If you’re running reports by exporting data to Excel, waiting for month-end summaries, or pulling figures from different systems to get a complete picture, you’re working harder than you need to.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connects directly to Power BI and Microsoft Copilot. That means the data already in your ERP can feed a live dashboard. It covers financials, warehouse, production, and purchasing. You can query it in plain English. You can do this with no manual effort. You also do not need to wait for someone to build a report.
Here’s how to approach it.
Start with the Decisions You Need to Make
Before you build anything, be clear on who the dashboard is for and what they need to act on.
For a life sciences business, that usually means two audiences.
Operations teams need visibility on:
- Batch and lot status across production
- Stock levels and expiry dates
- Order fulfilment rates and delivery performance
- Production output vs. plan
- Quality holds and rejections
Finance teams need visibility on:
- Revenue and gross margin by product or customer
- Purchase costs and supplier performance
- Cash flow and outstanding receivables
- Budget vs. actual across departments
- Cost per unit or per production run
Build separate dashboards for each. A single screen trying to serve both audiences usually ends up serving neither well.
Connect Business Central to Power Bi
Business Central has a built-in Power BI integration. You don’t need a third-party connector or a data warehouse to get started.
From within Business Central, you can publish data to Power BI using built-in reports or by connecting Power BI Desktop directly to your BC environment using the OData feed.
Microsoft also provides a library of pre-built Business Central content packs for Power BI covering finance, sales, purchasing, and inventory. These are a useful starting point. You can use them as-is or adapt them to match your own KPIs.
For life sciences businesses specifically, the ability to layer in batch traceability data, quality control results, and supplier audit records makes the integration particularly useful. You’re not just tracking revenue. You’re tracking the operational data that directly affects compliance and product quality.
The KPIs Worth Building First
Rather than trying to visualise everything at once, pick the five or six numbers that get asked about most often in your business.
For life sciences, these typically are:
- Batch Pass/fail Rate. How Many Batches Are Passing Quality Checks First Time.
- On-time Delivery Rate. Are Orders Reaching Customers When Promised.
- Inventory Days on Hand. How Long Stock Is Sitting Before It Moves.
- Purchase Price Variance. Are You Paying What You Planned for Materials.
- Gross Margin by Product Line. Which Products Are Actually Profitable.
- Outstanding Customer Balances. Where Cash Is Tied Up.
Get these right first. Once people are using the dashboard regularly, you can add more.
Where Microsoft Copilot Comes in
Power BI gives you the dashboards. Microsoft Copilot, built directly into Business Central, gives you the ability to ask questions about that data without having to build a report at all.
Copilot in Business Central uses natural language. You type a question, and it returns an answer pulled from your live ERP data. No SQL. No pivot tables. No waiting for IT.
For a life sciences business, that changes how quickly teams can get answers.
A few examples of what that looks like in practice:
- A finance manager asks: “What is our gross margin on product X this quarter compared to last?” Copilot pulls the figures and presents them directly.
- An operations lead asks: “Which batches are currently on quality hold and when were they flagged?” Copilot surfaces that data from within BC without anyone having to run a separate report.
- A director asks: “Which customers have invoices overdue by more than 30 days?” Copilot returns the list immediately.
These are questions that would previously mean asking a colleague, exporting a spreadsheet, or waiting for a scheduled report. With Copilot, the answer is available in seconds.
Copilot for Financial Summaries
One of the more practical uses of Copilot in Business Central is automated financial summarisation. Instead of manually creating a month-end report, Copilot can write a summary of your financial position. It uses your general ledger, accounts receivable, and budget data.
For life sciences businesses that report to investors, boards, or regulatory bodies, this is a useful time-saver. The summary won’t replace a professional financial review, but it gives finance leads a solid first draft to work from.
Copilot and Compliance
In a regulated environment, one of the harder things to stay on top of is whether your data is telling you something you need to act on. A batch that’s been on hold for longer than expected. A supplier whose quality metrics are drifting. An approval that hasn’t been signed off.
Copilot can surface these issues proactively when configured to do so. Rather than someone having to check manually, the system flags anomalies and brings them forward. That kind of early visibility matters when non-compliance carries real consequences.
Power Bi and Copilot: How They Work Together
Power BI and Copilot serve different purposes, but they work well alongside each other.
Power BI is best for structured, recurring reporting. You build the dashboard once, it refreshes automatically, and the same view is available to the whole team. It’s the right tool for KPI tracking, trend analysis, and performance reporting across departments.
Copilot is best for ad hoc questions. When someone needs a specific answer quickly and doesn’t want to navigate a dashboard to find it, Copilot gives them a direct route to the data.
Used together, they cover both ends of the reporting need. Your team has a live dashboard for daily visibility. It also has a natural language interface for questions the dashboard cannot answer right away.
Design for Clarity, Not Completeness
A common mistake is cramming too much onto one screen. If someone has to search for the number they need, the dashboard isn’t doing its job.
A few principles that work well:
- Put the most important number at the top left. That’s where the eye goes first.
- Use colour consistently. Red for off-track, green for on-track. Don’t use colour for decoration.
- Show trends, not just snapshots. A number on its own tells you where you are. A trend tells you where you’re heading.
- Add filters for time period, product, and location so users can drill in without needing a new report.
Keep It Live
One of the main benefits of connecting Power BI to Business Central is that the data refreshes automatically. You set the refresh schedule, and the dashboard updates without anyone doing anything.
For most life sciences businesses, a daily refresh is enough. For businesses managing fast-moving stock or high-volume production, you can set it to refresh more frequently.
This matters because decisions made on stale data are often worse than no data at all.
Who Should Own It?
Someone in your business needs to own the dashboard. That means keeping data clean in Business Central, updating visuals when KPIs change, and ensuring new team members know how to use it.
This doesn’t have to be a dedicated analyst. In most small and mid-sized life sciences businesses, it sits with a finance manager or operations lead who has admin access to BC and basic Power BI skills.
If you’re not there yet, that’s something Tecvia can support as part of your Business Central setup.
What This Means for Life Sciences Businesses Specifically
Life sciences businesses operate under more reporting pressure than most. Regulatory bodies want documentation. Boards want performance data. Operations teams need real-time visibility to catch quality issues before they become compliance problems.
Relying on spreadsheets and manual exports to meet that demand creates risk. Data gets out of date. Versions get mixed up. The person who built the report leaves, and nobody knows how it works.
Business Central, Power BI, and Copilot replace that with a single, connected system. Your data lives in one place. Reports update automatically. Any team member can ask a question and get an answer. They do not need to raise a ticket. They do not need to wait until the end of the month.
For a business where data accuracy has regulatory consequences, that’s not a nice-to-have. It’s a practical necessity.
Get in touch with the team at Tecvia to find out how Business Central can work for your business.
