In today’s rapidly evolving service landscape, organizations must manage their entire operations lifecycle efficiently—from initial client interaction to final service delivery and profitability. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations stands out as the comprehensive solution designed to meet the unique needs of service-centric organizations. It seamlessly integrates service-based operations, from sales and project management to resource allocation and financials, ensuring a smooth journey from prospect to profit.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations: Connect your service-centric organization, effortlessly 

For service-centric businesses, managing operational complexities requires a robust platform that provides end-to-end visibility and control over the entire service lifecycle. Dynamics 365 Project Operations is engineered to fulfill this need. It brings together crucial functions into a single, connected solution, including deal management, project delivery, financials, resource planning, and customer engagement.

With Dynamics 365 Project Operations, service organizations can:

• Enhance client engagement: Manage customer relationships effectively from initial prospecting to project delivery, ensuring consistent and personalized client experiences.
• Streamline project execution: Coordinate and manage complex service delivery processes, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and on budget.
• Optimize resource allocation: Allocate resources efficiently, balancing demand and capacity to maximize productivity and reduce costs.
• Boost financial performance: Gain deep financial insights to manage project profitability, from budgeting and forecasting to billing and revenue recognition.
• Facilitate collaboration: Connect teams across geographies and functions, fostering collaboration and ensuring access to real-time data and insights.

The crucial role of time tracking

Accurate time tracking is a cornerstone of operational efficiency for service-centric organizations. It directly influences key aspects such as billing, project costing, and overall profitability. Delays or inaccuracies in time entry can ripple through the organization, leading to postponed invoicing, misalignment in project cost tracking, and ultimately, a negative impact on profit margins. Ensuring that time entries are precise and timely is not just a matter of administrative accuracy; it’s a critical factor in maintaining financial health and operational integrity.

Recognizing the importance of efficient time management, Microsoft has introduced a groundbreaking feature within Dynamics 365 Project Operations that aims to revolutionize how service organizations handle time entry.

Introducing Copilot in time entry: Elevating efficiency and accuracy

To address the complexities and challenges associated with time tracking, Dynamics 365 Project Operations now includes a time entry feature, equipped with Microsoft Copilot abilities. This AI-powered assistant is designed to simplify and enhance the time entry process, making it more intuitive, accurate, and less burdensome for employees.

Copilot in time entry

Simplify the time entry experience and reduce steps for project team members

Find out more

Revolutionizing time entry with AI

Traditional time entry can be a significant pain point for service organizations. It often involves manual, time-consuming processes prone to errors and inaccuracies. This not only affects financial accuracy but also disrupts project management and resource planning.

Copilot in time entry addresses these challenges by offering an intelligent, AI-driven solution that simplifies the entire process. Here’s how it revolutionizes time entry for service-centric operations:

1. Intelligent suggestions: Copilot uses AI to provide intelligent time entry based on projects and tasks, making it easier to capture time accurately.
2. Context-aware assistance: It offers contextual recommendations, allowing users to input detailed and precise time entries without having to recall every task manually.
3. Streamlined process: By automating repetitive and administrative aspects of time tracking, Copilot frees up employees to focus on higher-value tasks.
4. Reduced errors: The system’s automated checks and suggestions help minimize errors, ensuring that time entries are accurate and compliant with project requirements.

Business outcomes and benefits for service-centric organizations

The Copilot in time entry feature is a game-changer for service-centric organizations, delivering substantial benefits that enhance operational efficiency and financial performance:

1. Boosted productivity and efficiency: By simplifying the time entry process, Copilot allows employees to save time and focus more on delivering high-quality service to clients. This boost in productivity translates into better project outcomes and increased client satisfaction.
2. Enhanced accuracy and compliance: Automated, AI-driven time entries can lead to greater accuracy, reducing the likelihood of discrepancies and errors. This leads to more precise billing, better compliance with contractual terms, and improved financial tracking.
3. Increased employee satisfaction: By reducing the administrative burden associated with time tracking, Copilot improves employee satisfaction. This allows them to concentrate on their core responsibilities, enhancing their engagement and performance.
4. Actionable insights for strategic decision-making: Reliable time tracking data provides valuable insights into resource utilization, project costs, and operational efficiency. This empowers service organizations to make more informed decisions, optimize their processes, and drive strategic growth.

Embracing the future of service operations

The introduction of Copilot in time entry to Dynamics 365 Project Operations highlights Microsoft’s commitment to innovating and enhancing service-centric operations. It showcases how AI can be harnessed to streamline complex processes, reduce administrative overhead, and improve overall efficiency.

For service-centric organizations, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, enriched with Copilot capabilities, is the key to managing the entire lifecycle effectively—from initial client engagement to project completion and beyond. By adopting these advanced tools, businesses can enhance their operational excellence, boost financial performance, and sustain a competitive edge in a rapidly changing market.

Discover how Copilot in time entry can revolutionize your service operations. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Project Operations and explore the transformative potential of AI-driven time tracking by visiting Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

The post Discover the power of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Project Operations for faster time entry appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

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.

Introduction:

In the ever-evolving landscape of business operations, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management has been a trusted companion for organizations, offering a robust suite of features to streamline processes. However, with its rich functionality, there often comes a learning curve for users. They require guidance to harness the full potential of the software. Enter the innovative in-app help guidance powered by Microsoft Copilot, which is set to transform the user experience.

Unleashing the Power of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management:

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides a wide array of tools to support diverse business processes. Yet, mastering this complexity often necessitates training and hands-on experience. Traditionally, users relied on experts, partners, or Microsoft support for guidance. But now, a revolutionary solution is at hand.

Introducing Copilot’s capability for In-App Help Guidance:

Copilot brings AI-driven capabilities into Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. One powerful capability delivers contextual help and guidance right into the application. This capability has arrived in public preview.
Here’s a closer look at how it functions:

Harnessing Public Documentation

The Copilot capability for help and guidance is grounded on the extensive repository of public documentation on Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management features. It employs generative AI to craft precise responses to user queries based on the understanding of the documentation it has been grounded on.

Contextual Assistance

Users can seamlessly and conversationally engage through Copilot within the application. They can pose questions related to their current context, and the Copilot, armed with a wealth of documentation, provides tailored and context-aware guidance.
In the future, it will facilitate direct navigation to specific pages within the application and suggest relevant actions to complete users’ tasks.

