If the Greek mathematician, Archimedes (287 BC to 212 BC) were alive today, he’d be impressed with the leverage business analytics can provide to companies as they develop their marketing strategies—he made the famous quote about being able to move the Earth, given a place to stand and a lever long enough!
For the owner of small to medium-size businesses, having the capability to use customer information to create sales opportunities, or to foresee problems in the supply chain, are two examples of how to leverage data collected—and analyzed—through the Microsoft Dynamics product line: Dynamics GP, NAV, SL and CRM.
A Cloud ERP Platform Infused with Powerful BI Capabilities
Coupled with robust cloud-hosting services, such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft delivers a cloud ERP platform infused with powerful BI capabilities: BI is deeply-rooted in SaaS offerings like Dynamics GP, for example.
In the past, the idea of dealing with big data was something reserved for the “domain of enterprise organizations,” as noted by “Inc.” magazine. But the ‘cloud’ remains the big disrupter, making BI available to just about any company using ERP software today…regardless of size.
What is BI?
Think of the competitive advantage a business can have if the owner has the tools to keep on top of what’s happening now as well as “what’s likely to happen in the future.”
Simply put:
“… business intelligence is the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes (and derived) from a variety of sources–sales history, transaction data, customer profiles, third-party sources.”
Successful outcomes occur improvements are seen in areas of customer service and increased sales revenue as well as gaining a better control of expenses.
Furthermore, Gartner points to such capabilities as a crucial element to understanding the complexities of customer relationships. Without it, says Gartner, a business may stand to risk “25 percent revenue reduction” in 2017 due to “erroneous results that annoy customers.”
Microsoft Power BI – Cloud ERP
Microsoft Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that gives you a single view of your most critical business data. You will be able to have a better handle on your businesses health using a live dashboard, create rich interactive reports with Power BI Desktop and have access any time, anywhere with native Power BI Mobile apps. The key functionality delivered by Power BI includes a number of integrated components brought together using Office 365:
- Power Pivot
- Power View
- Power Map
- Mobile BI Viewer
- Power Query
- Data Management Gateway
Power BI will be a big hit with customers who need “big company BI” without a heavy capital investment and complexity that accompanies a complex BI system. With Office 365 and Windows Azure, Power BI instances will deploy in days, not weeks. Future infrastructure upgrades will be left to Microsoft, freeing in-house resources to worry only about the application layer. That means IT is happy and management is happy because they don’t need to hire or devote another IT employee to manage the BI project. By removing the need to make large up-front infrastructure investments, Power BI will make the decision to use the technology much easier for more customers. This will also have a positive effect on the adoption rate of advanced BI capabilities.
Contact us to learn how you can leverage Microsoft Dynamics software in your cloud erp solutions to improve your ROI throughout your company, utilizing tools such as Power BI.
