Empower Your Team to Unlock the Data Potential of Dynamics 365
Successful business management is inextricably linked to robust financial and operational data. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management both deliver a solid platform for companies to organize, analyze, understand, and manage their financial data. However, Dynamics 365 (D365) falls short in some ways when it comes to financial and operational reporting, and planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
insightsoftware solutions fill these gaps by bringing granular, multi-dimensional, real-time, refreshable data to users’ fingertips, driving faster, more accurate business decisions. As an Independent Software Vendor Success Partner in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, insightsoftware solutions are designed to enhance the D365 enterprise resource planning (ERP) ecosystem and help Dynamics users speed up processes while increasing their data access, quality, and accuracy.
Identifying Customer Needs and insightsoftware Solutions
insightsoftware’s primary goal is to enhance financial data management and financial reporting. This starts with the finance department but has a cascading positive impact on financial leaders who gain increased access to accurate reporting and insights that enable more informed decision making.
This principle guides insightsoftware in providing software solutions that appeal to finance experts while making up for the flaws in financial reporting present in the Dynamics 365 ERP stack. While D365 excels at data management, its financial reporting capabilities leave much to be desired.
Due to the issues inherent with reporting in the ERP, Microsoft recommends that users employ Power BI or third-party software for reporting and analysis. Power BI can be excellent for creating attractive visualizations for management information, but due to its hierarchical structure, it is not intended to handle financial data. That type of reporting in Power BI requires complex data manipulation and workarounds. This leaves users with no choice but to explore options outside of the Microsoft portfolio of products to create a complete data management solution.
Here are some common reporting roadblocks we hear about from D365 users.
Going Beyond Power BI for Dynamics 365
Access ResourceNo Single Source of Truth for Operational Reporting
Effective operational reporting requires going beyond data found in the general ledger. To provide a comprehensive operational report, finance teams often need to combine data from CRMs and other business tools. This requirement to combine data sources is an inherent shortfall of D365 that users are painfully aware of.
Building Financial and Operational Reports Can Be Extremely Time-Consuming
D365 does not offer drill-down capabilities for financial reporting. Nor does it enable merging of data from multiple sources. Finance teams must resort to manual data dumps and copy/pasting data from various sources into static spreadsheets for analysis. This process of manual data manipulation is labor-intensive and time-consuming, with teams devoting up to eight hours each week to reporting tasks.
Increased Risk of Data Inaccuracies
The manual manipulation of data typically results in inaccuracies within those data sets. It is an unavoidable fact. This is especially true when data originating in various sources must be converted to a new format before it can be combined with the data in your spreadsheet. This manual handling of data opens the door to inaccuracy and increases the risk that tainted data will be used to steer business operations.
Over-Reliance on IT Support
Reporting is too dependent on IT, consultants, or other technical experts. When asked about the relationship between IT and Finance, 63% of IT decision makers find that finance is either very or over-reliant on IT. This heavy reliance on IT support leads to delays in accessing data, excess costs, and an inability to support ad hoc requests.
While this is not a comprehensive list of the challenges that customers experience, these are four far reaching areas that impact many finance teams and are areas where, by partnering with insightsoftware, you can add real and immediate value to your business.
Position Your Team for Growth
With products that support Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management for enterprises and Dynamics 365 Business Central for SMBs, insightsoftware offers solutions that are scalable and customized to your team’s financial and operational reporting needs. Learn more about our popular reporting and analytics solutions for Microsoft Dynamics that consistently deliver success to our customers:
- Jet Reports – Flexible Excel-based financial and business reporting that allows business users to easily create drilldown reports with no exporting, no copying and pasting, and no programming required. Jet Reports allows you to get all the operational data you need, in the format that works for you, no matter where you are.
- Jet Analytics – Complete on-prem or cloud-based data preparation, automation, and modeling solution that accelerates Dynamics BI projects and enables faster, easier D365 migrations, all without requiring specialist skills. Jet Analytics draws from all your data sources, including D365, to provide a controlled and consistent data set without you needing to understand underlying data structures. This makes data management easier and speeds up time-to-value.
insightsoftware’s Jet solutions are designed to provide fast, flexible reporting and analytics for any Dynamics data source. Read the brochure to see how Jet Analytics and Jet Reports will empower your finance team to unlock the full capabilities of your Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP.
Made To Work Together: Jet Reports and Jet Analytics
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