Article

10 Reasons why you will to see lots of Power BI at Convergence 2014

by Mark Polino
Director of Client Services, Fastpath, Integrated Business Group

At Convergence 2014, Microsoft is going to be showing off a lot of things, but one item that attendees are sure to see a lot of is Power BI. Power BI is Microsoft's suite of business intelligence products built around Microsoft Office. The core of the suite is clustered around Microsoft Excel 2013, but more and more new features are moving to Office 365 and SQL Server.

What does this have to do with Microsoft Dynamics GP? To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's about analyzing the data, stupid. Power BI is a natural fit for the middle market - and Dynamics GP. Here are 10 reason why you'll want to learn more at Convergence.

  1. Power BI is built on familiar tools like Microsoft Excel and Office 365. There's not much in the way of a new interface to learn. If your people need basic Excel help, there are tens of thousands of options to learn how use Excel.
  2. Power Query lets companies connect to all kinds of data for analysis, including other databases, other applications and publicly available data sources, like home registrations or restaurant cleanliness scores. If you've been itching to use external data sources but have balked at the complexity of accessing them, this tool provide a new solution.
  3. Power Pivot provide the ability to analyze large amounts of data and connect them for an integrated analysis. Need to analyze data from GP, CRM and a spreadsheet all together? Power Pivot can do that.
  4. It's not all about analysis though. Do you need to build a good looking financial dashboard? Power Pivot and Power View can both handle that. I'm using them for the upcoming ‘advanced' versions of the dashboards I'm building for Dynamics GP

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BI and Reporting Convergence 2014 Dynamics GP KPIs Power BI Power BI Power Platform
About Mark Polino

Mark Polino is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a former Microsoft MVP (2007-2018) for Business Solutions. He is the author or coauthor of 5 books related to Microsoft Dynamics GP.  Mark also maintains the Dynamics GP focused website DynamicAccounting.net. He speaks and writes regularly about ERP related topics. Mark has been a controller and CFO for a division of a publicly traded company and he has  worked as a consultant implementing ERP solutions. Mark holds additional certifications including Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP), Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) , Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA). Dynamics Credentialed Professional for Dynamics GP 2015 (Core Install and Core Financials), Xero Certified. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Central Florida and an MBA from Rollins College. Mark lives with his family in Florida.

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