This content introduces Microsoft Dynamics 365 as a business application platform designed for digital transformation, emphasizing its integration with familiar Microsoft tools and its role in empowering organizations to innovate within the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
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hello everybody good afternoon this is
Nick Sarnoff America Lucian's welcome
from snowy New York City here today
we've got a fun event planned for us
today super excited as our organization
to lodge the first of a few of these
webinar series coming up in the next
couple of weeks and months ahead so for
the folks that don't know me my name is
Nick Sarno I'm a director with our
organization and our agenda today is
going to take us through a couple of
different areas really my main role in
this event here today is to give us some
overview some content and some material
about our organization at a high level
supporting customers implement and
utilize Microsoft Dynamics 365 it's
really for the next 10 or 15 or so
minutes I'm going to spend talking with
you to set the stage for our actual deep
dive demo with Chris Berg I'm in the
agenda in front of us here today you'll
see we've got a couple of different
areas to walk through Josh if you can
thank you so to really set the stage for
context and perspective really wanted to
reinforce a few points here with what
we're working with here today as we're
all familiar with by the world today
around us is rapidly changing probably
faster than at any other point in
history it's really the way we gauge
this is the indicator of the fourth
Industrial Revolution that is emerging
which is what we call the digital
revolution really all of this driven by
the rise of big data the growth of the
cloud as well as a new era of
intelligent capabilities utilizing
mobile IOT machine learning and
artificial intelligence so really those
technologies have the power to disrupt
almost every industry which is why we're
super excited to be playing in this
space here today and really the depth
and breadth of changes resulting in the
transformation of these systems can be
felt across production management
governance etc so so really all this to
say that at Microsoft and merit
solutions our ambition really as a
company is to help democratize this
fourth Industrial Revolution by
providing organizations the building
blocks to actually empower them to build
innovate and ultimately transform so
really that's setting the stage for us
here today and really at the core of all
this is data so we view data as a key
strategic asset which combined with the
cloud really has the potential to
provide some really unique intelligent
the capabilities to help these
organizations grow Josh if you can go to
the next slide please
so really at the forefront of this what
I wanted to spend a couple minutes
walking through is you know what is
Dynamics 365 and why is it so relevant
to this fourth Industrial Revolution
that I just shared about so so for folks
that don't know Dynamics 365 is a
product line of enterprise resource
planning ERP and customer relationship
management CRM applications announced by
Microsoft in July of 2016 the product
itself was generally released in
November first 26 2016 as part of the
Microsoft Dynamics product suite roughly
in terms of numbers there are
approximately to date about 5 million
individual users of the software and
approximately 40,000 customers globally
utilizing Dynamics 365 and really across
industries etc there
dynamics 365 so dynamics 365 is really a
business application platform for
digital transformation that ultimately
combined the tools that people are
already familiar with the familiar
Microsoft tools that folks are familiar
with so so whether you're familiar with
office 365 power bi power apps etc
really booths are all things that play a
key part with the dynamics 365 product
suite so really on the outside are the
familiar applications that that most
users are familiar with on the inside
and that wheel they're really those are
the individual applications that are
components of the broader Microsoft
Dynamics 365 suite so really what it
allows organizations to do is pick and
choose which particular application
their organization wants to take
advantage of and start utilizing here so
really for the purposes of today we're
going to focus only actually on one of
those applications namely the finance
and operations application but the point
being that really the application itself
Dynamics 365 allows organizations at
their own pace to actually adopt
different key workloads and different
different processes as their
organizations grow and evolve
Josh got on that slide please
Thanks and so as I shared earlier really
today we're going to focus only on the
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for finance and
operations application and so really
wanted to drill a little bit deeper into
it to give some context into the actual
functionality and solution skill sets
that are available within it so so
really from the point of actually using
the application there's multiple ways
users can actually use the software so
whether that's you know from their
computers from their laptops from their
phones really from other services with
power bi there's multiple ways to
actually interface with the application
then in terms of the actual business
