Microsoft Dynamics Corporate Performance Management, Management Reporter & BI Blogger

Top 7 Benefits of Acheiving Self-Service BI

2012-01-20T15:21:00.000-05:00

Self-service BI is not just a buzz-word. It is an approach to analytics that enables business users to analyze organizational information (i.e. create reports, make dash boards, perform ad-hoc analysis, configure alerts). IT resources are not required on a continual basis to support end users, but rather only to set up the back-end (i.e. the data warehouse/data marts and related cubes underpinning the business intelligence system). Further, if an existing back-end solution is available, IT may not be required at all!

Top 7 Benefits of Achieving Self-Service BI:

Enable business users to create personalized reports and conduct analysis without IT involvement
Free IT resources to focus on other tasks
Improve organizational decision making
Increase responce time to changes in the business environment
Improve allocation of resources
Reduce organizational risk
Improve organizational results

The Results of Combining Operational Models with Financial Budgets

2012-01-11T16:57:00.001-05:00

This is the final blog entry in a 3 part series on combining financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts. Click here to review part 2 or part 1 respectively.

Combining operational models that link key business drivers with your financial budgets provide the following results:

Significantly shorter budget/forecast cycles
Facilitates market environment vs. calendar driven re-forecasting to react to quickly to changes
Re-aligns financial planning focus
Facilitates insight between operational tactics and the financial forecast
Facilitates variance analysis at the operational and key driver level
Shifts professional resource time from collecting data and maintaining spreadsheets to analysis and decision making

Please browse this autodemo for an overview of Prophix CPM, a solution that can facilitate sophisticated operational modelling.

How to Build Financial Budgets with Operational Models

2011-12-08T14:20:00.001-05:00

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on combining financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts. Click here to review part 1.

So, how should you go about building financial budgets with live linkage to operational models?

Shed disconnected, error prone and broken-linked spreadsheet models popularly referred to as 'Excel hell'
Leverage technology to:

Eliminate manual processes used to 'link' operational data
Enable variance analysis at both the financial and operational model level

Leverage manager and professional/analyst resources by having them focus on higher-value work (i.e. rather than compiling data)

Please browse this autodemo for an overview of Prophix CPM, a solution that can facilitate sophisticated operational modelling.

Why Financial Budgets Need Operational Models

2011-11-28T18:08:00.003-05:00

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on combining financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts.

So, why do financial budgets need operational models?

Increase ability to anticipate and react to change in today’s uncertain environment where past ≠ future
Traditional budgeting’s focus is often misplaced (i.e. focused on salaries & wages vs attracting/retaining customers and human resources)
Key drivers link operational tactics to the expected financial results of executing on strategy, giving insight behind the budgeted numbers and facilitating variance analysis

Please browse this autodemo for an overview of Prophix CPM, a solution that can facilitate sophisticated operational modelling.

Looking for an FRx, MR, or Forecaster alternative or replacement?

2011-11-12T00:06:00.003-05:00

For the record, I am a huge supporter of Microsoft's CPM solutions, which currently include FRx, MR and Forecaster. While these solutions generally serve most CPM needs, there are certain CPM requirements that cannot be addressed well by these solutions.

Prophix CPM is a scalable enterprise level CPM solution that can handle 7 of these more challenging requirements:

Combine financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts
Facilitate complex planning and forecasting scenarios
Improve reporting speed
Facilitate a robust workflow to help manage the budgeting cycle
Automate the dissemination of reports and budgeting templates
Fully automate and schedule administrative functions (i.e. loading of data, etc)
Reduce administration to facilitate more frequent forecasting and timely intervention

If you're looking for a replacement for any or all of these solutions, Prophix CPM should make the short-list. Contact me or view the autodemo for more information.

TimeXtender simplifies the BI backend!