Real-World Applications:

The Copilot’s in-app help and guidance proves invaluable in various scenarios. For instance:

1. Onboarding New Users: As new business users join, they often require assistance in understanding the application’s functionality and workflows. Copilot can answer questions like, “How do I navigate the procurement process?” or “What steps are involved in inventory management?“
2. Immediate Problem Solving: Users can seek instant solutions to challenges they encounter while using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Whether it’s configuring settings or troubleshooting issues, Copilot is there to help.
3. Reducing Training Costs: Small and medium-sized enterprises often invest heavily in training their workforce on new ERP systems. The in-app help guidance feature minimizes training expenses by enabling users to rapidly familiarize themselves with the software.

Step-by-Step Experience:

Let’s take a journey with Alice, a Purchaser who is new to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Alice is eager to initiate the creation of a purchase agreement with a vendor but is feeling uncertain about the process. Fortunately, Copilot is here to assist her every step of the way, thanks to its generative help feature.

Step 1: Access Copilot

To begin her journey, Alice simply looks for the Copilot icon at the top of the screen. Clicking on it opens the conversational sidecar experience.

Copilot introduces itself warmly and encourages users, like Alice, to ask any questions they may have.

Step 2: Pose Your Question

In this for her uncommon task of creating a purchase agreement, Alice can simply type her question into the Copilot chat experience.

Step 3: Instant Guidance

Like a trusted companion, Copilot responds promptly, providing Alice with clear, step-by-step guidance. With Copilot’s help, Alice navigates through the process seamlessly, ensuring she doesn’t miss a single detail.

Watch the demonstration videos below to see Copilot in action:

In this animation, Alice as a novice user experiences Copilot with its in-app help and guidance feature and Copilot helps her to get started with the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management application.

In the second example you see a Copilot interaction where a more experienced user is empowered by Copilot to efficiently tackle complex tasks with confidence and ease.

The Benefits Unveiled

The advantages of Copilot’s in-app help guidance are numerous:

• Cost-Efficiency: By reducing the need for extensive training, organizations can save significantly on training costs.
• Enhanced User Experience: Users gain immediate access to accurate information, enhancing their overall experience with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
• Improved Productivity: With real-time answers to questions, users can work more efficiently and effectively.

Responsible AI

We are committed to responsible AI practices. Here’s how Copilot ensures responsible AI usage:

• Data Privacy: Copilot follows strict data encryption and secure storage protocols to protect user data.
• Content Moderation: Messages generated by Copilot undergo a series of checks to ensure relevance and prevent harmful content.
• Responsible AI Principles: Our work is guided by principles such as fairness, reliability, privacy, transparency, and accountability.

The future of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

This section provides a glimpse into the expanding capabilities of Copilot, where it becomes a valuable partner for users, offering guidance, insights, and seamless navigation within the application.

• Copilot will go beyond providing answers, it will assist users in navigating within our product, making it an indispensable tool for efficiency.
• Users can inquire about data, processes, and status, and even act directly from the Copilot conversation.
• Copilot, in generative help and guidance, will provide the next best action suggestions on what users should likely do next.

As we look into the future, we are excited to share a demo video that offers first hand experience of Copilot’s evolving capabilities in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Copilot with its its In-app help guidance in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management represents a significant step in enhancing user experience. It bridges the gap between complexity and ease of use, enabling users to unlock the full potential of our product. While we acknowledge that we are in the early stages of this journey with basic capabilities, we are committed to continuous improvement.  As organizations embrace this feature, they begin to reduce training costs and empower their workforce. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management users can look forward to a more streamlined experience.  Copilot In-app help and guidance simplifies tasks and provides instant assistance, helping users make the most of their Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management experience. We are dedicated to enhancing these capabilities further, ensuring that users can navigate our product more efficiently.

Learn More

Interested in learning more about Copilot’s in-app help guidance? Here are your next steps:

Read the Copilot Product Documentation:

For comprehensive and detailed information about Copilot’s capabilities and functionalities, be sure to check out our product documentation. You’ll find in-depth insights into how Copilot can enhance your experience with Dynamics365 Supply Chain Management –

Read the Responsible AI FAQ for Copilot and its capability of generative help and guidance.

Experience Copilot in action (For Existing Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Customers):

 If you’re already using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, you can enable and experience Copilot’s capabilities to streamline your operations. Here’s how:

• Step 1: Enable Copilot Feature: Follow our documentation for existing customers to learn how to enable this feature. Once enabled, you’ll have access to Copilot’s powerful in-app help guidance within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
• Step 2: Access Copilot – Locate the Copilot icon at the top of your screen within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, then click on it to open the conversational sidecar experience. Copilot will introduce itself and encourage you to ask questions.
• Step 3: Pose Your Question – In any uncommon or challenging task within the application, simply ask Copilot for guidance. For better results, especially when seeking documentation-related in-app help, consider starting your questions with ‘How.’
• Step 4: Instant Guidance – Copilot will provide you with step-by-step guidance; all responses are grounded by our public documentation.

Please note that Copilot’s capabilities are exclusively available to existing Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers. If you’re one of them, don’t miss out on the opportunity to enhance your user experience and streamline your operations with Copilot.

Join Copilot for finance and operations apps – Yammer

Stay informed about the most recent Copilot by becoming a member of our Copilot for finance and operations Yammer Group. Share your Feedback and be the first to know about the latest enhancements.

The post Microsoft Copilot brings generative help and guidance into Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 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.

Only months after announcing Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, employees at more than 63,000 organizations—including brands like 3M, Prada Group, and Campari—have had the opportunity to experience some of the AI-assisted features firsthand—and the reviews are pouring in.

A common theme in the feedback we’ve received is a boost in efficiency and productivity, with employees able to reduce the time and effort spent completing common tasks. Organizations also report higher quality work, helped by AI-assisted insights and guidance, from suggested actions and content ideas to faster access to valuable business data.

Dynamics 365 Copilot

Explore what's possible with Dynamics 365 Copilot.

Get started today

Valencia Club de Fútbol (CF), a 103-year-old football club in eastern Spain, has used Copilot to help create opportunities for more meaningful and personalized fan engagement. “From creating content or journeys, to segmentation to gaining insights—Copilot enables our teams to deliver fan experiences and business impact faster and easier,” shared Franco Segarra, Innovation Director at Valencia CF. “It’s going to be amazing to uplevel our work with Copilot.”