rules and capabilities there's numerous
actually functional areas within finance
and operations such as supply chain
management production and Finance itself
that actually are folded under that
broader umbrella and then finally at the
core for all of that is really the the
power of the Microsoft cloud so the
solution set is actually hosted on
Microsoft as your network software as a
service based and really they're getting
the best capabilities with Microsoft
Azure stack at the core of this product
so I should go to next slide please
thank you so kind of wrap up my talking
points here today before I turn over to
Chris just wanted to give some
perspective of who married solutions is
and how we've had similar success in the
marketplace before so really married
solutions is a consulting services firm
we're focused a hundred percent on
Microsoft technologies our main industry
focus and vertical area of expertise is
working with manufacturers but more
specifically those that are
fda-regulated like Ben device companies
diagnostics providers my pharmaceutical
companies etc in terms of our global
footprint we have customers on all
continents today roughly 600 customers
globally which is very important to us
additionally in the center here of this
slide you'll see that I'm an actual
screenshot of our client satisfaction
scores or ratings and so really as a
client centric organization very key to
us is actually how our customers are
rating us regularly so each quarter we
actually assess from our customers and
ongoing projects how we're doing as an
organization to meet their needs
until you'll see why it's relevant as we
really maintain high customer service
levels throughout the labs in this
particular case three years but even
beyond that as well
and finally I'll kind of plug one unique
thing about us as well the company we
actually were the first organization to
actually implement the Microsoft
Dynamics product on Azure and so really
our organization's been at the forefront
of helping democratize that fourth
Industrial Revolution or digital
revolution as I shared earlier today so
with that I'm going to turn it over to
Chris Berg for actually our deep dive
demonstration and then certainly
throughout the day here today if you
have questions please feel free to chime
in via chat to other chat function thank you
you
sounds great Thank You Mick so today on
today's demo we're going to be doing
over a demonstration of the navigation
and user interface of Dynamics 365 for
operations I'm going to give you a you
know quick navigation overview go
through the Microsoft ecosystem and more
depths and and how the Microsoft
applications are actually embedded into
the solution then we'll talk about
workspaces and really how easy it is to
personalize various forms and features
within the application and then we will
move into the help and search
functionality showing you the the power
of being able to fully utilize the the
platform to its capabilities I want to
walk through some task guides because
those are some new and exciting tools to
dynamic 365 and really helps user
adoption then we're going to open some
forms and excel and show you how that
direct integration to excel can work
within the platform and then we'll
finish off by talking about power bi and
if we have time wrap it up with some
some some natural query language so with
that being said I am going to to go over
and launch the application right now and
what you're seeing is the landing spot
or essentially the home page of
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for finance and
operations going back to our agenda the
navigation overview is one of the key
pieces we're going to focus on today
simply because having a familiar
interface is so important to a
successful GRP project not just from an
implementation standpoint but from a
usability standpoint and when we look at
Dynamics 365 and compared to other ERP
platforms and systems the learning curve
is really much smaller Microsoft has
done a great job of ensuring that the
user interface is all about the users
ensuring that there is easy adoption
taking advantage of the familiarity and
similarities to other microsoft project
products such as Excel Word PowerPoint
and all of those applications
they know that they have a lot of
business users or power users that are
familiar with those and enabling those
users to move forward and evolve into
the dynamic 365 platform is a that's
that's a huge piece of their roadmap so
they're definitely going out of their
way to make sure that all their users
can take advantage of that prior
knowledge and in that history that they
have working with Microsoft products so
one of the first things to discuss is
what I have highlighted here and that's
a URL bar what does this mean well in
dynamic 365 everything is completely
web-based Nick mentioned the hosting the
azure so let's talk about that just a
little bit and some of the advantages
with everything being online in the
cloud with this being online you can
access dynamics 365 from any device at
any place with Wi-Fi whether it's from a
tablet or a phone in a restaurant or
you're on an airplane with Wi-Fi and
productivity is really no longer limited
to a dedicated machine or server also
one of the pieces to to discuss here is
a Microsoft support and flexibility with
the cloud and Azure I think a lot of
people out there have a misunderstanding
