1. Let’s Make Sense of BI for GP
Presented by Mark Jensen

2. Agenda Introduction What’s BI? What’s available? What do they do?
Wrap-up

3. Introduction Mark Jensen, Director of Product Management
Started w/GPA for DOS Tech Support at Great Plains Software
Dynamics GP experience since V0.5 (Support, Training, Product Mgmt)
Software Product Management/Marketing for past 20 years
Fargo for 27 years; now based in Minneapolis/St. Paul area

4. Business Intelligence
Complexity level
Standard
Reports
Budgets
Forecasts
Financials
Custom
Consolidated
Data
Dashboards
Warehouse
INSIGHT
EXPERIENCE
DATA
Ask a hundred people what Business Intelligence (BI) is and you will get two hundred different answers. At least that is what it feels like to me, as every week I hear about a new business intelligence, data analysis tool which will solve reporting and data problems for all of our clients. This post isn’t going to parse through all of the BI tools available today but rather will take time to explain what BI means to us and get an overview of some of the tools available.
BI is more than just data analysis tools and dashboards; it is the spectrum of what you do to gather and manage data combined with your insight and experience about your business and industry. This definition includes data capture and management, reports, budgeting, planning, forecasting, dashboards, KPI’s, data warehousing and data mining. The result of all of these activities and outputs when combined with your insights and experience is business intelligence. And remember you are analyzing and managing this data for one purpose…to learn.

5. What’s available? BI
Dynamics
Mgmt
Reporter
Power BI
ISV’s

6. Dynamics GP Smartlists Business Analyzer Excel Reports
Audits, activity lists, ad-hoc queries
Easy to deploy and manage
Not great: printing, large data sets
Doesn’t do: Totals, groups
Business
Analyzer
Work with disparate groups of data
Easy to deploy manage and secure
Not great: Larger lists take longer to generate
Excel Reports
Users don’t need a user license
Must have access to the SQL server where GP is installed
SmartLists are great for auditing – think 1099 Vendors with no Tax ID, GL control accounts with entries from a different module. Great for ad-hoc queries, exporting to Excel. You can also use SmartLists for creating mail merge documents.
Data is presented in a list format (think data dump), and you can configure columns.
Printing isn’t pretty, and remember the more columns you have and the larger the data set, the slower the SmartList will be. You can’t have totals or other groupings with SmartLists.
In order to use this ‘reporting’ tool, you must be a GP user as SmartLists are only available in GP. SmartLists are limited to data from the company the GP user is logged into (generally speaking), and you only get 4 filters in the search criteria.
Navigation Lists are great for working with items that are across different groups or classes.
Pros:
Configurable Action Pane, etc.
Can have more than 4 search criteria
Can save multiple copies of lists with different properties
Cons:
Limited columns
Lists take longer to generate
Excel Reports Pros:
Consumers don’t have to be GP users, they can access the reports separately
Data can be refreshed from inside Excel to get up-to-date data
Data load is typically much faster than SmartList
Extends custom-built SmartLists and includes the original SmartList search criteria
Utilize formatting and presentation capabilities of Excel
Can build List or Pivot table type reports
No parameters to control data – you get what the SmartList defined in the search criteria
Security is through SQL (rpt_ prefix), and the user must also have access to the folder where the reports are deployed.
Needs to be deployed separately, but can be done at any time
If you need to create a custom data connection and/or custom SQL views, additional expertise is required
Easy to Deploy – Yes – it’s installed right along with GP, BUT YOU MUST CHOOSE TO DEPLOY THEM (by company)
Easy to Manage – Yes – Obviously users need a relatively current version of Excel
Easy to Secure – Yes – Creates a data connection so the user needs proper rights to use that data connection. External users *may* have access (see above)

7. What’s available? BI
Dynamics
Mgmt
Reporter
Power BI
ISV’s

8. Management Reporter
A real-time financial reporting application for creating, generating, securing, and publishing financial statements, such as Profit & Loss (P&L), balance sheets, and Actual vs. Budget variance reports
Boardroom-quality reports without IT assistance
Full integration with Dynamics GP & AX

9. Benefits Real-time results without IT assistance
Custom reports based on GL data
Saves time
Speed up month end reconciliation
Quickly generate reports month after month
Automate report distribution
Short implementation cycle

10. What’s available? BI
Dynamics
Mgmt
Reporter
Power BI
ISV’s

11. WHAT IS MICROSOFT POWER BI?
Suite of business analytics tools
Focus on what matters
Accessible from Web, Desktop, Mobile
Works with ERP to web analytics apps
Power BI is a suite of self-service business analytics tools which help you transform your company's data into rich, organized visuals so you can focus on what matters when making business decisions. With Power BI you are able to analyze data and easily share insights across your organization.
Power BI accomplishes this with through KPIs such as Charts, Graphs, Scorecards, Tables, and Maps… and it accessible from the device of your choice: Web, Desktop, or Mobile. Power BI works with many back-end systems, like Microsoft Dynamics to web analytics apps.
Think of Power BI as an entry level solution with a high ceiling. There are certainly more powerful alternatives available in the market, but you will pay 5 to 6 figures more for them.

