The Role of Business Performance Analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance

Finance and operations departments often struggle to collect, process, and analyze the enormous amounts of data generated daily. Outdated data sources and fragmented tools significantly impact their productivity, hindering their ability to extract, integrate, and analyze data effectively.

They need to access advanced analytics capabilities and turn data into action to enable data-driven business transformation. Read on as we discuss business performance analytics in Dynamics 365 in detail.

Evaluating Business Performance Analytics

Today’s CFOs face several challenges in harnessing data for swift and intelligent business decision-making. With 88% of CFOs feeling overwhelmed by the organizational data they have, there is a pressing need for tools and capabilities that simplify and accelerate time-to-action.

Dynamics 365 Finance now offers advanced business performance analytics features that help CFOs address these challenges head-on. By delivering insights directly to critical decision-makers via a comprehensive and user-friendly interface, Dynamics 365 Finance enables non-technical users to easily access and analyze complex data sets, streamline financial reporting, and focus on strategic initiatives.

With self-service capabilities and near real-time cloud integration, business performance analytics allows teams to:

Eliminate siloed tools and user experiences and use updated and accurate data for financial forecasting – without toggling between systems.
Unearth insights into critical operational performances, such as accounts payable KPIs, average time to pay, or days payable outstanding.
Leverage unified data and AI to identify opportunities to improve financial performance and protect the organization from risk and future disruptions.
Fully leverage the Microsoft ecosystem of flexible solutions and stay ahead via constant innovation.

Today, business performance analytics also offers a Microsoft Copilot feature. Users can use a conversational interface to ask Copilot questions about the app and make the most of existing and upcoming capabilities.

Understanding the Key Concepts of Business Performance Analytics

Business performance analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is based on several key concepts. These include:

1. Data Warehousing

A data warehouse is the foundation of modern finance and operations, with data consolidated from various sources, locations, and systems. This centralized repository ensures finance professionals have reliable, up-to-date, and accurate data for efficient reporting across portfolio management, credit risk assessment, and fraud detection.

2. Dimensional Data Model

At the heart of the data warehouse lies the data model that represents the structure and relationships between various data elements. The dimensional data model simplifies data to facilitate easy and intuitive data analysis and optimizes the performance of complex queries in the data warehouse.

3. Reporting

Out-of-the-box reports are crucial to business performance analytics in Dynamics 365 Finance. Designed to provide a detailed overview of an organization’s financial health, these reports empower stakeholders to make informed decisions and drive business success. From balance sheets to financial performance, vendor invoices to profit and loss, stakeholders can use various filters and customize reports for different use cases.

Setting up Business Performance Analytics in Dynamics 365

Business performance analytics enables easy access to comprehensive data. It streamlines routine financial reporting and task automation, significantly reducing cycle times and improving productivity and decision-making accuracy.

Setting up business performance analytics in Dynamics 365 Finance is easy. Here are the steps to follow:

Ensure a tier-2 multi-box environment and Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.38 (Application version 10.0.1777.94) or later.
Set up necessary privileges in the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Finance.
Configure Microsoft Power Platform and the Microsoft Entra tenant.
Confirm Power App users are enabled in Dynamics 365 Finance.
Configure Dynamics 365 Finance and the Power Platform Admin Center
Use the install link and follow the instructions.
Set up users to open business performance analytics directly from Dynamics 365 finance and operations apps.
Set up security in business performance analytics to ensure the security of your business data, including admin and user roles and dimension security.

Microsoft also allows users to use the business performance analytics Excel add-in to expose the same analytics dataset on the Power BI.

Business Performance Analytics FAQs

When configuring and using business performance analytics, organizations, and users are bound to have questions. Here are answers to business performance analytics FAQs:

How Much Time Does it Take to Set Up Business Performance Analytics?

The configuration of business performance analytics takes around 60 minutes.

How Soon Is Data Reflected in the Reports?

After installation, it takes up to 24 hours for data to be accessible on reports.

How Many Years of Data Do Reports Present?

Business performance analytics builds reports using data for the current calendar year plus the previous three calendar years.

How Often is Data Refreshed in Business Performance Analytics?

Data is refreshed once every day.

What is the Frequency of Updates?

New features for business performance are released monthly, and bugs are resolved bi-weekly.

Unlock Intelligent Insights with Business Performance Analytics

CFOs face numerous challenges in today’s dynamic business environment. In addition to fulfilling traditional financial duties, they are also expected to promote long-term growth and sustainability through innovation.

To navigate these hurdles, they need access to strategic insights to drive transformation and minimize risks. Business performance analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables seamless access to unified, actionable business data.

CFOs, finance professionals, and even non-technical users can leverage business performance analytics to accelerate speed to insight, enhance business decision-making, and drive positive outcomes.