Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

how to do Forecasting in Mirosoft Ecosystem

Hi,

A client of mine is using a lot of Microsoft technologies like D365 Sales pro, Azure IAAS service and PoweBI, Power automate and App. Recently we have a need to provide some forecasting for revenue and other metrics. We have D365 Sales but Pro version so we dont have the forecasting module in D365 Sales. what are the options to do forecasting using these technologies, I would appreciate kind of a pros and cons of each option.

Thanks in advance

Hi,

Than you for your query.

Modern Forecasting techniques depends on Machine Learning. The technologies you mentioned can play a role in forecasting but cannot give you end result, unless you utilize or a build an AI Model. For example, using Power Automate you can push data to a Forecast Engine from Dynamics 365 Sales Pro and you can show the results in PowerBI.To build a Forecast module, you have 2 options:

Utilize Azure ML's forecast models ( look in the Azure AI Gallery) and bring back results to Dynamics 365 Sales Pro (you can use Power Automate for the integration):

https://gallery.azure.ai/

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/integrate-azure-ml-studio-with-powerapps-and-power-automate-part-1-c201dbce2bc6

Or you can use a 3rd party forecasting service, use Power Automate to push sales data and retrieve results back in Dynamics 365 Pro.

To summarize, to build a forecasting module, you need to have a machine learning expert (and/or data scientist). It would be easier to utilize a pre-built solution, you may evaluate 3rd party forecast engines but none of it is cheap. That means, it makes sense to use Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise for Forecasting and utilize other features as well (in my opinion).

If you are interesting in building Azure ML solution, I would suggest to post your queries in:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/azure/en-US/home?forum=machinelearning

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