On January 25, 2024, we published the 2024 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a compilation of new capabilities planned to be released between April 2024 and September 2024. This first release wave of the year offers hundreds of new features and improvements, showcasing our ongoing commitment to fueling digital transformation for both our customers and partners.

This release reinforces our dedication to developing applications and experiences that contribute value to roles by dismantling barriers between data, insights, and individuals. This wave introduces diverse enhancements across various business applications, emphasizing improved user experiences, productivity, innovative app development and automation, and advanced AI capabilities. Watch a summary of the release highlights.

Explore a heightened level of convenience when examining Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans using the release planner. Enjoy unmatched flexibility as you customize, filter, and sort plans to align with your preferences, effortlessly sharing them. Maintain organization, stay informed, and remain in control while smoothly navigating through various active waves of plans. For more information, visit the release planner.

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enhances customer understanding and boosts sales through data, intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. The 2024 release wave 1 focuses on providing sellers timely customer information, expediting deals with actionable insights, improving productivity, and empowering organizations through open configurability and expanded generative AI leadership. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to deliver and enhance cutting-edge generative AI capabilities for sellers by enriching the Copilot in Microsoft 365 capabilities with sales specific skills, data, and actions. Additionally, the team will focus on assisting sellers on the go within the Outlook and Microsoft Teams mobile apps.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through Copilot, filtering response verification, diagnostic tools for admins and agents, and usability improvements to multi-session apps. Additionally, we’re making enhancements to the voice channel, and improving unified routing assignment accuracy and prioritization. Watch this video about the exciting new features in Customer Service.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service is a field service management application that allows companies to transform their service operations with processes and experiences to manage, schedule, and perform. In the 2024 release wave 1, we’re introducing the next generation of Copilot capabilities, modern experiences, Microsoft 365 integrations, vendor management, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Operations integration.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance continues on its journey of autonomous finance, building intelligence, automation, and analytics around every business process, to increase user productivity and business agility. This release focuses on enhancing business performance planning and analytics, adding AI powered experiences, easing setup of financial dimension defaulting with AI rules guidance, increasing automation in bank reconciliation, netting, expanding country coverage, tax automation, and scalability. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Finance can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enhances business processes for increased insight and agility. Copilot skills improve user experiences, while demand planning transforms the forecast process, and warehouse processes are optimized for greater efficiency and accuracy. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is focused on enhancing usability, performance, and scalability in key areas such as project planning, invoicing, time entry, and core transaction processing. The spotlight is on core functionality improvements, including support for discounts and fees, enhanced resource reconciliation, journals, approvals, and contract management, with added mobile capabilities to handle larger projects and invoices at an increased scale. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Project Operations can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides is bringing several new capabilities and enhancements including supporting high-detail 3D model support through Microsoft Azure Remote Rendering and greatly improved web content support that enable customers to build mixed reality workflows that are integrated with their business data. Additionally, support for Guides content on mobile will be generally available in the coming wave through a seamless integration with the Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile application.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources will continue to improve recruiting experiences with functionality to integrate with external job portals and talent pools and offer management. We will continue to expand our human capital management ecosystem to include additional payroll partners and build better together experiences that span the gamut of what Microsoft can offer to improve employee experiences in corporations of any size and scale across the globe. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Human Resources can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to invest in omnichannel retail experiences through advancements in mobile point of sale experiences like Tap to Pay for iOS and offline capabilities for Store Commerce on Android. The business-to-business buying experience is enhanced with new capabilities, and a streamlined order management solution for buyers who work across multiple organizations.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is delivering substantial enhancements, with a central emphasis on harnessing the power of Copilot. Available in more than 160 countries, the team is focused on Copilot-driven capabilities to streamline and enhance productivity through enhanced reporting and data analysis capabilities, elevated project and financial management, and simplified workflow automation. We have also upgraded our development and governance tools and introduced improvements in managing data privacy and compliance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, using it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. With this release, we’re making it easier and faster to ingest and manage your data. AI enables quick insights and democratized access to analytics. Real-time data ingestion, creation, and updates further enable the optimization of experiences in the moments that matter. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys brings the power of AI to revolutionize how marketers work, enabling businesses to optimize interactions with their customers with end-to-end journeys across departments and channels. With this release, we empower marketers with a deeper customer understanding, we enable them to create new experiences within minutes, reach customers in more ways, and continuously optimize results. Thanks to granular lead qualification, we continue to boost the synergy between sales and marketing to achieve superior business outcomes. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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Watch this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave in Microsoft Power Platform.

Microsoft Power Apps focuses on integrating Copilot to accelerate app development with AI and natural language, enhancing user reasoning and data insights in custom apps. The team is also simplifying the creation of modern apps through contemporary controls, responsive layouts, and collaboration features. Additionally, they’re facilitating enterprise-scale development, enabling makers and admins to expand apps across the organization with improved guardrails and quality assurance tools.

Microsoft Power Pages interactive Copilot now supports every step of site building to create intelligent websites—design, page layouts, content editing, data binding, learning, chatbot, accessibility checking, and securing the site. Connect to data anywhere with the out-of-the-box control library and secure the website with more insights at your fingertips.

Microsoft Power Automate is bringing Copilot capabilities across cloud flows, desktop flows and process mining. This will allow customers to use natural language to discover optimization opportunities, build automations, quickly troubleshoot any issues, and provide a delightful experience in managing the automation estate. For enterprise-scale solutions, maintenance is made easier with improved notifications on product capabilities.

Microsoft Copilot Studio brings native capabilities for extending Microsoft Copilot, general availability for generative actions, and geo-expansions to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Norway, Korea, South America, and South Africa. We’re also introducing rich capabilities to integrate with OpenAI GPT models, along with new channels such as WhatsApp, and software lifecycle capabilities such as topic level import/export and role-based access control.

Microsoft Dataverse continues to make investments focusing on enhancing maker experience by improving app building productivity infused with Copilot experiences, seamless connectivity to external data sources, and AI-powered enterprise copilot for Microsoft 365.

