Dynamics 365 Business Central is a powerful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that helps businesses manage finance, supply chain, sales, and more. However, when it comes to reporting, many users face significant challenges in extracting actionable insights from the wealth of data the system holds. From limited reporting options to data integration issues, these roadblocks can prevent businesses from making informed, data-driven decisions.
In this post, we’ll explore the most common reporting challenges in Business Central and provide strategies for overcoming them—empowering your business to make the most of your ERP data.
1. Limited Built-in Reporting Options
The Challenge:
Out of the box, Business Central offers basic reporting functionality, primarily through built-in reports and generic data visualizations. While these reports provide a starting point, they often lack the depth and customization needed for more complex business scenarios. Customizing reports directly within Business Central can be time-consuming and may require technical knowledge, which can slow down reporting processes.
The Solution:
Integrating Business Central with Power BI, Microsoft’s powerful business intelligence tool, is an effective way to overcome this limitation. Power BI allows you to create highly customized and visually rich reports and dashboards that can be tailored to your specific business needs. With seamless integration, Business Central users can access their data in real-time, build reports that go beyond the standard templates, and gain deep insights into their operations.
At Polaris Insights, we specialize in integrating Power BI with Business Central, providing businesses with fully customized reporting solutions that enhance decision-making across the organization.
2. Data Silos and Fragmented Systems
The Challenge:
Businesses often operate multiple systems alongside Business Central, such as CRM platforms, e-commerce systems, or specialized financial tools. When data is stored in different silos, it becomes difficult to generate comprehensive reports that cover all aspects of the business. Manually consolidating data from multiple sources can be inefficient and error-prone.
The Solution:
A robust data integration strategy is key to overcoming this challenge. Microsoft Fabric, a unified data platform, can help centralize your data from different systems into one source of truth. By using Fabric’s built-in connectors, you can effortlessly bring data from other platforms into Business Central, allowing you to create reports that provide a holistic view of your operations.
With a unified platform, businesses can eliminate data silos, reduce manual data entry, and ensure that all stakeholders are working with the same, up-to-date information. This leads to faster, more accurate reporting and better business insights.
3. Difficulty in Handling Large Data Volumes
The Challenge:
As your business grows, so does the volume of data you need to manage. Large datasets can make it difficult for Business Central’s built-in reporting tools to handle performance-heavy queries. Slow reports or incomplete data sets can hinder decision-making, especially when timely insights are crucial.
The Solution:
Utilizing Power BI’s data modeling capabilities alongside Business Central helps overcome this challenge. Power BI’s data modeling allows you to compress and manage large datasets efficiently, making it easier to handle complex reporting without sacrificing performance. By structuring your data in a way that optimizes query performance, businesses can generate reports quickly—even when dealing with vast amounts of information.
Additionally, Microsoft Fabric offers scalable data warehousing solutions, so as your data continues to grow, your system can keep pace without affecting report speed or accuracy.
4. Lack of Real-Time Data Reporting
The Challenge:
Many businesses struggle with outdated information due to the delay in data syncing or report generation. Without real-time data, decision-makers may be working with incomplete or obsolete insights, leading to inefficiencies or missed opportunities.
The Solution:
Power BI’s real-time analytics and streaming data capabilities offer an answer to this issue. By connecting Power BI directly to Business Central’s live data streams, you can build real-time dashboards that automatically update as data changes. This ensures your teams always have access to the latest information, allowing for more agile decision-making.
Moreover, Microsoft Fabric’s advanced data pipeline features allow you to automate the data extraction and transformation process, reducing lag times and ensuring that your reports always reflect the most up-to-date data available.
5. Complex Custom Report Development
The Challenge:
Creating custom reports in Business Central often requires significant development effort, especially if you need specialized reports that cater to specific departments or business needs. For non-technical users, developing these custom reports can be daunting, leading to delays and dependence on IT departments or external consultants.
The Solution:
By using Power BI in conjunction with Business Central, businesses can empower non-technical users to build their own reports using an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Power BI provides a user-friendly experience that requires minimal technical knowledge, while still offering advanced reporting capabilities for more complex needs.
Additionally, companies can leverage pre-built Power BI templates tailored specifically for Business Central, allowing users to quickly generate reports without needing to build them from scratch.
6. Inconsistent Reporting Standards
The Challenge:
When multiple departments are generating reports in isolation, it can lead to inconsistencies in reporting standards, formats, and data interpretation. This fragmentation can cause confusion and inefficiencies, especially when different teams rely on varying metrics to make decisions.
The Solution:
A centralized BI platform, like Microsoft Fabric combined with Power BI, helps standardize reporting across the organization. By creating centralized data models and templates, you can ensure that all teams use consistent metrics, formats, and definitions when generating reports. This not only reduces discrepancies but also enables more reliable cross-departmental analysis.
At Polaris Insights, we work with businesses to establish governance frameworks that ensure consistency and accuracy across all reports, improving overall data reliability and trustworthiness.
7. Slow Report Generation and Distribution
The Challenge:
In fast-paced business environments, waiting for reports to be manually generated and distributed can lead to bottlenecks. Slow report generation can make it difficult to respond quickly to market changes or operational issues.
The Solution:
Automating report generation and distribution using Power BI and Microsoft Fabric can speed up the process significantly. With scheduled reporting, reports can be automatically generated and shared with the relevant stakeholders at predefined intervals. Power BI’s subscription-based features also allow users to receive automatic updates and notifications when a new report is available or when key metrics reach predefined thresholds.
This ensures that decision-makers have the information they need, exactly when they need it, without delays.
Conclusion: Elevating Business Central Reporting with Polaris Insights
While Dynamics Business Central provides essential ERP functionality, reporting challenges can hinder its full potential. However, by integrating Business Central with tools like Power BI and Microsoft Fabric, businesses can unlock powerful reporting capabilities that deliver real-time, comprehensive, and actionable insights.
At Polaris Insights, we specialize in helping businesses overcome these reporting challenges through tailored BI solutions. Whether it’s addressing performance issues, integrating siloed data, or building customized dashboards, we’re here to help you harness the full potential of your Business Central data. Contact us today to learn how we can transform your reporting processes and empower your business with data-driven insights.
Read more:
Three ways to extract data from Dynamics BC