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

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

The Future of Finance

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

Watch the webinar

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

5 ways accounts payable automation elevates finance operations

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

1. Focus on strategy—not tedious data tasks

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

2. Reign in costs and unnecessary fees

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

3. Stop small errors from becoming big problems

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

4. Get to know your vendors

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

5. Gain more visibility

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

When should you automate accounts payable?

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

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

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

How Dynamics 365 Finance modernizes accounts payable operations

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

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

Introduction

Companies seek efficiency in their customer engagement activities. Front office salespeople, traveling sales representatives, account managers, and others need to engage efficiently with customers while using Dynamics 365 Sales without spending time to ensure that data flows efficiently between their front-office work environment and the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management back-office environment. True end-to-end process integration must work seamlessly across applications, using an integrated process flow from quotation to invoice, to help businesses drive efficiencies in their sales and fulfilment processes, improve accuracy, and reduce lead times.

We are excited to announce the general availability of a set of new features and capabilities that will enhance the efficiency of the prospect-to-cash integration between Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. These additions to the prospect-to-cash integration aim to improve efficiency and cover several new features in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 10.0.34, as well as a new Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203.

This new feature set enables businesses to achieve true end-to-end process support and unlock various benefits. In this blog post, we will briefly showcase and explain the advantages that companies can gain by leveraging this feature set in an integrated scenario between Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Integrate Sales Quotation Lifecycle

Sales quotations can be created and processed throughout their lifecycle in both Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 SCM. It is crucial that when a sales quotation is processed in one application, it is accurately reflected in the other application. Let’s consider a scenario where Dynamics 365 Sales serves as the CRM application. Salespeople utilize Dynamics 365 Sales to create, edit, collaborate on, and communicate sales quotations with customers. From a back-office perspective, it is essential for these sales quotations to be visible in Dynamics 365 SCM. This visibility allows for insights into expected demand, supporting back-office supply planning.

Furthermore, it is equally important for these sales quotations to be accessible in Dynamics 365 SCM to enable collaboration between back-office staff and front-office salespeople. This collaboration enhances sales quotations by incorporating necessary information that only back-office staff possess insights into. Lastly, but certainly not least, it is critical that when a sales quotation is activated and communicated to the customer by the front-office, this event triggers the appropriate quotation update in Dynamics 365 SCM.

With our new feature set, we now allow for such an integrated scenario with fewer touch points, better efficiency, and improved transparency.

Key benefits of this feature include:

End-to-end quotation lifecycle integration:

The sales quotation process can be initiated in either Dynamics 365 Sales or Dynamics 365 SCM and completed in either application, ensuring that changes and lifecycle updates seamlessly flow between both applications. This eliminates the need for manual duplication of sales quotation data and processing.

Unambiguous and transparent quotation lifecycle processing:

With the introduction of new concepts of origin and ownership, it is always clear and transparent which application is responsible for processing the sales quotation. This eliminates human errors in the quotation process.

Reduced cost of ownership:

The end-to-end lifecycle integration is supported without the need for customizations, resulting in reduced costs of ownership.

The integrated sales quotation lifecycle is supported by Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203 and the following Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34 features: Integrate Sales Quotation lifecycle with Dynamics 365 Sales, Copy Supply Chain Management sales quotation data to sales orders synced from Dynamics 365 Sales, Set default ownership for sales quotations when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales.

To learn more about these features, follow the link:

Add efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Integrate Pricing

Before the release of Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203, in conjunction with Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34, the recommended method for integrating pricing between the two applications was to configure Dynamics 365 Sales to utilize the system price calculation. This setup, coupled with the synchronization of totals and subtotals from Dynamics 365 SCM to Dynamics 365 Sales, along with the utilization of price quote and price order actions in Dynamics 365 Sales, as well as the implementation of manual discounts in Dynamics 365 Sales, could lead to a loss of transparency. This lack of transparency pertains to identifying which application controls and calculates the monetary values associated with sales quotations and sales orders, including prices, discounts, subtotals, and totals.

In Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34, we introduce two features to simplify and enhance transparency in calculations related to price, discount, subtotal, and total when integrating with Dynamics 365 Sales. The first feature is to designate Supply Chain Management as the price master when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales. The second feature enables the calculation and pushing of prices, discounts, and totals specifically for selective sales orders and sales quotations when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales.

