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What Embedded Reporting Reveals About Life After Great Plains 

For many finance teams still running Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, reporting follows a familiar pattern.  

1. Transactions live in the ERP.  

2. Analysis happens somewhere else.  

3. Excel becomes the bridge between the two, carrying budgets, actuals, board reports, and ad-hoc questions from one place to another. 

This workflow didn’t emerge by accident. Great Plains was built in an era when reporting tools lived outside the application, and exporting data was often the most reliable way to analyze data. Over time, those exports became embedded in how finance teams operated. They were how numbers were validated, how questions were answered, and how confidence was built. 

But as organizations start thinking about life after Great Plains, reporting becomes an opportunity: bringing dashboards and analysis inside the ERP can reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and save time that often gets absorbed by exports and rework. 

Why “Better Reports” Was Never the Real Problem 

Most finance teams don’t struggle because they lack reports. They struggle because the information they need isn’t available where and when decisions are actually being made. 

When reporting depends on exports, insight tends to arrive late. A spreadsheet may be accurate in the moment it’s created, but it starts aging immediately, and teams compensate by adding more review steps, more reconciliation, and more versioning until confidence becomes something that has to be reconstructed every time the question comes up again. 

Report quality matters, but the bigger challenge is how far reporting sits from the source data. 

The Shift: Reporting Inside the Application 

Modern ERP platforms have changed this dynamic by changing where reporting lives. 

Instead of treating reporting as something that happens after the work is done, embedded analytics bring insight directly into the application where transactions are created, reviewed, and approved. Power BI plays a key role in this shift when it is integrated directly into the ERP experience, rather than sitting alongside it. 

As one Sparkrock expert explained during a recent webinar, “Power BI is actually a widget… I can select different reports, expand it and interact with it directly within our application.” 

That distinction matters. Instead of running a report and exporting it, you can interact with it in context, on live data, without breaking your workflow. 

What “In-Context” Reporting Changes Day to Day 

When reporting lives inside the ERP, everyday work starts to look different. 

Finance teams can review budgets and actuals without leaving the system. Variances can be explored by drilling into the numbers that created them, rather than rebuilding spreadsheets to trace the source. Managers can interact with dashboards safely, adjusting filters and views without risking the integrity of the data or asking finance for another export. 

When insight is available in context, teams spend less time validating numbers and more time acting on them, because the data stays anchored to the system of record. 

What Changes When You Move Off Great Plains 

Moving off Great Plains changes more than the technology underneath the ERP. It changes how decisions get made, because reporting stops being a separate activity that happens after the work is done. 

When interactive Power BI reporting lives inside the application, questions that used to require a request, an export, and a follow-up can be answered while the work is still in front of you. A budget owner can explore a variance before approving a purchase. A finance lead can drill into a number and see the transactions behind it without rebuilding a spreadsheet. A manager can adjust filters and understand what’s driving a result without waiting for a refreshed file. 

That shift affects pace, confidence, and accountability. It reduces the gap between what the system knows and what decision-makers can see, which is one of the most tangible benefits organizations notice as they modernize beyond Great Plains. 

Embedded Reporting as a Signal of Modern ERP Architecture 

Power BI integration can look impressive in almost any environment. The difference is whether it stays connected to the way the ERP actually operates. Cloud-native platforms support live reporting without breaking governance, because identity, permissions, and data structures remain consistent from transaction to insight. 

Embedded analytics become a clear indicator of maturity. If reporting can live inside the ERP and remain interactive, current, and permission-aware, the platform is doing more than displaying charts. It is supporting decisions in the same place the work happens. 

The “Stop Exporting to Excel” Moment 

For many teams, the difference becomes tangible when reporting stops requiring an export. Questions that once meant pulling data into a spreadsheet can be answered directly inside the application, using the same live information the ERP is already working from. 

Excel remains useful for sharing and analysis, but it becomes a choice rather than a dependency. Reporting stays grounded in the system of record, and teams spend less time validating versions and more time interpreting what the numbers are saying. 

Where the Power BI Sampler Fits 

For organizations still on Great Plains, this kind of interactivity can be hard to picture until you’ve worked with it. 

Tools like Sparkrock’s Power BI Reporting Sampler can help make it concrete. The sampler offers a hands-on way to explore interactive, dimensional reporting using Power BI, showing how budgets, actuals, and transactions can be sliced, filtered, and drilled into without rebuilding spreadsheets. 

It’s not a replacement for embedded ERP reporting, but it can help teams visualize what modern reporting looks like and how different it feels from export-driven workflows. 

Why Reporting Matters During a GP Transition 

Reporting is often treated as a follow-on project during ERP migrations. The priority becomes operational continuity, with reporting enhancements deferred until after go-live. 

When reporting is embedded, teams don’t have to wait for a separate phase to regain visibility. Insight becomes available as the new workflows take shape, which helps finance leaders validate results, shorten the parallel spreadsheet period, and keep the organization aligned on a shared view of the numbers. 

That’s why reporting is one of the most immediate upgrades organizations notice when they move off Great Plains and into a modern ERP environment. 

Rethinking Reporting as Part of Moving Off Great Plains 

Great Plains end-of-life conversations usually start with timelines, support, and risk. That framing is necessary, but it can keep the focus on what you’re losing instead of what you’re gaining. 

Moving off GP changes the day-to-day reality of finance work by keeping insight closer to the transactions that created it, which means questions get answered while decisions are still being made and numbers can be shared with fewer caveats, fewer version checks, and far less time spent rebuilding confidence in what’s current. 

Embedded reporting makes that shift visible in a way teams feel immediately, because reporting becomes part of operations rather than a separate cycle that happens afterward. 

Reporting Where the Work Happens 

Power BI is powerful on its own, but the bigger shift happens when reporting lives inside the ERP. 

When insight stays connected to transactions, reporting becomes less of a production cycle and more of an operational tool. That shift reduces reliance on exports, shortens the time between question and answer, and makes it easier to share numbers with confidence. 

If Great Plains is still part of your reporting workflow today, this is one of the areas worth paying attention to early, because it changes what “good” can look like in your next system. 

Want to see what this looks like in practice? Download Sparkrock’s Power BI Reporting Sampler for a hands-on look at interactive nonprofit finance reporting. If you’re already exploring life after Great Plains, our team can also walk through how Sparkrock’s ERP connects with Power BI natively and what that can look like in your environment.