Continuing to stay ahead of competitors isn’t just about having streamlined operations but also about data-driven decision making. It goes without saying that Business Central is a useful cloud-based ERP solution that can enable businesses to manage their finances, supply chain and operations. However, in order to maximise your use of the data and to gain valuable insights into your business you need to consider integrating Power BI with Business Central.
In our latest blog article, we discuss why you should do this and the benefits of doing so.
The Why?
Let’s delve into four reasons as to why you should consider integrating Power BI with Business Central:
Consolidating data
Many businesses have data stored in a whole host of different systems and databases. By having Power BI integration in place, you can collate all this data into one platform. Regardless of what types of report you need, whether it be financial, sales or inventory, you are still able to bring in data from different sources and build real-time reports that can give you an overall view of how your business is performing.
Customisation
You will find that Power BI provides many different customisation options, enabling you to create reports and dashboards that match up with your specific business needs. You have the ability to tailor visuals, add filters and build drill-down experiences in order to generate answers for certain questions or to identify any trends or patterns in the data.
Real-Time Data Visuals
It goes without saying but Power BI is a leading business intelligence tool that enables you to build visually great reports and dashboards. By bringing it together with Business Central, you can view real-time data from your ERP system and shape it into meaningful visuals. Thus, allowing you to regularly review and monitor KPIs and make decisions based on the data.
Predictive Analytics
Power BI’s advanced analytical functionality can enable you to predict future trends and highlight potential opportunities or risks. Through the use of predictive analytics models combined with Business Central data, you would be able to make decisions to help increase business growth.
The Process
As we’ve now explained the benefits of completing the integration between Power BI and Business Central, let’s take a look at how this can be done.
Step 1: Connect the data: You need to create a data connection between Business Central and Power BI. You can complete this by connecting to your Business Central instance via the Power BI service or through the use of Power BI Desktop. Make sure at this point that you have the necessary permissions and rights to do this.
Step 2: Transform the data: After this connection has been built, you will be able to start building your reports and dashboards. This is where Power BI is great as it gives you a user-friendly interface that is perfect for transforming data, thus enabling you to convert and clean the data to fit your analytical requirements. As well as this, you are also able to identify relationships between different data variables.
Step 3: Create the reports: Once you have your data in the right order, next you can start creating reports and dashboards. Furthermore, Power BI gives you a whole host of visualisation options such as charts, graphs and tables. From here, you are able to add engaging features like slicers or filters to improve the overall user experience.
Step 4: Sharing and working together: You will notice that Power BI enables you to share out reports and dashboards with colleagues and stakeholders. You have two choices at this point: you can add them to the Power BI service or embed them across other apps such as Teams. This will help to make sure that everyone across your business has access to these insights.
Step 5: Automation: To enable your reports to stay up to date, you are able to create an automated data refresh schedule. This will make sure that your reports always include the latest information taken from Business Central.
The Wrap Up
Choosing to integrate Power BI with Business Central enables your business to make data-led decisions, have better insights into your operations and enables you to remain ahead of competitors. Through the use of real-time data visualisation, consolidating data, customisation and predictive analytics, you are able to revolutionise your ERP system and help to build growth and grow profits.
It is important to understand that investing in Power BI integration is a long-term investment rather than a short term one. By using your own data, you are able to create opportunities, reduce the level of risk and optimise your operations to improve efficiency as well as to increase customer satisfaction. If you haven’t looked into this integration, then you should consider doing so.
Next Steps?
If you are a business that is currently using Business Central and are keen to take advantage of Power BI then please reach out to our team of Power Platform experts to discuss your requirements in more detail.
Want to hear more from us around integrations? You can if you become part of our mailing list.