2011-11-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

Tell me, just how many executives, business analysts and other BI end users are excited by the deep technical knowledge and time it takes to properly develop and maintain the backend of a BI solution, namely a data warehouse, the extract, transform and load (ETL) processes and finally the cubes themselves? But without a good backend for your BI solution, even the best dashboarding and BI/analytics solution available (i.e. TARGIT BI) will not be able to provide the information that your organization needs to for analysis and effective performance management.

TimeXtender simplifies the administration of the BI backend so that your organization can realize the value of its chosen analytics/visualization solution.

This is also part of the reason Jet Reports partnered with TimeXtender in their Jet Enterprise offering. Read the interview with Joe Little, President of Jet Reports, here.

TARGIT BI - A proven BI solution that works!

2011-11-11T23:19:00.000-05:00

TARGIT BI has been recently recognized in a BARC research study as the most widespread BI solution used due to ease of use and product functionality. For a summary of the results of this study, please click here.

MR 2012 Expected Release Date & Functionality

2011-10-18T15:07:00.002-04:00

MR 2012 (previously referred to as MR2 FP2) is currently scheduled to be released in the late March/early April 2012 time frame.

MR 2012's new functionality centers around the theme of 'distribution' and is expected to offer the following:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration
A richer report viewing experience, including:

Drill back to Dynamics ERP
Show accounts without dimension codes on reports
Comments
Instant Messenger integration

Report output flexibility, including:

Export to XPS
MS SharePoint integration with alerts (There is not expected to be an MR Viewer for MS SharePoint, but rather a listing of reports that will launch the MR Viewer and view the report from the secure MR Report Library.)

Report Scheduling (Note that command link scheduling is available now)

A listing of MR versions and release dates can be found here.

Prophix CPM

2011-10-14T22:33:00.022-04:00

Prophix CPM is a fully integrated performance management solution that empowers organizations with budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidations and personnel planning capabilities.

Prophix CPM’s robust analysis functionality empowers end-user investigation with ad-hoc ‘drag and drop’ capabilities, automatic variance calculations and full drill-down to details on measures within the business model.

Prophix CPM has the ability to combine financial and operational business models, meaning that you can leverage Prophix to manage performance across your entire organization and roll these operation budgets into your financial model. An example would be to create a project/job costing model that facilitates budgeting project costs at the operational level. This model would then facilitate budget to actual reporting for projects and automatically update the financial budget/forecast when changes are made to any project’s budget/forecast.

Prophix CPM facilitates the automation and scheduling of administrative functions, from importing actual data to distributing Excel templates for end user contribution to distributing financial reports via email or Microsoft SharePoint.

Prophix CPM is ERP agnostic meaning that it can be used with any ERP system including any Microsoft Dynamics ERP. It also fully integrates with TARGIT BI.

For more information contact me and/or view the Prophix CPM Product Tour.

MR Translations - FRx vs MR

2011-10-04T23:15:00.000-04:00

Management Reporter's financial translations feature is completely different from FRx's functionality, which is a welcome improvement!

The highlights of FRx's functionality was that you had to:

Re-enter your average, spot and historical rates in FRx's DAX tables (since it couldn't pull this information from your Dynamics ERP), and
Have a number of settings correct in FRx (i.e. company currency, report catalogue translations feature, translations activated in the column and the column syntax correct).

The beauty of the translations feature in MR is that it leverages the Dynamics ERP exchange rate information. In Dynamics GP, it specifically references a default exchange table. So, in most cases, a client can have two exchange tables (i.e. monthly average, and spot/historical) used for multiple purposes including: calculating exchange at time of transaction, revaluing foreign currency transactions and financial translations. Next, you have to set the translation setting for each account in your ERP.

Once this is complete, there is only one step to perform in Management Reporter to produce a translated financial statement, namely, ensure that you have a column with the Currency Source set to the translated currency. In the sample below, the functional currency is USD and the translated currency is CAD:

MR Column Translating USD to CAD

This is what the final report looks like:

Sample MR Translated Report

I must say, this functionality is a great improvement and much more efficient than what was provided in FRx. Enjoy!