AI Builder invests in three key areas: prompt builder for GPT prompts, intelligent document processing with new features and models, and AI governance improvements, including enhanced capacity management and data policies. These initiatives aim to empower users with advanced generative AI, streamline document processing, and strengthen governance across AI models within Power Apps.

Early access period 

Starting February 5, 2024, customers and partners will be able to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These features include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled for users in production environments during April 2024. To take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page. 

For a complete list of new capabilities, please check out the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 1 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 1 plan, and share your feedback in the community forums via Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform.

The post 2024 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform now available appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As the calendar turns its page to a new year, the roles of chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance teams take center stage as they review business performance and tackle updating strategic plans. The fresh new year of 2024 will bring with it a multitude of opportunities, challenges, and transformative possibilities for financial leaders navigating the ever-evolving landscape of the global economy. In this dynamic arena, where precision meets strategy, the CFO becomes the architect of fiscal success, and finance teams are the craftspersons shaping the financial future of their organizations. And yet, many leaders struggle with the complexity involved in navigating uncertainties, taking advantage of emerging trends, and driving business performance. We’re introducing the latest advancements in our enterprise resource planning (ERP) portfolio that address these challenges to simplify how you activate business insights at every level of your organization.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance

Begin your AI-guided business performance management journey today.

Learn more

Let’s break this down based on the following top business performance management challenges we’ve heard from our customers as they turn to their planning, analytics, and insights tools, then we’ll cover our new year’s resolutions for each.

• Data accuracy, consistency, and integration: Poor data quality, reconciliation processes, and the integration of disparate data sources hinder accurate analysis and planning. Resolve to create a connected enterprise in 2024; our new business process-centric data models in the business performance analytics capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance will pave the way.
• Complexity for users: Financial planning and analytics (FP&A) and corporate performance management solutions often have a steep learning curve, lack a user-friendly design, and are difficult for users to navigate. Resolve to empower your teams with easy-to-use tools; our business performance planning capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, generally available on December 31, 2023, will help.
• Total cost of ownership: Most financial management and ERP solutions do not include business performance management capabilities as part of their core solution, and these tools need to be purchased separately, which minimizes who can use them. Resolve to lower your total cost of ownership, while maximizing business performance management; our new Dynamics 365 Finance Premium offering will provide an easy way to acquire and deploy advanced business management capabilities.

Resolution 1: Create a single source of truth for planning, analytics, and insights, making it easy to get started.

Unlocking the true potential of your finance department requires addressing the common data-related challenges and tool limitations that hinder productivity, and getting actionable business performance insights in a timely manner.

We introduced business performance analytics in February 2023 to help you analyze and improve business performance by unifying data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dataverse, and other sources into an easy-to-use, business process-centric data model. You can use business performance analytics to create reports, dashboards, and insights that help you make informed decisions and optimize your operational workflow.

Business performance analytics aims to revolutionize how finance departments handle complex data by streamlining data ingestion, cleansing, and enrichment. By automating data hygiene, teams can reduce manual work, minimize reliance on IT, and lay the foundation for advanced capabilities like copilot and AI. 

Business performance analytics capabilities are currently available in preview and your administrator can request installation;  your current Dynamics 365 Finance licenses allow you to try it out today.

Resolution 2: Empower people with planning and analytics tools that are easy to use.

Finance teams often face challenges with outdated data and complex tools, resulting in slow, manual processes when extracting integral information. The complexity of analytical tools often demands advanced data science skills or falls short with outdated features, hindering the discovery of valuable insights crucial for enhancing business performance. In the pursuit of agile decision-making, finance leaders must overcome these hurdles and ensure access to robust, timely insights that drive action.

We introduced our vision for extended planning and analysis (xP&A) back on May 31, 2023. On December 31, 2023, we’ll deliver on this vision with the general availability (GA) of business performance planning capabilities that equip our Dynamics 365 Finance customers with a comprehensive view of financial and operational performance. These capabilities simplify and automate planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analytics by integrating with familiar Microsoft Power BI and Excel environments.

Your administrator will be able to access these capabilities for installation after the GA date from the Power Platform admin center.

Resolution 3: Optimize costs while ensuring people have the tools they need and that they’re easy to buy.

The total cost of ownership for many business performance management solutions can be notably high due to various factors such as initial software licensing fees, implementation costs, and customization expenses. Integration challenges with existing systems may necessitate additional resources, and the need for skilled personnel to manage and optimize the solution can incur ongoing labor costs.

Our approach is to include planning, analytics, and insights as capabilities within Dynamics 365 Finance, while providing interoperability with familiar tools like Excel and Microsoft Power BI. This strategy allows our customers to minimize the high costs associated with many FP&A and xP&A solutions. This ensures that individual users have access to the capabilities they need to successfully complete their work, while not having to pay for unnecessary functionalities. We’re introducing a new offering to help realize this goal. Dynamics 365 Finance Premium will equip users with the tools needed to build advanced financial plans, budgets, analytics, and insights. This license will only be needed for roles within the organization that are responsible for creating strategic plans, budgets, reports, and insights. Welcome to a new era of financial empowerment, where success is not just measured but strategically crafted.

Modernize business performance management

In navigating the complexities of today’s economic landscape, CFOs recognize the indispensable need for advanced planning and analytical tools to effectively steer their organizations through uncertainties, foster innovation, and ensure both short-term resilience and long-term prosperity. With these new capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance, CFOs can empower finance and business leaders with the essential tools to not only anticipate risks but also drive strategic innovation. In the face of modern economic challenges, more advanced corporate performance management becomes essential for financial leaders, offering a robust foundation to fortify their organizations, ensuring they not only weather the current storms but emerge stronger and more resilient for the challenges of tomorrow.

We’ve made planning and analytics easy for customers to get started, in familiar tools that are easy for finance users to use, and we’ve made the buying process simple with the Dynamics 365 Finance Premium offering. Ensure your organization is ready to adopt the new business performance planning capabilities and start 2024 with a better view of your strategic plans.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Finance

Begin your AI-guided business performance management journey today. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Finance and our finance solutions to get a better understanding of how this new offering will add additional business performance management capabilities for our customers.

The post Enhance business performance agility with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Premium appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, we kicked off the 2023 release wave 2 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a six-month rollout of new and enhanced capabilities scheduled for release between October 2023 and March 2024.

