BI Reporting and Analytics for Dynamics CRM

September 2014

Agenda

1. About CloudFronts2. What is BI ?3. Case Study • SSRS Reporting• CRM Dashboards• Power BI

4. Summary5. Q & A

About Us

Incorporated on June 1st, 2012 CloudFronts is a Microsoft Partner focused on Dynamics CRM,

Portals, BI & Integrations We have three core practice areas: CRM, BI & AX Focused on helping small & medium companies deploy successful

solutions using Microsoft technologies in the cloud Clients across North America, Europe & Australia. Verticals: Professional Services, Pharmaceutical/Healthcare,

Financial Services All consultants are certified in their respective areas of expertise

What is Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) simplifies information discovery and analysis, making it possible for decision-makers at all levels of an organization to easily access, analyse and act on information.

Case Study

‘CRM Associates’ is a Microsoft Partner that focuses on CRM, BI and AX. They use CRM Online & Office 365 to manage their business operations.They have a custom ‘Professional Services Management(PSM)’ solution deployed in Dynamics CRM Online where they track their Projects, Budgets, Tasks and Time entries.

Different roles in the organization:- Project Manager (Peter)- VP (Steve)- CEO (Mark)- BI Consultant (Sagar)

Scenario - 1

How to get these details in a

particular format?Which time

entries to bill for?

OMG! Its time

consuming and tedious

task to extract, clean

and format my data

Peter says: “Every week I am supposed to send billing details to the Accounting team so that they can bill clients accordingly”

SSRS Reporting

Features• Shows data in desired pre-designed format• Fetches real time data• Easy to export in Word/Excel/PDF formats• Easy to regenerate reports, no more need to

save previous file!• Integrated within Dynamics CRM, no SQL

Server required!

When to use• Best used to standardize detailed reports• Ex: Billing details, Invoices, Job Sheets

Scenario -2Peter says: “I have to handle many projects and resources to keep track of what's going on, I have to search and compile data from different entities”

What’s my

Project status?

Completed & pending work ? Effort & time

spent on different projects?

CRM DashboardsFeatures

• Summarizes data with beautiful visualizations

• Available out of box in CRM, No Extra Cost!• Data from different entities in a dashboard• Faster development

When to use• Best used to visualize simple metrics• Ex: Expected v/s Actual Revenue, Different Project Status, Opportunities Won/Lost

Scenario -3Steve says: "I need to submit a monthly report to our CEO, Mark. It includes key metrics calculated on various parameters. "

Resource

Utilization

Project Billability

/Overshoot

Y-O-Y growth??

Growth across each practice

Power BIPower BI for Office 365 is Microsoft's cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution that works from within Excel and Office 365 to analyse and visualize data in a self-service way

View reports on the go with Power BI app

*iOS app to be available by Summer 2014

Power BI Components/Features

Discover Data (Power Query):

• Supports various data sources

• Provides data cleaning options

• Create, Certify, Share Queries

Model Data (Power Pivot) :• Easy to create relationships between different entities• Provides a good number of analytics functions (DAX)• Supports geo spatial analytics

Share Data (SharePoint Online):

• Easy to share reports across organization

• Schedule daily refreshes

• Q&A, End users can ask questions and get instant answers

• Mobility

Visualize Data (Power View/ Power Maps):

• Different charting options available

• Can visualize data on Geo spatial maps

• Provides high interactivity to end user

Power BI Architecture

SQL Server

Power View

Power Pivot

Power BI for Office 365/ SharePoint Online

On Premise /Azure VM

External Data

sources

Power Query

Need of SQL Server Data Warehouse

• In Power Query there is a direct connection available for Dynamics CRM Onlineo But this connection is not supported for auto refresh of datao This task of refreshing needs to done manually offline

• Advantages of SQL Server Data warehouse:o Can integrate data from different sourceso Can serve as single integrated source of clean data for organizationo End users can easily query data for adhoc reporting

Summary

SSRS Reports

CRM Dashboards

Power BI

Detailed functional reports

Visualize simple metrics

Robust BI analytics

Contact Us -www.cloudfronts.com info@cloudfronts.com

Upcoming BI Webinars (To be scheduled) Technical Deep Dive - Power BI - CRM Reports and Dashboards

Power BI Pricing : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/pricing.aspxPower BI Blog : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/bi-blog.aspxCloudFronts Power BI Whitepaper: http://goo.gl/CT5aei CRM 2015 Release Preview Guide: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=511975&clcid=0x409

Q & A