Key benefits of these features include:

• Calculations for extended amounts, summary amounts, subtotals, and totals for sales quotations and sales orders are not performed in Dynamics 365 Sales; All calculated monetary fields are calculated in and synchronized from Supply Chain Management.
• Front-office salespeople can now, if authorized, manually apply a discount from Dynamics 365 Sales which is fully integrated with discounts in Dynamics 365 SCM.
• Back-office staff can now calculate and push, whenever needed, all price and discount related updates for one or more sales quotation and sales orders from Dynamics 365 SCM to Dynamics 365 Sales.

To learn more about these features, follow the link: 

Work with added efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Asynchronous or synchronous processing of events

Front-office salespeople using Dynamics 365 Sales need to work efficiently on quotations and sales orders without unnecessary wait times. They also need to maintain efficiency when Dynamics 365 Sales is integrated with Dynamics 365 SCM. The same applies to back-office staff working on quotations and sales orders in Dynamics 365 SCM. Achieving a smooth user experience and efficiency in these tasks heavily relies on asynchronous processing of events.

Asynchronous processing of Sales-integrated events allows events to be processed asynchronously in Dynamics 365 SCM using the message processor framework. This approach significantly enhances the user experience and performance of sales order and sales quotation integration in various use cases.

• Front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales activates a quotation. This event will update the Sales Quotation in Dynamics 365 SCM to Sent and create a quotation journal.
• Front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales creates an order from a sales quotation won. This event will update the Sales Quotation in Dynamics 365 SCM to Won, create a quotation confirmation journal, link the resulting sales order with the sales quotation, and, if setup, copy sales quotation data from the Dynamics 365 SCM sales quotation to the Dynamics 365 SCM sales order, and synchronize the changes to the sales order in Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Back-office staff in Dynamics 365 SCM recalculates and pushes prices and totals for one or more sales quotations and sales orders to Dynamics 365 Sales

Key benefits of this feature include:

• The user experience of front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales will not be impacted any additional time it may take to process integration related events.
• Companies can flexibly decide which events to be processed synchronously and which to be processed asynchronously to provide the optimum user experience.
• Improved system performance which will have a positive impact on user experience in both applications.

To learn more about this feature and Supply Chain at Microsoft, click below:

Feature Insights:

Work with added efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Supply Chain at Microsoft

Take a tour – Supply Chain Management | Microsoft Dynamics 365

We’re excited to launch Free Trial | Microsoft Supply Chain Center Preview ,  which harnesses generative AI to assist Supply Chain managers in real-time communication with suppliers regarding specific news

The post Boosting Productivity: Unleashing the Power of Dynamics 365 for Prospect-to-Cash Efficiency appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In this blog post, we will show you how to get started on your journey with generative AI for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Microsoft’s unique partnership with OpenAI allows us to bring the innovative power of large-scale language models (LLM) to the Business Central ecosystem in a unique, complete, and responsible way. Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service provides access to OpenAI’s advanced models such as GPT-4, GPT-3, Codex, and DALL-E with the security and enterprise features of Azure. 

Over the last few months, we’ve listened to many community ideas on how generative AI can enrich existing features, or deliver entirely new customer value, and the follow-up question is always the same: how do I get started with AI in AL and Visual Studio Code? We’ve collected a few tips, including sample code, to make it easy for you to start exploring Azure OpenAI and share your learnings with the community. 

New to generative AI? 

We appreciate that there is much to learn about this new and exciting technology. If you’re new to this branch of machine learning and Azure OpenAI, these links are a great introduction to understand the basics. 

• Watch the inspiring video: AI at Microsoft Build 2023 

• Learn how other customers are using Azure AI 

• Understand and compare Azure OpenAI and OpenAI 

• Work through Introduction to Azure OpenAI Service training module 

• Explore key Responsible AI guidelines and principles at https://aka.ms/RAI 

How to get started with your AL code 

We’ve shared some sample code as an extension that enables you to explore the possibilities of LLM. This code is designed to simplify the process of setting up and running LLM experiments, starting with easily configuring and testing your connection to the Azure OpenAI service. After that, you can extend your AL logic to do more exciting things with this code. 

The sample code uses Azure OpenAI to suggest an item category based on the item description field. 

The extension’s source code is available at the Business Central BCTech repository on GitHub. You can get to it directly at https://aka.ms/BCStartCodingWithAI. You can either download or install the sample extension to your sandbox environment or clone the source code for your own projects. 

How to get an Azure OpenAI key 

To use Azure OpenAI Service, you need to have an Azure subscription and apply for access to the service. Azure OpenAI is generally available with a limited access policy to promote responsible use and limit the impact of high-risk use cases. Once you apply and are approved, you will receive an email with instructions on how to create an Azure OpenAI resource and get your API key. 