This release wave introduces hundreds of new features across Microsoft Power Platform applications, including enhanced capabilities for governance, administration, and professional development. Updates for Dynamics 365 include innovation to help employees be more productive, create exceptional customer experiences and deepen relationships, and drive meaningful growth across the business. This release also features new AI capabilities in Copilot—which more than 130,000 organizations have now experienced—that help to improve insights, save time, and enhance creativity across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.  

Tune in to the launch event, live or on-demand, for a concise overview of the release wave, as well as a firsthand look at how organizations like Nestlé, Kodak Alaris, Northern Trust, Centrica, Spark NZ, Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland, and Suffolk are adopting these capabilities to drive transformative changes in their businesses.

Some of the themes at the event include:

• A new era of AI-powered customer service and field service
• Transforming enterprise resource planning (ERP) with AI
• Enhancing customer experience through AI-driven transformation
• Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform

A new era of AI-powered customer service and field service

As a frontline for customer loyalty, service agents and field teams need access to information and insights to understand customer needs and respond appropriately. New Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service will help reduce time spent on common tasks, as well as introduce enhancements to the Customer Service workspace. Updates include improved inbox functionality, a redesigned voice experience, enhanced collaboration through Microsoft Teams, and integrated diagnostics for administrators—all aimed at boosting agent productivity and operational efficiency.

During the session led by Jeff Comstock, Corporate Vice President, Customer Service, we demonstrated how Copilot assists customer service and field service processes, including customer self-service, across various channels.

We also revealed how customers like Northern Trust Corporation, a leading wealth and asset management institution, can use Copilot to assist the client services team with tasks ranging from account reviews and case investigations to post-resolution wrap-ups. Northern Trust Corporation has not only gained recognition for its innovative financial services, but also for its unwavering commitment to customer service. With Dynamics 365 Customer Service as a steadfast component of its journey, the latest capabilities in release wave 2 can help the client service teams at Northern Trust be even more efficient, effective, and customer-focused, streamlining its workflow and enhancing its ability to provide timely and accurate support to clients. 

The session also delved deeper into the field service domain, where Centrica, a global energy services company, effectively manages its sizable workforce of 12,000 field operatives on site by harnessing the new capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service, streamlining processes from task assignments to issue resolution.

To learn more about release wave 2 capabilities for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service, visit the release planner.

Transforming ERP with AI

The new release wave harnesses AI, automation, and analytics to help organizations drive greater operational efficiency across finance, supply chain, and operations—capabilities that enhance visibility, automate processes, extend coverage, and deliver a more integrated experience across departments.

Updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance include the general availability of extended planning and analysis, which brings together operational and financial planning to continuously plan, act, and analyze. In addition, the general availability of business performance analytics streamlines financial reporting by centralizing data from multiple business processes and in an easy-to-use interface.

Updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management include improvements in demand planning, as well as procure-to-pay processes. Copilot will now suggest actions that can help purchasing agents make better decisions in response to new and updated information that affects open purchase orders.

At the launch event, Georg Glantschnig, Vice President, AI ERP, showcased how Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland is improving its demand planning accuracy by using AI. These new features have greatly enhanced its capacity to serve more customers by precisely planning food requirements, thereby reducing food waste, and improving environmental sustainability through more efficient facility operations. Additionally, the process of fulfilling purchase orders has also seen a remarkable enhancement, thanks to Copilot.

We also demonstrated how New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services provider, Spark NZ, is transforming its finance and supply chain operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365. It can now automate many of its financial processes—including vendor invoice processing, automatic revaluation of foreign currency transactions, transaction reconciliation, billing, and complex tax calculations. Human resources can also streamline processes, from hiring to self-service vacation time requests and tracking.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Project Operations, and Human Resources.

Enhancing customer experience through AI-driven transformation

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and Copilot you can use data and insights that used to be hidden, unlock capabilities previously out of reach, and reach new levels of productivity and collaboration.

The new release wave introduces a variety of solutions to help marketers and sales professionals use Copilot to deepen their understanding of their target customer base, streamline engagement processes, and push the boundaries in crafting exceptional customer experiences. 

In the closing keynote session, Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience, demonstrated how Kodak Alaris, a global technology company, effectively used Copilot within Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Insights. Taking advantage of the new AI capabilities, it tapped into previously hidden data to target its customer base, unlocking capabilities that were once out of reach. Using Copilot, it was able to create unique personalized content to keep customers informed about its services and effortlessly establish new levels of productivity and customer connection, attracting new businesses like never before.

For more details, review the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform

Copilot in Power Platform ushers in a new era of AI-assisted low-code development. Copilot features in release wave 2 make it even easier to quickly create solutions.

At the launch event, Sangya Singh, Vice President, Power Pages, showcased how Copilot plays a vital role in democratizing development, enabling a broader audience—both citizen and professional developers—to create innovative solutions using natural language.

Through the lens of Suffolk, one of America’s largest construction companies, we demonstrated how Microsoft Power Automate helped them streamline critical material request processes, enabling teams to use Copilot in Power Automate to build flows by describing what they need.

We also showcased how Microsoft Power Apps can help Suffolk facilitate efficient coordination of construction status updates, and how the generative answers capability in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents can search industry resources for answers, reducing manual research. We also demonstrated how Microsoft Power Pages improves collaboration with multiple partners on construction projects, and how Microsoft Power BI can help Suffolk visualize safety data at construction sites across the globe, highlighting the trends, causes, and outcomes of incidents and near misses so that preventative actions can be easily identified and implemented.

In addition to enhancing daily business operations, Copilot within Microsoft Power Platform has significantly improved the governance and administrative experience, expediting the development of these applications.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform release planner for more details.

Tune in to the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event 

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Tune in live or on-demand for a concise overview of the release wave.

Watch now

Watch the launch event on-demand for in-depth insights and demonstrations of the new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You can also delve into several deep-dive presentations on topics including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, responsible AI practices, and a fireside chat that explores the latest features in this release wave.

Don’t forget to explore the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform to stay informed about what’s new and on the horizon.