about owning their own code or you know
having their own servers you know with
this product and with the Azure services
you are still able to control your own
instances your own code base and you
still own your own data so you still
have all of that ownership you're just
utilizing the power of the Microsoft software
software
additionally the Dynamics 365 platform
is now fully scaleable with licenses
they have what's called a subscription
model allow you to only pay for what you use
use
and then ramp up and/or scale up with
your business so it's no longer a
shotgun approach where you have to buy a
huge bulk of user packages and licenses
you can gradually implement more and
more functionality as time goes on
through different phases and add key
users during those phases so essentially
as your business grows the ERP grows
with you so I'm going to go ahead and
start diving into some of the navigation
I'll go ahead and choose our little icon
over here on the left and one of the
things you'll see is we have the ability
to tag all of our different favorite
modules and workspaces into our
favorites bar we also have the ability
to tag our recent and really is it gives
you that browser like approach so and
it's really key to have this you know
especially ERP systems people can think
of them as being complex and having the
fear that Microsoft makes us easy to
navigate through you can tag favorites
in the recent we'll get into the
workspaces and modules a little bit
later but wanted to just reiterate the
fact that they really make it more like
a browser approach and while we're
talking about that with the dynamic 365
for operations platform being online you
can easily navigate back and forth with
your browser you can refresh screens you
can actually you know save this homepage
to you know to a link or a tab within
your browser it really is its its own
webpage which is a which is a great
piece of functionality to have another
thing to cover is from our home page
what you're seeing here is we obviously
have a calendar but we're also able to
view work items assigned to me so
particular to my role these are system
generate alerts that either require my
approval or tasks that I need to
complete throughout the day moving in
onto the Microsoft ecosystem I talked
about this before
about the direct embeddedness with the
Microsoft products I'm just going to go
ahead and and launch our our bar up here
and as you can see we have a number of
different options for applications that
are part of the Microsoft ecosystem but
additionally to what you're seeing here
I can go ahead and choose all apps and I
can specify all these different
Microsoft apps and pin them to my
Dynamics 365 solution this includes the
Microsoft Office 365 suite we're looking
at Excel onedrive OneNote outlook
PowerPoint power bi all of these
different apps or applications are like
I mentioned fully embedded into the
solution so it really is all the
solutions under one roof which is a key
advantage of this product in particular
compared to others also as we go ahead
and scroll down here to get more apps I
did want to to bring up the fact that
Microsoft also uses a system called app
source which is very similar to the App
Store and iTunes if you've ever used it
before essentially you get a whole
robust number of apps that are either
Microsoft built or third-party apps and
I did want to mention that if it is a
third-party app it goes through rigorous
approval process that are and these apps
are fully supported by Microsoft you're
not just going to get some junk up on
this app source website this has to be
fully vetted and qualified and approved
to Microsoft and it's actually a
rigorous process to go through that but
while we're here I'm just going to go
ahead ahead and and specify or drill
into some of these apps I'll choose
finance and operations and I'll choose
operations and supply chain and
furthermore moving down out to
healthcare and life sciences is one of
the industries that we specialize in as
you can see over here we have our own
Macs life solution through merit
solutions posted on app source it just
gives you this great user interface and
ability to go and see what is out there
what is approved by Microsoft on on
their apps or storefront and be able to
you know put you in touch directly with
these vendors or you know if it's a
Microsoft based product go ahead and
download install
apply or apply so a lot of great
features from from app source I did want
to bring up the the point that the
Microsoft ecosystem is not only directly
connected with these other Microsoft
products but the look feel and usability
is consistent what does that mean well
it's going to be easier to adopt
application and its features and take
advantage of the tools that your users
are already familiar with so moving into
personalization and usability so
dynamics 365 as I mentioned before does
a great job of making the system
flexible easy to navigate easy to use
but also easy to customize and
personalize to each of your users
obviously in different industries or
different companies you're going to have
different users with different roles
that want to you know want to look at
different forms or they want to see
forms in different ways some might want
to see tiles some might want to see
lists pages so what Microsoft Dynamics
has done they have taken the traditional
approach of workspaces and I'll just
