Copilot for MSD365 Finance
Copilot for Dynamics 365 Finance helps you to:
Automate repetitive tasks – Save time on invoice chasing and month-end closes
Drive smarter decisions — Use AI-powered insights to predict trends and forecasts accurately and using natural language
Simplify user training — Reduce the learning curve with real-time, conversational support
Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, has changed the way many finance professionals use Dynamics 365. It lets them work more efficiently and make decisions faster, and reduces how much time they waste on repetitive admin tasks.
But not everyone has embraced Copilot yet. Some don’t know the benefits it could bring, and even fewer know how to wrangle them from the AI. Even financial professionals who use it on a daily basis don’t take full advantage of what it can offer.
As a trusted Microsoft Dynamics partner, we understand the extent to which Copilot can streamline your business processes – in fact, we’ve already discussed the benefits Copilot can bring to productivity. But it can also benefit your finance department. It can simplify complicated processes, making data-heavy tasks a lot quicker, easier and less prone to error.
In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into the exact role Copilot can play inside Dynamics 365 Finance. We’ll cover the benefits of using it, as well as the jobs it can assist you with. We’ll also cover the potential challenges of using it to make sure you are able to implement it as successfully as possible.
As we mentioned above, Copilot is Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant. It’s built directly into Dynamics 365 Finance and Finance & Operations applications and uses generative AI to provide contextual assistance, insights and recommendations on your workflows.
Unlike standard reporting tools, Copilot lets you work with financial data using natural language. Rather than learning how to access the information you need, using multiple screens or creating custom reports, you can simply ask the questions that you need to have answered. You can request summaries, investigate variations or unexpected results, and receive guidance on how to complete tasks just by asking. It greatly simplifies the process of accessing information and lets you take action much more quickly.
It also makes understanding your financial data and harnessing usable insights a much easier, quicker job, giving finance teams a head start on addressing issues, too. A vital form of support when finance departments are being expected to deliver strategic insights while also managing a growing workload.
Want to see how Dynamics 365 can transform your wider business operations beyond the finance team? Explore our comprehensive suite of Microsoft solutions.
As we’ve mentioned above, Copilot’s biggest benefit is that it speeds up the process of finding and analysing information. This is a big advantage for finance departments when large amounts of numerical data and financial records need to be accessed by many people for many uses.
With Copilot, these users no longer need to navigate complex reports or dashboards to find the information they need. Instead, anyone can just ask their exact question and receive a direct answer.
Many finance processes involve repetitive tasks such as creating summaries, reviewing workflow histories, responding to queries, and gathering information from multiple sources. With Copilot, these activities can be carried out far more quickly through automation.
Copilot can generate contextual summaries, provide guidance and surface any relevant information you need simply by asking. No more flipping between dashboards seeking information or cross-referencing what you’ve found, Copilot can do it for you, so your team can focus more time on analysis, forecasting, business partnering and strategic initiatives.
By helping you access vital financial information quickly and easily, Copilot also enables you to make data-driven decisions more quickly.
Copilot can rapidly analyse vast amounts of data and use it to predict trends and forecasts. It gives you the grounding you need to make important decisions and makes them more reliable by ensuring they’re based on real data. All at a much quicker pace than if you had to collate and cross-reference the data yourself.
Even before Copilot, Dynamics 365 was a powerful platform that greatly streamlined your finance processes. However, its extensive functionality can be difficult to grasp, leaving new users with a steep learning curve. This can make it intimidating for those trying to learn.
Copilot eases that learning curve, making the software simpler to use and also giving extra support to users who do struggle. It can give contextual assistance and answer even complex questions with straightforward, easy-to-follow instructions.
It not only makes it easier for new users to learn, but it can also make them more engaged and willing to learn in the first place. Users can even receive support while completing tasks without leaving their workflow, making it easier to process and apply the answers they receive.
In finance operations, you must maintain consistency. Copilot helps you standardise processes by giving everyone in the team the same access to the same information. It removes the barriers for people who are less comfortable with Dynamics 365 Finance software, as they can simply ask the questions that they need answered. It allows all staff to work at peak efficiency.
