FRx Replacement: Management Reporter

FRx’s replacement is called Management Reporter.

It is a part of the PerformancePoint Server (PPS), Microsoft’s player in the business intelligence (BI) space. Think ProClarity if you will.

I won’t really touch on PPS in this space other than to say that it works with operational data and financial data. It’s also pretty pricey for the midmarket. There’s an excellent recap at Mark Polino’s DynamicAccounting post on PerformancePoint.

Anyway, back to Management Reporter. The word is that it will be available as a standalone module, meaning you won’t be forced to purchase the entire PerformancePoint Server suite of products. Today, however, you must buy PerformancePoint to get Management Reporter.

Management Reporter has a new user interface, but still uses the row, column, and tree building block concept, so you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly.

Timeframe
Today, purchasers of PPS with Software Assurance also receive Management Reporter. It was released for Dynamics AX using the Data Import Wizard (no direct GL integration yet) in December 2007. Same thing for GP, but it’s coming in the GP10 Feature Pack (Mark Polino tells me June 2008). SL and NAV are still in the planning stages.

They are still working on the direct GL integrations. AX is to be finished “any minute”.

For non-MBS ERPs like Sage and Epicor, the timeframe depends on your software publisher. Each publisher is creating its own integration. Right now, I don’t have any word on timing.

Back End
C# managed code, .NET Framework, SQL Server back end database.
Looks like Launcher and Drilldown Viewer will not be separate applications.
No .frd (drilldown viewer) files: all stored in relational database.
System requirements haven’t increased.

Pricing
I don’t have word on pricing yet. It’s still being worked out.
Is a trade-in for Forecaster available? I couldn’t get details yet.
Same thing for trade-in for FRx.
Licensing still being worked out.
(Sound like a broken record?)

For information on migrating existing reports and on functionality, see my next two posts.