show you what a workspace looks like for
example I will go ahead and excuse me
when I meant when I said workspaces I
meant module they have taken the
traditional module approach and this is
what we're looking at here is a
traditional module of all of these
different forms that could be either a
set up in config form it could be a
report form it could be a list page form
all of this data and they have chunked
it out and they put it into the form of
these workspaces what you're seeing here
are these tiles from my home page and
the benefit of doing this is it allows
you to pull all of those pertinent
pieces of information required for
day-to-day activities and work streams
and put them in a single place now
unlogged in as an admin access user
right here but I'm going to go ahead and
open up a different browser window and
go ahead and launch the home page for
finance and operations in this example I
am logged in as a accounts receivable
manager and logged in as the accounts
receivable manager I only have access to various
various
work excuse me workspaces and modules
that are pertinent to my role and to
take that a step further I want to show
you how easy it is to personalize some
of these workspaces so if I'm an
accounts receivable manager I can go
ahead and launch my workspace from the
workspace which I mentioned is new to
the dynamics 365 product we have a
number of different tiles on the left
hand pane this is going to be consistent
across all the workspaces summary tiles
we're going to have transactions and
list pages in the center and then
related information over on the right
whether that's navigating to a report or
set up in config of various areas but if
I am posting cash and I'm an AR manager
one of the things I might want to see
our customers that are past due and if I
don't have that tile already in my
workspace how would I go ahead and add
that well it's very easy all I need to
do is go ahead and go to the source
within the module find my customers path
do load that list page and from that
list page I can add this particular list
directly onto my workspace simply by
choosing options at - workspace I will
add it as a tile I can type in the name
of the tile and I can even have the tile
display account
I choose ok and I will go ahead and
close out of my customers pass-through
form and go ahead and launch customer
payments and here we are just as quick
as a couple you know as easy as a couple
of clicks I now have my customers
past-due tile
directly embedded into my workspace
that's particular for my role another
nice feature is the ability to take this
data from my workspace and actually add
it back to my home page dashboard so all
I need to do right click on the tile
choose personalize pin to my dashboard
and click off the tile and close my
workspace refreshes our dashboard home
screen so excuse me and sure enough all
all of a sudden
have our customers past due in a tile
format with our count right here on our
home page this is incredibly useful
especially for users that are using
these tiles with different counts we
like to say it merit a lot as we're
implementing the software that you know
if you're a user and your number counts
down to zero at the end of the day you
can clock out and go home for the day so
a lot of great uses
you know usability particular to
different users and different roles
within your organization from the
summary tiles the transactions list the
related information there's a lot of
great power here to ensure your users
only have access to the various areas
that they need I'm going to from our
other environment I'm going to go ahead
and launch what the security looks like
and what those roles look like within
Microsoft Dynamics 365 just to give you
an idea of what roles are available out
of the box as you can see we have a
number of different roles as I scroll
down this page so what does that mean it
means you all you have to do is simply
specify your users or assign your users
to these various roles and you are
running out of the gates
yes it's very easy to modify the various
capabilities of each of these roles or
you can add different capabilities for
each user
but just from a starting point these
roles don't have to be built from
scratch they're already available and
from a quick ease of adoption starting
point it's great to take advantage of
all of those current security roles
right from the get-go
now we're going to move on to the help
and search features within the the
dynamics 365 platform it may seem really
simple but one of the key features for
Dynamics 365 right now is having the
search functionality and the search
functionality doesn't just trigger some
help text and results if I if I am a new
user to the system and I need to
generate a trial balance and I forget
what module or I forget what workspace
that's in I can easily easily just go
ahead and type in here trial balance and
the system is going to bring up all of
the different results
are specific to that search text so
trial balance can be found in a number
of different areas but it's telling me
right here that okay our top hit is
going to be our trial balance form I can
just click into trial balance and it
brings me right into my trial balance
form so incredibly powerful I've been
using the Dynamics ERP software for for
over eight years now and I will tell you
it seems simple but it's small all
things like this that really really
