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"Microsoft Dynamics GP enhances business intelligence (BI) capabilities and helps people at all levels of the organization transform data into actionable insight."
Source : Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) is also known as:
Business Intelligence Solutions,
BI Applications,
BI Project,
Business intelligence software,
Business intelligence management,
Knowledge management,
Intelligence Software,
business intelligence system,
business decision,
business needs,
Free Business Software,
Business Decision Making.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Reporting Tools
- Report Writer
- Reports Library
- FRx®
- Enterprise Reporting.
- Original Report
- Drill Down on the Total Group
- Drill Down on North America
- Crystal Reports
- Microsoft SQL Server&8482; Reporting Services
- Reporting Services Technical Overview
- Architecture Overview
- Server Components
- SQL Reporting Service sample report packs
Analysis Tools
- Analytical Accounting
- Transaction Dimensions
- Transaction Dimension Codes
- Valid Code Combinations
- Multilevel Reporting.
Ad Hoc Query
- Inquiries and Audit Trail Records
- SmartList.
- Integrating Microsoft Dynamics GP data from SmartList with Excel
- Export Solutions
- Business Portal Query Pages
Quick Insight
- Business Alerts
- Business Portal Executive Center
- Key Performance Indicators
- Office Web Parts in Business Portal pages
- Excel data source
- Instant access to data using SmartTags
- Analysis Cubes for Excel
- Business Scorecard Manager
- Web Services
Abstract
Microsoft®Dynamics GP Business Intelligence is designed to provide
businesses with the tools they need to help analyze
data in order to make faster more informed decisions. This white paper is
intended to provide the reader an overview of the solutions available to address
this business need.
Introduction
The ability to extract and present information in a meaningful way is vital
for a business management application like Microsoft Dynamics GP. Business
Intelligence enables companies to make better decisions faster than ever before
by providing the right information to the right people at the right time.
Employees increasingly find that they suffer from information overload and need
solutions that provide the analysis to effectively make decisions. Whether they
are working on the strategic, the tactical, or the operational level, Microsoft
Dynamics GP provides business intelligence applications to make informed
decisions a more natural part of all employees everyday work experience. Several
reporting and analytics solutions are available for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Some
are delivered as part of the core Microsoft Dynamics GP application, while
others are additional products that extend the Microsoft Dynamics GP solution.
Key goals of these solutions are to provide:
- An integrated platform and applications
- A secure and personalized user experience
- A collaborative environment
- A total solution that is cost effective and comprehensive
In order to understand which reporting tool is most appropriate for the task,
we have broken the Microsoft Dynamics GP business intelligence solutions into
four categories:
Reporting tools ' Allow you to create the
operational and financial reports you need to run your business
Analysis tools ' Allow you to analyze, interpret, and create reports
based on information tracked within Microsoft Dynamics GP
Ad-hoc
query ' Allows you to have interactive information access, including
drill down and drill around capabilities
Quick insight
'Preconfigured tools that allow your executives and operational managers can use
to quickly and proactively view and react on information within Microsoft
Dynamics GP
Reporting Tools
Report Writer
Core reporting capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics GP are provided by the
Report Writer, the reporting tool that is part of System Manager and is
available with every Microsoft Dynamics GP installation.
The Report Writer creates two types of reports: graphical and text. Graphical
reports can use a variety of fonts, shapes, and pictures. They are typically
used for reports that should be visually appealing, such as invoices. Text
reports contain only text, and are designed to print quickly. They do this by
extensively using the built-in rendering capabilities of the default printer.
Text reports are typically used for reports that can be lengthy, such as a trial
balance.
In addition to creating new reports, end users can use Report Writer to
customize most of the more than 2000 standard reports included with Microsoft
Dynamics GP. The graphical layout window that's used to design reports also can
be used to customize their appearance.
The following illustration is an example of the Report Layout window in
Report Writer.
