Dashboards are everywhere – and for good reason.  In this article, we’ll discuss the #1 tool in the Business Intelligence realm for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers.    

If you’ve read my blog articles, you know I’ve written about dashboards before – and this probably won’t be the last time.  There was a recent study on the priorities of CFOs regarding technology that revealed data visualizations, dashboards, and performance management tools are financial executives’ top priority.  In today’s business culture, professionals at all levels of a company need to be able to make informed, data-driven decisions quickly.  Dashboards provide for that.  More specifically, data visualizations are graphs, charts, and scorecards that utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) to demonstrate wins, losses, and data trends, whether you’re analyzing data company-wide, divisionally, or for a project.

If you’re thinking, “I have a dashboard in my car, so Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards must be similar,” you’d be correct.  Both types of data visualizations are similar in that you can quickly look at a dashboard to make informed decisions to stay between the lines and on pace, based on data in chart or graph form.  BI dashboards differentiate themselves by offering more interaction and adjustment, including drill-down and drill-to features, so you can evaluate your transactional and operational data to make smarter decisions about the future of your organization.  Let’s discuss your options, and we’ll zoom in on the particular features and functionalities you have to upgrade your dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics AX.

First, you have the ability to pull company information from more than one system.  You can produce real-time analytics right from Dynamics AX.  This option allows you and your team to evaluate and comprehend the financial status of your company to the very second you run the dashboard, which is particularly effective when decision-makers need up-to-date information.  This route is also practical for mid-sized organizations that only require basic accounting system data visualizations, without the resources to oversee a BI database, like an online analytical processing (OLAP) cube or a data warehouse.  On the other hand, bigger companies tend to need something a little faster and more robust than integrating live from Dynamics AX.

Integrating from an OLAP cube or a data warehouse allows bigger teams of people to generate dashboards while avoiding a sluggish AX server.  Integrating from a BI data store basically provides high performance analytics.  However, an OLAP cube or a data warehouse will be an investment, and you will have to replicate your information from AX and your other data sources to the data store.  You should also look at modern hybrid solutions that invite you to integrate both ways.

To continue learning more dashboards for Dynamics AX, read the rest of this article here.

by Solver, Inc.

June 24, 2015 by Solver Global

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Tags: analysis cubes, AXUG, BI360, dashboard, Dashboards for Dynamics AX, Data Visualizations, Data warehouse, Dynamics AX Dashboards, Graphical Scorecards, halo, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Power BI, OLAP, QlikView, Solver, Tableau, targit, zap
Posted in About Microsoft Dynamics AX, By ISV/Add On Partners, ISV/Add On Products | Comments Off on Dashboards for Microsoft Dynamics AX Customers

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