separate it from other a RP systems
being able to bounce around navigate and
easily take advantage of the forms and
the tools of the application another
nice feature is the is the help piece
which if I am lost in the system and I
don't know or if I forget my tasks it's
very easy for me to to utilize help text
was in the excuse me within the
application so what I'm going to do is I
am going to go ahead and launch finance
and operations and I'm going to show you
what that help looks like so all I have
to do is choose help and support and
then choose help and Terp type in mice
in my text let's say for example I am
new to the application and I need to
create and submit a purchase order so
what I'll do is I'll just go ahead and
type in submit into my help text and the
system is going to look for various
results of how can we find a particular
task guide or how can we find help text
that's going to help me process this
create and submit purchase order I'll go
ahead and choose create and submit
purchase order and when I do that it's
going to launch what it's called a task
guide and the task guide as you can see
here is a description of steps that
tells me how to actually perform my role
within the system but guess what it's
way more than just a text or description
of steps the task guides are fully
interactive so I will go ahead I'm going
to hit start task guide and what it's
going to do is it's actually going to
walk me through performing this task
interactively within the applet
Asian so it's telling me to click
purchase order preparation I click
purchase order preparation and it opens
the purchase order preparation workspace
it's now telling me to choose new
purchase order I specify a right click
new purchase order and a new Pio is
about to be generated I have to specify
my vendor and the vendor account field I
go ahead and do that and when I am ready
all the system tells me to click OK to
generate purchase order so from here
similar to before all I need to do is
walk through what this task guide is
telling me I can simply specify in this
case the item it's going to ask me to
scroll right and tell me to specify a
quantity of this item and when I'm done
with this it's going to say hey go ahead
and add a new line until you are
finished I'll just come in here and
specify my second line of my purchase
order and I'll specify my quantity and
after I've done that the system is going
to tell me that say go ahead and save
and when I'm done with that it's going
to ask me to submit to workflow and
while we're here I did want to bring up
as a sidebar workflow is an incredibly
powerful capability within Dynamics 365
it's an engine that tracks approvals and
requests for approvals we see a lot of
this on purchase requisitions and
purchase order approvals with our
customers but just to let you know that
workflow and a number of its
capabilities are available out of the
box so I'm going to choose workflow and
submit this purchase order after I submit
submit
disorder the fast guide is going to tell
me to go ahead and close the page but
and then when I'm finished all is said
and done my purchase order has been
submitted which is incredibly powerful
to be able to walk through that whole
process from end to end you know a lot
of times in the ERP systems you know
you're looking at ten fifteen steps for
users to perform a role to have these
task guides available there in the event
you forgot step 9 out of 15 or what do I
do next where do I go having those task
guides there are incredibly great
feature to have not just from a
standpoint of you know I forgot how to
do my job or how do i process this
transaction but it's great to have these
task guys you can document all of your
standard operating procedures within the
software you can save them out to
lifecycle services library and that's
that's great in case you ever have
employee turnover you need to train new
users get them up to speed also saves
paper from you having to come in and
custom customize user documents another
great piece of these task guides is that
you have the ability to simply edit if
there's a 20 step task guide and you
change a new process within your
organization all I have to do is edit
the task guide insert one step and bam
I'm out of the gates I don't have to
come back and completely redo all of my
task guides I did want to bring up the
fact that within merit solutions we
actually have our own task guides as
part of our rapid 365 solution and
what's nice as I mentioned we can access
all these tasks guides directly from
what's called LCS or lifecycle services
so I'll go ahead and choose this link
and I can access our full library
straight through the task recorder
within the D 365 for operations
application and as you can see we have a
whole number of different task guides
for various work streams if I look up
and up financials or drill down into
general ledger these are all specific
tasks that we have developed at merit
solutions that follow industry best
practices that are included as part of
our rapid 365
methodology and other projects we use
these tools quite frequently as well but
to give you an idea of the task guides
just another nice piece you can actually
play back the recording of these task
guides automatically so I'll just come
into vendor management and I'll choose
put a vendor on hold choose okay and
when I do that I'll just go ahead and
hit start and what that's going to do is