Reports Library
Before customizing a report on your own, take a look at the reports available
for download from the Reports Library available to Microsoft Dynamics GP
customers. The Reports Library contains modified versions of reports in addition
to samples of the reports included with Microsoft Dynamics GP. Save valuable
time if the modification you require has already been performed by simply
downloading the report.. Reports are categorized by series, version, and report
name. Currently there are more than 200 modified versions of reports available
for download.
FRx®
The FRx family of reporting and analysis tools is the standard financial
reporting tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP. FRx Reporter makes it easy to manage
and distribute critical financial reports that your business depends on to run
effectively. As a part of Microsoft Business Solutions, these tools fully
integrate with Microsoft Dynamics GP. Such reports typically built using FRX
include Balance Sheet, Income
Statement, Statement of Cash Flows, budget
versus actual, or any other financial report or statement.
The key to FRx's flexibility is a unique and dependable system of three basic
building blocks: Row Format, Columns Layout, and Reporting Trees. Once defined,
you can save these building blocks to use again and again to create
business-essential reports. Custom fonts, formatting, and formulas stay with the
report maintaining the professional, boardroom-quality appearance of your
reports.
Row Format Starting here, you can select individual
accounts, a range of accounts, or a list of noncontiguous accounts to be
included in a report. You can also define totals, calculations, and if/then
parameters. And by using Wild Cards, you can automatically recognize and include
new GL account numbers, keeping your reports up-to-date. You can even create,
name, and reuse account sets across multiple reports to simplify the report
creation and maintenance process.
Column Layout The Column Layout makes it easy for you to
include period information like actual, budget, or other types of data in a
report either from your general ledger or other data source such as
spreadsheets. You can apply calculations across columns, making it easy to
identify variances, projections, or percentages.
Reporting Trees You can create a hierarchical picture of
your organization to understand or change your organizational and reporting
structures. A powerful auto-build function constructs Reporting Trees in
seconds directly from your chart of accounts. Easy drag-and-drop functionality
enables you to create alternative structures and multiple rollups of various
accounts without having to make modifications to your general ledger or chart of
accounts. And by using effective dating, you can apply several different
Reporting Trees for different periods of time all within a single report.
Additionally the Drill Down Viewer allows you to drill down into the detail of
the summary numbers calculated by using the reporting tree.You can drill down
into unique account balances that make up the summary totals or you can drill
all the way down into the detailed transactions providing all the necessary data
to your report consumers. Finally, security settings allow you to limit viewing
rights at the unit level of your organization, helping ensure that report
consumers can view only the information they are responsible for.
The following illustration is an example of the FRx DrillDown Viewer.
Enterprise Reporting
Enterprise Reporting is a product designed for consolidation, financial
reporting, budgeting, and analysis across the enterprise. It has support for
multiple currencies, consolidations, and eliminations. The main components of
the product are the rich client, a Web extension that allows you to access
reports over the Web and Windows Services that you can use to generate reports
and import data on a scheduled basis. The product also has support for OLAP for
data analysis and an add-in for Excel.
The following illustrations show how you can use the Enterprise Reporting
Drill Down Explorer.
Original Report
Drill Down on the Total Group
Drill Down on North America
Crystal Reports
Crystal Reports is a stand-alone report writer that is often used to produce
reports for applications like Microsoft Dynamics GP. When used with Microsoft
Dynamics GP, Crystal Reports accesses data directly from the database through
ODBC.
The following illustration is an example of the Crystal Reports Layout
window.
Microsoft SQL Server&8482; Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services extends the Microsoft business intelligence
platform by making it easy toget the right information to the right people, in
virtually any business environment.
Based on .NET and XML Web services, SQL Server Reporting Services delivers a
robust environment forcreating, managing, and delivering traditional,
paper-oriented reports, as well as interactive, Web-basedreports. The product's
modular design and extensive Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) allowsoftware developers and enterprises alike to
integrate reporting with legacy systems or other integratingapplications.
Reporting Services includes:
- A complete set of tools for creating, managing, and viewing reports
- An engine for hosting and processing reports
- An extensible architecture and open interfaces for embedding reports or
integrating the solution indiverse IT environments.