Management Reporter Security & Licensing

2011-09-05T23:33:00.002-04:00

Management Reporter's security model allows for four pre-defined security roles, namely: Administrator, Designer, Generator & Viewer. These roles roughly correspond to their FRx counterpart; however, note that much of the rest of the way security works is very different than FRx. For example, you cannot secure a specific report or building block to a specific group or user.

The chart below gives an overview of the MR security roles:

Now, MR licensing adds another twist. Full Microsoft Dynamics GP licenses entitle an organization to an MR Designer license. This license allows the MR user to be given Administrator/Designer rights, although these licenses could be assigned as Generator/Viewers.

The Light Office user entitles an organization to an MR Viewer license which allows MR users to be granted Generator/Viewer rights.

So, if you require additional MR users, please contact your Microsoft Partner to review your needs; however, the following options may be available:

- a full Microsoft Dynamics GP license, which would give you an additional MR Designer license
- a separate MR Designer license (this would not give you any other Microsoft Dynamics GP users)
- a Light Office user.

Management Reporter Version Numbers & Release Dates

2011-07-19T22:41:00.003-04:00

I was so inspired by a recent posting on FRx version numbers and release dates by Noah Moseley and Penny Watts posted here, that I thought I'd share the same for MR:

MR2 RTM Release - 2.0.1662.37 (May 2010)
MR2 SP1 - 2.0.1663.3 (September 2010)
MR2 FP1 - 2.0.1664.19 (December 2010)
MR2 SP2 - 2.0.1700.31 (June 2011)
MR2 FP2 (aka MR 2012) - X.X.XXXX.XX (Expected late March/early April 2012)

Top 7 Reasons to Choose TARGIT Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics ERP/CRM

2011-06-10T00:35:00.000-04:00

The following Top 7 Reasons to choose TARGIT Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics ERP/CRM were presented at BDO's annual user conference on May 12, 2011:

1) Easy to Use
2) Highly Interactive
3) Enables ‘Power Users’
4) Unique CALM/OODA Philosophy
5) Consolidate Reporting across Multiple Data Sources
6) Enterprise Level Solution
7) Better Performance

The following are a few key aspects from what I presented.

My take on how BI has evolved and how the level of insight has increased over time

An introduction to the Performance Management Pyramid or my explanation of what it takes for an organization to successfully implement and utilize a CPM solution

An introduction to TARGIT's unique CALM or OODA philosophy, which is embedded into their entire solution

A sample TARGIT dashboard

Please contact me for more information on how TARGIT might revolutionize BI in your organization and/or visit http://www.targit.com/

Dilbert and Why to Not Budget using Excel

2011-06-03T10:16:00.000-04:00

For many smaller organizations with simple budgeting/forecasting needs, Excel works just fine. However, as Dilbert points out below, there are certainly drawbacks to using Excel:

For organizations with more complicating needs, the value of a using a dedicated CPM solution for budgeting/forecasting and financial/management reporting are myriad, including:
- Simplify and better control the budgeting process
- Reduced administration of the budgeting cycle
- Increased collaboration
- Real time version control
- Mitigate speadsheet ‘mis-calculations’ and ‘overrides’
- Better manage security
- Historical tracking/audit of changes
- Integrated financial/management reporting solution to facilitate variance reporting
- Simply reforecasting administration

How to change your password in Management Reporter

2011-05-31T23:26:00.001-04:00

If you have used Management Reporter 2 since the RTM release you may be aware that it was not easy to change your password once saved in MR. It actually required a registry hack!

Well, MR now lets you change your password within MR itself and save it as well! This means that you can log on to MR directly to your default company without having to enter any passwords at all!

To change your password in MR:

Select Company > Companies
Select 'Credentials'
Change your password
Click the option to 'save' your password (Optional)
Click 'OK'

How to Migrate from FRx to MR (Management Reporter)

2011-04-12T13:48:00.003-04:00

The steps below are based on a combination of guidance provided by Microsoft, as well as, my own experience.

An interesting statistic is that in a recent organizations migration from FRx to MR, 80% of the reports migrated properly with very little manual intervention. A further 10% required moderate intervention and the last 10% required re-design due to the fact that row linking was used in FRx.

