Regardless of the business, it is my firm belief that around 80-90% of the gap between the business requirements and the 'out of the box' Dynamics CRM functionality can be achieved without coding. Therefore the first port of call would be to understand about entities and attributes, how to create new ones and link them.
Once you have this, you will be able to capture the data important to your business in a sensible and reportable manner.
Next I would get a handle on Excel, specifically formulas, pivot tables and graphs. This way you can export out the data and do your reporting.
Next would be to understand workflows. These powerful little beasties are a workable proxy for jscripting in a lot of cases. Workflows are great for escalations, notifications, auto-record creation, auto-field filling etc.
The next port of call would be to understand SQL querying i.e. select statements. Understanding how to write a SQL query means you can adjust the Excel query to extract more complex data from CRM. I'd argue that with SQL and Excel, most, if not all reporting requirements of a business can be achieved.
That should close the gap between the business requirements and Dynamics CRM and make about a 95% match.
The final 5% requires coding which means learning javascript for client-side customisation, .Net for server-side customisation and maybe learning SSRS reporting to create nice-looking reports for CRM.
Finally the most important asset you could get hold of would be a CRM consultant to steer you on the right path. Even if you only phone or email them to 'sanity check' your thoughts and pay them for their time you'll avoid pitfalls or potentially expensive mistakes.
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