As an integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence platform,
Reporting Services helps companies control costs while improving decision making
at all organizational levels.
Reporting Services Technical Overview
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is designed with a modular,
distributed architecture to ensure both scalability and flexibility. Processing
is distributed across multiple components that can be extended, as well as
integrated into custom solutions.
Architecture Overview
The following diagram illustrates the primary components of Reporting
Services.
Server Components
At the core of Reporting Services is a component-based server platform for
obtaining, processing, and rendering data.
Server Component
Features
Report Server
A Web service with multiple components that:
- Handles SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and URL requests
- Processes reports including executing queries, evaluating expressions,
and generating output formats
- Provides report snapshot and cache management
- Integrates with SQL Server Agent for scheduled operations
- Supports and enforces security policies and authorization
Report Server Database
- A SQL Server database that stores the information used by the report
server, including report definitions, report metadata, cached reports,
snapshots, and resources. It also stores security settings, account
information, and scheduling and delivery data.
Report Manager
- A Web-based report access and management tool distributed with Reporting
Services.
Multiple report server instances may be deployed in a Web farm configuration
for maximum scalability and reliability. Also, the report server database may
run in a failover cluster.
SQL Reporting Service sample report packs
To make it easy to get started with SQL Reporting Services with Microsoft
Dynamics GP, we've created the Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Microsoft
Business Solutions'Microsoft Dynamics GP, which is a set of predefined report
definition files that work with the Microsoft Dynamics GP sample database. You
can upload and view each report separately and you can use the sample reports as
templates for designing new reports.
With the reports in this pack, you can take the report definition files and,
with only some minor configuration changes, have them work against your existing
Microsoft Dynamics GP environment. If you choose to use these reports against
your existing Microsoft Dynamics GP application, be aware that they bypass the
Microsoft Dynamics GP application security layer and will require the user to
have SQL access privileges to all views and tables in the Microsoft SQL Server
database that contains the Microsoft Dynamics GP data. This sample database is
based on the sample database that is included with Microsoft Dynamics GP, with
some minor modifications.
The sample reports that are provided in this report pack include:
- Commissions Report shows sales commissions by territory, salesperson,
and year. You can expand a territory to view sales commissions by a
salesperson. You also can expand a year to view quarterly commissions by
territory. Also, there is a sales summary graph that displays annual sales
by territory.
- Customer Profitability Report shows sales, total profit, and gross
margin percentage per customer for the year that you selected. You can
expand customer ID to view the sales, total profit, and gross margin
percentage by document number.
- Inventory Value by Site Report shows a bar graph of the value of
inventory by site and the total inventory value for the company. You can
then drill through by clicking an inventory site bar to display the
Inventory Value by Site and Item Number Report to view items and their total
value for that site.
- Item Quantity Back Order Report shows the quantity of items that are
back ordered, quantities that are allocated to purchase orders, and item
quantities available for all sites. You can expand each item number to view
item quantities for all sites. You can also drill through by clicking the
"Qty on PO" link to display the Quantity on Purchase Order Report to view
information about the items allocated to each purchase order.
- Open Purchase Orders Report shows purchase orders that have not been
closed or canceled per vendor or for all vendors. The number, status, and
date of each purchase order are displayed in a list view, along with the
vendor assigned to the purchase order. You can expand each purchase order to
display the line items and the status of each line item. You can also drill
through by clicking on the "Qty Shipped" link to display the Purchase Order
Receipts Report to view the quantity remaining to be shipped.
- Open Sales Orders Report shows a list of un-posted sales orders for a
range of customers. The sales order number, the date of each sales order,
customer information, the requested ship date, and the amount remaining on
the order is displayed in a list view, along with the salesperson assigned
to the order. You can expand each purchase order to display the line items
and specific information about each line item.