However, it is also worth noting that Copilot does respect existing security permissions. If a user asks about information they aren’t authorised to view, they won’t be able to access. Copilot lets you embrace all the benefits of AI-assisted workflows while also maintaining full control over your financial data.
Knowing all the benefits Copilot can bring is a start, but to really harness them, you need to know how and where to use them. Here are some specific use cases where Copilot really comes into its own.
Save time on chasing overdue payments with Copilot. It collates all the information you need, can generate summaries of accounts, customer details and payment history, and highlight outstanding invoices for you. This streamlines the process of contacting companies and chasing them up.
Month-end close is a complicated process that usually spans multiple teams. This leaves it prone to mistakes and miscommunications that can delay it – sometimes significantly. Copilot helps you track progress, review workflow history and identify outstanding actions quickly, and it lets other teams do the same. It helps make sure you’ve always got easy access to the same information, without the need for data duplication that creates the risk of mistakes.
Inside Dynamics 385 Finance, there is an account reconciliation agent that helps streamline the process for high-volume accounts. It matches transactions at scale and flags discrepancies to improve close consistency and reduce your dependency on spreadsheets.
But Copilot can improve efficiency even further. It makes the review process even more straightforward while still maintaining approval workflows, financial controls and audit trails.
It can also support journal entry review by summarising activities and generating easy-to-understand explanations about them. These can even have historical or transactional context added. This makes the whole process a lot quicker, allowing your expert team to verify accuracy rather than taking the effort to write them all out.
Creating reports often requires gathering information from multiple sources and turning data into clear business insights. Copilot can help by summarising financial performance and generating draft narrative content for management reports. This allows finance teams to spend more time reviewing results and less time writing reports.
Perhaps the biggest benefit Copilot brings is with user support. If you or your team are struggling to carry out a task in Dynamics, you can simply ask Copilot by sharing the issue you’re having and what you’d like to do. The copilot will explain with easy-to-understand instructions so you can carry out your task or fix the problem.
No need for trawling through help guides or trying to find the right terms to search for in an FAQ; you can just explain the problem in a way that feels natural to you, and you’ll receive an answer in the same format.
As with any use of AI, issues can arise when you’re implementing or using Copilot. Some can be avoided, some can’t, but if you’re aware of them, you’ll be better placed to spot if they occur.
Copilot uses the data inside your Dynamics 365 system to answer personalised questions. This means that if your records are inaccurate or incomplete, the insights Copilot provides won’t be reliable either.
This is particularly important for finance departments, where even the smallest inaccuracy can be significantly exaggerated and create issues.
The only way to avoid this is to supply Copilot with the most accurate data possible. If you manage this to begin with, then it will help maintain that quality by reducing the need for manual duplication across systems, where future errors could be made.
Not everyone is comfortable with using AI in their work every day. Some people may resist Copilot or struggle to understand how it works.
The best way to overcome these challenges is with comprehensive training and support during the implementation process. Make sure your whole team understands the benefits that Copilot can bring and how Copilot supports their role.
Copilot can work within your business’s user permission restrictions. However, you do need to make sure these are set up correctly in the first place, and that users won’t work to override them. As financial data is often sensitive, this is particularly important with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps.
Along with using high-quality data, Copilot works best when your financial processes are already clear and comprehensive. If your workflows or manual processes are inconsistent, then Copilot will struggle to access the information it needs. Even if it can find the information it needs, it might not be able to generate reliable results if your processes or workflows aren’t standardised.
Again, the fix for this is very simple, though. Before implementing Copilot, make sure you have checked your workflows and that they are consistent across departments.
Seeing the full benefits of Copilot needs more work than simply switching the feature on. If you work with an experienced implementation partner, they can spot the most valuable uses for the feature, encourage user adoption, and ensure it is used to maximum benefit.
Here at NoBlue2, we help businesses get the biggest possible ROI from software like Dynamics 365 and features like Copilot. We know all the benefits that Copilot can bring, and once we understand your business processes, we can give you tailored training and implementation uses to ensure you get the very best that Copilot offers.
As an experienced Microsoft Dynamics partner, NoBlue2 helps you tailor Copilot to your unique workflows so your finance team can eliminate repetitive admin tasks and focus on strategic growth.
Let’s unlock the full potential of your financial data together.