Northrop & Johnson, the world’s leading superyacht brokerage, shared the team’s early experiences with Copilot. “We’ve tried some machine learning-based AI point solutions before—they were expensive and not as efficient as what we are seeing now with generative AI,” explains Keith Perfect, Director of Tech & Intelligence. “It’s amazing to have Copilot built right into Dynamics 365 as it is in the flow of work, has the business context, adheres to our existing security model, and also doesn’t come with the extra cost.”

Like Valencia CF and Northrop & Johnson, we’re hearing from a range of organizations that expect Copilot to boost results across teams, from customer-facing departments like sales, marketing, and service to operations, finance, and supply chain roles.

Copilot helps sales professionals focus on closing deals

One of the first sales organizations to try Copilot in Viva Sales, launched in March, is Microsoft’s own business-to-business sales team. Nearly 4,000 sales professionals have used its capabilities, and the impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. Viva Sales was rolled out with a “customer zero” mindset, designed to create the best experience for employees to accelerate innovation and improvements for customers. According to Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Dynamics 365 Customer Experience platform, feedback from the team has influenced new capabilities added to Microsoft Sales Copilot. “Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.”

Using Copilot to gain better insights faster from the data in Dynamics 365 is a strategic priority area for Sandvik Coromant, one of the world’s leading suppliers of tools, tooling solutions, and know-how for the metalworking industry. “We are very excited about Sales Copilot helping us accelerate here with opportunity summary,” shared Per Hoffner, Product Owner, Dynamics CRM at Sandvik Coromant, referring to the ability to get auto-generated opportunity summaries including status, progress, and highlights of key changes; all from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. “The feedback from our pilot groups has been very positive.”

For insight into day-to-day selling assisted by Copilot, read the guide “How Sellers Can Use AI to Better Engage with Customers” at Microsoft WorkLab.

Copilot helps marketers improve customer experiences

We previously announced Copilot capabilities for marketers, including AI assistance to help brainstorm marketing copy for email campaigns, create targeted marketing segments, and use natural language to infer key insights from customer data. These and newly announced Copilot capabilities are available in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights which, as reported last month, will offer both customer data platform and customer journey orchestration capabilities as a single solution.

NC Fusion, a professional soccer team and sports organization serving the Triad region of North Carolina, is an early adopter of Copilot. Marketing director Chris Barnhart shared the team’s experience. “Normal engagement runs about 20 to 30 percent and there’s a lot of factors that go into the email itself, but with the email written with content ideas the engagement was about 70 percent.” The content ideas feature helped them save time, too. “[It] helps us tremendously to efficiently produce emails,” said Barnhart. “In fact, I can tell you it was normally at least an hour, and I did it in 15 minutes, it takes me ~25 percent of the time it took before to create email content!” Learn more about how NC Fusion is using Copilot to inspire young soccer players.

Campari Group, a worldwide leader in the spirits industry, is also benefiting from the ability to prompt Copilot to generate content ideas. “Setting the tone allows Campari Group, a global company, to tailor the tone of voice for each brand and region’s communication style saving us hours of copywriting,” said Liam Barnes, Global IT Director – Marketing Technologies at Campari Group. 

“It’s pretty impressive,” said Keith Perfect, Director of Technology and Intelligence from Northrop & Johnson. “Our team has been very happy using the feature. it’s making delivering great content faster and easier.”

Institutions for higher learning can also benefit from Copilot by equipping departments and colleges with Copilot capabilities to better engage a variety of audiences. “Once we share this with our teams, it has the potential to be quite transformational,” shared Sidney Fernandes, Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology at the University of South Florida. “Students and staff won’t need to be educated on the nuances of student data or copywriting to engage the right audiences impactfully.”

Coffee + Dunn, a leading technology and customer engagement consulting firm, shared its experience using query assist to use conversational, everyday language to quickly build targeted segments. They can simply describe the attributes of the target segment—such as demographics, psychographics, behaviors, or preferences—and query assist will automatically generate the list of contacts. “Using query assist was quick and easy,” said Tyler McClain, Senior Solution Consultant. “I just typed ‘anniversary within the past five years,’ and it gave me exactly what I was looking for. This feature can further empower our clients to engage their customers with ease, and I’m excited to share it with them.”

To learn more about AI-assisted marketing tasks, read the guide “How Marketers Can Use AI to Unlock Breakthrough Creativity” at Microsoft WorkLab.

Using AI for breakthrough customer service experiences

Customer and field service teams are on the frontline for customer satisfaction and retention. Based on early reviews, Copilot promises to help service agents and field teams to improve service delivery and customer experiences.

Firesafe, a market-leading provider of fire protection components and systems in Nordic countries, will deploy Copilot as part of an extensive customer engagement transformation. “We are excited about the Copilot capabilities for customer service and omnichannel and are looking forward to see the anticipated productivity gains for the customer service agent in real action,” explained Petter Aamot Vangstein, CDO.

Delivering more strategic value across operations, supply chain, and finance roles with AI

With Copilot, you can further unlock the potential of enterprise resource planning (ERP) by bringing together data and AI to accelerate the speed of execution and business outcomes. Bartek is the world’s largest producer of malic and fumaric acid—two key ingredients for many foods, beverages, and industrial applications. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, it now has perpetual inventory sales that gives the company visibility to see inventory and customer orders all in one system. “Business Central and the Power Platform really lets us leverage a small team, and create very big outcomes,” explained Steven Chambers, Chief Financial Officer, Bartek. “As we move into more automated planning and bringing in AI-assisted demand planning, I know Microsoft and Business Central are there.”

Explore what’s possible with Dynamics 365 Copilot—and share your review

We are dedicated to helping your employees be more effective and provide customers with amazing experiences. With Copilot, your teams can do more with less and focus on higher-impact work. Best of all, teams across your organization can start experiencing Copilot. Many Copilot capabilities are available now, with more coming over the following months. Explore more about what’s possible with Dynamics 365 Copilot and get started on your journey today.

The post The early reviews are in: Dynamics 365 Copilot helps to reclaim time, drive innovation, and engage customers    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Microsoft recently introduced Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first AI copilot integrated into customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications in the cloud, that is designed to augment workflows, uncover insights, identify the next best actions, and reduce time spent on administrative tasks. Organizations relying on on-premises applications will struggle to compete with peers embracing these AI-powered technologies in the cloud. It is paramount for companies to migrate their critical business processes to the cloud now.