We also invite you to learn more about the latest AI innovation at Microsoft Ignite 2023, taking place in Seattle from November 14 through November 17, 2023, with online sessions available live and on-demand on November 15 and November 16. Register today.

The post Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event introduces wave of new AI-powered capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

AI is ready to support work—the question is: What will your business do with it?

Join us at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on October 25 and explore how to create an AI-powered business that helps people and teams be more productive, solve problems quickly, and focus more energy on building revenue.

This will mark our tenth Business Applications Launch Event—a milestone in our commitment to business app innovation, our customers, and our partners. But we’re just getting started. To see what’s next—and what it means for your organization—you’ll hear directly from Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and low-code solutions.

Register for a glimpse at the future of business AI, with thought leaders and Dynamics 365 experts guiding you. Be first to see the latest AI advancements in action, including:

• The latest AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales that provides relevant recommendations, summarizes data, retrieves information, and performs actions within the flow of work.
• Advanced Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service that streamline agents’ workspaces, let them see transcripts of live chats and voice calls in their inboxes, and allow them to respond to customers quickly with the right information.
• New Microsoft Sales Copilot features that help compose emails, update customer relationship management (CRM) records, recap meetings, and offer real-time tips to help sales teams close more deals.
• Enhanced automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance to help handle accounts payable and bank statements, complex tax scenarios, and e-invoicing requirements in more markets.
• New Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to help marketers quickly create memorable customer experiences using whole new levels of personalization for emails, images, and layouts.

Plus, learn about updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources—all ready to help your employees be more productive, build customer loyalty, and drive meaningful growth. You’ll also hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, about what’s driving innovation today. Then catch some of the newest AI capabilities in action, with demos led by the people behind the 2023 release wave 2, offering expert guidance on how these updates will help you:

• Improve insights, save time, and fuel creativity with the latest AI-powered solutions.
• Empower your employees to focus on revenue-generating work and avoid repetitive tasks with automation.
• Connect people, data, and processes across your organization using modern, AI-enhanced collaboration tools.

Insights on putting AI to work for you

The Business Applications Launch Event is more than our chance to showcase hundreds of new features and updates. It’s also a great opportunity for you to learn expert tips on how to apply these new technologies to some of your business’ biggest challenges. And if you have questions about new features, the role of AI at work, the evolution of copilots, or what’s ahead for business apps, get them answered by experts—we’ll be hosting a live Q&A chat at the end of the event, so be sure to stick around.

It’s been inspiring to see all the new features that the Dynamics 365 team has been working on, and we’re looking forward to celebrating 10 events’ worth of advancing business applications ahead.

Business Applications Launch Event

Explore how to create an AI-powered business.

Register now

We hope you’ll join us.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

 9:00 AM–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

The post Discover new AI for Microsoft Dynamics 365 at our tenth Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Finance teams’ roles have evolved—and expanded—into new realms. As economic pressures demand that everyone deliver more with fewer resources, finance professionals’ plates are increasingly crowded with analysis, strategy, even supplier relationships—plus all the traditional finance processes they’ve long been responsible for.  

It’s not just moving invoices along—finance teams are being asked by upper management to bring cost-saving, time-optimizing, and value-adding insights to the table when business model evolution and digital transformation are discussed. And they’re looking for any solution that will give their overstretched employees time back in their day to think bigger, by tightening up tedious processes that drain human energy and douse the spark of innovation. 

The Future of Finance

Streamline your accounts payable process and free up resources to fund your business transformation

Watch the webinar

For finance teams, incorporating automation into accounts payable (AP) is a great place to start. After all, the work of capturing invoices, processing and verifying them, then paying vendors can be complex—with plenty of sub-processes to support the end goal of on-time payments and stronger customer relationships. Automating parts of the accounts payable process lets finance teams spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on higher-value work that builds agility in finance operations and across your business.  

5 ways accounts payable automation elevates finance operations

To get started on your AP automation journey, check out this webinar, The Future of Finance: Unlocking the Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation, and learn how automating accounts payable data can help you:

1. Focus on strategy—not tedious data tasks

Allow your finance teams to put more energy where it matters—fulfilling, strategic work that keeps them engaged—not cumbersome accounts payable processes that waste time and drag down productivity.  

2. Reign in costs and unnecessary fees

Understand payment trends, analyze vendor performance, and improve processing time to drive significant savings. Cut paper costs by automating manual processes, while helping avoid handwritten errors that lead to mistakes and late payment fees downstream.

3. Stop small errors from becoming big problems

Improve accuracy with automated accounts payable software that limits the unavoidable errors inherent with manual data entry—so you sidestep risk now while dialing in what you need for compliance later.

4. Get to know your vendors

Strengthen vendor relationships by automating AP processes to pay them on time, every time. And over time, analyze accounts payable data to reveal valuable cost-saving insights that put you on more solid footing for future negotiations.

5. Gain more visibility

Put more eyes on your cashflow to help people across your business focus more on cost savings. Empower everyone—not just data specialists or finance operations teams—to support larger initiatives with more readily available data.

When should you automate accounts payable?

To keep pace with competitors, you’re probably looking at ways your finance team can integrate new technology into traditional processes like accounts payable that have long kept business’ bottom lines in order. Because the pace of business isn’t slowing, nor are potential disruptions retreating. To respond to changing business conditions and guard against long-term risk, finance leaders are starting to recognize how the latest AI-powered automation can help them take on what’s currently taking up too much of their employees’ time: 

• Complex processes: The more complex the process, the more challenging it can be to manage effectively. Inefficient processes with too many steps are not only a drag on people’s time and energy, they’re often a barrier to digital transformation. When that leads to a delayed payment, it can damage customer relationships that have taken years to build—putting the wrong kind of spotlight on finance teams. 
• Strained IT: When organizations are facing flat (or shrinking) IT budgets and people don’t have the tools they need, it’s hard to build consistent processes. A lack of IT budget is more than annoying; unreliable systems can overwhelm employees, get in the way of strategic work they’d rather be doing, and make it tougher to follow processes that finance regulations demand. 
• Data overload: Invoices, payment records, information on multiple vendors—all that data is difficult to manage on its own. When people naturally turn to manual processes to make sense of it all, it’s often time intensive and susceptible to errors, fraud, and missed opportunities for insights. 
• People power: Freeing up resources to hire new talent is tough enough, and retaining that talent is even tougher when mundane tasks fill up their plate. Engaging them in their current role with opportunities to be creative and offer strategic insights is often a better investment than trying to find, onboard, and retain a new hire. 

