Dashboard Design

Optimize Processes with Data Visualization

Global Data 365
May 24, 2021

Every aspect of a company relies on making prompt, well-informed decisions. Data is at the center of the financial services sector. Traditional business intelligence (BI) methods aren’t up to the task with so much data to rummage through. These techniques were designed for tabular reporting and can only handle small volumes of homogeneous data; they also require advanced technical expertise. Today’s software can process and interpret massive amounts of data in real-time, with a level of elegance previously unseen. By leveraging modern tools to optimize processes with data visualization, companies can transform complex datasets into actionable insights, enhancing decision-making efficiency across all departments. According to a report conducted by Gartner on the top priorities of CFOs, here’s what they looked at:

– Enhancing Financial Analytics:
Even after a 50% rise in financial analytics expenditure in the last three years, only a few businesses have advanced analytics capabilities. As analytics becomes a central responsibility of the finance department, this must change.

– Reorganizing Finance Teams:
Traditional approaches for coordinating and using finance teams are becoming less effective as the popularity of finance teams grows. To stay relevant, the department needs a shakeup from the top down.

– Finance Technology Optimization:
Finance teams must maximize the value of their ERP systems while also adopting newer innovations and planning to become more tech-savvy. If this isn’t done, the finance department will become less intelligent and agile.

Any of those projects could keep a CFO busy for a year without yielding much progress. However, if such executives consider these problems analytically, realizing how the challenges and goals intersect, a surprising approach emerges, data visualization.

Data Visualizations

There has almost certainly been some kind of data visualization for as long as there has been data. Charts and graphs have recently become commonplace in business due to Excel spreadsheets. Users soon realized that visual interfaces help them understand complex information. Instead of manually examining a spreadsheet, they could quickly recognize the key takeaways by looking at a pie chart. Digital visualizations provided the finance team with a unique outlook on data and a game-changing method for decision-making, compared to what was previously available.

Today, visualizations have taken yet another step forward, possibly the most important yet. Advanced visualization features are included in today’s top financial reporting tools, which run on top of ERP and beyond the constraints of Excel. Such visualization tools do more than improve on what has come before; they turn the relationship between the finance team and the data on which it relies more highly than it has ever been.

Advances in Data Visualizations

So, what’s the difference? To begin with, visualizations have progressed well beyond basic graphs and maps. They can now visualize data in new systems that provide more context and information. Users can view the optimal visualization to encompass the data rather than trying to settle for a sufficient option with this enlarged toolkit at their disposal.

After you have made that decision, creating the visualization is nearly seamless. It only takes some clicks to move data from one area to another in several cases, rather than a lengthy manual process. This not only saves time and eliminates mistakes, but it also helps everyone inside or outside the finance department to create their own visualization without any need for advanced training.

Lastly, and perhaps most critically, visualizations have moved to the foreground of decision-making. The finance members can quickly integrate them into financial reports and structure them to optimize the insights they contain as well as the ease with which they can be extracted. The design features within such reports are also not static. They update themselves as new information becomes available, making them more like interactive indicators that monitor key metrics in real-time than visualizations.

In addition to finance, operational and supply chain management teams benefit from these dynamic features. Inventory dashboards, for example, provide real-time insights into stock levels, supplier performance, and demand forecasting. This allows organizations to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and make informed decisions across departments. Integrating financial reports with operational data ensures a comprehensive view of business health, enhancing decision-making at both the strategic and operational levels..

Everything in today’s visualizations is vastly superior to previous versions. Despite this, it’s always easy to underestimate their effect on the economy. The CFO, the finance team, and the company are all involved.

Using Data Visualizations to Optimize Processes

Data visualizations not only help people view data in new ways, but they also help them see it more clearly, presenting insights, opportunities, and challenges that would otherwise go unnoticed.

One form of data visualization does this is by compressing large volumes of data into a readily available layout. Financial reports influence decision-making, but in the past, they were either too simple to show anything of value or too difficult to stir up an action. Today’s visualizations bridge the gap, allowing reports to include what decision-makers need to know while still revealing those insights in real-time.

Advanced data visualizations also allow F&a to investigate financial data on their own terms. Decision-makers know what knowledge they want better than everyone else, and once it’s simple to find it and visualize it as needed, understanding differences disappear. To look at it another way, visualizations open a vast array of nuanced financial data to the point that it can be explored. Anyone interested in delving deeper into the data now has a great starting point.

Visualizations help practitioners outside finance grasp a topic that can be perplexing to the general reader, in addition to CFOs. Executives and heads of departments need to consider how their decisions impact the company’s finances on a micro and macro level, but many lack the knowledge to do so from a dense spreadsheet presenting a financial report. However, when presented with visualizations, the material emerges in a manner that everyone can comprehend. As a result, financial knowledge grows across the board, helping companies optimize processes with data visualization for better decision-making.

Data Visualizations: a Modern Solution

Finance teams will use innovative data visualizations to make significant progress on every one of 2021’s top priorities. Once implemented, analytics improve dramatically, accountants spend less time manually processing data, and the ERP ceases to be a barrier to understanding.

