The Future of Finance is Autonomous: Dynamics 365, AI, and Low-Code Innovation
- Charlie West
- Oct 1
- 9 min read
Agentic Finance
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, commonly still referred to as Finance & Operations (F&O), provides the technology infrastructure for organizational stability and growth. Upcoming releases of Dynamics 365 Finance include embedded Copilot AI and Microsoft Power Platform capabilities, enabling organizations to automate routine work, gain predictive insights, and rapidly adapt processes.
Organizations incorporating AI into their Dynamics 365 environment are becoming more efficient, data-driven, and agile. These tangible business benefits will continue to grow as the platform makes AI tools more innate.
This post provides an overview of what’s new in Dynamics 365 F&O as of 2025 and how these innovations (especially Copilot AI and Power Platform) are transforming operations across industries like manufacturing, retail, financial services, and supply chain.
New Features and Updates in Dynamics 365 Finance (2025 and Beyond)
Recent release waves for Dynamics 365 F&O introduce numerous features that enhance automation, intelligence, and integration:
Copilot-First Enhancements: Dynamics 365 Finance is now designed with a “Copilot-first” experience, embedding AI assistants (Copilot) throughout the system. Users get AI-powered help for complex tasks such as automated account reconciliations and intelligent financial close processes in Finance. These Copilot features augment the ERP with natural-language interactions and recommendations, making the system more “autonomous” in routine operations.
AI-Driven Analytics and Insights: New financial insights capabilities use AI to improve forecasting and anomaly detection. Dynamics 365 Finance can now leverage historical and external data to forecast cash flow and revenue more accurately, alerting CFOs to likely shortfalls or late payments. Machine learning also scans transactions for irregularities to flag potential fraud or compliance issues. In supply chain, AI models analyze sales, market trends, and even IoT data for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and quality control insights. These analytics enhancements help organizations make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Process Automation & Agents: Dynamics 365 Finance updates continue to add automation for formerly manual processes. Examples include improved bank reconciliation automation, rules-based tax and regulatory compliance updates, and the use of AI “agents” that suggest or take actions in workflows. In Dynamics 365 Supply Chain, the system can now automatically send routine supplier communications or flag supply risks via AI, reducing the need for human intervention in low-value tasks. Many repetitive processes in finance and operations are being streamlined or handled by intelligent agents, accelerating work and reducing errors.
Power Platform Integration: As of May 2025 every Dynamics 365 Finance environment is linked with a Power Platform environment (Dataverse) to unlock new features. This convergence enables virtual tables, real-time data sharing, and low-code development across Dynamics 365 and other apps. It means organizations can easily build Power Apps that use financial and operational data, automate workflows with Power Automate, and embed Power BI analytics into Dynamics 365 with unified security and governance.
Continuous Cloud Updates: Dynamics 365 in 2025 follows Microsoft’s one-version strategy with two major release waves per year. The 2024 and 2025 release waves delivered hundreds of new features from AI-powered “Generative AI” help bots in the interface to industry-specific enhancements. The platform is continuously updated, so enterprises are always on the latest capabilities without big upgrade projects. This keeps organizations ready to leverage the newest technology (like upcoming AI models or improved analytics) as soon as they’re available, helping them stay competitive.
Copilot AI: Enhancing Automation and Decision-Making
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot is an AI assistant embedded within the Dynamics 365 applications (both CRM and ERP). In Finance, Copilot gives users access to AI capabilities that augment the application’s functionality and user experience. In practice, Copilot appears as a conversational helper (a side panel chat or embedded insights) that can understand natural language commands and proactively support various tasks.
Some key ways that Copilot AI is transforming enterprise operations include:
Natural Language Interaction & Guidance: Users can engage in a dialog with the ERP via Copilot’s chat interface to retrieve information or execute tasks. For example, a finance user can simply ask, “Show our overdue receivables for the past 60 days by region,” and Copilot will instantly generate the answer or a report. This capability turns complex querying and reporting into a quick conversation, dramatically speeding up analysis. Copilot also provides “generative help” – explaining system features or guiding users through processes in real-time, which reduces training effort.
Automating Routine Finance Tasks: Copilot acts as an AI assistant for finance teams, taking over time-consuming tasks. It can draft journal entries, summarize profit-and-loss statements, generate financial reports on demand, and explain anomalies or trends in the numbers. Instead of manually compiling data or writing reports, finance professionals can rely on Copilot to produce first drafts or analyses, freeing them to focus on higher-value work. For instance, Copilot can summarize a monthly P&L and highlight key changes between periods, helping controllers quickly spot issues. These features streamline financial closes and reporting cycles – contributing to faster period-end processes.
