This week I had the opportunity to present a session at the Global Dynamics 365 Bootcamp.
The session was called:
Beyond the Ledger: Explore Business Central’s Data Analytics with Power BI
The title already says quite a lot about where we are as a community today. Clients are no longer satisfied with a working ERP system. They want dashboards. They want answers. They want to understand what is actually happening in their business without calling a consultant every time they have a question.
That is a reasonable expectation.
And the good news is that Business Central can deliver on it.
From Reports to Analytics
During the session I walked through several ways Business Central supports analytics:
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The standard Power BI apps provided by Microsoft
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The Data Analysis mode inside Business Central for quick ad hoc exploration
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Building custom Power BI models using Business Central APIs
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Embedding Power BI inside Business Central so users do not have to switch tools
Technically speaking, none of this is particularly difficult anymore. The platform has matured a lot, and the tooling is good.
But every time I give a session like this, something interesting happens during the Q&A.
Someone inevitably asks:
“But how do we get clients to actually use it?”
That question is usually more interesting than the slides.
The Real Challenge: Adoption
The real challenge is rarely the technology.
It is adoption.
A client receives a dashboard. They open it once. Maybe twice. Then they quietly go back to Excel.
I do not have a silver bullet for that. But I do think we as consultants sometimes introduce dashboards the wrong way around.
We focus on the tool before we explain the story in the data.
A Power BI report should not be treated as a final deliverable that gets handed over at the end of a project. It should be the start of a conversation.
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What question are we trying to answer?
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What decision should this data support?
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What patterns should the user look for?
Without that conversation, even the most beautiful dashboard will collect dust.
Beyond the Ledger
That is ultimately what this session was about.
Moving beyond the traditional ERP mindset where the goal is to produce reports, and towards a model where users explore their own data and discover insights.
Business Central provides the data. Power BI provides the visualization.
But the real value appears when we help users ask better questions about their business.
Steven Renders’s Speaker Profile @ Sessionize
For those who attended the session or want to browse the material, you can download the slides here:
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