Does anybody use the above software, and if so give an opinion please.
Thanks Andy
I saw few demos of the software. The most important thing what they did is to merge all data from multiple NAV tables into one big Cube.
This is a unique approach that has its own pluses and minuses.
Plusses:
Consistency of report amounts with G/L. By this I mean – if you want some sales report it will show amounts processed through sales Invoices Type item, GL, Fixed Asset… Plus any amount processed through G/L Journal… and as result will match your accounting records.
Minuses:
This is Closed System – if you have additional entry table and need to create report you have to ask them to add it and it takes substantial amount of time
The cube is quite bulky and sometimes you just need to sales amounts processed through Items… Maybe smaller cube will be more efficient.
As reccomendation: If you want sombody do all work for you and you will just use reports/dashboards you can consider them as option. If you want take responcibility for cube, measures, kpi’s i will recomend other solution.
One of our larger clients has been using PrecisionPoint for a couple of years. If you send me your contact information (email) I can ask if they would be willing to send you their opinion of the system.
PrecisionPoint is grateful to Versapak who have now chosen PrecisionPoint’s integrated data model over other tools which build separate cubes or virtual cubes (UDM). We are also delighted that the large NAV customer, referred to in this thread, has recommended PrecisionPoint to another large food company who then actually returned their existing BI cube builder tool and traded up to PrecisionPoint. A warm thank you to PrecisionPoint customers who are happy to recommend our product and explain to other NAV customers why an off-the-shelf solution is much more cost effective and reliable than roll-you-own BI projects.
Valentin - on your point about PrecisionPoint being a closed product, all of our customers require some degree of database configuration, since no two NAV systems are the same, and changes can be made by IT, partners or, since it is typically only a few hours now and then, PrecisionPoint support desk can do it for them remotely. However all reports are created by the business users so IT is off the hook when it comes to reporting. We think that’s a good thing. So do our customers - especially IT Directors. 
Dr Nigel Geary, Founder & President, PrecisionPoint Software - Certified for Dynamics NAV and AX.
Hi Andy,
This maybe too late but here is my 5 pence worth anyway…
I work for a NAV Partner in the UK and we have been reviewing BI/Reporting tools for many years with a view to finding a product that empowers our customers to own their own reporting platform and be able to maintain it themselves. As you will know NAV is a great product and offers rich functionality, flexibility and can store very rich data. However using the data is something that has been difficult and in many cases NAV users rely on partners like us to provide additional reporting etc. Whilst this is very good for us, customers are often left with a bad taste in their mouth and are left frustrated that they can’t do it themselves.
On our quest to find such a tool, Precision Point was a product we did review and whilst we were impressed with the theory of the hyper cube and with the demo of the product, we didn’t add Precision Point to our portfolio and there were a number of reasons for this decision:
- We found the commercial model i.e. the price list from Precision Point was a bit ad-hoc and therefore we were unable to give our clients a clear indication of the total cost of ownership over a period of time that may include growth. We put some customer scenarios together to gauge pricing, but solution prices based upon how much a client’s turnover is, we found a little unsettling. This was made more difficult by the fact that the client still isn’t in total control of the product in terms of customisation etc. which again made it hard for us to estimate additional costs now and in the future. It appeared that Precision Point would be required to carry out any customisation in the future. This may have changed?
- Whilst Excel is the tool of choice for Finance People, this doesn’t always serve a purpose for non finance people such as CEO’s and Operations Management. The need for front end tool/portal in addition to excel was something we felt was important and was something we felt shouldn’t need additional investment. Precision Point pushes the use of Excel as the primary tool only and doesn’t have its own front end tool.
- With any BI Solution/project, it has historically been something that appears complex and in some cases too difficult to achieve. Precision Point definitely addresses this and simplifies what is a difficult task of getting the NAV data out and also overcomes some of the shortcomings too such as multi-company reporting without the need for consolidation. However it still does not enable the end user to take control and implement a solution quickly that they can then refine over time as their businesses evolve. We thought this may end up being restrictive.
- Like a lot of NAV partners, we have customers that have customisations which is often the reason they opted for Dynamics NAV in the first place. In some of our client’s cases, the data we capture in the customisations is often needed as part of their business reporting. Precision Point can be customised to handle these changes but they need to do the work for you which both us and our clients would potentially find frustrating. Equally if customisation is on-going it would mean that we would constantly need Precision Points involvement which we feared that if this was the case for all their client, Precision Point scale to deliver customisation to many customers on an ongoing basis may mean that smaller customers don’t get priority. Again this is a view that may not be reality as we didn’t opt for the product as we wanted a product our clients could control.
- The NAV channel is also very small in reality and whilst there are some definite success stories like the one referred to in the other posts, I have also heard of some not so positive stories such as the hyper cube taking too long to process to be useful, spiralling costs and development of additional functions never being completed for standard NAV areas for Service Management with some customisations? I would guess this would be the case for many BI products but it was enough to make us look a little harder for the right solution.
- We are also a CRM partner and some clients have a requirement for analytics that span across both NAV and CRM. At the time we reviewed Precision Point was ERP focused only. I am unsure if they could now extend this?
Anyway in the end and after many products, we opted for another product called ZAP Business Analytics for NAV.
It addressed all of the above points: Straight forward and competitive pricing model, Wizard Driven implementation that automatically picks up customisations and enables the end user with a little training to take control of the reporting model, and a web based front end that enables sharing of reports across the organisation.
It obviously can do all of the Excel reporting too which is enhanced further in Excel 2007 and now 2010 but once you see the reporting tool itself, you have a definate choice to make as it does have many extra bits…
ZAP also works for NAV and CRM which was excellent for us and we have been able to implement some complex solutions in just a few days which has included custom areas of the system. The fact our clients could have a Proof of concept demo with their data, or a trial of the software on their site for a small cost, made them feel very comfortable that the solution could do what they wanted before they committed to the licensing.
Once thing I can now say too after implementing the solution, the development team behind ZAP are very agile and the product is continually advancing and becoming richer in functionality. The new 2010 version of ZAP now included alerting on KPI’s which has turned out to be very useful.
I would suggest you check out ZAP’s micro site’s for more info and demos sites, http://www.msdynamicsanalytics.com/ and http://www.zapbi.com/
I will also drop you an email with my contact details if you would like to discuss.
Hope this helps
James