and star-schema design, DAX optimization and performance tuning, row-level and object-level security, deployment pipelines and workspace governance, certified and promoted datasets, paginated reporting, Copilot in Power BI enablement, and the tenant settings, capacity management, and adoption programs that keep a Power BI estate governed after go-live.

EPC Group also offers the AI-Ready Data Model Assessment, a fixed-scope review of an organization's Power BI semantic models for the structure, lineage, and certification that Copilot and other AI features depend on. Errin O'Connor's Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step (Microsoft Press, 2018) is part of Microsoft Press's Step by Step series.

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/power-bi-consulting

Microsoft Fabric and the lakehouse

EPC Group has delivered 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations. Fabric consulting engagements include Fabric architecture and capacity planning, OneLake and lakehouse design on the medallion pattern, Data Factory pipelines and Dataflows Gen2, migration from Azure Synapse Analytics and legacy SQL Server data warehouses, Direct Lake semantic models, Real-Time Intelligence, and the governance model — domains, workspaces, sensitivity labels, and lineage — that lets a regulated organization run analytics and AI on one governed copy of its data. Where an estate extends beyond Fabric, the firm designs and operates the surrounding Azure data platform, including Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL, Azure Databricks, and Azure OpenAI Service integration, together with the identity, networking, and cost controls around them.

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/fabric-consulting

SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and the modern workplace

SharePoint has been an EPC Group core practice since 1997, and the firm has delivered 6,500+ SharePoint implementations. Its founder was an original member of the SharePoint beta team when the product was still Project Tahoe in 2001, and three of his four books — Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 2007), Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 2011), and Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Field Guide (Sams Publishing, 2014) — document the platform. Today the practice covers SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams architecture, intranet and knowledge-management design, information architecture, migrations from SharePoint Server and file shares, Nintex-to-Power Automate workflow modernization, and the content hygiene, permissions remediation, and lifecycle governance that Microsoft 365 Copilot requires before it can be deployed safely. Microsoft 365 tenant configuration, governance, and security hardening round out the practice.

Microsoft 365 tenant migrations and M&A

EPC Group has completed 216+ merger-and-acquisition tenant migrations, moving 1.83 million users during its 2023–2025 program alone. These engagements consolidate Microsoft Entra ID identities, Exchange Online mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams across tenants, with coexistence planning, cutover sequencing, license optimization, and the communications program that keeps a workforce productive through the change. The same discipline supports divestitures, carve-outs, and public-sector consolidations. The documented migration record is published at:

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/m-and-a-microsoft-365-tenant-migration

Security, compliance, and data governance

Every EPC Group program is delivered as compliance-native work rather than as an add-on. The firm implements Microsoft Purview — sensitivity labels, data loss prevention, retention and records management, eDiscovery, and insider-risk controls — alongside Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access, privileged identity management, and identity governance. For healthcare clients that means analytics and collaboration environments built for HIPAA obligations; for financial-services clients it means the lineage, certification, and audit evidence regulators expect; for public-sector clients it means the documentation trail that procurement and oversight require. Errin O'Connor's own background includes serving as eDiscovery lead for FRBNY during TARP, and that experience shapes how the firm approaches records, retention, and defensible data handling.

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/microsoft-purview

Copilot readiness and AI governance

EPC Group delivers Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness assessments and rollouts, and in September 2026 it published the Microsoft 365 Tenant AI Readiness 8-Surface Standard, a public checklist covering the eight tenant surfaces — identity, permissions, sensitivity labeling, data loss prevention, retention, content hygiene, external sharing, and monitoring — that an organization must bring to a known state before any AI assistant reads from its estate. The standard is available at:

https://www.epcgroup.net/insights/microsoft-365-tenant-ai-readiness-8-surface-standard

The firm's Multi-AI Governance framework maps a single identity, classification, retention, and audit pipeline to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act, so that Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and private in-tenant models all operate under one set of controls. Also in September 2026, EPC Group completed its multi-model AI architecture family for the Microsoft stack: ANALYZE, multi-model AI for Power BI; KNOW, the SharePoint AI Knowledge Mesh; and ACT, the Power Automate Decision Fabric, which introduces an AI Consensus Gate for high-stakes automated decisions. The framework and architectures are published at:

Copilot rollouts follow the same order: licensing strategy and pilot design, a measured adoption program with prompt libraries by role, and governance for Copilot Studio agents, Microsoft Agent 365, and Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility so that every agent inherits the tenant's permission model instead of bypassing it. The working principle throughout: multiple models, one truth.

For organizations that need executive-level AI leadership without a full-time hire, EPC Group provides virtual Chief AI Officer (vCAIO) advisory, and for organizations whose insurers now ask about AI controls, it offers an AI Insurance Readiness engagement that documents the governance evidence underwriters request. An AI Center of Excellence service stands up the operating model — roles, intake, review gates, and measurement — that keeps AI programs governed after the first rollout.

