Modern Reporting Strategies for Dynamics AX, Part II: Where Business Intelligence Really Fits

In the first half of this article, we looked at crafting an advanced reporting strategy for Dynamics AX.

This time we'll explore where business intelligence (BI) fits into that strategy; and finding the BI that fits your organization.

There are mixed messages and misperceptions about what BI is, exactly. Regardless, whichever BI strategy you look at should have the following general description.

BI is a solution that includes technical elements that give the user the ability to extract and format Dynamics AX and other data into meaningful information efficiently.

I have tried to tell my BI friends that they need to focus their message. Talking about such things as "predictive analysis based on multiple data sets from multiple sources" is not necessarily what people are looking for.

What they are truly looking for is such things like "How much money did I make last week and how does it compare with this week and this week last year?" In short, "How about giving us analysis on the information we have already collected?"

Why should BI be part of my reporting strategy?

As you may have gathered by now, I believe that BI should be part of your business strategy. It may very well be the only cost-efficient strategy available. But we need to come to the realization that what we used in the past simply doesn't work very well. In fact, it may very well work worse at this point. BI is an important transition in thinking about your reporting strategy. If you are tired of submitting report requests that take three weeks to get delivered at an exorbitant cost, then you should have no ...