- Employee Capacity Report shows the available work centers and the
employee capacity of each work center by weeks. You can drill through by
clicking on the weekly graph for each work center to display the
Manufacturing Orders for Work Center Report, which displays the
manufacturing orders assigned to the work center. Customer names, customer
priority, and manufacturing priority also are displayed.
- Machine Capacity Report shows the available work centers and the machine
capacity of each work center by weeks. You can drill through by clicking on
the weekly graph for each work center to display the Manufacturing Orders
for Work Center Report to view the manufacturing orders assigned to the work
center. Customer names, customer priority, and manufacturing priority also
are displayed.
Analysis Tools
Analytical Accounting
Analytical Accounting is a tool that helps you to analyze, interpret, and
create reports based on information tracked outside of your company's chart of
accounts. You also can store information that cannot be computed in monetary
terms, such as labor hours. You can enter detailed analysis information without
resorting to segmental accounting.
With Analytical Accounting, you can:
- Enter analysis information for a group of analysis dimensions
- Set up unlimited analysis dimensions
- Perform comprehensive reporting.
Transaction Dimensions
You can classify, report, and analyze financial transactions based on your
specific business needs with an unlimited number of user-defined transaction
dimensions, including Cost Center, Profit Center, Region, and Hours.
You will use the Transaction Dimension Maintenance window, as shown below, to
create transaction dimensions.
Transaction Dimension Codes
You can attach user-defined transaction dimension codes to ledger
transactions, eliminating the need to analyze transactions on the basis of
account segments.
Valid Code Combinations
Define valid transaction dimension code combinations to prevent combinations
that aren't valid from being entered for a transaction. For instance, a product
group and region always must appear together, or a project and cost center never
can appear together.
Multilevel Reporting
Enable multilevel reporting by grouping any number of transaction dimension
codes into an unlimited number of user-defined levels. Additionally, you can
include customers, vendors, items, and sites to Analytical Accounting reports to
further analyze your data.
Wizard-Driven Inquiries Generate multilevel reports more
easily with wizard-driven inquiries that integrate with Microsoft Office Excel
and Microsoft Dynamics GP SmartLists.
Reports in Microsoft Office Excel Multilevel reports are run
and displayed in Excel for easy manipulation, integration of non-accounting
business data, and enhanced presentation.
Implode/Explode Decide how much detail you need to view
throughout your entire report or section by section with an implode/explode
function. If you wish you see additional detail use the explode function.
Integration Analyze transactions across your entire
organization with seamless integration across the following Microsoft Dynamics
GP modules: General Ledger, Receivables Management, Payables Management,
Inventory Control, Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing, and Bank
Reconciliation.
Ad Hoc Query
Inquiries and Audit Trail Records
Inquiry windows within Microsoft Dynamics GP allow you to review information
for several types of records. You can select the record or records that you want
to view and specify the order that the records will be displayed in. For
example, in the General Ledger Detail Inquiry window, you can select a general
ledger account and a year to view information about the account. You can then
click the link on the Account field to view the transaction distributions for
the account that have been linked with other distributions.
Microsoft Dynamics GP also provides an audit trail record so that you can
trace a transaction from any point within the system back to the location where
it was originally entered. After you've entered a transaction, you can trace it
from its originating point in Microsoft Dynamics GP to the actual source
document - such as in invoice, check, or receipt - that provided the basis for
the transaction, along with a precise record of where the transaction was posted
as it made its way through the Microsoft Dynamics GP system.
SmartList
SmartList in Microsoft Dynamics GP is another reporting tool that you can use
to organize and present data from the accounting system. You can display lists
of records from a specific category, such as Customers or Purchase Orders. You
can apply search criteria to limit the results to only the records of interest.
You can determine which columns should be displayed, as well as the order of the
columns.
After you've set up a SmartList search, you can add it as a SmartList
favorite, so that it can easily be rerun. The search results can be exported to
Excel or Word. These features make SmartList an excellent tool for creating ad
hoc reports.
