Making Microsoft Dynamics 365 & CRM predictive for sales: R scripting with Power BI

Power BI is sometimes portrayed as the ultimate analytics accessory for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365. And for all its potential, Power BI's standard capabilities leave plenty of analytics horsepower untapped for CRM power users.

Fortunately, an even more versatile analytics engine is just one further click away, says David Eldersveld, senior solution consultant at Blue Granite in Michigan. That additional power can be found in one of the "Get Data" menu options in Power BI labelled "R Script (Beta)". This option enables a Power BI user to run scripts written in the statistics and machine learning language R. And with Dynamics 365's tight integration with Power BI, it effectively means the CRM app user has at her fingertips one of the most powerful analytics languages in data science today.

But, cautions Eldersveld, don't be intimidated by the term "data science." Even if your last exposure to statistics came in an introductory course in college or high school, Dynamics CRM and 365 users can still make a lot of headway with the pre-fabricated R scripts and R tutorials (often called "vignettes" by the R community) that are available for free online these days.

Predicting customer churn using R

As one example, Eldersveld points to the perennial business challenge of customer churn - i.e. any company's concern that a customer is going to dump them and buy from their competitor instead. CRM, he says, is nothing if not a mine of ...