Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations

By : Robert Houdeshell
Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations

By: Robert Houdeshell

Overview of this book

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is a game-changing solution set for project-driven businesses that allows you to deliver commercially successful projects in a timely and cost-effective manner, keeping the project teams productive and collaborative. With this book, you'll find out how you can bring more value to the business by winning new projects and driving exponential revenue growth. Starting with the key principles of Project Operations, you'll understand how it improves project planning and execution. You’ll then learn how to successfully deploy Project Operations along with different integration strategies and get to grips with the best approach for sales through project opportunities, project contracts, and pricing workflow implementation. This book will guide you through setting up direct staffing and centralized staffing models and enable you to manage project changes confidently by getting hands-on with project timeline management, pricing management, resource assignments, and modifications. In the final chapters, you'll find out how to use Project Operations effectively for project accounting and finance. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the confidence to deliver profitable projects in a well-connected organization through efficient decision-making and successful customer-client relationships.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Foundation and Framework of Project Operations
5
Section 2: Project Sales through Delivery
10
Section 3: Project Delivery through Operations

Data analysis and presentation

There are several key performance results of implementing a Project Operations solution. Most notably, the firm will begin benefitting from the process, organization, and overall data generated from the Project Operations system, which will guide you through decisions based upon your key performance statistics.

The information processed through Project Operations is only as valuable as the ability to make sense of it later in the business. Therefore, encircling all this functionality are Customer Insights, dashboards, and Power BI capabilities to have visibility into customer satisfaction as well as overall practice and firm health:

Figure 1.7 – Sample dashboard showing KPIs on a project

Figure 1.7 – Sample dashboard showing KPIs on a project

Power BI is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, which will provide you with the information you need to manage projects successfully. Having information is only one element, though. Acting upon it is another and that is where the power of the Microsoft Power Platform comes into play. Critical components of the Power Platform that play most well with the Project Operations system are Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps development.

Power Automate is used to perform a number of automation tasks revolving around the Project Operations solution. Power Automate has connectors and templates for a large number of Microsoft and non-Microsoft solutions. Power Automate can be used to perform workflow approvals, data integrations, automation of tasks, and much more.

Combined with Power Apps, you can have the power of decisions, approvals, and workflows in the palm of your hand. All power apps are built with a Unified Interface design, which works equally well on a laptop, tablet, or phone.

The Power BI platform allows you to take the information generated through the entire solution and puts it into the right data presentation form factor to give you the information you need to make better decisions.