Pre-Migration Clean Up in FRx

Backup your Sysdata folder
Backup your Specification Set(s)
Decide which FRx reports and associated building blocks you wish to migrate to MR
Prepare your FRx data for migration

Remove/rename any building blocks with 'spaces' at the beginning of its ID
Delete any unneeded reports and building blocks
Delete any companies not in use, including the sample companies
Associate any building blocks not being used with a Report Catalogue (otherwise, it will not be migrated to MR)
Ensure that any rows currently used with a row linking design in FRx are attached to a Report Catalogue, as they may not convert properly based on my experience. (Note: Any reports with Reporting Trees that are referencing multiple rows will not be migrated properly as row linking is not currently supported. Having said that, it is possible to reference multiple dimensions using the row links in a single row format, but I have seen some issues with this design migrating properly.)
Remove any .G32 files not required

Compact the FRx database
Set each FRx company as default
Ensure all GP2010 companies have the same segment names. This step is only required if you have a multi-company installation and you have the same or similar segments/dimensions in each company's chart of accounts. FRx' segment approach did not look at the actual names of the segment (i.e. Account, Department) but rather its position/length. MR does look at this information and a typo or segment identified as 'Segment 1' could botch your entire migration!

Run MR Migration Wizard

The documentation on this is readily available and quite good.

Review & Clean Up Reports in MR
Remember, running the MR wizard is generally a one-time event, as each time you run it, it will remove all the MR building blocks.

Cautions:

Rather than muddying your production FRx environment, I would recommend a separate FRx installation, preferably pointing at your GP2010 data as this comes in handy for validating that reports are working properly.
Remember to review the current MR readme information for information on what does not migrate (i.e. security) as well as to understand the functionality differences between FRx/MR (i.e. row linking, account sets)

Good luck!

Management Reporter (MR) Feature Pack Update

2011-03-16T17:54:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Management Reporter Feature Pack 2 can currently be expected in the latter half of 2011, which means it will be here in time for Christmas!

Many of the new features will be related to a distribution theme, such as:

• Sharepoint integration (Note: This likely will not be an MR Viewer experience within Sharepoint, but rather a listing of reports in Sharepoint that users can launch the MR Viewer on and view with the MR Reports Library where they are securely stored.)

• Emailing

• Scheduling (Note: Command link scheduling is available now.)

• Show accounts without dimension codes on reports (Note: Currently account segments also display the full dimension names, which many people have wanted changed.)

• Some type of Drill down to GP

Obviously the above is not a full list and it is subject to change. Please contact your Microsoft Dynamics Partner for more information.

Forecaster 'Missing Link' Found!

2011-02-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

With Microsoft's recent release of the Forecaster Data Transfer Tool, a 'missing link' in the Microsoft CPM solution has been delivered.

This is excellent news and means that we no longer have to rely on a manual Excel based method to feed Forecaster data into Dynamics GP. Instead, this process can now be automated.

It also allows Management Reporter to report on Forecaster data via Dynamics GP versus directly as can be done in FRx.

Best of all, this tool is free!

For more information, visit the Microsoft Dynamics CPM blog or CustomerSource.

Note: The tool is compliant with GP2010.

SmartView for Dynamics GP

2011-01-21T21:59:00.001-05:00

When it comes to how to get your information out of Microsoft Dynamics GP, there are so many alternatives!

One distinction that I formally made between SmartLists (whether the out-of-the-box SmartLists or the custom SmartList Builder lists) and Reports (whether SRS Reports or Crystal Reports) is that reports typically have grouping and totalling of data to facilitate analysis and decision making. Well, that distinction between 'lists' and 'reports' has been blown away with the introduction of SmartView for Dynamics GP! This is a 'must-see' and 'must-have' tool for any and all GP users.

SmartView is like GP’s SmartLists; however, it is a whole lot better! SmartView is a fast, flexible and easy to use Excel-like tool for analysis that works with all existing SmartLists, including those built using SmartList Builder.