that's going to launch our task recorder
I can play one step at a time or I can
navigate to a particular pending step or
I can choose play all pending steps I
will click this leave my mouse in the
same place and what's going to happen is
a system is actually going to run
through this transaction without me
clicking any icons or buttons this is
great for testing regression testing if
you need to apply an update you want to
make sure all of your processes are
still working this task recorder is a
it's a game changer tool in the ERP
space right now so I'll just go ahead
and stop the task recorder and the next
thing I wanted to to bring up with with
everyone is the ability to work directly
within Microsoft Office 365 I know I
mentioned the direct integration to
Excel before so let's come back to that
Microsoft ecosystem I'm going to go
ahead and open up my environment and I'm
going to navigate to a general journal
and show you the processing power and
that direct integration with Excel I'll
go ahead and find my general journal it
is an open journal right now I'm going
to choose the lines button and it's
going to show me the lines that I have
in my journal well from here I have a
number of features that I can use I can
you know directly add lines to the
journal in this form but if I'm more
familiar in Excel or if I want to dump
this out to excel I have the ability to
open it in Microsoft Office I also have
this ability to add attachments to it if
I have a scan or if there's something
I've received that I need you know need
to make sure I add to this journal I can
do this and this is consistent across
almost every form within Dynamics 365 you
you
ability to add attachments and then
finally being able to open this up in a
new window
this is really nice excuse me to be able
to open up these different these
different windows sorry I had my popup
blocker on there but being able to work
in multiple windows if you have multiple
monitors it's really powerful and again
you can do this on every single form
within the application so what I'm going
to do is I'm just going to show you how
easy it is to actually open this in
let me close out of this form I'm going
to go ahead and just do a quick refresh
real quick now as you can see it was
simple refresh within the browser I'll
choose my lines and then open in Excel I
choose open general journal line entry I
will just download it to excel open in
Excel and I'm going to choose enable
editing and what's going to happen when
I do that there's going to be a
microsoft dynamics office Adhan or a
data connector that syncs excel directly
back to Dynamics 365 it's going to spend
a second or two here retrieving the data
from my particular journal but then it's
going to populate all of these forms in
Excel to mirror exactly what we just saw
in the application now what's great
about this integration and I mentioned
this before was the ability to be able
to make changes to our journal and then
go ahead and publish that back up into
the ERP just to keep things simple I can
go ahead and copy this line and add a
new line to our excel
I could also choose to add a new line
here and when I add a new line I can
specify a date it's going to walk me
through these fields very similar to
what I would see in the ERP I specify my
legal entity specify my account type all
of these pieces mirror the D 365 for
operations application but when I'm done
with my journal all I need to do is hit
publish and as you can see previously I
had a single line journal entry within
the application here I'm just going to
check check the refresh button and sure
enough our second journal line is now
part of our journal it is really that
easy it's a it's a great piece to have
especially for those that are really
familiar to utilizing excel regard to
easy adoption I know a lot of business
power users spend a lot of time in Excel
so this just helps bridge that gap
between the Microsoft power of Excel and
the D 365 for operations capabilities so
I'm going to go ahead and close out of
our general journals and I did want to
showcase some of those new features that
we talked about regarding workspaces and
take that a step further and show you
some of the power bi in the included
features that actually come standard in
Microsoft Dynamics 365 product so the
first thing I'm going to launch is
what's called the CFO overview workspace
and as I launch the workspace it's going
to bring up a number of different
dashboards within the workspace that are
particular to either the company on the
inn or the organization that I'm in so
it it does include a number of different
tabs here on the bottom in this case
we're looking at CFO workspace so this
is something that would primarily be
used by a CFO or a you know Finance VP
someone that wants to get an immediate
snapshot of the health of their business
being able to look at either a current
ratio or margin cost of goods sold just
at a real high level one thing to keep
in mind too is these dashboards are real time
time
so that means that a number of these key
metrics or these deep dashboards that
you are seeing this is real-time data as
it gets posted into the application a
lot of times you need to have a team of
data analysts that go extract you know
different data from different modules
and different forms and scrub and
cleanse and and slice and dice that data
and then you know by the time they get