How to use the Azure OpenAI playground 

Azure AI Studio offers an Azure OpenAI playground: a web-based interface that allows you to explore the capabilities of generative AI models and try them out with your own prompts and data. You can access the playground from the Azure portal or from this link: Azure OpenAI Studio. 

If you’re not a developer but have played around with ChatGPT or similar, you will find the playground to be a convenient place to experiment and assess whether ChatGPT is a suitable tool to solve the problem at hand. It’s perfect for product managers, designers and consultants looking to get their feet wet without having to write code or without having to build a deep understanding of the underlying technology. 

And if you’re ready to dive into the more technical side of things, the playground lets you choose a model, a scenario, and a few shot learning examples to generate outputs. You can also modify the parameters such as temperature, top-p, frequency penalty, and presence penalty to control the randomness and diversity of the outputs.  

How to get started with prompt engineering 

Prompt engineering is the art of crafting effective inputs for generative models to produce desired outputs. Prompt engineering involves understanding the model’s capabilities and limitations, choosing the right format and tone for the input, providing relevant examples and instructions, and evaluating the output quality and reliability. Prompt engineering is a crucial skill for using Azure OpenAI Service effectively and responsibly. Here are some short links that can help you learn more about prompt engineering: 

• Read the guide on how to design prompts for Azure Open AI Service 

• Browse the collection of example prompts and outputs for various scenarios and models 

• Put responsible AI to practice with Azure Open AI Service 

Join the conversation  

While Microsoft is hard at work bringing more generative AI to Business Central, we hope that these simple tips will get you started on your AI journey with Azure OpenAI. The product team is eager to hear your feedback on how we can support your use cases and help you design, build, and deliver AI solutions quickly and responsibly in the AI era: community partners are invited to join us at the Copilot and AI Innovation group on our Yammer partner community network. And if you’re looking for inspiration on how to enrich your features with generative AI, check out our 30 minute video where we present the details around our first generative AI feature in Business Central: Marketing Text Suggestions. 

Happy experimenting! 

The post Get started with developing generative AI features for Dynamics 365 Business Central  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

 
Microsoft is delighted to announce that the new Dynamics 365 Community is now live, marking a significant milestone in our journey of empowering users, fostering collaboration, and driving innovation. 

With its fresh new look, streamlined experience, and a suite of powerful features, the new Dynamics 365 Community sets a new standard for user engagement and knowledge sharing. We have listened to your feedback, studied your needs, and made significant enhancements to ensure a seamless and immersive experience. Our aim is to create a platform that not only meets your present requirements but also inspires you to explore new possibilities and accelerate your success. 

Here are the highlights of some of the new and future features of our new community: 

1.  Enhanced User Experience: Navigate through the community effortlessly and find the answers you need quickly. With intuitive search functionality, personalized recommendations, and a modern interface, your journey within the community has never been smoother. 
2.  Achievements Elements: Get ready for a fun and rewarding experience! Engage in community activities, earn badges, and unlock new levels as you contribute and grow. We believe that recognizing your valuable contributions is vital to building a thriving community.
3.  AI-Powered Assistance: Our AI-assisted moderation ensures a safe and inclusive environment for all community members. By leveraging intelligent algorithms, we can maintain the quality and relevance of discussions while fostering a sense of belonging and respect.  

This is just the beginning of an incredible journey! We are committed to continuous improvement and will be rolling out regular updates and new features to address your evolving needs. Your feedback and suggestions are invaluable to us, and we encourage you to share your thoughts to help shape the future of the Dynamics 365 Community. 

As we embark on this exciting chapter together, we are excited to see the positive impact that this community will have on your professional growth, collaboration, and innovation. The Dynamics 365 Community is more than just a platform; it’s a catalyst for driving positive change in the world of business applications. 

Microsoft would like to express our sincere gratitude to our incredible community members, MVPs, and User Group leaders who have played an instrumental role in shaping the Dynamics 365 Community. Your passion, expertise, and dedication continue to inspire us as we strive to create an inclusive and thriving ecosystem. 

Thank you for being a part of this remarkable community. We invite you to explore the new Dynamics 365 Community at http://community.dynamics.com/ and embark on a journey of learning, collaboration, and success. Together, let’s unleash the full potential of Dynamics 365 and shape the future of business applications. 
 