If these obstacles sound familiar, automating accounts payable processes is a cost-efficient way to start moving your organization past them. When your company is ready to shift from managing cumbersome accounts payable operations to supporting strategic initiatives, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance can help. 

How Dynamics 365 Finance modernizes accounts payable operations

Dynamics 365 Finance modernizes accounts payable operations by capturing invoices in multiple formats (digital and manual), processing them while coding and resolving errors with full automation, then automatically paying vendors on time—with analytics around payment scenarios and compliance gathered in real time. Be sure to watch the webinar to learn more, including how one Microsoft customer cut invoice costs in half and reduced overall costs by 25 percent by streamlining procedures across their business, including invoice processing, with accounts payable automation. It also features a demo of how to use AI-powered automation to accelerate digital transformation with Dynamics 365 Finance.  

The post 5 ways accounts payable automation drives digital transformation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In times of economic uncertainty, business agility is critical to meeting stakeholder expectations and delivering customer value. These challenging times put CFOs and finance teams in the spotlight as leaders across the business look to them to protect short-term financial health and long-term growth. Yet, many leaders struggle to get the insights needed to pivot quickly. Watch Finance Reimagined on demand to see how automation, AI, and analytics can help you lead the way through disruption.

While business intelligence (BI) and cloud analytics tools can provide actionable insights, a significant obstacle that hinders finance professionals and business leaders from maximizing the potential of these tools is the need for advanced technical skills to consolidate, manipulate, and integrate data from various systems utilized in business operations. This requires a deep understanding of complex data models and the ability to normalize, transform, and combine data sets to provide a coherent, usable output for all business users.

Historically, finance teams have spent most of their time running accounting and financial operations, closing the books, and creating financial reports and statements. Business performance insights were delivered monthly, quarterly, or yearly. As the speed of business has accelerated and continues to accelerate at an unprecedented pace, finance professionals are being asked to deliver performance metrics daily and at a micro level. Many teams have invested in data scientists and reskilling their people to take on modern data storytelling roles. However, this approach does not scale. To achieve the level of business agility to succeed in ultra-competitive markets, business leaders need to activate actionable insights securely at every level of the organization. This means that all people, regardless of their technical expertise, need the ability to get the analytics they need to understand business performance better.

The question becomes, how do we get the business performance analytics needed in the hands of people across the organization? The answer lies in creating a hyper-connected enterprise through an intuitive data model and empowering people to use familiar tools like Microsoft Excel and Power BI for self-service analytics.

Finance leaders can create a hyper-connected enterprise

Although CFOs may not be directly responsible for data security and connectivity, a strong partnership between finance and IT is crucial for successfully implementing business performance analytics. During our virtual event, Finance Reimagined, you will hear how Robert Walters, a leading global recruitment and talent management company, strengthened their partnership by adding a finance expert to their IT team. The results were remarkable, as they were able to replace their financial management solution on time and within budget, providing near real-time insights to all recruiters within their workflow. Easy access to correct information enables teams to achieve strategic objectives more efficiently and effectively.

With unified and accessible data, finance leaders can empower their teams to quickly gain insights and position themselves as leaders in innovation and business transformation. To realize these benefits, it is essential to consolidate all business data for a comprehensive view of the organization and embed intelligence in every function to promote proactive decision-making and collaboration among employees. To achieve this, finance leaders should collaborate with IT to:

• Unify data: Many well-defined business processes, like procure to pay, quote-to-cash, and other regular ledger and subledger processes, consist of a collection of documents related to the other. Unifying data from the ledger, subledger, and source documents makes using data from these different sources simpler. 
• Simplify reporting: Streamlined reporting enables the finance team and other teams to create the reports they need, which previously would have taken weeks or months with IT experts or outside vendors.
• Adopt self-service analytics: Operationalizing custom reports and ad hoc analytics for the business through self-service analytics enables comprehensive digital transformation, even for organizations with limited IT investment. This empowers finance teams to use their data.

Actionable insights with self-service analytics

Self-service analytics refers to the ability of a business user to access unified, actionable data and intelligent technology to make informed decisions quickly. This technology is designed to be used by any user, no matter their sophistication, and can significantly contribute to driving growth and creating value beyond financial metrics. In the past, these benefits were challenging for organizations to achieve due to the complexity of technology implementation.

With self-service analytics, organizations can take advantage of technology that eliminates the need for finance professionals to have expertise in data science and IT, or access to external resources.

Now, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance users can validate data quality, generate customized reports, and easily extract valuable insights. With self-service analytics, finance teams can independently access, analyze, and use their data to make informed decisions. Take a guided tour and see how.

Business performance analytics

To tackle the challenges faced by CFOs and finance professionals in consolidating data and utilizing self-service analytics, we are proud to introduce new capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance. Our latest innovation, business performance analytics, delivers insights directly to all users, regardless of technical ability. Business performance analytics empowers finance professionals to make informed decisions without needing advanced skills or data science understanding. This solution simplifies the process of gaining insights from data by providing a comprehensive and user-friendly view across multiple business processes.

With business performance analytics, all users can easily access and analyze data, helping to streamline regular financial reporting and shorten cycle times, allowing finance teams to focus on strategic initiatives. It enables reporting in a more holistic, less siloed way, across multiple systems of record, by normalizing data. Built on Microsoft Dataverse, it includes a web-based reporting hub where customers can create reporting via Excel, Power BI, and other templates. 

Finally, with business performance analytics, we enhance the growth potential of Dynamics 365 Finance capabilities by leveraging unified data for AI and machine learning. With AI-powered solutions, we will enable teams to identify opportunities to improve financial performance automatically. Through our partnership with Open AI and recent acquisitions in business domains like process mining and AI-driven spend analytics, Microsoft will help auto-detect and recommend ways to protect organizations from risk and guard against future disruption. 