done putting analysis behind that data
that data is already stale so it's
really nice being able to have that real
time data and that power to log in to
these dashboards and get that immediate
pulse and performance of your business
so I'll just click through a couple of
these different tabs one of them is the
tabs I wanted to show is the sub-ledger
insights here in this case we're looking
at top 10 products or by revenue and top
10 customers these dashboards are fully
interactive so when I click on this
high-end speaker here it's actually
going to show me out of my customers
which ones purchased that speaker the
most I will click on again the toggle
off and if I want to come down and take
a look at my top 10 customers my revenue
if I choose kanto so europe and click
Encanto so europe up top it's going to
show me the top products that canto so
europe you know purchases it's
incredibly powerful to be able to click
and navigate between these dashboards to
get this view and in real time and
consumable data in the format that then
it's incredibly powerful but it's also
really easy to use I did want to show
one of the new features that Dynamics
365 is added they have actually pulled
financial statements out of management
reporter and pulled them into various
dashboards and when I say pull them out
they're still obviously available in
management reporter and there is a
direct connection from management
reporter to Dynamics 365 now but on top
of that these financial statements are
now part of various workspaces in these
dashboards and to take that a step
further I can actually drill into these
financial statements directly from the
dashboard if I want to look at the at
the columns of this particular 12 months trend
trend
income statement I just go ahead and and
I choose columns and I drill in columns
and it's going to break out all of my
quarters by month of what I've just
selected and drilling into that
transaction level it's as easy as
clicking a value or double-clicking a
value and diving in to that individual
transaction in this case it has brought
me to the voucher I'll just go ahead and
choose voucher transactions and from
here I can choose original document and
from the original document I just choose
view details and it's going to actually
step me right back into that invoice
journal it's going to show me the sales
order number the items on this
particular sales order the quantities
the prices the discounts the margins the
contribution rates ratios all there so I
have the ability to drill back all the
way from my workspace that has a
embedded power bi dashboard with a
financial statement into a specific
voucher transaction in original document
it's incredibly powerful but it's also
user friendly and one of the things I
did forget to mention and I'll just come
back to our financial overview is the
ability to apply filters to our
different dashboards here what we're
looking at is a dashboard for one legal
entity for the USMS entity but within
dynamic 365 for operations we have the
ability to have a whole number of
different legal entities within the
solution and you can process
consolidations eliminations intercompany
trade and the great part about that is
that I can now get visibility into all
my organization's in one place for
example if I choose organization you SMF
but I also select organization DM D EMF
I'll go ahead and let the system to
respond and what it's going to do is
it's actually going to pull in the same
information for data as it does excuse
me the same information as US MF and
it's going to let me see side by side
and so that power of having multiple
legal entities or multiple operating
units within your organization being
able to slice and dice on these
dashboards to get real-time analysis and view
view
the performance of each of these pieces
is its to be honest it is a game-changer
in the ERP space not just because of how
powerful it is but because of how simple
it is to come in here and specify these
pieces imagine being able to showcase
this to a CFO or you know you know an
owner of a company being able to get
this data on the fly to conclude the
presentation I did want to bring up some
of the natural query language that we
have in the power bi application itself
this is a power bi app this one is not
embedded into the dynamics 365 solution
however there is some great great
functionality that that is included with
the power bi application and that's
called natural query language before I
jump into that I just wanted to dive in
some of the dashboards here it's very
similar to what we saw within the
application being able to look at you
know in this case we're looking at a
supplier quality analysis dashboard I'm
trying to track the you know or manage
the quality of different components of
different suppliers that I have it
points out outliers that I might have or
areas that I need to adjust or make
quick decisions on but in terms of that
decision making where the where the
natural query language really really has
a lot of power is the ability to use
what's called ask a question about your
data what this means is I can actually
come in to my power bi app and I can
explore and I can drill into my data on
an ad hoc basis so in this case if I
just want it to look at my total defect
quantity I can go ahead and type that in
and by doing that the system is going to
recognize what my search tech did text