12. Power bi: freeMIUM PRICING
FREE POWER BI
POWER BI PRO
Not a trial
Not “adware” or “nagware”
Share reports and dashboards
Feature Limitations:
1 GB/User Data capacity limit
1 a day content refresh
10K rows/hour of streaming data
$9.99 / user / month
Premium Features:
10 GB/User Data capacity limit
Schedule content refresh
1M rows/hour of streaming data
Consume live, interactive data sources
Create and Publish Organizational Content Packs
No really it’s free! Not a trial version
Share reports and dashboards with other Power BI users but doing this does require an O365 license
Content refresh can only be done once a day
You can consume up to 10k rows of streaming data per hour
Power BI Pro
Up to 10 GB of data capacity per user
Schedule content refresh up to 8 times per day
You can consume up to 1M rows of streaming data per hour
You can create and publish your own organization content packs
For details, visit: Every user consuming Power BI Pro content must also have a Power BI Pro License

13. POWER BI BENEFITS Business performance dashboard
Data from Microsoft Dynamics is presented in an easy-to-use dashboard, providing a complete overview and important insights
Finance and sales insights
Users can drill into more details in the sales and finance reports, facilitating decision making
Personalizing the insights
Users can create a personalized dashboard from the existing KPIs and charts in reports
Modify and extend
Users can create their own KPIs and charts, select data from queries, set filters, select visualizations and more to create their own dashboards
Power BI provides you with dashboards that give you insight into important information
Power BI users can access information which helps them make more informed decisions
Power BI users can personalize the information to their needs either from existing charts and reports or from scratch

14. Demo
Working with visualizations

15. What’s available? BI
Dynamics
Mgmt
Reporter
Power BI
ISV’s

16. ISV Products Solver Jet BizNet Reporting Budget/Forecast Dashboards
Data Warehouse
Jet
Express (incl.)
Excel based
BizNet
Consolidation
Visualizations
Office integration

17. BI360 Modules Data Dashboards Warehouse Reporting Planning
Excel and Web-based, intuitive and robust
Flexible, user-friendly budgeting & forecasting
Web-based convenience, total visibility into your business
Centralize, consolidate & simplify your data, at a fraction of the cost
Live Financial Reporting (GL)
Live Operational Reporting (AR, AP, etc.)
Drill to GL detail and drill across to sub-ledgers for real-time answers
Easy to Learn with Drag and Drop report design in Excel
Web and Mobile reporting to access your reports anywhere
Automatic scheduling and distribution of reports
Benchmark, KPI and graphical reporting
Excel- and web-based budget and forecast input, streamlined data entry
Pre-built as well as user-defined input templates
Revenue, Expense, Payroll, Capex, Projects, etc.
Balance Sheet and Cash Flow planning
Statistical planning
Budget data immediately available
Approval workflow with discussion and notification functionality
Modelling and what-if analysis
Web platform for anywhere, anytime access
Fully customizable dashboard layouts
Interactive charts, scorecards and more
Drag & Drop dashboard design gives instant insight
Business users learn dashboard design in hours, not days
Run real-time on ERP system or on BI360 Data Warehouse with drill-down
Detailed security
True multi-source data warehouse
Preconfigured & can be set-up in days
Dramatically reduces time/cost/risk to implement
Integrate to virtually any data source including cloud
User friendly interface built for business users
Trees for enhanced hierarchy reporting for any dimension
Advanced business rules such as Currency, Elimination, etc.

18. BI360 Architecture Other Dynamics CRM
This simplified architecture diagram gives you an overview of how all the BI360 modules fit together.
Reporting offers both reporting and consolidations and can be both live on the ERP system (ask for which systems are integrated) as well as run on the BI360 Data Warehouse. Excel, web and mobile interfaces are available.
Planning offers a very flexible budgeting and forecasting module where input forms are designed in Excel (web input also available approx. mid-2014). It uses the BI360 Data Warehouse for storing any type of planning data as well as storing uploaded historical data.
Dashboards are web-based (same portal as web reporting) both for designers and end-users.
Data Warehouse not only provides a budget database as mentioned earlier but is very much a MS SQL Server-based enterprise data warehouse you can grow with and you can expand to include data from virtually any of your existing data sources (including cloud data sources like Salesforce, Intacct, Acumatica and Netsuite where we have pre-built connectors). Apart from being a very easy to use and to configure data warehouse, it integrates directly and out-of-the box with all the other BI360 modules as well as 3rd party tools that supports the SQL Server platform. Why build a homegrown data warehouse when you can buy one for a fraction of the cost?
On top of the diagram you can see various ways users can access BI360: Through the BI360 Web Portal, Mobile apps, Excel add-in, receive reports and messages through , and by interacting with other users through the powerful collaboration features.
Other
Dynamics
CRM

19. Demo
Working with Web Portal

20. Jet Reports Express Professional Enterprise Real time Financials
Pre-built
Multi-Co
Professional
Mobile/Web
Multi data source
Scheduling
Sharing
Free form
Enterprise
Dashboards
KPI’s
Data Warehouse
Drag and Drop
Adv. Security
Jet Express for GP and NAV is an extension included with Microsoft Dynamics GP to create basic reports inside of Excel.
Jet Professional is a flexible financial and business reporting solution inside of Excel that allows Microsoft Dynamics users to get all the operational data they need, in the format that works for them.
Jet Enterprise is a BI solution that delivers a Data Warehouse, pre-built cube set, and a Data Warehouse Automation platform.

21. Why BizNet for Reporting?
100% Excel-Based
Easy to Deploy, Use & Learn
In-Memory Caching for Real Time Access
Pre-Built for Dynamics GP
No Risk Deployment
Extends to Any Application

22. Demo
Working with BizNet

23. What’s available? BI
Dynamics
Mgmt
Reporter
Power BI
ISV’s

24. Questions? mark.jensen@interdynbmi.com Direct: 651-746-1677
@markdjensen
Thank you for attending today!