Requirements:

• Excel 2007 (Excel 12)
• ERP/CRM database such as Microsoft Dynamics GP or Dynamics CRM
• Some basic knowledge of SQL Views (or access to someone who can help)
• A hypothesis or theory you would like to prove or disprove

Here are 5 reasons why people don’t use Excel for BI and how they can be debunked.

1. Lack of confidence in the data. This is true if you connect to a SQL view that isn’t validated.  Use these best practices:  
   • Isolate a known result and test output from Excel
   • Use naming conventions such as ExcelView FlatSales
   • Use an Excel data connection library
   • Use data governance- appoint Excel connections manager
2. Can’t trust worksheets as they move around.  This is true if you don’t refresh the data connection.  Use these best practices:
   • Set all connections to refresh when opened
   • When using a data connections library, the connection is stored on the server
   • When a worksheet is e-mailed/shared, it will automatically seek the server connection file and refresh the data
   • Limit users who can modify connection files
3. Takes too long to refresh the data set.  This is true if you don’t use parameter queries.  Use these best practices:
   • Use parameters to limit the data as it comes in.  For example, use a month parameter for a monthly report or limit sales people so they can only see their customers
4. Excel is just a spreadsheet.  This is true if you don’t know the true purpose of Excel 2007.  Excel 2007 was designed as an ad-hoc BI tool.  Use these best practices:
   • Start by providing pre-built pivot tables
   • Offer basic training in Excel data connections
   • Provide advanced Excel training for power users
5. Excel requires many complicated calculations.  This is true if you don’t use SQL for the calculations.  Use these best practices:
   • Limit the need for users to perform their own calculations (avoid rework)
   • Assign a SQL developer the task of implementing common calculation in SQL View (i.e. Gross Profit=Sales Amt-Cost Amt)
   • Don’t overwhelm basic users with too many calculations
   • Advanced Excel users can add calculated fields to the pivot table

Excel offers even more powerful tools and techniques such as Predictive Analytics to predict a certain outcome and Data Mining to gain insight into relationships.  To learn more about using Excel 2007 for business intelligence,  view the entire “Accessing Company Data Using Microsoft Excel 2007″ presentation, presented by Socius’ BI consultant, Brad Blackmore.

Learn More about Socius’ Business Intelligence Solutions

First, let’s discuss what BI really is.  Mukhles Zaman, author of the article, “Business Intelligence: Its Ins and Outs”, defined business intelligence as: “…neither a product nor a system.  It is an umbrella term that combines architectures, applications, and databases.  It enables the real-time, interactive access, analysis, and manipulation of information, which provides the business community with easy access to business data.  BI analyzes historical data- the data businesses generate through transactions or by other kinds of business activities- and helps businesses by analyzing the past and present business situations and performances.  By giving this valuable insight, BI helps decision-makers make more informed decisions and supplies end-users with critical business information on their customers or partners, including information on behaviors and trends.”

Given this definition, virtually every small, midsized, and large business can benefit from BI.  Specific issues or scenarios that are good indicators a BI discussion should take place include:

• The need to integrate data from multiple business applications or data sources
• Lack of visibility into the company’s operations, finances, and other areas
• The need to access relevant business data quickly and efficiently
• Increasing volume of users requiring and accessing information and more end-users requiring analytical capabilities
• Rapid company growth or a recent or pending merger/acquisition
• Introduction of new products
• Upgrades within the IT environment

There are several benefits a BI solution offers to an organization regardless of size: 

• Share information efficiently and effectively with people across your organization.  BI makes it easy for everyone- from decision-makers to functional teams- to access and analyze up-to-date information anytime, anywhere.  Everyone throughout the company can make better decisions, faster.
• Empower your people.  Providing employees with access to analytical data that is readily available and understandable allows them to work more effectively and support the overall business strategy. 
• Simplify collaboration and sharing and improve alignment with a single source for accurate financial and operational information.  Having a single, central location allows you to monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs), access reports, analyze your data, and share documents.  All of the functional areas are aligned to articulate strategies, set objectives, and monitor the organization’s performance so you can make better informed and timely decisions that support your overall business strategy.
• Gain insights to understand and analyze your business performance and opportunities on a deeper level.  Analyze and evaluate information that is more accessible and easy to interact with to make strategic and tactical decisions.
• Deliver meaningful analysis and reporting.  Readily track and analyze KPIs against key business goals to gain a better understanding of how your business is performing today and not when it’s too late to impact performance.
• Have a solution with the scalability and flexibility to grow and change as your organization does.  Many companies rely solely on the most widely used BI tool, the Excel spreadsheet.  While Excel offers many useful features such as graphs, charts, and pivot tables which assist in decision-making, it doesn’t scale to your business.  Also, compiling data from multiple, disparate databases is time-consuming and is prone to errors.  However, Excel is still a key component of a total BI solution.