Take a look for yourself! Experience it today: New Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community 

The post Introducing the New Dynamics 365 Community – A Catalyst for Collaboration and Innovation  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited to introduce support for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service across multiple geographic regions, or cross-geo support. During the past few months, we successfully rolled out Copilot features to customers in the United States. Following this momentum, we are now extending the power of this cutting-edge technology to customers outside of the United States. Now regions across the globe can enhance their customer service operations with ground-breaking generative AI. 

Copilot leverages the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to provide an intelligent assistant for customer service agents. With Copilot, agents can resolve customer issues faster, automate routine tasks, and boost productivity. In general, tasks that can take minutes or hours are ready for agents to review and complete at the click of a button. This transformative technology enables agents to handle customer inquiries with greater accuracy and speed. Consequently, contact centers attain higher customer satisfaction rates and operational efficiency. 

Customers outside the United States can now experience the transformative power of Copilot in their contact centers through a simple opt-in process. 

To start using Copilot, customers outside of the United States can request access to the limited preview by emailing d365_csaipreview@microsoft.com. Once you have access, our team will guide you through the process and help you unlock this powerful feature for your contact center. 

We invite you to be a part of this transformative journey. With Copilot capabilities, you can revolutionize your customer service operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Try the preview and unlock the true potential of Copilot today. 

AI solutions built responsibly

Enterprise grade data privacy at its core. Azure OpenAI offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Copilot is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection.  

Responsible AI by design. We are committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.  

Learn more about cross-geo support for Copilot

Watch a video to learn how copilot AI searches company knowledge sources and generates optimized responses in a single click. 

Read the documentation:  

• Supported regions and languages, and service limits for analytics and insights | Microsoft Learn 
• Copilot data movement across geographies | Microsoft Learn 
• Transparency note for Copilot data security and privacy in Microsoft Power Platform – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

The post Take Customer Service to new heights with cross-geo support for Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Busy sales account managers prioritize their activities by mining information from their accounts. But manually making sense of all that unstructured data takes time and can lead to inaccurate assumptions. They can end up focusing on the wrong activities, which results in a lower impact on business outcomes. The most productive and successful account managers are the ones who focus on the right customers with the right priority. Dynamics 365 Sales account-based seller insights can help.

Account-based seller insights help drive priorities

Account-based seller insights help you set priorities and formulate the best engagement plan for your customers. These are automated, actionable insights that are derived from multiple sources of unstructured data and presented to you in the right context. For instance, you might be shown an upsell insight for an account based on past won opportunities for similar accounts, along with guidance on the next best action to take. Seller insights help you proactively manage the customer journey, from the first engagement to the final sale. 

Behind the scenes with seller insights

Account-based seller insights can be generated in three ways:

• Bring your own model. Use your own AI model, trained on your data, to generate insights, and work with them in the Dynamics 365 sales accelerator.
• Use out-of-the-box models. The account-based seller insights solution comes with its own models, which mine the data in Dynamics 365 Sales to generate insights.
• Build a back-end rule framework. You can build your own rule framework that uses Power Automate flows to generate insights when certain conditions are met. 

How seller insights boost productivity

How can seller insights help you be a more effective sales account manager? Let’s look.

Insight list and actions

First, you get curated insights for all your accounts:  

• You only see insights that are relevant to you, not your team members. 
• The insights have expiration dates so that you know the information is fresh and relevant. 
• You can see the reasons an insight appears in the list. 

And after you acknowledge an insight, you’re guided through the next best steps to act on it, optimizing the sales workflow for better results. You can also collaborate with team members while you’re working on your insights. 

Insight assignment and distribution

Second, although your insights are curated, that doesn’t mean they’re siloed. Insights are assigned to the account owner. If the owner of an entity is a team, an insight can be automatically assigned to the appropriate salesperson on the team, based on role, through the flexible rule framework. Ownership can be transferred from one seller to another, and multiple sellers can work on a single insight. 

Insight action history

Finally, you can find all the insights that have been generated for an account on the account’s Insights tab. The list includes status, type, due date, and other helpful information. Filter and sort it to focus on what’s most important. You can easily identify all seller activities for the insights on the timeline view of the account.

By helping you identify your most important and profitable accounts, understand their needs and preferences, tailor your messages and offers, and nurture long-term relationships with them, account-based seller insights can lead to higher revenues, shorter sales cycles, and better customer satisfaction.

Next steps

To get started with seller insights:

• If you’re a sales account manager or seller, read the user documentation.
• If you’re a Dynamics 365 Sales admin, read the administrator documentation.

Not a Dynamics 365 Sales customer yet? Take a guided tour and sign up for a free trial. 

The post Account-based seller insights improve sales account manager effectiveness  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.