We at Microsoft want to empower every organization of any size to adopt these innovative AI-powered technologies so that no one is left behind, and that is why we are introducing AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move).

AIM offers organizations a tailored path to move critical processes to the cloud with confidence. It provides qualified customers with access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, expert assessments, investment offers, tools, and migration support.

AIM’s coverage extends to a broad range of on-premises business applications from Microsoft, including Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics SL, and Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises. It truly reflects Microsoft’s commitment to guiding on-premises business application customers into the era of AI-guided productivity.

Let’s dive deeper into the AIM offering.

Accelerate now by starting with AIM assessments

Before embarking on a cloud migration journey, businesses want to understand the business value, expected outcomes, and key steps and dependencies for moving their on-premises business applications to the cloud. We designed AIM assessments to help customers answer these foundational questions. Our partner ecosystem plays a vital role in delivering these assessments, and now with AIM, we are expanding the coverage of the partner activities program to include AIM assessments for a broad portfolio of on-premises products.

Innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition

When migrating to the cloud, accelerating time to value while minimizing risks is crucial for project success. AIM offers expert implementation guidance and services from Microsoft and its certified partners. Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployments, provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, as well as transitioning from on-premises to the cloud.

AIM provides partners with access to additional Success by Design tools and guidance, such as the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal, which offers tailored implementation guidance for successful cloud deployment. FastTrack solution architects from Microsoft are available to collaborate with eligible customers, validating solution architectures, mitigating risks, and overcoming deployment blockers. These architects work closely with the partner ecosystem to ensure seamless transitions. And as part of our Unified Support offerings, we’re launching new project quality advisory services that help support a successful cloud transformation.

Partners that want to accelerate their customers’ move to the cloud can work together with AIM Modernization Centers. These service providers bring tools, assessments, and expert migration guidance to other Microsoft partners and their customers, allowing partners to build migration expertise while focusing on delivering business outcomes for their customers. 

Move with agility and scale as your business grows.

Transforming your business through the cloud is an incremental process. AIM provides exclusive offers that help customers optimize their investments. The recently expanded Bridge to the Cloud 2 (BTTC2) promotional offer enables on-premises customers to utilize discounted subscription pricing as part of migrating to the cloud.*

In summary, AIM is a comprehensive offering that unlocks the potential of AI-powered business systems while reducing costs, providing agility for business model innovation, and operating securely with resilience. Let’s explore how some customers have benefited from moving their legacy on-premises business applications to Dynamics 365 in the cloud.

Reducing costs and driving efficiency

United Kingdom-based energy company Viridor experienced immediate cost savings and a 50 percent reduction in legacy apps after migrating to Dynamics 365, resulting in reduced IT support costs. It further experienced a 30 percent reduction in reporting effort across the organization and is saving 400 hours a month through streamlined account processes. Similarly, UK-based manufacturer Kodak Alaris projected a 25 percent cost reduction by migrating to Dynamics 365, driven by decreased customizations and ISV costs.

Driving agility and scale

Manor AG, burdened by aging applications and on-premises infrastructure, initiated a cloud migration project that improved resiliency, efficiency, and overall customer experience. With Dynamics 365, Manor AG gained greater visibility into operations, allowing for optimization of procurement, sales, pricing, and stock monitoring. Similarly, Azelis, a specialty chemicals and food ingredients service provider, improved scalability by deploying Dynamics 365 across 71 entities, leading to increased productivity and meeting carbon reduction goals.

Improving extensibility, reliability, and security

Dynamics 365 offers a 360-degree view of your business by connecting data from ERP and CRM systems. It provides actionable insights through unified data accessible via Microsoft 365 and Power BI. With more than 5,000 developer extensibility points, Dynamics 365 is flexible and can be personalized to meet industry-specific needs. Microsoft Security ensures the reliability and security of Dynamics 365 in the cloud, protecting data and applications with multiple layers of cybersecurity.

AIM for the future with Microsoft today

Microsoft is committed to empowering customers to take advantage of AI capabilities in every line of business, and with AIM, organizations can start now to move to the cloud, making it easier than ever to adopt AI-guided productivity and realize the full potential of AI-powered technologies. Get started with AIM today and unlock a brighter future for your business. Watch the on-demand Inspire 2023 session to learn more. 

AIM for the future with Microsoft

Adopt innovative AI-powered technologies

Get started

To learn about how AI copilot is breaking down data silos, turning insights into actions, and giving customers a new reason to embrace the cloud, check out this blog post: Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program.

*This offer is subject to change.

The post AIM for the future with Microsoft: Future-proof your business in the cloud appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Copilot is breaking down data silos, turning insights into actions, and giving customers a new reason to embrace the cloud.

Since March, when we introduced Dynamics 365 Copilot—the world’s first copilot for both customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP)—and Copilot in Microsoft Power Platform, we’ve seen an incredible response with more than 63,000 organizations experiencing Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Customers like Campari Group, Leatherman Tool Group, and Northrop & Johnson are able to transform how work is done, from the front office to the back office. Copilot assists employees wherever they are working, surfacing valuable business data and delivering business insights so they can focus on the most meaningful parts of their jobs. And with this momentum in AI, it’s a great time for our customers to move to the cloud.

Microsoft Sales Copilot

Empowering sellers to increase productivity and personalize customer interactions.

Learn more

Introducing Microsoft Sales Copilot

Today, we are announcing Microsoft Sales Copilot—a role-based copilot designed for sellers that empowers them to increase productivity and personalize every customer interaction so they can close more deals. Designed to be a seller companion, Sales Copilot can be accessed in the tools where sellers work, whether that is Outlook, Microsoft Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales, and connects to other CRM systems like Salesforce.

Sales Copilot saves sellers time with CRM task automation, auto-generated email or meeting summaries, and more. Sellers can go from one customer meeting to the next feeling prepared, armed with AI-powered, real-time insights such as top opportunities and customer opportunity summaries. Sales Copilot also helps sellers with customer follow-up by generating AI-assisted content and recommendations, such as contextual emails based on Outlook and CRM data.

Microsoft Viva Sales, announced in June 2022, kick-started our work of transforming seller experiences, and these capabilities are now part of Sales Copilot. In our own sales organization at Microsoft, more than 10,000 sellers have been using Sales Copilot. Early results show that 85 percent of surveyed sellers report completing one or more tasks faster, and 70 percent stated that Sales Copilot helped them improve productivity.

