Business intelligence in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Make informed business decisions
Microsoft Dynamics GP enhances business intelligence (BI) capabilities to help people at all levels of your organisation transform data into actionable insight. Microsoft Dynamics GP offers a wide range of reporting and analysis tools to help equip your people to effectively monitor, analyse, and plan.

To highlight how Microsoft Dynamics GP business intelligence capabilities equip organisations to make smart decisions, we have organised these capabilities around three core business activities:
 
Monitor
Accurately monitoring current activity, comparing it to historical activity or plans, is essential to keeping business on track.

Analyse
Looking deeply at the information retrieved during the monitoring phase, with ready access to details, helps businesses understand why data/information/results are what they are. Robust analysis capabilities enable the actionable insight needed to change the direction of a negative trend or take further advantage of a positive trend.

Plan
Budgeting, forecasting, and planning are closely tied to monitoring and analysis. To remain competitive, companies need to compare plans to actuals, analyse that information, make the necessary adjustments, and then take action to move forward.

Monitor - Keep current on changing business conditions

Accurately monitor current business activity, and compare it to historical activity and future plans to give people the contextual information they need to keep performance on track. Microsoft Dynamics GP delivers many integrated monitoring tools to help your people access the most relevant, accurate, and timely information about your business.

Browse inquiries and trace transactions. Inquiry windows in Microsoft Dynamics GP make it easy to browse records and get details. Similarly, audit trails in Microsoft Dynamics GP allow people to quickly trace a transaction throughout the system.

Get immediate notification about business activity. With Microsoft Dynamics GP, users can set up Business Alerts to automatically notify them about business changes. The Business Alerts feature monitors the Microsoft SQL Server database for conditions you specify.

Track and report on business financial performance. Microsoft FRx helps people understand how the business is doing financially, without having to wait until the books are closed. You can also easily create, manage, and distribute business financial statements. With FRx WebPort, you can access financial statements from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Receive RoleTailored information. RoleTailored centers within the Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Portal provide people with business intelligence information relevant to their jobs.

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). Microsoft Dynamics GP delivers standard business metrics that allow managers to easily determine the real-time financial health of the organisation. Available through Business Portal, these KPIs can warn people when specified values reach a certain point above or below a target value.

Put information into easy-to-read scorecards. Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager smoothly integrates with Microsoft Dynamics GP to help articulate strategy, convert strategy into measurable goals, and monitor progress.

Analyse - Gain insight into your business

It’s not enough to gather accurate and timely data, people need powerful and easy-to-use analysis tools to help them understand context and trends. Microsoft Dynamics GP business intelligence functions provide people with the insight they need to take quick action and pursue opportunities.

Get immediate notification about business activity. SmartList in Microsoft Dynamics GP allows people to organise and display data from the accounting system in a way that makes sense to them and to then search those records according to specific criteria. People can save their searches as SmartList favorites or export data to Microsoft Office Excel or Microsoft Office Word.

Unleash the power of Microsoft Office Excel. Microsoft Dynamics GP has more than 500 Microsoft Office Excel reports out of the box that give you access to real-time data, these can easily be customised and, with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, access reports from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Look and analyse data in innovative ways. Analysis Cubes in Microsoft Dynamics GP give people standard, preconfigured, online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes through Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, that offer virtually unlimited ways to look at data. The powerful, interactive analysis can serve as the basis for Reporting Services reports, Office Excel PivotTables, balanced scorecards, or interactive dashboards built with the Office Excel Add-in for Analysis Services.

Plan - Budget, forecast, and plan effectively

Microsoft Dynamics GP offers flexible planning tools to help you compare budgets, forecasts, and plans to actual performance. It also gives you the ability to update budgets and plans on the basis of new data and analyses to help your business stay competitive.

Create, forecast, and adjust budgets. With Microsoft Forecaster, people can build budgets that incorporate market conditions and specific business objectives and, when the business environment changes, use Microsoft Forecaster to adjust forecasts and budgets so that managers can respond effectively.

Plan more effectively. Create accurate, high-level plans instantly, using up-to-date data pulled directly from the General Ledger in Microsoft Dynamics GP. Integration across Microsoft FRx and Microsoft Forecaster gives you access to all the data, from summaries to transactions.

Empower decision-makers. Integration between Microsoft Dynamics GP and industry-leading tools, such as Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, and Microsoft FRx Professional, gives your people the information they need to forecast, analyse, and make business decisions.

White Papers

Microsoft Dynamics RoleTailored Business Productivity
Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Intelligence

Demos

Do you need to easily spot the trends that seem to be hidden in your data? (1 min 12 sec)

Do you want your business management system to automatically tell you when something is wrong or when your action is required? (1 min 21 sec)

Do you need to make better, faster decisions with easier access to more relevant data? (1 min 08 sec)