SmartView features include:
• Faster retrieval of data than the SmartLists they are based on.

• Unlimited & Advanced Filters to isolate just the data that you want to see.

• Grouping & Subtotals to dynamically group your data by dragging and dropping.

The Evolution of SmartLists to SmartListBuider to SmartView looks something like this:

Click here to watch a SmartView demo: SmartView Demo (Make sure you select the Windows Media File version.)

For more information on SmartView for Dynamics GP contact your partner.

Management Reporter Feature Pack 1 (FP1) Stocking Stuffer!

2010-12-16T16:54:00.002-05:00

Microsoft was just in time for Christmas with the release of FP1 for Management Reporter.

This feature pack technically applies to the previously released Service Pack 1 (SP1) release.

The notable new features in this release are:

Currency Translations
Integration to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

There are, of course, a number of bug fixes.

I am hopeful that the promised Forecaster integration will be released in January 2011. Lets wait and see!

Wishing you all happy holidays this year!

Management Reporter: 7 Reasons to Upgrade

2010-10-19T21:58:00.001-04:00

This blog is the condensed material to be presented in a webinar tomorrow:

Familiar User Interface (MR is both like MS Office and FRx)
Simplified Reporting Tools (i.e. Undo, Associations, Hide/Unhide, Exporting/Importing Selected Building Blocks, etc..)
Powerful Analysis & Personalization Capabilities (Logos, Custom Page Numbering, Custom Page Breaks, Complex Filtering, etc...)
Superior Performance & Security (SQL based solution, Enhanced Security, Server-side processing, Supports 64 bit, Windows Authentication, etc...)
Migrating from FRx to MR is Easy! (Well.. for the most part!)
MR is the Future! (MS has made a significant investment in MR as the CPM platform for Dynamics GP)
You Want to! (MR is only compatible with GP2010 and higher. FRx SP11 is also compatible with GP2010.)

Management Reporter Building Block Import Features: Never Lose Sleep Again!

2010-09-03T15:04:00.002-04:00

Another really nice new feature in MR (vs FRx) is the ability to import specific building blocks versus the entire exported building block group backup file.

The screen shots below show that even while I am not importing the catalogue, I can still import one of the building blocks (i.e. the row) associated with it.

Catalogue Not Seleted

Row Definition Selected

This is a great convenience for heavy report designers who like to make a full backup of their building blocks by exporting them prior to an all day (or more likely all night) report design session!

It is also a great feature for consultants to make use of when creating a reporting package solution or to troubleshoot report design.

Sleep well!

Management Reporter: The Devil is in the Details!

2010-08-05T23:24:00.002-04:00

Jan Harrigan's post on transaction level drill-down in FRx (here) inspired me to draft this post on how to achieve transaction level drill-down in MR.

The basics and tips that Jan covered in her post apply to MR. The main difference is found in the column design. In MR, you do this by selecting ‘ATTR’ as the column type, then selecting an Attribute Category. The screen shot below shows what this looks like. As a reminder, you need to have a ‘Periodic’ vs ‘YTD’ FD column type in the column for the transaction level drill-down to work AND ensure that the Report itself is set to display Financial, Account & Transaction level information.

Finally, the full list of all 19 transaction level 'categories' currently available for display on drill-down in MR are:

Audit Trail Code
Batch ID
Currency ID
Distribution Reference
Exchange Rate
Journal Entry
Originating Audit Trail Code
Originating Document Number
Originating Master Record ID
Originating Master Record Name
Originating Transaction Type
Reference
Reporting Ledger
Series
Source Document
TAPL
TDESC
Transaction Date
Voided

Have fun exploring the transaction level details!

Note: Drill-down to Dynamics GP is currently not available in MR, but is expected to be included in Feature Pack 2, which is anticipated to be released in the spring/summer of 2011.