Learn what’s next at Finance Reimagined

Integrating financial data across an entire organization and giving the finance team a wealth of self-serve analytics tools will deliver significant benefits across a business. Business performance analytics will be available in public preview with 2023 release wave 1. Our focus will be on ensuring the business performance analytics capabilities within Dynamics 365 Finance helps customers to:

• Simplify data insights by providing a comprehensive and user-friendly view across multiple sources in near real time. 
• Allow all users of all technical abilities to quickly access and analyze data to facilitate faster decisions and better business performance. 
• Enable ease-of-use through familiar apps like Excel and Power BI.
• Streamline financial reporting and operations to reduce cycle times and focus on strategic initiatives.
• Provide auditors with direct access to financial data, enabling them to quickly access and analyze the information they need, making the audit process more efficient.

Finance Reimagined

Learn how Dynamics 365 Finance can deliver the benefits of digital transformation, activating insights through analytics, AI, and automation.

Watch on demand

The post Deliver insights with Dynamics 365 Finance business performance analytics appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

With global volatility and inflation impacting organizations across all industries, business agility has never been more important. Leaders turn to finance teams to get real-time insight into business performance and recommendations on future initiatives that will help them thrive amid disruption. But finance teams are overwhelmed with manual tasks, cobbling together data, and disconnected teams. Achieving game-changing business agility begins with augmenting the human ingenuity of your people with intelligent process automation.

When it comes to reimagining processes with AI, automation, and analytics, many finance leaders don’t know where to start. This year, at the third annual Finance Reimagined digital event, we will delve into real-world best practices from Microsoft and industry leaders that will help you prioritize the right cost optimization, growth acceleration, and workforce transformation initiatives.

Finance Reimagined 2023

Unpack the latest trends shaping the future of finance.

Register now!

Finance Reimagined: Bringing the future of finance into focus

Finance Reimagined is a virtual event bringing together finance leaders from around the world. Through watching the event, you can unpack the latest trends shaping the future of finance including the strategic evolution of the role of CFO within organizations, maintaining commitments to multiple stakeholders and bottom lines against a challenging economic environment, and the opportunities to drive transformation through the partnership of human ingenuity and AI.

Learn more and register for Finance Reimagined 2023.

Discover what’s top of mind for CFOs and financial leaders

You’ll discover best practices, trends, and priorities that are top of mind for CFOs and finance leaders. We’ve lined up experts from Microsoft, IDC, Avanade, EY, HSO, KPMG, and PwC to deliver actionable insights on how to strike the right balance between the following:

Human and AI

Find harmony between automation and your organization’s most important asset—your people. We will tackle one of the top concerns for CFOs today: workforce optimization. The heart of productivity sits in employee well-being—or the organization’s ability to increase creativity, job satisfaction, and ultimately, happiness. Human ingenuity is now business’ greatest investment to drive long-term vision and needs to be incentivized. Automation changes the way we work, thus organizational structures, required competencies, and roles must change as well. Get tips at Finance Reimagined on how to prioritize automation initiatives and how to use them to augment your people resources.

Cost optimization and growth acceleration

Embrace a dual role of gatekeeper and innovator to bring more strategic value to your organization. You’ll hear from a panel of finance leaders at Microsoft as they respond to trends from a recent study of more than 500 senior finance leaders from across all industries. Learn how Microsoft is empowering our finance leaders to do more with less to guide teams through these uncertain times. We will discuss tactics to optimize cash flow, increase operational effectiveness, and reinvest to meet growth expectations.

The speed of business and risk mitigation

Organizational health has become increasingly dependent on data and tools to facilitate agile, data-driven decision making. Finance teams are doubling down on their efforts to keep up with our world’s increasingly volatile and interconnected markets that demand more fluid operating models, extending beyond the walls of an organization. This means that the role of the finance leader has evolved from being an economic guardian inside the walls of an enterprise to designing new business models that focus on delivering customer value outside of an enterprise. This evolution is only possible through a tight partnership between the CFO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure data security while activating insights at every level of the organization. Join us for a discussion with the CFO and CTO at Robert Walters, a global recruitment and talent management company with a team of experts spanning 31 countries and serving more than 4,300 clients, to hear how they partnered to speed the time to insight within their organization.

Register today to attend Finance Reimagined for your look ahead at the emerging trends and essential insights defining how tomorrow’s businesses will thrive. We hope to see you there.

The post Leap into the future of finance at Finance Reimagined 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Innovation is a fundamental element for businesses to remain competitive and achieve success. Innovation leads to increased efficiency and effectiveness and contributes to improved business performance. With the ongoing economic challenges and recession facing global economies, the importance of innovation is even greater. The finance team plays a vital role in this endeavor by incorporating innovation into its strategies and operations. CFOs must not only fulfill their responsibilities as the financial stewards of the business but also actively collaborate with other departments to foster innovation and prepare for potential disruptions. In this challenging environment, CFOs must accomplish more with limited resources; innovation is the key to achieving this goal.

This blog post will explore the advantages organizations can gain by implementing a Finance Center of Innovation to review internal operations and discover ways to improve efficiency. Additionally, we will highlight a practical example from Microsoft, where implementing robust and flexible technology enabled swift closing of technical deficiencies and automation of previously labor-intensive manual tasks.

Finance Reimagined

Learn how low-code applications can help your finance team accomplish more with less.

Register here

Address complexity, manual processes, and inflexible legacy systems

One of the biggest challenges facing finance teams today is the sheer amount of data being generated, which can be challenging to manage and use effectively. In many cases, legacy systems that were once sufficient are now unable to keep up with the times and are costly to replace. Furthermore, there needs to be more tools available to finance teams to anticipate the growing complexity of businesses. Manual and inefficient processes and errors continue to plague finance teams and cost valuable time and money. Additionally, with increasing risks and threats worldwide, the regulations and compliance requirements that finance must abide by are growing in complexity. To mitigate these challenges and ensure business success, implementing a Finance Center of Innovation can help identify opportunities to use digital technologies, enabling finance teams to stay focused on the future and remain agile.