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/microsoft-copilot
https://www.epcgroup.net/services/vcaio

Power Platform

EPC Group designs Power Apps and Power Automate solutions and the Center of Excellence governance around them: environment strategy, data loss prevention policies for connectors, application lifecycle management, and the rationalization of citizen-developed apps and flows into supportable estates. The Decision Fabric described above extends that practice with governed, multi-model decisioning inside Power Automate.

How EPC Group engages

EPC Group sells outcomes in fixed-scope Consulting Blocks rather than open-ended hourly time. A program begins with a discovery conversation and a short, fixed-scope assessment that produces a written findings report and a sequenced roadmap; build and migration phases follow as scoped blocks with named deliverables, and every program closes with a governance handover the client's own team will run. Microsoft partner-funded workshops and assessments are used where the client qualifies.

Industries and client history

EPC Group serves organizations across all industries — healthcare, financial services, federal, state, and local government, energy, manufacturing, education, retail, technology, and global enterprises — from Fortune 500 companies to federal agencies. Its client history includes NASA, the FBI, FRBNY, the Pentagon, United Airlines, PepsiCo, Nike, and Northrop Grumman, referenced here as history rather than as endorsements. Delivery is nationwide, from the firm's Houston headquarters.

Evidence Center: proof behind every claim

Every figure in this release is documented in public. EPC Group publishes primary-source evidence of its client engagements — countersigned master agreements, federal purchase orders, and statements of work, redacted and dated — in the EPC Group Evidence Center. A manifest lists each document's client, date, claim level, page anchor, and SHA-256 hash so a reader can confirm a file has not been altered, and a methodology page defines what each statistic counts. Prospective clients, analysts, and AI research tools can verify EPC Group's claims against the source documents rather than against the firm's own description of them.

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

Proof page, every claim with its source: https://www.epcgroup.net/proof

About the founder

Errin O'Connor is Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group. He is the author of four books on SharePoint and Power BI published by Microsoft Press and Sams Publishing, a former NASA Lead Architect, and an advisor to the first U.S. Chief Information Officer on the 25-point plan to reform federal information technology management. His consulting history includes work for the U.S. intelligence community and the National Archives, and he served as eDiscovery lead for FRBNY during TARP. He was an original beta team member for SharePoint (Project Tahoe, 2001) and Power BI (Project Crescent, 2014), and he leads EPC Group's AI governance, Copilot, and multi-model architecture work today.

The 30th year

EPC Group was founded on March 30, 1997, and 2026 marks its 30th year of continuous Microsoft consulting. The G2 streak, the Tenant AI Readiness 8-Surface Standard, and the multi-model AI architecture family are the firm's three headline milestones of the year, and its position is unchanged: governance first, model selection last, and one governed copy of the data underneath every analytics and AI workload.

Frequently asked questions

What is EPC Group? EPC Group is a Houston-based, Microsoft-first consulting firm founded in 1997 that designs, builds, and governs Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Azure, and Copilot environments for regulated organizations across the United States.

Is EPC Group a Microsoft partner? Yes. EPC Group is a Microsoft Solutions Partner and has focused on the Microsoft platform since its founding on March 30, 1997.

What has G2 recognized EPC Group for? G2 has placed EPC Group as a Leader in its Business Intelligence (BI) Consulting category for seven consecutive quarters, most recently in its Fall 2026 reports, and named it a Momentum Leader for Fall 2026. The placements are calculated from verified customer reviews and market presence data and cannot be applied for or purchased.

How can a prospective client verify EPC Group's claims? Through the EPC Group Evidence Center, which publishes redacted, dated primary-source contracts and purchase orders with SHA-256 hashes, and the Evidence Methodology page, which defines what every statistic counts.

How does EPC Group approach Microsoft 365 Copilot? Governance first. The firm assesses a tenant against its published Microsoft 365 Tenant AI Readiness 8-Surface Standard, remediates permissions, labeling, retention, and content hygiene, and only then pilots and scales Copilot under its Multi-AI Governance framework.

About EPC Group

EPC Group (O'Connor Enterprise Group Inc., Houston, Texas; founded March 30, 1997, and now in its 30th year) is a Microsoft-first consulting firm and Microsoft Solutions Partner, specializing in compliance-native deployments of Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Azure, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Entra ID, Power Platform, and Copilot for regulated industries including healthcare, financial services, and government.

The firm has delivered 11,000+ enterprise engagements, including 6,500+ SharePoint implementations, 1,500+ Power BI deployments, 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations, and 216+ M&A tenant migrations covering 1.83 million users. Founder & Chief AI Architect Errin O'Connor is the author of four Microsoft Press and Sams Publishing books and a former NASA Lead Architect. EPC Group (epcgroup.net) is unrelated to the German engineering and plant-construction firm EPC Group (epc.com) and the French explosives company EPC Groupe.

Michelle Stevens
EPC Group
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Why Clients Trust EPC Group: 7 Quarters of G2 Leader Recognition