Predictive Planning and Insights: AI in Dynamics 365 delivers predictive insights that improve planning in finance and operations. In Finance, AI-powered forecasting uses historical data plus real-time signals to project cash flow and revenue, allowing CFOs to foresee shortfalls and adjust budgets proactively. In Supply Chain, Copilot’s demand forecasting analyzes past sales, seasonality, and external factors to predict demand with high accuracy, helping prevent stockouts or overstock situations. By anticipating issues (whether a cash crunch or a supply bottleneck) earlier, enterprises can make better decisions sooner.
Intelligent Recommendations & Anomaly Detection: The Copilot AI features proactively surface recommendations or outliers. In supply chain scenarios, Copilot can monitor supplier performance and global news to predict potential delays or disruptions, then suggest alternate sourcing options to mitigate risk. In Finance, AI-driven anomaly detection flags unusual transactions (e.g. duplicate payments or odd journal entries) that might indicate fraud or errors, improving compliance and saving costs. In short, Copilot provides a “second set of eyes” on data, catching issues and recommending actions. Businesses using these AI assistants are seeing measurable improvements. Microsoft has indicated that organizations using Copilot in supply chain operations achieve up to 40% faster decision-making because they get timely, data-driven insights and options they wouldn’t have caught as quickly on their own.
User Productivity and Decision Speed: By offloading administrative work and providing on-demand analysis, Copilot significantly boosts user productivity. Employees spend less time sifting through data or performing repetitive steps, and more time on strategic activities. For example, Dynamics 365 Copilot can generate a complete sales order or draft an email to a supplier based on a simple prompt, cutting down manual data entry. The overall impact is that decisions can be made with greater speed and confidence. In essence, Copilot’s AI capabilities act as a digital team member – one that works 24/7 – improving the quality and pace of work in finance and operations.
Power Platform: Low-Code Innovation and Integration
The Microsoft Power Platform (comprising Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages, and more) plays a pivotal role in extending and connecting Dynamics 365. Today Power Platform is deeply woven into Dynamics 365 – enabling organizations to quickly build custom solutions, automate workflows, and analyze data without heavy coding. This low-code integration is driving enterprise transformation in several ways:
Unified Data & Ecosystem (Dataverse): With F&O now linked to the Dataverse (the common data platform for Power Platform), data flows seamlessly between ERP and other business apps. Tools like dual-write and virtual tables keep key records (customers, products, orders, etc.) synchronized in near real-time. This means a company’s front-office and back-office systems (CRM, ERP, HR, etc.) can share one source of truth. Combined with business events from Dynamics 365 (which trigger actions when something important happens, like a sales order confirmation), the integration allows rich cross-system processes. The upshot is better interoperability – sales, finance, and operations data can be mashed up for insights or used in one-off applications easily, enhancing enterprise agility.
Power Apps for Extension: Instead of customizing the core ERP, organizations are now leveraging Power Apps to extend Dynamics 365. The organization can build tailor-made apps (web or mobile) that connect to Dynamics 365 data via Dataverse. For example, a company could create a mobile app for warehouse workers to perform inventory counts or a supplier portal for vendors to view POs – all powered by live F&O data but delivered through a flexible Power Apps interface. Because Power Apps is low-code, these solutions can be built much faster than traditional development. This flexibility is crucial for enterprise agility: teams can respond to new requirements or opportunities by building an app in weeks, not months. Microsoft’s ecosystem has 33 million+ monthly active users of Power Platform driving innovation. The result is that Dynamics 365 doesn’t remain a one-size-fits-all system – it becomes a platform that companies continuously adapt to their unique needs via Power Apps.
Power Automate for Workflow Automation: Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Flow) allows Dynamics 365 data and processes to be connected with hundreds of other services, enabling end-to-end automation. Enterprises are using Power Automate to create workflows that eliminate manual steps. For instance, automations can route an invoice from Dynamics 365 for approval in Microsoft Teams, or trigger a vendor reorder in when inventory drops below a threshold. A Forrester study found that adopting Power Platform delivered a 224% ROI and $81M in net value over three years, plus a 7% revenue uplift within six months for organizations, by streamlining processes and accelerating app delivery.