Integrating Microsoft Dynamics GP data from SmartList with Excel
SmartList is a Microsoft Dynamics GP querying tool that allows you to
instantly create sophisticated queries to find detailed customer, vendor,
general ledger, inventory, and employee information. A number of predefined
queries are included with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Exporting to Excel is as easy as opening a SmartList favorite and clicking a
single button to export to Excel or Word. The data is automatically formatted
appropriately so no "cleaning up" is necessary. Distributing data using the
world's most widely used office productivity suite ensures that employees who
need access to back office data can obtain it easily and reliably and analyze it
in an environment that they are already used to. You can include spreadsheets or
Word documents as attachments to e-mail messages or embed the data within the
message.
Export Solutions
You can use the Export Solutions window, as shown in the following
illustration, to export search results to a template and run Excel or Word
macros before or after exporting. For example, perhaps you would like to chart
your customers that are past due. Create a macro in Excel to create the chart
and then attach the macro to the Customer SmartList that contains the applicable
data. When you select to export the data to Excel, it will be presented in chart
format.
Business Portal Query Pages
Query pages, found in each of the Business Portal centers, provide access to
information stored in your back office system. For example, the Finance Center
includes the Financial Queries page and the Sales Center includes the Sales
Queries page. Business Portal Queries can also be modified to include
information specific to your organizational needs. Query results can also be
exported to Excel for further analysis.
The following illustration is an example of a Business Portal Query Page.
Quick Insight
Business Alerts
Business Alerts uses Microsoft SQL Server to monitor your business's data,
delivers fast access to business critical information, which enables your
organization to make quicker, more informed decisions to improve your business
success.
For example, suppose that you want to be notified when a customer's credit
limit has been exceeded. In that case, you can use the Business Alert wizard, as
shown in the following illustrations, to create a query that compares the credit
limit amounts to the current amounts for your customers.
You can use the wizard to set up the schedule for the alert that is, when,
how often, and for how long you want Microsoft Dynamics GP to check whether the
conditions you've defined exist.
After you have created and activated a business alert, the conditions will be
checked according to the schedule that you set up. Whenever the alert condition
is found, an e-mail message is sent to the people or groups that you specified.
Business Portal Executive Center
Business Portal gives employees access to the specific information and tasks
they need to do their jobs, based on their roles within your company. Roles are
user categories that group users with similar job functions.
Center pages serve as navigation to groups of role-related items. Use each
center page as a starting point to access role-based information and tasks.
For example, if you're an Executive, such as CFO or CEO, use the Executive
Center to obtain key, high-level information that is used to make strategic
business decisions. Execs can drill down into the details of the key business
metrics when needed.
Business Portal Information Pages: Information pages combine a number of
parts mainly result viewer Web Parts to present current data from the back
office.
For example, the Customers information page displays current customer
information.
Key Performance Indicators
Suppose that a company is trying to fine-tune its operations, but needs
faster access to business measurements in a proactive instead of reactive
manner. Those measurements enable employees to make decisions more quickly and
base them on more accurate information.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are standard
business metrics that provide your company's managers with an easy-to-read
assessment of the financial health of the organization. KPIs are available
through Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal.
KPIs also can indicate when specified values reach a certain point if you've
defined warning and critical alert ranges. An alert range is a range of
variation expressed as a percentage above or below a target value.
You also can display KPI information as a bar chart, showing a single KPI,
and graphically illustrating company performance for specific time periods.
Office Web Parts in Business Portal pages
Business Portal is a powerful tool for presenting data to users in a variety
of business roles. Role-based access helps provide security to sensitive data
because users only see the information that their role is allowed to see. While
it's easy to see a broad view of your data, individual users also can display
more targeted information that provides the at-a-glance view of the business
measurements that are most important to them for making timely, accurate
decisions.
The following table describes how you can access information from within
Business Portal and then select how to display the information.
Access from
Within Business Portal, by opening theVirtual Server Gallery of SharePoint®
Web parts.
Description
You can select from multiple galleries, each that contains a number of Web
parts, such as an Excel pivot chart, that you can add to your Business Portal
pages.