Today, we’re also announcing new Sales Copilot capabilities. Sellers can now: 

• Get auto-generated opportunity summaries including status, progress, and highlights of key changes, inside Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Create contextual emails that utilize customer CRM data to pull in product, customer, and opportunity information, inside Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Prepare for customer meetings with a summary view including account information, recent notes, highlights of any issues or concerns, customer news, and more—in Outlook, Teams, or Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Get real-time tips and suggested answers during Teams meetings prompted by competitor or brand mentions by the customers to stay ready to handle objections.

“Opportunity summary in Microsoft Sales Copilot is a huge and important leap in our direction to save more time for our sales personnel. With this capability in the hands of our sellers, they can spend more time equipping organizations with best-in-class security solutions to help make our world a safer place.”

—Philip Eklund, Vice President of Client Engagement Platform, Securitas

“At Investec, we are very excited to see how we can leverage Microsoft Sales Copilot and AI within the Microsoft stack to connect our internal teams and to enhance our understanding further of prospective and current clients to ensure we are providing a best-in-class experience.”

—Dan Speirits, CRM Product Manager, Investec

Sales Copilot is generally available today both as a standalone subscription and included as part of customers’ existing Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium licenses at no additional cost, with the new capabilities above rolling out this month.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights: AI-powered customer insights and journeys

Delivering exceptional customer experiences is at the heart of what sellers, marketers, and customer service agents do. From building brand loyalty and generating leads to addressing customer issues and closing deals, these roles all rely on knowing the customer in the context of their journey with the brand. Yet, limitations in managing and harnessing customer data in meaningful ways, coupled with organizational silos, have prevented organizations from delivering and realizing the value of a truly connected customer journey.

To help organizations increase the speed of acting on customer insights and orchestrating personalized customer journeys, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will offer both customer data platform and customer journey orchestration capabilities as a single solution and continue investments into real-time marketing. In March, we announced content ideas, query assist, and dialogue with data—copilot capabilities for brainstorming marketing copy for email campaigns, creating new targeted marketing segments, and using natural language to infer key insights from your customer data and support better business outcomes. These copilot capabilities are available now for use, and we’re adding enhancements in the coming months to include the ability to refresh and improve existing marketing content as well as to summarize audience definitions and suggest improvements to simplify definition.

Today, we also announce two new copilot capabilities for marketers—all included in the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights subscription. The new capabilities help you:

• Easily style your email, forms, and event registration pages to perfectly match brand guidelines (as simple as using an existing website) using natural language, so you can deliver a consistent brand narrative and customer experience.
• Use natural language to easily orchestrate contextually relevant customer journeys across marketing, sales, and service, so customer actions can be responded to appropriately and quickly, generating sales leads or increasing customer satisfaction.

These new capabilities will start rolling out in preview next month. The new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offering will be generally available on September 1, 2023.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights unlocks the full potential of your customer data and elevates customer experiences with predictive real-time insights, contextual and relevant customer journeys, and built-in next-generation AI. When customers combine the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, they can create even more seamless leads-to-sales-to-retention cycles with differentiated capabilities, including these features that are available today:

• A 360-degree view of the customer profile, associated marketing interactions, and predicted customer lifetime value to guide both sellers and service agents in their customer interactions.
• Ability to surface the next best action to the sales team or service team when a lead engages with the marketing team.

“Super exciting—it’s the right move to bring together the customer data and journey capabilities into a single solution”… “this will enable our team to deliver more cohesive experiences quicker and easier.”

—Keith Perfect, Director of Technology & Intelligence, Northrop & Johnson

“At Leatherman, we are thrilled about the potential of generative AI and Microsoft Copilots to advance our business. We are beginning to realize the benefits of improved productivity, streamlined processes, and personalized customer experiences. This technology will undoubtedly propel us towards greater innovation and success.”

—Liz Lee, IT Director, Leatherman Tool Group

AIM for the future with Microsoft

Copilot is redefining productivity, efficiency, and collaboration across business workflows. However, today many businesses are challenged to access new technology innovations, like AI, to improve profitability and maintain a competitive edge because they are still operating on legacy on-premises solutions. At Microsoft, we are committed to helping customers gain access to and take advantage of AI capabilities, starting now.

So, today, we’re also announcing AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move), a brand-new program that offers a tailored path for our customers to move from on-premises to cloud-first Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications.

With AIM, customers of all sizes can accelerate their migration to the cloud to adopt AI-powered technologies starting with AIM assessments. These assessments are designed to help customers understand the business value, expected outcomes, and key steps and dependencies for moving their on-premises business applications. Customers can innovate faster to stay ahead by using the proven Success by Design methodology from Microsoft to implement Dynamics 365 and go live with confidence. Customers get expert implementation guidance and services from FastTrack and its certified partners. And finally, they’ll also be able to move with agility and scale as their business grows. AIM provides exclusive offers that help customers optimize their investments and transform the business processes in an incremental manner.

AIM is a comprehensive offering that unlocks the potential of AI-powered business systems while reducing costs, providing agility for business model innovation, and operating securely with resilience. AIM provides access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, assessments, offers, tools, and support to give customers a faster route to innovation and success.

Get started today with AIM and future-proof your business.

Looking forward to Dynamics 365 solutions

• Learn more about Microsoft Sales Copilot.
• If you are an existing Dynamics 365 Sales or Marketing or Customer Insights customer, start using the new capabilities in preview. To learn more about the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offering, read more here.
• If you are not a customer yet, learn more by watching our guided tour or signing up for a trial on our website.
• If you are a customer using ERP and CRM systems on-premises, and want to migrate to Dynamics 365 in the cloud to accelerate adoption of AI-powered technologies, get started today with AIM.

The post Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and a new cloud migration program appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Welcome to a new era in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, powered by AI. In recent years, businesses have embraced AI to automate and enhance processes from planning to forecasting. Now, generative AI is taking center stage as a game-changing technology that promises to modernize the way work gets done, driving innovation across ERP; from streamlining operations to speeding time to actionable insight.

Dynamics 365 Copilot, announced in March, takes advantage of recent advancements in generative AI to automate tedious tasks and unlock the full creativity of the workforce. In April, we shared how generative AI can be applied to key supply chain processes, and today we are introducing more AI-powered assistance across our ERP portfolio, included in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. To activate these new Copilot features within your Dynamics 365 products, work with your IT admin.