Embedded Analytics with Power BI: Data-driven decision-making is enhanced by the native Power BI integration with Dynamics 365. Users can embed interactive Power BI dashboards and reports directly into Dynamics 365 forms. For example, a CFO can see a live cash flow dashboard on the Finance home screen. This tight coupling means frontline managers and executives get insights in context, without toggling between systems. Additionally, Power BI can mash ERP data with external or CRM data to produce richer analysis (like profitability by customer segment, combining finance and sales info). By providing self-service analytics, Power BI empowers teams to track KPIs and spot trends on their own. Overall, the Power Platform’s analytics capabilities ensure that the massive data within Dynamics 365 is transformed into actionable intelligence for faster, better decisions.
AI Builder and Virtual Agents: The Power Platform also brings AI and chatbot capabilities into the mix, complementing Dynamics 365. AI Builder allows creation of AI models (for tasks like form processing or prediction) that can be applied to financial and operational processes – for example, reading and importing data from scanned invoices or predicting payment likelihood. Power Virtual Agents (and Copilot Studio) enable creation of chatbots or assistants that can be connected to Dynamics 365. Companies have built bots to answer employee queries on HR policies or to act as virtual finance assistants. These tools contribute to an organization’s ability to automate not just structured processes but also interactions and unstructured data processing. By combining AI agent services with Dynamics 365 data, enterprises are reimagining customer service and internal operations.
In summary, the Power Platform integration amplifies Dynamics 365’s impact, enabling businesses to build low-code apps, automated flows, and analytics on top of their ERP. This synergy is a catalyst for operational efficiency and innovation. Organizations that embrace it are seeing big gains – from faster solution delivery to improved process outcomes – and are better equipped to adapt in a fast-changing business environment.
Business Benefits for Enterprises
Thanks to Copilot AI and Power Platform, enterprises are realizing concrete business benefits from Dynamics 365’s new capabilities. Key advantages include:
Automation & Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks, companies significantly reduce manual effort and errors. Routine processes that once required human intervention (matching payments, reconciling accounts, generating reports, etc.) are now handled by AI or automated workflows. This leads to massive time savings. These efficiencies free up employees to focus on higher-value activities and enable teams to accomplish more without adding headcount.
Improved Productivity & Faster Processes: Copilot and AI features in Dynamics 365 help employees work smarter and faster. Tedious tasks like data entry, report compilation, or lengthy analyses are expedited by AI assistance. In project-driven industries, AI can draft project proposals or summarize meetings, giving professionals “time back” for strategic thinking.
Better Decision-Making & Insights: Enterprises are making more informed decisions, more quickly, thanks to real-time data visibility and AI insights in Dynamics 365. Power BI dashboards embedded in Dynamics 365 and AI-driven analytics give decision-makers instant access to key metrics and trends. Moreover, Copilot’s ability to surface anomalies or predict future outcomes means managers can be proactive rather than reactive. Business leaders report that decisions which once took days of analysis can now be made in hours or minutes because the data and analysis are at their fingertips. Dynamics 365’s new capabilities turn data into a strategic asset, enabling confident, data-backed decisions at all levels.
Enhanced Agility & Innovation: The combination of Copilot AI and Power Platform greatly increases an enterprise’s agility – its ability to adapt and innovate in response to change. Low-code tools mean new solutions or process changes can be rolled out in days, letting IT and business teams experiment and continuously improve operations. For example, when a new regulatory requirement or market opportunity arises, companies can quickly build a Power App or automate a process to address it, rather than waiting for long development cycles. AI-driven planning and what-if analysis features also improve agility by allowing organizations to simulate scenarios and prepare for contingencies. All of this leads to a more resilient and responsive enterprise.
Higher Employee and Customer Satisfaction: Although not always as quantifiable, there’s a human benefit too. Employees benefit from modern, AI-assisted systems – their work becomes less about administrative tasks and more about strategic, interesting problems. This can improve job satisfaction and reduce burnout. Meanwhile, customers see improvements in service, as enterprises can respond to their needs faster and more personally. Faster delivery times, fewer errors in orders, and more responsive support (through AI chatbots or informed staff) all boost the customer experience. AI technology is driving not just internal efficiencies but also external satisfaction and competitive advantage.
Ready to build your AI-Powered Enterprise with Dynamics 365 Finance?
The future of enterprise finance and operations belongs to organizations that can harness AI, automation, and low-code innovation to move faster and smarter than the competition. With Dynamics 365 Finance, Copilot AI, and the Microsoft Power Platform, your business has the tools to transform decision-making, streamline processes, and unlock new opportunities for growth. The only question is how quickly you want to get started.
Partner with PS Hummingbird today to design an intelligent, future-ready framework that shifts your operations from reactive to proactive—and positions your business to thrive in a rapidly evolving market. Let’s begin building your competitive advantage now.