Management Reporter: The MR Dimension

2010-07-23T00:07:00.002-04:00

One of my favourite new features in Management Reporter is how it supports Financial Dimensions. Actually, there are two 'dimensions' to what I appreciate:

1) In addition to building your MR account structure on simply your Dynamics GP Chart of Accounts and your Analytical Accounting dimensions (which you could do with FRx), you can also include the Account Category or any of the GL Account Maintenance user defined fields.

2) The flexibility of the Financial Dimensions leaves FRx's structured rules behind and simplifies the report design process. An example is that you can code a particlar line in a row format to include a single segment from your Chart of Accounts, while another line in the same row may actually reference multiple segments.

Migrating to Management Reporter (MR) from FRx when Upgrading to GP2010

2010-07-13T15:43:00.003-04:00

Most of FRx’s core functionality is already built into Management Reporter (MR), including multi-company consolidation, multi-currency and AA integration. As such, many organizations using FRx could migrate to MR today along with GP2010 upgrade.

Note: Organizations do not have to migrate to MR with a GP2010 upgrade; however, an upgrade to GP2010 is required to use MR.

Having said that, a review of FRx functionality currently being used to ensure there are no surprise functionality gaps that may pose an issue upon migration is a good idea!

While this information is constantly changing, a current snap-shot of functionality gaps is outlined below:

'Not Yet' in MR:

Feature Pack 1 (FP/SP1), which is scheduled for fall 2010, is expected to have the following functionality:

• Translations (based off GP translations enhancement which is not yet in GP2010)

• Forecaster integration that will be more advanced that FRx’s

Feature Pack 2 (FP/SP2) which has a 'distribution' theme, scheduled for spring/summer 2011, is expected to have the following functionality:

• Sharepoint integration

• Email

• Drill down to GP (inquiry screen and possibly SRS reports)

'Not Currently Planned' for MR:

I believe the only ‘real’ deal breaker here is ‘row linking’ which is used in a small percentage of advanced FRx design environments. However, a few other items, such as 'report manager' and 'effective dates' are also currently not planned to be incorporated into MR. That may be somewhat misleading though, as MR may incorporate different more advanced functionality that would handle the same type of situations and much more.

'Different' or 'Improved' in MR:

Many features in MR are improved or different. A few of these items are listed below:

• Translations (SP1)

• Forecaster integration (SP1)

• No Webport – Report Library (Current) or Sharepoint (SP2)

This is not a complete list. I hope to blog about these features in the future, so stay tuned!

Introducing Management Reporter

2010-06-23T22:42:00.001-04:00

Management Reporter (MR) is Microsoft's Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform for its Dynamics ERP solutions. It has been available for Dynamics GP2010 for about a month (See Microsoft's official Press Release).

CPM is a Business Intelligence (BI) capability area covering:

financial reporting,
consolidations,
planning,
budgeting and
forecasting

In short, MR is FRx on steroids! In fact, MR is much more than that. It is more than a new graphical user interface, the entire product has been rebuilt from the back end (how it accesses data) to the front end (the user interface). It is the foundation upon which the future of Microsoft's CPM solutions will be built and that is very exciting!
MR effectively replaces FRx for users on Dynamics GP2010 and above. However, some advanced FRx reporting design capabilities are slated to be delivered in the fall of 2010, so not every FRx installation can migrate to MR today. Remember, patience is a virtue!
If you're worried about migrating from FRx to MR, don't be, because Microsoft has built a migration path/tool. Of course, each situation is unique and some manual updating of reports may be requried in some circumstances.
In case you are wondering, MR is currently slated to encompass the planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilties of Microsoft Forecaster by 2011, thus effectively replacing that product as well. As with FRx, a migration path will be available. So, your current investment is safe!
A final word of praise for FRx... FRx has been the industry leading financial reporting package for nearly 20 years. I think we all agree that it is a great product, but it is based on old technology and I think we can also agree that it needs more than just a facelift to carry it into the future. That, together with Microsoft's vision to build the industry leading CPM solution on a common platform, is essentially the raison d'être for Management Reporter.
Warning: Management Reporter may cause financial report designers to renew their excitement for creating financial reports.