You can select from multiple galleries, each that contains a number of Web
parts, such as an Excel pivot chart, that you can add to your Business Portal
pages.
You can add an Excel pivot chart, in the example shown in the following
illustration, by dragging and dropping it from the Virtual Server Gallery to a
Business Portal page.
After the Web Part is on the Business Portal page, you can connect it to the
data you need, such as commission amounts as shown in the example in the
following illustration. You also can select chart styles so the data appears in
the most effective format.
Excel data source
Suppose that you'd like to explore various scenarios, based on recent sales
trends, by considering price increases, price decreases, and promotions of
different durations using your Microsoft Dynamics GP data as a starting point,
but you want to do the analysis with a familiar tool. Excel is a great tool for
this task, and the Excel data source is ready to use without additional setup.
The Data Connection wizard in Excel makes it easy to access data stored in an
external source, such as Microsoft SQL Server. In Excel, a data source link to
the Microsoft Dynamics GP database is already included, saving you the effort
and time needed to complete this setup.
A wizard interface makes it easy to specify the Business Portal query that
will be run in Excel. You can use query pages and result viewer Web Parts in
Business Portal to create customized queries that provide access to information
stored in Microsoft Dynamics GP, including information about customers, vendors,
transactions, and items. For commonly used queries you can save them and rerun
them rather than creating them from scratch each time.
When you're looking at the data in Excel, you can experiment with different
scenarios and apply macros, filters, and formatting to serve a wide range of
purposes. Experienced Excel users should find this a timesaving time tool for
analyzing and presenting Microsoft Dynamics GP data.
Instant access to data using SmartTags
In a competitive business environment, employees need to spend their time and
energy closing sales and delivering products and services to customers, rather
than searching for information. Using the Microsoft Office SmartTag Manager, you
can have instant access to detailed information in the Microsoft Dynamics GP
database from within Office documents that refer to specific item, customer,
vendor, and employee records stored within Microsoft Dynamics GP. So, for
example, if you're about to send a letter out to a customer, you can instantly
drill back from that letter to see their latest order in real time, then thank
them for that order in the letter.
Pausing over a name or ID, such as the customer name in the following
illustration of a customer letter in Word, displays a SmartTag icon that you can
use to access additional information from the Microsoft Dynamics GP database.
You can display a list of actions by clicking the SmartTag icon, as shown in
the following illustration.
When you select one of the items in the menu, a window will open that
displays data from the Microsoft Dynamics GP database, which, in the following
example, includes current sales and payment summaries for each accounting
period, the current and previous year, and the life-to-date amounts.
Analysis Cubes for Excel
Analysis cubes for Excel allows you to take full advantage of Microsoft SQL
Server Analysis Services by providing out-of-the-box preconfigured OLAP cubes.
Analysis Cubes provide virtually unlimited ways to look at your data with
powerful interactive analysis.
Customers with large volumes of data can greatly improve reporting
performance by utilizing Analysis
Cubes. Analysis Cubes for Excel is also
extensible and data from other systems can be included for analysis.
Analysis Services Cubes provide data that can be utilized in a number of
different ways (examples to follow):
- Excel Pivot tables can use a cube as a data source
- The Excel Add-in for Analysis Services can be used to build interactive
dashboards as well as tailored reports.
- Reporting Services can utilize Analysis Cubes as a data source
- Analysis Cubes can provide information for Balanced Scorecards
Leveraging the Excel Add-in for Analysis Services you can build powerful
interactive dashboards as seen below.
Using this functionality a cell within Excel can be set to a value in your
accounting system. For example cell C7 in the dashboard above is equal to sales
in January and one or more restrictions like the Company or Salesperson drop
downs in the top left corner of the dashboard above can be used to recalculate
that cell. For example only sales for a specific territory or only sales of a
particular item class.
Analysis Cubes also can be used as a data source for pivot tables. Pivot
tables can be created using the Pivot Table Creator window in Microsoft Dynamics
GP or they can be created directly in Excel. The following Pivot Table was
configured to automatically open by clicking on the Sales by Item Class graph on
the dashboard above.
