BI & Dashboards

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Posted on by Ian Fletcher

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Hello, we have Nav 2009 R2 although will look to upgrade to Nav 2013 in about 9 months time.

However we require BI & Dashboards for KPI's now, i currently have Jet Express, but this is limited, i also use Crystal Reports, but again this is limited.

Our Partners has told us to review Jet Reports & i have prices for Jet Essentials and Jet Enterprise - which looks like the preferred choice.

We have a system of approx 25 users would Enterprise be the way to go, the partner has also recommended qlikview but this looks more expensive than Jet?

The sort of KPI's are to be to drill down on values or send alerts to senior management if a certain criteria is met & general Sales Reporting against Dimensions and year on year etc

Thanks

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Aleksandar Totovic 16,765 on at

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I can recommend BI4Dynamics. You can see about this solution on http://www.bi4dynamics.com/.

This is not too expensive solution, but it is very effective. You can see many demo videos on this site.

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nplima 540 on at

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Another vote for Bi4Dynamics here. At Advantage Business Systems (UK) we have been working with Bi4Dynamics to supply ready-made BI for SME. It delivers a lot of ready made reports "out of the box".

Jet Reports Essentials is great for getting immediate reports into Excel with a direct connection to the database.

Jet Reports Enterprise and Bi4Dynamics will create and maintain a data-warehouse in your SQL Server, which is then accessed by Excel or by a different front end tool in order to create reports.

This kind of datawarehouse is also a useful resource to use for upgrades. Rather than bringing all old customisations to the new version of NAV, what you can consider is to re-implement NAV. This way you get a fresh start in terms of customisations but the datawarehouse will carry over old data and the new as well.

If you want to discuss these alternatives, please get in touch.

Nuno Lima

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Ian Fletcher 2,445 on at

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Hi both,

Did you evaluate Jet against Bi4Dynamics, i'm interested to know why you chose this over Jet?

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nplima 540 on at

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Hi Ian,

In our case, it happened was that we were on the market for a ISV solution for BI at a time when Jet Reports inc. had not yet released the Enterprise product. At the time they did, we had already committed to training in using and setting up Bi4Dynamics.

Since our team was already familiar with Jet Reports, we resort to either product depending of the context: Jet Reports Essentials for direct reporting from the NAV database; Bi4Dynamics when using a datawarehouse.

Nuno

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Ian Fletcher 2,445 on at

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Hi Nplima,

I suppose the question is - if you were to start this process again & did not have either product - which one would you choose? Apart from the 2 reviews on here, others i have spke to have preferred Jet & do not know too mucg about B!4Dynamics & that incudes our partner, so Jet looks a safer option for us?

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Aleksandar Totovic 16,765 on at

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Maybe I speak subjective, but my opinion is:

-for ad-hoc analysis directly from NAV, I like to use JetReports Express

-for making a serious analysis, BI4Dynamics is almost indispensable tool (if we talk about quality / price ratio)

Of course, you can make big BI project with perfect analysis, but this can be too expensive.

BI4Dynamics is so easy for using and is not expensive tool. You can find its implementation all around the world.

You can donwload free trial version from www.bi4dynamics.com/.../trial. If you know pivot tables using, you will gonna be very easy to manage it. You have not have the same partner as NAV for implement this solution.

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nplima 540 on at

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Hi,

well I can't be 100% unbiased because I already have experience in this small-medium company market (I have worked for 2 NAV partners in the UK). Overall I'd go with Bi4Dynamics because it's more mature and slightly cheaper to license than Jet Reports Enterprise.

What I've seen so far is that Jet Reports Essentials, to be used properly, needs to be learned in so much or even more depth as Excel. Most small companies don't have someone available to do that.

Bi4Dynamics includes 100+ reports pre-built, which can be copied, adapted and adopted by anyone who knows how to use Excel pivot tables and charts.

If you are picking between Bi4Dynamics and Jet Reports Enterprise, then it's fair to say that the Bi4Dynamics solution is more mature as it's been on the market for longer, improving both the back-end and the included report set.

I've also seen that companies where the NAV and SQL permissions were done "cheap & nasty" they had problems because users get access to NAV tables they shouldn't. This is of course not a shortcoming of Jet Reports, rather a degree of tolerance that a SQL based solution does not have, therefore exposing these problems before you go live.

If instead you choose Jet Reports Essentials, just ensure that your budget covers a minimum of training every year, otherwise you'll end up with a collection of reports with workings that are understood only by a minority of Excel gurus.

Nuno Lima

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Ian Fletcher 2,445 on at

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Thanks both, it is not so much about Budget at this level as we have approved the cost of Jet Enterprise plus 3 days training - 2 initially & then a follow up day.

It is really about which is best as i will be using the product for management reporting, so what gives the best results in the easiest way, i want the end users to be self sufficient in running reports, i'm happy to design & configure them.

I would rather have a Cube product so that i can produce everything that is reqiured from Day 1 & not have to worry about future costs, so it will not just be Essentials.

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Aleksandar Totovic 16,765 on at

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As I said, maybe I'm subjective, but I implement BI4Dynamics in 80% of project I worked on. This is an excellent tool. It's easy for work and it's power tool for all NAV modules and for the most popular vertical solutions (LS Retail, Pablestone Fashion...)

I will recommend this tool without any reservation.

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Martin Knapic on at

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I know i'm a bit late, but I would like to mention a BI tool caled BIView (www.biview.com).

Works like pivot tables, allows basically all functionalities like other tools including drill down for dimension members and filtering for measurements as you are mentioning. It's very easy to use, it works on mobile devices (free mobile app for android and iOS caled BIView Mobile 2) and it's affordable. You can even get a training for your personnel.

Ofcourse it works on any database, but one version is developed especially for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (and older versions) - BIView for NAV - check more on website biview.com/.../BIViewNAV and try free trial

Like other allows importing and making different cubes and BIView team guarantees a rapid maintenance. You can also get a security settings for cubes each personnel is allowed to see ... and so on ..

feel free to ask more. Regards,

Martin

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