Microsoft Dynamics NAV Users Search for the Reporting Sweet Spot but Find Gaps

When it comes to making Microsoft Dynamics NAV business intelligence (BI) and reporting solutions more attractive, the bottom line is that many customers are yet to identify a single solution either from Microsoft or an ISV that fulfills all the ideals - minimal IT administration, versatile, cost-effective, and self-service for the accounting and finance users who want to create reports.

In a recent BI roundtable discussion with members of the NAV User Group, users reported that while some of their reporting needs were usually met with their current approach, there was still much room to improve.  Starting with Microsoft, itself, the majority felt that the Dynamics NAV Business Analytics tool is not user friendly for accounting and finance users. What they're looking for, in part, is a more robust report writer with wizards that won't require as much manual coding.

Users also want to be able to do ad-hoc reporting and export financial reports to an Excel format with drill down capabilities for auditing purposes.

On one user's wish list is the ability to export dimensional reports to Excel with supporting detail in a pivot table format.

"This type of export would be as an option tool for Account Schedules," according to the user. "It would be great to provide a summary report with some drill down features to support it."

To close the perceived  functional gap, accounting and finance users of Dynamics NAV often look to add-on solutions to produce financial and other reports. The problem, according to the users, is that there's no one add-on solution that stands out. Rather there are many different ways to tackle the ...