If you have been using Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the past few years you are probably at the point where you have accumulated enough data that can provide meaningful insights into how your business is running. Extracting that data and analyzing it can sometimes be a challenge. That's where Microsoft Power BI comes into play. While Dynamics has several reporting tools and data filtering capabilities, uncovering the gems by turning your data into actionable information and insights is the job of Power BI. Power BI is not just a reporting tool for Dynamics. Seldom do organizations have all their data in one central application. Usually business data is spread across multiple systems. Often the majority is centralized in Dynamics 365 but there is a lot of value in linking it to related information wherever it may sit. Power BI can connect to any data source within your organization. Whether it is your accounting system, a custom-built SQL databases, or even Excel files, all this data can be pulled together analyzed using Power BI. It is easy to create reports and dashboards that dynamically update and provide drill down or clickable data points. Power BI connects all that data together and can allow you to uncover valuable information. For example, customer buying trends over time, pricing patterns as they relate to customer segmentation's or historical sales pipeline overlaying actual sales data. Power BI is starting to become a mainstream product and not just something a technical data analyst uses to create reports for other people. And here is another nice thing, Power BI is free. Well the base version of Power BI is free. If you start to roll out company wide analytical reports and dashboards then you will need to move up into the paid versions. If you want to dip your toe into the world of data analytics and see what is possible, then you should start with the free version. It is not hard to learn and there is a lot of training online to help get you started. To get started contact us.
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