Microsoft Dynamics 365 + BI: Four benefits of combining Dynamics data with other data sources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Experience is a treasure trove of insights waiting to be unlocked, especially when CRM administrators can combine their Dynamics data with other sources of customer data.

Unifying data from Dynamics and other business systems confers more than just the liberty to choose virtually any analytics or BI tool. You can also create consolidated dashboards of your KPIs, analyze activities across all the systems your business uses, which enables you to close the loop on reporting, and, consequently, generate more profitable customers.

The value of these benefits shouldn't be understated. So, let's examine the merit of each in finer detail.

Creating consolidated dashboards of KPIs

Does the following scenario sound familiar?

The CEO asks you to build a consolidated dashboard of KPIs. As the Dynamics admin, you oblige and scramble to the source systems. But the head of marketing owns one system, the devops guy another, and nobody's exactly sure about the third. "You'll have to ask around," someone says.

Weeks later, you've waded through the gatekeepers, frustrated that there's no central place to bring the data together. Every department uses a different SaaS application. And every application generates its own proprietary reports, none of which match.

To alleviate your stress, you spend hours reading docs and tinkering with new programs, and researching different tools. But in the end, you don't trust the reports.

It's not that you're overly skeptical, merely pragmatic. You know that not every system was built for reporting. Or they only report on certain metrics, using different formats, and dashboards insulated in their own closed environment. Either reports are incomplete or the results are difficult to share.

Indeed, unifying Dynamics and other SaaS application ...