Business Performance Analytics - A New Member of the D365 Finance and SCM Family -Dynamic 365 Finance and operations
Business performance Analytics:
Posted by : Hariharasudan Kandaswamy
As announced in the Microsoft Blog in February this year, 'Business Performance Analytics' is finally here and available as a preview in the latest 10.0.36 (preview version) application release.
The moment I applied the latest update (not intended for production environments), a fresh section labeled 'APPS' appeared on my home dashboard, introducing the Business Performance Analysis application, as you can see in the screenshot above.
Navigating on the app I was automatically transferred to Microsoft AppSource, where I was able to kick off the installation of the application in the environment of my choice - because this is the first thing you need to do.
System requirements
A Tier-2 environment (multi-box) is required to preview business performance analytics. For more information about environments, see Environment planning.
Version requirements
Business performance analytics requires Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.35 and PU59 and later and the selected language to be en-US.
Set up business performance analytics environment
Business performance analytics is currently supported in the following regions: Australia, UK, USA, Europe, Canada and Japan. It will be available in other regions when Business performance analytics is generally available and in sovereign clouds after Business performance analytics is generally available. Before you can use business performance analytics, you must complete configuration steps. For more information, see Set up business performance analytics.
Install business performance analytics
After business performance analytics is configured, it can be installed. For more information, see Install business performance analytics.
In reality it is the Model Driven Power App which, upon the installation, will be directly connected to your D365 Finance and SCM system, from where the financial information will be taken for the analytics.
Microsoft Description of the Business Performance Analytics says the following:
Business performance analytics is a new capability in Dynamics 365 Finance that streamlines financial reporting by centralizing data from multiple business processes, including record to report, order to cash, acquire to retire, and procure to pay, presenting it in an easy-to-use interface. Powered by Dataverse, Business performance analytics includes a web-based hub that enables end users to create and share reports through familiar tools like Excel and Power BI. With Business performance analytics, users get secure and near real-time access to critical financial information, empowering non-technical users to access and analyze data easily. With improved visibility into valuable financial data, finance teams can make informed decisions and streamline financial reporting to free time to focus on high-value initiatives.
With Business performance analytics, customers can:
- Gain a complete view across multiple business processes.
- Enable non-technical users to access and analyze data easily.
- Reduce cycle times with streamlined financial reporting.
- Seamlessly integrate with familiar apps like Excel and Power BI.
I followed the official Microsoft documentation and within an hour, mostly because of application installation itself, the Business Performance Analytics was installed and ready to be used!
Please keep in mind, this app is still in preview, so what you see here might not exactly match the final version's appearance and reports upon general availability (GA). Nonetheless, it does provide us with a solid overview and insights into what we can anticipate.
When I opened the application for the first time I was presented with the following screen, where multiple out-of-the-box reports were already available to be used.
On the ‘Reports’ page I was able to jump from one report to another, leveraging embedded Power BI capabilities that summarized and presented financial data directly out of my D365 F&SCM system.
I opened the first report and first thing I noticed that I have possibility to filter my report based on ‘Currency parameter’, ‘Legal entity’ and ‘Fiscal period’ allowing me to narrow down the information I want to analyze. Filter options are available across all reports.
So, let’s quickly jump through the reports that are at the moment out-of-the-box available and see what can we expect to see.
Record-to-report
Balance Sheet Report
First out-of-the-box report in the list was 'Balance Sheet Report'. This report provides a view of the organization's financial position for the year. In my case it shows side by side ‘Balance Sheet’ amounts all the way back to 2016. It includes already mentioned Currency parameter, Legal entity and Fiscal period filters, so you are for example able to filter on your legal entity and/or fiscal period of your choice. The account category setup in finance and operations apps is used to create the structure of the balance sheet.
Budget vs. Actual
In case you have defined budgets whithin your organization this report compares the planned budget to actual financial amounts. This report can really be helpful to have an quick overview and identify the areas where your spending in in line with your budget expectations and areas that are not and need more attention.
Financial Performance
Awesome report highlighting and providing an in-depth analysis of a company’s financial performance. It highlights and visualizes your Revenue, Expenses, Budget to actual profit & loss, Budget to actual balance sheet and Budget to actual revenue. Great overview of your net income and your organization cash flow.
General Ledger Dimension Details
General ledger dimension report breaks down your general ledger into its elemental dimensions, providing in-depth insights into every detail of the organization's financial transactions. It shows really bits and pieces of your transactions, which gives you an awesome insight into your transactions.
General Ledger Transaction Details
Here users can check the general ledger transactions in detail to get an better understanding over the recorder transactions. It can give you a better picture of your current fund flows and break down the information to a single transaction including legal entity, ledger account, account name, accounting date, currency and so on.
Profit and Loss
The profit and loss report will summarize your revenues, cost and expenses over a specified period of time, providing you with an overview of your company overall profitability. As you can see from the report it offers historical data and information such as Actual amount, Budget amount and Variance amount.
Trial Balance
Trial balance report gives you an overview of your trial balance records over multiple legal entities, fiscal period and account categories. Also great detailed overview of you current or past trial balance records including, opening balance, debit, credit, closing balance and accounting currency.
Custom reports
Additionally to the existing out-of-the-box reports, you are able to create you own reports as well. Based on data models, that you get along with Business Performance Analytics, you can leverage such and easily create your own needed reports using embedded Power BI capabilities.
When navigating to ‘New report’ you have an option to start a blank report or to duplicate one of the Microsoft reports that you have and adapt them to your own purposes.
After creating for example a new blank report, your report will appear among other reports marked as a 'custom' one and by opening it you have a blank familiar Power BI playground to leverage out-of-the-box data models and create report for your own purposes.
Conclusion
Overall, as mentioned, this application is still in a preview, which means it will get upgrades and experience changes until it reaches general availability, however it gives indications where the journey goes and what to expect. Personally, I find it very useful and comprehensive! It will definitely allow customers to easily get their KPI presented in a understandable way and form a different angle, and all this by leveraging powerful Power BI capabilities. As it uses information directly from your D365 F&SCM system and gives you the possibility to easily create your own reports based on the data models, which can really be helpful to not only leverage presented (which will definitely as the times go by increase) out-of-the-box reports, but also give you tool in the hand to crate reports that might be advantageous for your specific reporting scenarios and needs.
Comments
Post a Comment