Analysis Cubes can also be accessed by Reporting Services to provided web
based reporting and analysis, printed reports, or scheduled email distribution
of information.
Below is an example of an Accounts Receivable Aging report that could be
accessed online or emailed to a salesperson providing aging information for
their customers. In this example by clicking on any of the customers you can
drill down to the detailed transactions that make up their outstanding balance.
Business Scorecard Manager
Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is a comprehensive web-based scorecard and
dashboard application that provides deep contextual insight into business
drivers. Business Scorecard Manager helps put information in context and link
corporate strategy to line-of-business (LOB)
actions, reporting on organizational performance in both financial and
non-financial terms. Scorecards are designed to articulate strategy and convert
it into specific, measurable goals and to monitor progress towards their
achievement.
Taking a deeper dive into the core value of the interoperability with
Microsoft Dynamics GP&8482; you will see a highly complementary offering for these
customers - in particular when looking at the existing modules available for
Microsoft Dynamics GP. First we have the Microsoft Dynamics GP Professional -
Business Intelligence Foundation, which is comprised of components to deepen
business insight. One of the Business Intelligence components is the Analysis
Cubes for Excel, which is the piece that truly enables the out-of-the-box
interoperability between Microsoft Dynamics GP and the Business Scorecard
Manager. Thus the Analysis Cubes are to be seen as the Business Scorecard
Manager enabler, helping customers enjoy the benefits of the Scorecard
application with a limited level of investment.
Secondly, we have the Microsoft Business Portal, the Microsoft Dynamics GP
portal solution, to which the Business Scorecard Manager should be considered a
highly complementary offering.
The two solutions are both portal based business intelligence offerings
helping to provide anytime, anywhere access to business data, and they each
address very different business needs. Customers can use one, the other or both
in orchestration, depending upon the business needs that are to be addressed.
Diving one lever deeper into the functionality layer of the Microsoft
Business Portal, you will see that this application also offers KPI
functionality. However, keeping in mind that the applications were designed with
two different purposes, quite naturally the KPI's are designed to address
different needs. The KPI's offered with the Microsoft Business Portal are
designed for measuring data hosted in Microsoft Dynamics GP. Therefore, if a
customer wants to focus on monitoring the data coming from the Enterprise
Resource Planning system only, the Business Portal KPIs are the best choice. The
KPI functionality offered with the Business Scorecard Manager, however, are
designed with a broader scope in mind, allowing for creation of KPI's based on
data consolidated from a variety of data sources. Thus, the KPI functionality
available with the Business Scorecard Manager should be more accommodating when
aiming at a more holistic solution. Here the KPI's can encounter multiple data
types, either when data comes from multiple systems or from multiple Microsoft
Dynamics GP companies.
The deciding factor should be based on what data the customers want to start
with and what they want to achieve. It is important to note that very often you
will find situations where the two solutions will be working in orchestration.
Here the Microsoft Dynamics GP solution's interoperability with Business
Scorecard Manager truly opens the possibilities for a best-of-breed portal
experience encompassing a broader variety of needs compared to the needs covered
by the two solutions individually. For example, the possibility of combining and
surfacing the multi-source Business Scorecard Manager KPIs with the Microsoft
Dynamics GP specific KPIs within the Microsoft Business Portal truly help
increase the portal user penetration. The reason being that you are now
delivering KPIs and business insight to an even boarder audience throughout the
organization, without jeopardizing the familiar portal look and feel for the
traditional Microsoft Dynamics GP users.
Web Services
The Web Service engine includes 160 Web Service access points supporting 20
key business processes. The adoption of industry-standard Web Services XML
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allows your organization to readily
customize and adapt Microsoft Dynamics GP to provide deeper integration with
disparate internal and external systems.
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management
solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with
greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like and with familiar Microsoft
software, automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship and
supply chain processes in a way that helps you drive business success.
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