ERP systems have long been the central nervous system of modern businesses, centralizing data for better business insight from core functions like finance, HR, procurement, resourcing, and supply chains. However, traditional ERP solutions have struggled to keep pace with the dynamic nature of today’s global markets. Complex and rigid processes within ERP create more work for people, and repetitive manual data entry overwhelms departments. Dynamics 365 Copilot promises to help finance managers, collections agents, project managers, and procurement professionals complete time-consuming tasks and get insights faster.

Speed time to insight—get the most from your ERP data

Harnessing big data is even more crucial as we enter a new era defined by next-generation AI. At Microsoft Build 2023, we announced how Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Fabric work with Dataverse and our business intelligence tools to deliver actionable insights and reporting. Our upcoming extended planning and analytics solution will build on this powerful foundation to help finance managers and business analysts spend less time slicing and dicing data. With the ability to use familiar tools like Microsoft Power BI and Excel infused with Copilot capabilities, these professionals can:

• Use natural language to bring data to life by simply describing the visuals and insights that one is looking for. Copilot will help create a Microsoft Power BI dashboard or report—complete with visualizations and summaries—and help refine it. One can dig into the data further by asking questions. Copilot will find the right answer.
• Collaboratively align plans, budgets, and forecasts with business strategy.
• Streamline sales and operations planning.
• Automate financial consolidation for seamless book closing.
• Strategically close talent gaps for an empowered workforce, gain a comprehensive view of cash flow dynamics, and access highly accurate predictions through advanced predictive analytics powered by machine learning and AI.

By using these tools and technologies, finance managers can optimize their performance, allocate resources effectively, and drive better financial outcomes for their organizations.

Deliver more strategic value with intelligent automation for project managers

Project managers frequently struggle to complete projects on time and within budget. Today, we are announcing Copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 Project Operations to dramatically reduce the time spent on project status reports, task planning, and risk assessments.

With Copilot, project managers can rapidly create new project plans for new engagements in minutes, instead of hours, simply by describing details of the project using natural language. Copilot will generate a project plan that can be further refined by the project manager.

Once the project is underway, the project manager can use Copilot to create a project status report, which Copilot will help generate in moments—reducing the hours often spent manually researching and writing. To ensure project success, Copilot then can be used to identify risks and suggest mitigation plans on a continuous basis. For example, the project manager can prompt Copilot to search across all open projects to identify common project risks that can derail a project, such as significant delays or budget overruns.

With Copilot, project managers can improve efficiency, reduce risks, and focus on more strategic and value-added activities.

Supercharge productivity of collections agents and procurement professionals

Today, we are announcing Copilot capabilities that will help collections agents and procurement professionals enhance productivity and better collaborate with customers.

Timely payments and healthy cash flows are increasingly important in times of economic uncertainty. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance, collections managers have quick access to credit and payment history so they can prioritize and personalize customer communication, helping to increase successful collection rates and proactively keep customers in good standing.

Disruptions to supply chains are an everyday occurrence, and supply and demand can shift quickly. Workers like procurement professionals and buyers are tasked to sort through large volumes of purchase order change responses daily and need more intelligent and agile tools to help address and streamline this process. Order responses oftentimes require changes to ordered quantities, delivery dates, or products delivered. Today, procurement professionals must review the changes for individual orders one by one to identify the risk to plan and potential downstream impacts. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, users are able to efficiently handle changes to purchase orders at scale and assess the impact and risk to help optimize procurement decisions. 

They can quickly identify high-impact or low-impact changes and take rapid action to address any risk. Copilot enables quick collaboration with internal and external stakeholders that brings relevant information into Outlook and Teams using natural language. Users can also dig deeper with pointed questions to refine and approve changes so they can rapidly adapt their sourcing plans to meet customer and partner needs.

At Microsoft, we are fully committed to revolutionizing the future of ERP by harnessing the power of intelligent, composable technologies. With its ability to speed time to insight, intelligently automate processes, and foster productivity, Copilot can help you stay ahead in an increasingly complex business landscape. With Copilot, you’re in control as it is grounded in your business data and automatically inherits your valuable security, compliance and privacy policies, regulations, and processes. Stay tuned and join us on this exciting journey into the future of ERP.

Learn more about the latest AI breakthroughs with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot on the Dynamics 365 AI webpage or through a free trial.

Next-generation AI across Microsoft business applications

With next-generation AI, interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature.

Discover more about AI

The post Introducing next-generation AI and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities for ERP appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In an era marked by increasing interest rates, high inflation, and economic uncertainty, empowering CFOs with financial planning tools and data analytics (FP&A) has become essential. These resources aid decision-making by providing comprehensive financial analysis, forecasting, and budgeting capabilities helping organizations to consolidate and analyze financial data, and create accurate financial models. At Microsoft, we are dedicated to delivering advanced FP&A solutions that seamlessly integrate innovative new features with traditional capabilities, empowering CFOs with impactful tools tailored for the modern era. Our objective is to usher in a new generation of planning capabilities for CFOs by unifying data across business processes, delivering near real-time insights to anticipate the future, and using the latest advancements in AI and natural language processing to provide a solution that goes beyond traditional FP&A solutions and redefining how finance operates.

Today, we are thrilled to announce significant strides toward realizing this vision. Microsoft is introducing a fully developed, customer-ready extended planning and analytics solution (xP&A). Our solution will provide Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance customers with user-friendly and rapidly deployable modern xP&A capabilities. Empowered by our new solution, organizations can continuously plan, looking across the enterprise at timely operational and financial data with AI-assisted insights providing critical strategic direction to accelerate innovation and guide their businesses toward sustainable success.

Dynamics 365 Finance

Enhance your financial decision making

Explore Finance

Outdated and overly complex solutions hinder finance’s strategic execution

Over the past decade, CFOs have reaped the benefits of various FP&A tools offering invaluable support. However, these tools inherently possess limitations that impede their ability to meet the strategic demands of modern CFOs. Challenges such as integration complexities, restricted data sets, and infrequent data updates severely curtail their effectiveness, rendering agile planning difficult if attainable. Their implementation tends to be sluggish and costly, demanding advanced skill sets to derive actionable insights. Moreover, their inflexibility and reliance on rigid user interfaces constrain customization possibilities and do not cater to specialized customer requirements. Lastly, these tools, in their present state, often lack advanced analytics and AI capabilities to better predict and model scenarios to anticipate future needs.

Equipping Finance with the planning tools of the future

To address these challenges, our xP&A solution will utilize advancements across the Microsoft product portfolio. It seamlessly integrates access to unified, near real-time data innovations powered by the business performance analytics capabilities within Dynamics 365 Finance and incorporates automated insights obtained through recent acquisitions in critical business domains, such as AI-driven spend analytics and process mining. Additionally, our solution includes the latest advancements in natural language processing, enabling interactive and embedded AI experiences that actively guide finance and operations leaders toward better decisions. This unique combination of technologies positions Dynamics 365 Finance as a disruptive force in ERP (enterprise resource planning) and the opportunity to lead in the financial planning and analytics category. By embracing our solution, finance teams can confidently navigate the era of AI and may experience significant growth.

Traditional FP&A solutions with the innovation needed for success

While our xP&A solution aims to be visionary, we acknowledge the importance of meeting the foundational expectations established by industry-standard FP&A tools. In addition to offering these essential capabilities, our new xP&A solution provides access to a diverse range of customizable use cases and templates designed to address various financial requirements, facilitate a quick start for customers, and enable fast deployment.

Whether teams require support for budgeting and forecasting, sales and operations planning, cash flow forecasting, financial close, or workforce planning, our solution delivers proven workflows that are highly adaptable. Our solution prioritizes critical modern capabilities that are top of mind for today’s CFOs, such as predictive forecasting, zero-based budgeting, what-if analysis, and uncovering hidden drivers with AI-powered insights.

Dynamics 365 Finance xP&A capabilities go beyond traditional finance processes by extending the scope of data to encompass cross-domain datasets, including supply chain, human resources, sales, and more. This holistic approach supplies a comprehensive view of operational performance, empowering informed decision-making.

Familiar user experiences and the power of Microsoft Cloud

Most importantly, our xP&A solution provides customers with a familiar and user-friendly environment, delivered through the well-known and easily customizable experiences of Power BI and Excel. These applications have become ubiquitous among Finance users as their go-to analytics environment for daily work. Our solution allows them to seamlessly work within their preferred experiences without extracting and transforming data from their ERP. Gone are the days when finance teams were confined to rigid and outdated user experiences in traditional ERPs. With our solution, finance teams can fully embrace innovation from dedicated product teams while enjoying the familiarity and efficiency of the tools they have relied on for decades.

Finally, backed by the full power of the Microsoft Cloud and data platform, our xP&A solution will use innovations across the Microsoft portfolio. With robust collaboration capabilities embedded into Microsoft Teams and recently announced Dynamics 365 Copilot natural language processing functionality to deliver interactive insights embedded into the flow of work so users of all skill levels can securely access, share, and collaborate with timely data within the same tools they already rely on daily.

A new era of planning capabilities for the CFO

Today’s announcement of extended planning and analytics (xP&A) for Dynamics 365 Finance represents a significant advancement in providing CFOs with AI-driven financial planning tools and data analytics capabilities. Imagine a world where finance teams can engage with embedded natural language processing models in planning tools, enabling them to initiate what-if scenario planning iterations by asking critical questions and modeling their impacts. This empowers finance teams to anticipate and adjust for various outcomes proactively.

For instance, what if Finance users could prompt Dynamics 365 Copilot by asking questions like, “What is the predicted growth rate for product A and B?” These predictions are then seamlessly integrated into planning models, generating detailed scenarios that offer valuable insights into how the growth of specific products may influence staffing needs, revenue, and margins.

To address modern economic challenges, a new age of sophisticated planning and analytical tools is essential for CFOs to anticipate risk, drive innovation, and guide their businesses toward short-term and long-term success. With Dynamics 365 Finance, CFOs now have the tools to address these challenges and keep their organizations strong for the future.

Learn more

Begin your AI journey today! Learn more about Dynamics 365 Finance or watch the Manage Financial Risk Guided Tour.

The post Introducing extended planning and analytics for Dynamics 365 Finance appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Resiliency for retailers might best be understood by thinking about the delight consumers feel when they order that specific, thoughtful gift online for the holidays or when they come across the perfect gift while shopping at a store. To be successful with consumers in these moments, retailers must have the right products in stock at the right time and deliver them quickly and cost-effectively. This is what resiliency for retailers looks like, but how do you build resiliency into your supply chain?

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Reduce supply and demand mismatches by running simulations using AI and real-time, advanced analytics.

Try the preview

McKinsey & Company found that 75 percent of consumer packaged goods (CPG) supply chain leaders prioritize supply chain digitalization, suggesting that resiliency through digitalization is one strategy that retailers are exploring.¹ At Microsoft, we believe the path to retail resiliency lies in three interconnected capabilities: connectivity, agility, and sustainability, which we showcase solutions around at this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) exposition in New York City.

Connectivity

True end-to-end visibility requires a platform capable of connecting and harmonizing data from new and existing sources. According to research commissioned by Microsoft from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 97 percent of executives agree that having a resilient supply chain positively impacts a company’s bottom line.² The same study found that most organizations’ digital infrastructure is composed of a mix of modern and legacy apps, with only 11 percent using a single integrated platform of modern, best-in-class applications.³ This makes any solutions’ connectivity a critical factor in building resilience and agility.

One merchant that is enjoying the benefits of connectivity and visibility is iFIT. iFIT is a leading health and fitness platform that markets several home exercise equipment brands. Recently, iFIT adopted the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform to bring together its systems and data. With this integrated, centralized view, iFIT can reduce the manual effort and guesswork involved in strategically placing inventory in its more than 40 forward-stocking locations. Utilizing built-in AI capabilities, iFIT increased efficiency from 30 to 75 percent on their forward stock inventory resulting in faster delivery times––reduced from a two-week window to two days––and increased customer delight.

Extensible systems increase connectivity, too, such as the ability to leverage highly functional micro-services like the Inventory Visibility Add-in for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Users can enable the Inventory Visibility service free of charge to gain a real-time, global view of on-hand inventory and tracking across all data sources and channels. Additionally, the Inventory Visibility service allows users to avoid overselling by making real-time soft reservations and using the allocation feature to ring-fence valuable on-hand stock for essential customers or channels.

Learn more with the Inventory Visibility Add-in overview.

Another dimension of connectivity is collaboration. Dynamics 365 and Supply Chain Center include Microsoft Teams built-in, unleashing the power of collaborative applications for users, making all your business processes and applications multiplayer. With collaborative applications, team members can connect in real time, surface and act on insights from unified data, and swarm around supply chain issues to mitigate disruptions before they impact customers.

Connected systems and data create the visibility supply chains need to sense risks and illuminate opportunities––the necessary precursors to agility, which we look at next.

Agility

To enable agility, supply chain software needs to increase visibility across data sources, predict and mitigate disruptions, streamline collaboration, and fulfill orders––sustainably and securely. In short, companies need to understand the entire supply chain network. By connecting disparate systems and harmonizing data across the supply chain, companies gain a more comprehensive understanding of supply and demand. With Supply Chain Center, retailers can connect and harmonize data and generate supply and demand insights using AI to uncover patterns and projections based on historical and real-time inventory and order volumes.

One company using Supply Chain Center to build a more agile supply chain is Northern Tool + Equipment, a manufacturing and omnichannel retailer with 130 stores across the United States. Northern Tool + Equipment’s fragmented supply chain technology infrastructure had pushed lead times for the 100,000 items in its product catalog to four to seven days. In addition, many of the company’s products are very large, like generators and air compressors. The sheer size of these items brings further complexity to the challenge of optimizing shipping routes for cost and sustainability. Similarly, Northern Tool + Equipment struggled to provide firm delivery dates for online and in-store product orders. For a business that serves people who do tough jobs and rely on their tools for their livelihood, being competitive means offering delivery in one to three days and providing accurate delivery times.

Northern Tool + Equipment partnered with Microsoft to overcome these challenges with an end-to-end supply chain solution. The selection of Supply Chain Center meant that Northern Tool + Equipment could immediately begin to rationalize and connect every node of its supply chain with a solution designed to create a more resilient and sustainable supply chain through an open, flexible, collaborative, and secured platform. The result? Northern Tool + Equipment can provide customers with a committed delivery date and shipping costs while also ensuring one-day to two-day delivery within a specific proximity of its stores.

A significant factor in Northern Tool + Equipment’s lead time improvement is its use of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management capabilities, which allows organizations to connect and orchestrate order fulfillment across different platforms and apps. But Supply Chain Center has an assortment of capabilities to serve other retailers on the agility journey.

One such capability is the Supply Chain Center news module, which gathers information about world events and presents articles relevant to your business and supply chain. How can this feature be a functional building block of agility?

Let’s consider an example of a retailer selling portable air conditioners. Using the news module, the retailer could receive a news alert that a specific geography is forecasted to have the hottest summer on record. This would likely increase the expected seasonal demand for the product in the affected region. The retailer could capitalize on this intelligence by increasing their forecast during the planning process so that they can be prepared to quickly shift inventory to ensure coverage. 

In addition, Supply Chain Center connects with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which gives retailers access to advanced warehouse management functionality, such as warehouse automation by integrating with partners like inVia Robotics. It also gives retailers the ability to set up pop-up warehouses in a matter of days in six easy steps. Continuing the example above, our portable air conditioner retailer might utilize the supply chain planning functionality and learn that they have insufficient warehouse capacity to meet the seasonal demand increases. In this case, they could use Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to open a new warehouse in a matter of days by utilizing wizards and templates and quickly deploying the mobile app. Similarly, the retailer could then improve warehouse productivity with InVia Robotics by leveraging robots to do the heavy lifting and traveling across the warehouse, freeing up workers to do the more complex task of sorting and packing. The value of these systems is getting the attention of organizations and analyst firms. Gartner® predicts that by 2026, 75 percent of large enterprises will have adopted some form of intralogistics smart robots in their warehouse operations.⁴

Sustainability, circular economies

In a recent survey, 46 percent of individuals who purchased products online said the most important thing they want brands to do is be socially responsible.⁵ This fact helps explain why 53 percent of organizations plan to increase their focus on sustainable sourcing in 2023.⁶ While there are several dimensions of social responsibility, sustainability is the most relevant to retail supply chain leadership. For retail supply chains, this can be challenging.

For retailers to lead not just the industry but to exceed consumers’ expectations for social responsibility, another challenge beckons—the utilization of circular economies. Even leaders in the EU, who successfully decreased material use by 9 percent and increased products derived from recycled waste by 50 percent,⁷ understand that while their progress is impressive, growth of circular economies is still limited compared to their actual material footprint. Still, the incentive for retailers, beyond the value of doing the right thing, is significant. One survey by Statista expects worldwide revenue of circular economy transactions to more than double from 2022 to 2026, growing from $338 billion to $712 billion.⁸

One way that Microsoft is helping brands meet the challenge is with built-in sustainability features for suppliers. One example is the FedEx integration with Intelligent Order Management––which is included in Supply Chain Center. The FedEx integration allows users to offer boxless returns to their customers by leveraging environmentally friendly QR codes to return items at more than 60,000 retail FedEx locations. Plus, retailers can utilize the self-service return functionality of the FedEx integration to easily manage all returns with complete visibility of every step in an item’s return to the warehouse.

Learn how FedEx and Dynamics 365 reimagine commerce experiences.

What’s next?

As we have seen here, the path to retail resilience in today’s competitive environment revolves around connectivity, agility, and sustainability. Brands should address disruptions and challenges with solutions that can exceed customer expectations, drive profitability, and improve sustainability.

Ready to see how Supply Chain Center can help your business on the path to retail resiliency? Watch our Supply Chain Management guided tour and sign up for a free 180-day trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center (preview).

For a look back at NRF 2022, check out our previous blog: Dynamics 365 helps build the retail supply chain of the future. And take a look at the following posts to learn more about NRF 2023:

• Transform retail customer experiences with the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform
• Resilient Retail
• How Microsoft Teams empowers your retail workers to do more with less

Sources

¹McKinsey & Company, 2022. How consumer-packaged-goods companies can drive resilient growth.

²Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2022. A Supply Chain Built for Competitive Advantage.

³Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2022. A Supply Chain Built for Competitive Advantage.

⁴ Gartner, 2022. Gartner Predicts the Future of Supply Chain Technology. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved

⁵GWI, 2022. GWI USA.

⁶KPMG, 2022. The supply chain trends shaking up 2023.

⁷The World Bank, 2022. World Bank Releases Its First Report on the Circular Economy in the EU, Says Decoupling Growth From Resource Use in Europe Achievable Within Decade.

⁸Statista, 2022. Estimated revenue generated from circular economy transactions in 2022 and 2026 worldwide.

The post The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform enables resiliency for retailers appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.