Many organizations have sales or marketing analysts whose focus is to deliver summarized information for management that goes beyond the basics that come from dashboards or operational reports.  These analysts typically are focused on extracting data from Dynamics CRM using Advanced Find queries and then developing their own pivot reports based on this data.  In building these reports, they may slice the data based on Fiscal Quarters or based on the analysis of a specific sales rep or geography. 

The primary benefit of a cube is that it can provide a free flowing environment in which an analyst or manager can quickly and easily slice CRM data using Excel without going through the hassle of running a set of Advanced Find queries and without developing their own custom logic to represent things like a fiscal calendar or management hierarchy. 

The cube can significantly improve system performance when doing Excel based analysis of large data sets, and it can be developed to automatically provide analysts with drill down into hierarchies in all types of relevant business domains (i.e. management, product, calendar).

Here's a simple screen shot of the outcomes from a cube based analysis of CRM data.

This image shows a basic cube that's pulling data from Dynamics CRM where an analyst has created a simple dashboard based on having multiple pivot charts displaying from the cube.

That said, the real power is in the ability to dynamically adjust the date criteria and drill up and down from Fiscal Year to Quarter to Month.  This type of drill through with the associated hierarchical nature of the dimensions are the key business benefits that a cube exposes that a user does not get with the out of the box CRM reports and Excel reports.