Business Intelligence Prototyping with PowerPivot

PowerPivot is generally marketed as a 'Self-Service BI' tool. However, it can alternatively be used as a way to enhance the design phases of traditional Business Intelligence projects, even if the final implementation does not use PowerPivot technology at all.

Why is that? Because it more closely aligns business experts with BI developers during architectural discussions. In order to explain this better, I think it's relevant to first describe the process by which data analysts can provide relevant input to BI designers: