Harnessing the power of AI in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

In the era of digital transformation, harnessing the power of AI is becoming vital for business operations. One groundbreaking solution is Copilot for Dynamics 365, an AI-powered tool designed to revolutionize operations across various business domains such as sales, support, supply chain management, finance, and marketing. In this blog, we delve into the main features and benefits of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations applications and how it streamlines processes, enhances decision-making, and simplifies traditional tasks through generative AI capabilities.

Copilot for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations applications, which comprises of Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, is an innovative AI-powered tool designed to boost productivity across various business segments. Copilot’s seamless integration with Outlook and Teams aids in efficient data management, while its generative AI capabilities enable quick record summarization and email content generation.

In Dynamics 365 Finance, Copilot boosts productivity for collections managers by providing AI-generated summaries of customers’ accounts, overdue invoices, and payment history, thereby aiding in prioritization and effective customer communication. In Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Copilot proactively identifies potential external issues impacting key processes, offers predictive insights on impacted orders, and aids in drafting emails to alert partners, leading to a resilient and efficient operation. All these functionalities together make Copilot an important toolset for ensuring effective business operations.

Integrating Copilot’s AI into Dynamics 365 Finance revolutionizes collections management and administrative tasks. It allows for smart prioritization of customers, personalized communication, and time-efficient operations by utilizing AI-generated data. Additionally, it simplifies administrative management, improving both collection rates and business operations, ensuring a competitive edge.

Copilot’s collections workspace timeline summary

The AI-powered Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance introduces an immediate, comprehensive summary within the new collections coordinator workspace. The collections workspace timeline summary drastically streamlines the collections process by providing instant, critical information to collections coordinators and agents. Developed with Microsoft Azure OpenAI’s large language model, this feature aids in improving cash flow by enabling more timely payments and provide agents with all necessary information on a single page including credit rating, payment history, and communication history.

The benefits include:

• Quick access to customer account information such as credit and payment history
• AI-crafted emails for increased efficiency in customer communication that you can edit and send to your customers
• Prioritization of customers who need attention through AI-enabled customer account analysis
• Enhanced decision-making regarding customers

Administrative tasks, data, and report management with AI

Traditional administrative tasks, data gathering, and report writing can be time-consuming, error-prone, and inconsistent. Copilot in D365 Finance benefits teams with the ability to use conversational language to automate and complete tasks. These range from managing security, searching for data within the system, and even creating and managing reports, making administrative tasks, data gathering, and report writing less error-prone, consistent, and less time-consuming.

This new Copilot functionality provides:

• Significant time saving
• Ensured accuracy and consistency
• Lower costs, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks and strategic planning
• A competitive edge in efficiency, cost-saving, and strategic advantage
• A reduction in the cognitive load on employees

Designed to augment productivity, Copilot for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management delivers AI-enabled assistance directly within the application context, promoting efficient supply chain management. Additionally, Copilot empowers procurement specialists with the ability to make effective purchasing decisions.

Inventory management with AI-enhanced insights

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management gives users easy access to crucial information to make informed inventory decisions. With this feature, users will be able to search omnichannel inventory stock levels using natural language chat for an on-hand inventory search. This feature not only reduces time and effort by eliminating the need to remember specific details or navigation paths, but also makes the process more user-friendly and efficient.

Key benefits and applications of these inventory management features include:

• Inventory querying: Users can use natural language to inquire about inventory stock levels just like chatting with a colleague. As simple as typing “Find all the 18-inch tires in my store,” without needing to recall exact specifications or navigation paths.
• Inquiry inventory: Offers a guided conversational experience for quickly identifying the best available products for order inquiries. This functionality helps sales managers to stay focused on customer communication and sales.
• Third-party integration: The natural language search APIs for Inventory Visibility can integrate with third-party e-commerce apps or websites. Customers can use this to build chat functions that facilitate product search, availability checks, and viewing of alternative options on third-party platforms.

Streamlining procurement decisions with Copilot in D365 Supply Chain Management

During procurement planning, any changes that are made to confirmed purchase orders can have a significant impact on downstream processes such as planned production, service work, or sales orders.  Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management revolutionizes the way purchasing decisions in the system are made. It helps users navigate large-scale purchase order changes efficiently and evaluate their impact on downstream processes, enhancing procurement decision-making.

Key features of Copilot’s procurement support include:

• AI-driven procurement management – Copilot summarizes purchase order changes as they arrive in responses from vendors. It helps make purchase order changes easier to overview and manage by providing a conversational interface to help users organize and filter changes in procure-to-pay processes
• Downstream impact overview – Copilot summarizes the downstream impact of purchase order changes, providing an at-a-glance understanding of potential delays in sales, production, and maintenance work orders.

Exploring additional AI-driven features in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Microsoft’s latest Copilot features for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management promise a significant boost to productivity, enhanced communication within supply chain and cross-functional teams, and proactive disruption mitigation.

• Proactive disruption management: The enhanced capability makes it possible to proactively identify and mitigate potential disruptions. This will augment workflow automation, as well as improving the overall user experience.
• In-flow work enhancements: Copilot offers conversational help within the regular workflow. This eliminates the need to swap between multiple tabs or leave the workspace for pertinent insights.
• AI and Machine Learning based forecasts: The new demand planning features allow organizations to predict potential demand employing AI and machine learning models. These models can integrate data from a host of external sources, providing a comprehensive forecast. Users can tailor the forecast inputs to their specific needs, thereby fine-tuning the algorithms and parameters to align with their business scenarios.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations signifies a groundbreaking integration of AI in finance, operations, and supply chain management, streamlining processes, and optimizing productivity. Embracing Copilot for Dynamics 365 F&O is a strategic step forward towards a more efficient, resilient, and data-driven organization. To learn more about AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, or to optimize your system, contact Rand Group today.