is and it's going to tell me what is my
total defect quantity but the nice part
about this is I can continue to add to
my search text if I wanted to look at
total defect quantity by category
and sure enough the system adjust and it
breaks out all of my defect quantity by
category I could look at my total defect
quantity by category in in pie format or
I could look at my total defect quantity
by category let's say by material type
and now I start as I drill into this I
start figuring out ok I have some
outliers here I have some key decision
points or key decisions that I need to
make based on these KPIs and it's
incredibly powerful to be able to come
in here on an ad-hoc basis now keep in
mind these what I've been typing in here
is not defined it's not a report that I
come in here and generate every single
day and I run in the background I can
just free form text and and click into
all of my results and I can drill into
all these pieces so that was going to
conclude my call today I know we went
through a lot of information and from an
overall standpoint hopefully everyone
got a great feel for the user interface
navigation some of the tools such as the
searching the help text the the task
guide the Microsoft apps and the direct
embedded application with the Microsoft
platform and all of the the new
workspaces and features and
functionalities that are included with
the product I did want to mention we did
look at that CFO overview a key added
point here as well is that all of these
pieces they come included pre-built into
the software so what does that mean that
means that when you purchase a software
all you need to do is perform
transactions and these dashboards will
come alive for you yes they can be
configured they can be custom spec to
meet your needs most of that can be done
on the front end it won't need a
developer for it so it's it's easy to
use like I mentioned before but having
the ability to you know from a early
adoption standpoint to just get my
transactions into the system and and
start having these charts and graphs
start populate form ease and it's
incredibly beneficial and
a implementation and deployment
standpoint it really is a major time
saver rather than having a developer
come in here and custom spec all of
these different dashboards for me
another piece I did want to mention as
well a lot of these workspaces in
embedded dashboards of power bi they
keep getting enhanced by Microsoft just
in the last three months
this siesta CFO workspace has seen a
number of improvements one of them was
including these financial statements as
part of the dashboards so you know
between that and number of other new
content packs it's still the the feature
set just keeps growing and growing it's
very powerful and you know is funny I
was talking with a co-worker the other
day and he asked if I you know how would
I like to add more horsepower to my car
with just a quick system enhancement
knowing that it was at no cost I mean
it's truly a no-brainer there so you
know that would conclude my
demonstration on the the navigation and
overview section for today's demo I did
want to leave some time for for any
questions if anyone has anything they
want to bring up based on what they've
seen based on you know what I've walked
through today was a you know hoping
needs to get feedback or see if there
was a question that I could address so
I'll go ahead and turn it over to to the
group and we will we will progress with
any questions thanks Chris
I am NOT saying oh it looks like we have
our first question coming in give me one second
second
to pull it out again you can use your
your right hand Q&A section if you want
to ask any questions I don't know this
one comes from rohi that says maybe CI
a-- trail logging in action I don't know
if that's something you can do right now
or well he did that's something we can
take offline Chris is that something you
can show right now you know what I would
I could but it could be a long
discussion not because it's difficult to
navigate to but it actually is pretty
easy like I said with the search bar I
get a number of different areas to go
ahead and search on my audit trail I can
dive into each of these
ouch er transactions for this particular
audit trail so from a simple standpoint
yes audit trail is right there front and
center that is the only question we have
so far we'll give it a couple more
seconds here Nick or Chris any final
comments as we wait Josh this is Nick
the one with one question I bring up
your comment rather for the group is is
in customer conversations I've had
recently you know what's the what's the
integration between Dynamics CRM or what
they call sales and the ERP which is
what Chris has just showed here today
and really the integration is seamless
so really these two solutions are
integrated together as one common
application using the common data
service platform as the two connector
between them I just wanted to make sure
that was clear that the sales front-end
component is integrated to the system as
well the backend great well I'm not
seeing any more questions come through
we did record this session I will follow
up afterwards and send this out to
everyone if you have any questions at
that time please don't hesitate to reach
out and I can direct you to the
appropriate person thanks everyone for
your time thanks to Nick thanks Chris
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