Dynamics AX business intelligence and reporting have become an important part of the system and it sure looks like this functionality is going to play even more important part in the upcoming Dynamics AX 7 release. What are the most highlighted trends in the Dynamics AX BI that both MS development team members and industry experts are talking about today? Let’s find out.

1. Wider user adoption. Business intelligence and reporting will be available to anyone in the organization, not just the power users who know how to build sophisticated reports. As the Dynamics AX BI’s logic is based on user roles and the tools those users are familiar with, the users should be able to complete more tasks without looking for technical help. ‘Self-service BI’ is a buzz word today predicting that users should be able to write their own repots, configure forecasting models, build and deploy dashboards.
2. Embedded BI tools. Business intelligence tools will be intuitive to users as the whole concept of Dynamics AX BI is putting the right tools in the hands of the right people. The idea is to use business intelligence as part of everyday activities, starting right from the personalized homepages.
3. Forecasting. Using forecasting algorithms and predictive analysis will enable users to get even more business insights through both native functionality and 3d party solutions. Forecasting, budgeting, and modeling will become a routine, not something exceptional that only technically skilled individuals are able to accomplish.
4. Data visualization. With a huge amount of information, the attention span of an average employee has become shorter. Therefore, rich feature dashboards and user-feature visualization are a must for the Dynamics AX business intelligence solution in 2015. The process of visualizing will be simplified, so that the important data can be easily accessed and analyzed.

The other major trends are mobile and cloud, of course, as the Microsoft’s product roadmap and strategy states “mobile first, cloud first”. The users will be able to concentrate on analyzing the right data right when they needed it.

All these trends are aimed at resolving one common challenge, which is how to be more productive with data. Although most of the soon-to-become users think that the Dynamics AX BI will be there out of the box, it’s not the case, as the information to be analyzed often includes KPIs, reports, analytics, and other disparate data, including data from non-AX sources. Many companies use 3d party solutions or have to hire somebody to configure the Dynamics AX reports for them.

Therefore, the most important question you have to ask yourself before implementing BI solution or configuring reports is “What information do different users in my company need to see?” and “What ROI do I expect for my Dynamics AX BI project?” Only after you answer these questions, you can define the requirements for choosing or building a Dynamics AX business intelligence solution or configuring Dynamics AX reports and OLAP cubes with native Microsoft tools.