Global Data 365 offers visualization tools to optimize finance processes. In terms of usability, precision, and variety, these resources far exceed what you’ve come to expect from Excel. Even better, they’re just one of many features available in purpose-built financial reporting tools that are designed to work with today’s most common ERPs.

If you’re searching for a new perspective on data, we offer a comprehensive upgrade. To see how this all operates, request a free demo today.

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Global Data 365 is composed of highly skilled professionals who specialize in streamlining the data and automate the reporting process through the utilization of various business intelligence tools.

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Limitations of Power BI – Are They Risky?

Global Data 365
May 21, 2021

If your business is considering implementing Microsoft’s Power BI analytics framework, you must understand the level of complexity and limitations of Power BI involved in successful integration. Power BI is a many-month software project based on a complex mix of technological elements, not just a device you install and customize. To get it right, you’ll need a lot of preparation and the highest level of management skills. So, what is Power BI and what are some limitations of Power BI?

Power BI

Microsoft’s Power BI is a cloud-based business intelligence service package. It uses insightful visualizations and tables to transform raw data into usable information. Data can be processed and used to make strategic business decisions in a short amount of time. Power BI is a set of business intelligence and data visualization tools that includes software services, applications, and data connectors. Power BI is a user-friendly tool with versatile drag-and-drop design and self-service capabilities. Power BI can be used on both on-premises and cloud systems.

So, what are the limitations of Power BI that you can avoid?

What is Jet Reports?

Jet Reports, on the other hand, is a dynamic business intelligence tool that goes beyond conventional financial reporting. With its user-friendly interface and Jet Dashboard Designer, organizations can leverage its capabilities for comprehensive financial reporting and analysis. Jet Reports is known for its adaptability and ease of use, making it an asset for businesses aiming to enhance their reporting processes.

We are going to give you three scenarios where a user should consider switching to Jet Reports or Jet Analytics:

Complexity Involved with Power BI

Most of us have become used to applications that can be downloaded in minutes or even hours in the case of more advanced systems. That’s a fairly straightforward scenario. At the other side of the curve are items that entail some configuration and are designed and implemented by a team of specialized experts to overcome the limitations of Power BI. A full Power BI implementation must solve a slew of design issues. The answers to those questions will affect efficiency, productivity, and adaptability in the long run. Some of the major differences between a Power BI cloud deployment and an on-premise deployment. For instance:

– What features should you run, where should they run, and how will they all interact?

– What level (or levels) of security do you incorporate?

– Will you be using SQL Server Analysis Services to model your results, or will you use the Power BI desktop tool?

– Should you use Power BI’s Direct Query function or import data?

– Will a gateway component be needed, and if so, where will it be installed?

All these are technical questions, but the solutions have long-term consequences, and it’s always difficult to adjust later. This level of complexity necessitates upkeep, which entails additional costs and disruption.

Power BI: Toolset not a Complete Solution

There are no reports included with Power BI out of the box. In fact, Power BI reporting necessitates a substantial upfront expenditure, not just in terms of constructing the technological infrastructure, but also in terms of deciding how you access the data, how and when data must be converted or pre-processed, where you archive them, and so on. After you have answered those design considerations and limitations of Power BI, you will need to put in a lot of time to set up the data access and data flow.

Data access is becoming more complex in this age of cloud computing. This is particularly true of Microsoft Dynamics 365 products, which no longer require unlimited reporting access. Microsoft has suggested some possible workarounds, but all of them require major compromises. Microsoft has introduced an indirect layer of “data entities” in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (D365 F&SCM), for instance, that developers can use to obtain entry to ERP data. Personalizing Power BI can be very costly. Since every company is different and has its own set of requirements, customization is unavoidable. Recurring costs arise from the ongoing maintenance of such customizations.

Power BI as a Dashboard Visualization Tool

Power BI was developed to be used as a dashboard visualization tool. It does an adequate job of producing conventional tabular reports, lists of individual records with several columns and subtotals, and it does a great job of providing an insightful visual analysis of what is happening in the market. Traditional banking statements are not generated by Power BI because they are somewhat different from other forms of reports. Some more limitations of Power BI such as Filtering, masking, or grouping GL sums by account column, for example, is commonly required when creating a P&L statement. This is often done in different ways for each row in the report.

Columns in the report may be sorted by organizational agency or division, or they can be used to reflect various time spans, budget vs. real, or variance amounts or percentages. Since Limitations of Power BI has a little method of controlling such distinctions, having it generate a comparatively straightforward P&L is a very costly custom programming activity.

Power BI without the Limitations

Global Data 365 offers self-service, user-friendly analytics and reporting tools, as well as collaboration with Power BI and Excel. With the help of Jet Analytics, we hold the guesswork out of Power BI by automating the process of developing a data warehouse with pre-built connectors for over 140 different ERP systems, allowing business leaders and analysts to have the data they demand, when they need it, without any need for specific commands or the complexity and limitations of Power BI stack.

Need to overcome the limitations of Power BI, opt for our Power BI Training program today.

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