Learn how Microsoft embraces resourcefulness to innovate

At Microsoft, we are proactively adapting to the dynamic landscape by implementing a resourceful approach throughout our business operations. By embracing this “do more with less” philosophy, we are able to accelerate innovation, empower our employees to accomplish more, and ultimately drive better results. To achieve this, Microsoft has established a “Center of Innovation” strategy to facilitate the collaboration of technical and non-technical finance professionals to optimize existing processes. This allows our finance teams to direct their attention towards high-impact activities that foster growth and increase profitability. By thoroughly evaluating internal operations, the team identifies opportunities for improvement and efficiency, then deploys low-code applications, such as Microsoft Power Platform, to rapidly automate processes and streamline operations.

How can a Finance Center of Innovation (FCI) benefit my organization?

A “Finance Center of Innovation” (FCI) is a specialized team or department within an organization focused on driving innovation and creating new solutions in finance. The FCI aims to improve financial performance by exploring innovative technologies, approaches, and business models. FCIs will range from a diverse group of financial experts, engineers, data scientists, and business leaders to a small, dedicated team of finance professionals with an aptitude for using technology and solving problems. The specific composition and approach of an FCI will depend on the organization’s needs and goals. There are many valid approaches to take when building an FCI team, both simple and complex. The benefits of an FCI are numerous, so CFOs should get started with whatever resources are available and add complexity over time.

Having an FCI can bring many benefits to finance teams, such as:

• Enhanced financial planning and analysis: The FCI can use data and technology to provide better insights and support more informed decisions, leading to improved financial performance.
• Streamlined financial processes: The FCI can identify opportunities to automate and optimize financial processes, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.
• Improved risk management and financial reporting: With access to more advanced tools and analysis, the FCI can help organizations identify and mitigate risks and improve the accuracy and timeliness of financial reports.
• Compliance: The FCI team can help the organization stay up to date with the latest regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Innovate through automation of routine finance tasks

Assembling a team of experts is a crucial first step toward driving innovation within your organization. However, the next step is equally important—identifying opportunities for acceleration. Finance teams should work closely with their Center of Innovation to identify and prioritize areas where automation can be introduced to optimize routine tasks. Some common examples include data entry automation, accounts payable and accounts receivable, expense management, compliance, and audit functions. However, it is crucial to note that the implementation and specific tasks will vary depending on your company’s unique needs. By collaborating with your Center of Innovation and identifying critical opportunities for automation, you can streamline processes, reduce costs, and free up your employees to focus on more strategic initiatives that can drive growth and revenue for your organization.

Accelerate innovation and automation with low-code solutions

Once optimization priorities have been identified by your FCI, the next step is selecting the appropriate resources to solve the problem. This can be challenging, as many teams are held back by inflexible legacy systems and processes that can only be easily corrected with significant technical resources. However, with low-code automation tools, FCIs can make these improvements and innovations without replacing expensive legacy systems, effectively breathing new life into their solution ecosystem without an expensive rip-and-replace. Microsoft Power Platform offers a powerful solution for finance teams looking to solve complex business challenges within their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) quickly. Our low-code tools empower innovation, conquer business hurdles, and open new opportunities to do more with less. Whether you are a pro developer or not, our user-friendly tools allow anyone to create solutions, saving time and costs while reallocating resources to focus on what matters most.

Case example: Microsoft streamlines payment term exception requests and improves the compliance process with Microsoft Power Platform, saving thousands of hours

Microsoft identified an opportunity to streamline payment term exception requests and improve the compliance process. Historically, contract payment term exception requests were received through multiple email inboxes, often needing more information for quick and accurate evaluation. The process owner was required to research and develop a compliant response. Still, finance controllers could not track the requests, measure impact, and analyze cash flow implications, leading to a lack of accountability and consistency in understanding payment policies. To improve this, the team used Microsoft Power Platform to automate the payment terms exceptions workflow for intake, dispositioning, decisioning, and reporting. Then, a Power Apps and Power Automate flow was developed to standardize request intake, automate alerts, and establish accountability. Finally, a Power BI dashboard was created to give executives visibility into change requests and cash flow impact. Within six months from the start of the project, the team had a more than 14 percent improvement in payment compliance while saving 5,000 hours (about seven months) per year of manual processing time, which reduced the average service time from 8 to 10 days to approximately 3 days.

Help finance stay strong for the future

At Microsoft, we understand the various challenges that finance teams and CFOs face in today’s business landscape. To address our challenges, we have implemented a finance-first innovation approach that utilizes our low-code platforms to enable the rapid creation of solutions to handle almost any business challenge. Our low-code apps are compatible with any ERP, including Microsoft’s own Dynamics 365 Finance, making it easy to get started. With easy-to-use technologies and helpful best practices, you can help your organization to optimize its resources and free up time for more value-adding activities, demonstrating the power of doing more with less. By embracing this approach, you can transform many manual and time-intensive activities into streamlined and efficient financial operations, keeping your organization agile and prepared for the future.

Learn more at Finance Reimagined

Discover the power of innovation and automation at Finance Reimagined. Join us for a session specifically designed for CFOs to learn how low-code applications can help your finance team accomplish more with less. Register now to take the first step towards revolutionizing your financial process.

The post Finance Reimagined: Microsoft uses low-code and automation to streamline processes appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In a recent keynote at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella made this prediction, “The next 10 years are not going to be like the last 10,” and that “Digital technology will be the only way to navigate the headwinds facing business leaders today.” Today, we face is a world of perpetual change with ever-increasing economic, environmental, and social complexities. This brings us to a cumulation of factors that profoundly impact the health and success of individuals and corporations. The opportunity facing business leaders is to find ways to utilize technology to drive a positive impact on business performance and the well-being of society and the environment.