To learn more about Ohio business intelligence software and Ohio Microsoft BI solutions, please contact us!

Request a Complimentary Business Intelligence Consultation from Socius, a Certified Microsoft Dynamics consulting partner.

• Easily import and modify with SmartList Builder
• Set-up to publish to SmartList under the Additional SmartLists
• Very similar to (if not exactly like) the default Favorites in SmartLists
• Very similar to the Data Connections that already exist with Dynamics 10.0 SP2 but are using GP tables

Download the SmartList templates from CustomerSource by going to Downloads & Updates – Reports Library – Microsoft Dynamics GP – SmartList Templates.

Support policy for modifications to SmartList Builder and Excel Report Builder in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Did you know that Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 contains more than 200 Office Excel 2007 reports with refreshable data that you can generate and modify quickly?

Now there’s a new add-in for Excel, Chart Advisor, that generates various charts for you based on the properties of your data.  Chart Advisor ranks the recommendations based on their charts scores and displays them in a new dialog.

You can then modify the chart, filter your data, and select the types of data you want to display.

When you’re finished, simply click “Insert” to insert the chart into your worksheet!

To learn more about Ohio Microsoft BI and Microsoft Dynamics solutions, please visit our website or contact us today!

Microsoft Office Excel is the most widely used Office tool in the United States.  According to a survey conducted by Xavier University’s Williams College of Business, people in a business setting use Excel 35% of the time they spend at work regardless of role.

It is clear that companies value and depend on Excel; however, very little emphasis is ever put on training Excel users.  When asked how much training they had received, 35% of respondents indicated that they had received no formal training on Excel and only 14% of respondents had received some level of advanced training. 

Socius, an Ohio Business Intelligence Software partner, can help you bridge the Excel training gap in your company. 

Later this month, we are offering a 2-hour Excel 2007 Basics training class in each of our three locations: Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland.  Following each of the Basics classes, we are offering a 6-hour Excel 2007 – Business Intelligence 101 training class during which we will teach you how to connect live business data and present the information in various forms including reports, charts, process maps, and dashboards.  Get dates, times, and costs for this training here.

Save Time with this Data Entry Trick: Date Field
The date field in Microsoft Dynamics GP is already set for the current month, day and year.  To change the day in the current month, there’s no need to enter the month, day and year; only enter the day.  For example, if today is July 17, but I want to enter data for July 9, just enter “9″ in the date field.  There is no need to enter the day as a 2-digit number here. 

If you need to change the month and day, only enter the month and day.  So again, if today is July 17 but I want to enter data for June 1, enter “601″.  Notice that when changing the month and day, the day must be entered as a 2-digit number.

Work Smarter with SmartLists and Excel
This feature in Microsoft Dynamics GP comes in handy when you want to export SmartList data to the same Excel file on a regular basis.  You can even choose Excel macros to run before and/or after the export for analysis, formatting, etc.  Work smarter by automating this process.

1. Save your SmartList as a Favorite.
2. With the SmartList open, in the menu choose SmartList->Export Solutions.
3. Name the SmartList, add your Excel file name and your before and/or after macro names.
4. In “Visibility”, set who can see this Favorite and select Excel for the application.
5. In the tree view at the bottom, select your Favorite and check the box.
6. Click Save.

1. Close the window. Close and reopen SmartList.

Normally when you export to Excel, you have the option of doing a Quick Export which sends to Excel with a new sheet.  Now when you pick the Favorite you just saved and click Excel, you’ll see two choices now: the Quick Export and the saved export solution you just created.  If you click the Favorite, your spreadsheet opens, the data imports and your macro(s) runs.

It’s recommended that you do a normal export first. Then you can experiment with your Excel file and macros in order to get them where you want before setting up the export solution.