Reduce operating costs with ESG initiatives

It has become clear that ESG (environmental, social, and governance) initiatives are becoming a top business priority for many organizations. The Gartner annual CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey states, “In 2022, environmental sustainability became a top 10 business priority for the first time ever, with 9 percent of the respondents naming it as one of their top three.”¹ This focus in priority is for good reason. Studies show that companies that execute effectively on ESG programs can reduce operating costs by up to 60 percent² and that higher ESG scores correlate to lower costs of capital (6.16 percent compared to 6.55 percent for the lowest ESG scores).³

What is less clear is how businesses execute ESG initiatives in ways that do not require more effort or added expense—effectively, how to do more with less. In his Microsoft Inspire keynote, Satya stated, “Doing more with less doesn’t mean working harder or longer. That’s not going to scale. But it does mean applying technology to amplify what you’re able to do across an organization so you can differentiate and build resilience.” The expectation that we must do more with less is especially relevant when actioning on ESG goals. The approach business leaders must consider is anything that reduces energy costs or increases resource efficiency will be highly beneficial to CEOs, customers, employees, investors, and the environment. 

Go paperless with Dynamics 365 Finance

There are many ways to make ESG impact, and perhaps most attractive to business leaders are opportunities that align business processes to ESG outcomes. One very accessible possibility exists in the automation of paper-intensive business processes. For example, Accounts Payable (AP) has historically been plagued by the manual effort and cost required to manage tens of thousands of paper invoices. AP invoicing is heavy with storage, printing, disposal, and document security costs that can easily be mitigated through digitization.

Though the digitization of office paper has been achievable for over a decade, organizations still struggle to phase out paper-laden business processes. Some estimates show that US offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper annually and that demand for paper is expected to double before 2030.⁴ To address this trend, companies should turn to robust and easy-to-use technology to help quickly reduce paper usage.

Invoice capture within Dynamics 365 Finance

Automate your AP process

Participate in the preview

If your organization is ready to embark on the journey to go paperless, Microsoft is here to help. We are excited to release the preview of Invoice capture within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. Invoice capture will allow our customers to digitally transform the entire invoice-to-pay process within their AP department—delivering better spend control, faster cycle times, and paperless processing, leading to more automation and less waste. With the support of advanced technology, organizations can efficiently drive outcomes that benefit both business interests and the greater good.

Sources

¹Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

²Five Ways That ESG Creates Value, McKinsey.

³ESG and the Cost of Capital, MSCI.

⁴Paper Waste Facts, The World Counts.

The post Automate more, waste less: ESG initiatives with Dynamics 365 Finance appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited and honored that Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in their 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.* This evaluation of Microsoft was based on specific criteria that analyzed our overall Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. This is the second year in a row we’ve been recognized as a Leader. As Product-Centric enterprise customers transition their mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes to the cloud, we believe they look to recognized vendors for the technology to transform and realize business value. We’re honored to be recognized in this space.

An integrated enterprise ERP solution

Both Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance offer organizations the standard capabilities they expect in an ERP solution but delivered on a modern, open, and cloud-based architecture that empowers composability and scalability. These solutions can work as stand-alone products or together as an integrated, extensible solution—giving businesses the flexibility to work the way they want.

Building a Leader

At the heart of our vision is the relentless desire to empower organizations to enable a resilient and sustainable supply chain, and it is through this vision and dedication that we have built a Leader. Let’s explore the qualities we believe put us in this category.

Cloud-native ERP integrated with the Microsoft technology stack

Dynamics 365 is a cloud-native application that runs, and was built on, Microsoft Azure. This seamlessness between cloud and application helps organizations to scale as their business grows and to protect their data with security tools from Microsoft. Companies can drive innovation with continuous updates, which are quality validated and controlled by the customer, allowing them to set the pace of change while also leveraging the latest and greatest feature updates. It also allows organizations to use Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI can bring insights to the surface, and Power Automate can streamline processes by automating repetitive tasks with no-code tools embedded in Dynamics 365. The underlying Microsoft Dataverse architecture also makes it easy to integrate with third-party applications for niche requirements or communicate with customers and suppliers when order or shipment information is updated.

Dynamics 365 integrates natively with Outlook and Teams, enabling companies to use the tools they already have and are familiar with to augment their finance and supply chain tasks. Stay in the flow of work with embedded Teams integration, which allows cross-team collaboration on things like supply and demand planning.

Embedded advanced analytics on a composable platform

Dynamics 365 incorporates embedded Power BI dashboards, which puts the data you need at your fingertips and in the context of modules like warehousing and procurement. For example, with Power BI, you can gain a single view of your warehouse performance to optimize location capacities and make efficient labor scheduling decisions.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance are built on a composable platform, making it easy to extend your solution with Power Platform, providing low-code tools like Power Apps and Power Automate. Where ERP customizations were once a heavy, time-consuming task, these tools empower end users to customize their solutions and build apps so you can work the way you want. Furthermore, users can leverage prebuilt customizations and industry-specialized solutions from our ISV partner network to help speed development even further. Internally at Microsoft, we’re leveraging Dynamics 365 and custom Power Apps to enable a circular economy at our Microsoft Circular Centers.

Flexible manufacturing capabilities

Modern manufacturers require nimble solutions and flexible systems to adapt quickly to changing demands and production processes. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management features a logical and intuitive UI designed for modern production floor execution, whether you’re running discrete or continuous processes.

Additionally, while some manufacturers may use the native functionality in Dynamics 365 to control their manufacturing activities for machines, equipment, and personnel, many manufacturers are implementing manufacturing execution systems (MES) to meet advanced and bespoke manufacturing requirements. For manufacturers that have either built MES solutions in-house over a number of years or have implemented a third-party MES, integrating an MES with ERP can be challenging. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management takes the pain out of integrating with your MES by leveraging the power and simplicity of application programming interfaces (APIs). Data exchange is fully automated and occurs in near real time, keeping data current in both systems with no manual data entry required.

Investing in innovation with global coverage

We are thrilled to be recognized as a Leader again in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.* But our ambitions don’t stop here. We are continuing to invest in making Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance even better with innovations that will make our products smarter and more efficient for for enterprises of all scale—global, large, and mid-market.

Learn more

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management or Dynamics 365 Finance, request a demo or take a tour today.

Magic Quadrant reports are a culmination of rigorous, fact-based research in specific markets, providing a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Providers are positioned into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. The research enables you to get the most from market analysis in alignment with your unique business and technology needs. View a complimentary copy of the Magic Quadrant report to learn more.

*GARTNER and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

Source: Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises,” Greg Leiter, Dixie John, Robert Anderson, Tim Faith, September 26, 2022.

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