Dynamics 365 is already a major player in the business solutions market. It contains features that put it ahead of the competition in multiple areas. With new updates, Microsoft is introducing Cortana and AI integration within the Dynamics applications to make smarter use of your data.
What was science fiction ten years ago is now becoming a reality. All the big tech companies are moving their strategies from “Mobile First” to “AI first.” Artificial Intelligence is now integrating into our lives with the rise of personal assistants. Microsoft is a tech giant that does not need an introduction. They have a broad range of products from operating systems (Windows) to productivity tools (Office) to servers, tablets, and enterprise solutions. Throughout the years, Microsoft introduced multiple integrations between these products to form the powerful platform it is today.
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What is Cortana?
Apple has Siri, Google has Google Assistant, Amazon has Alexa, and Microsoft has Cortana. You’ve no doubt heard of at least one of them by now. If not, don’t worry, we have you covered. These are all personal assistants that have been in development for a couple of years. Much research has made these assistants more robust today, and with the technological advances in neural networks and machine learning, they’re just getting started.
Cortana, like most other assistants, can understand written and spoken commands. Unlike the old days where you had to use a certain set of words said in a specific sequence for your command to execute, today’s assistants are getting better at understanding natural conversational commands.
What does Cortana bring to the table?
1. Inventory Forecasting
Dynamics 365 already offers excellent inventory management. You can see your items, quantities left, quantities ordered and get control over anything a standard inventory management tool provides. With the addition of Cortana intelligence, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is now smarter than ever. It allows inventory forecast to predict when you will need to order items to avoid stock-outs.
It’s not a random forecast; Cortana collects all historical data and analyzes it with different time series models to present a calculated and precise forecast. You can react to it immediately by creating a purchase order directly for your vendors.
The Benefits of using Cortana Intelligence for Inventory Forecasts:
- Lower working capital
- Avoid stock-outs that could lead to missed sales
- Increase customer satisfaction by having needed items available
- Eliminate time required to analyze inventory data
- Automate the creation of purchase orders for vendors
2. Sales Forecasting
Cortana also brings sales forecasting to the table. It collects all past sales data from quotes, invoices, and orders to generate future sales predictions.
Benefits of using Cortana Intelligence for Sales Forecasts:
- Businesses can focus on future customer potential
- Eliminates time needed to analyze sales data
- Decreases lost opportunities by targeting the best leads
3. Voice Commands for Dynamics 365
This time, we will flip the scenario and look at Dynamics 365 inside of Cortana. If you’re not familiar with Cortana, it’s Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant available on all major platforms (Windows, Android, and iOS).
You can connect your Dynamics 365 Organization to Cortana to view, edit and create entity records directly from the assistant.
With this integration, you can use simple voice commands to interact with your Dynamics 365 organization without even opening the web application.
Examples of commands to try:
- Open an entity record
- Show a view
- Search for an entity record
- Create a new entity record
- Create a phone call activity
- Create an appointment
- Create a task
- Open a task list
Learn more on how to manage your business with Dynamics 365
Guide: Resell Microsoft Dynamics 365 With CSP Program
You’ve heard all about Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and how it will make life easier for resellers like you. But when it comes right down to it, do you really understand how it works?
- Exactly what the CSP is and how it works
- How to get started as a CSP partner
What’s next for the Dynamics 365 – Cortana integration?
The world of technology has never been more exciting. We see innovations every day from all angles. Artificial Intelligence is one major player in today’s road to the future, and it’s obvious why.
By including Cortana’s Artificial Intelligence inside its Dynamics 365 product, Microsoft is making a statement. Dynamics 365 should become smarter the more you use it, and it will learn your business habits and could potentially help with business plans.
There’s no doubt that there is a huge potential for the Cortana-Dynamics 365 Integration. Dynamics 365 itself is a very mature product that handles all parts of a business process. With more Cortana integration, it will only drive business further.
According to the public dynamics roadmap for new features in development, Microsoft should be including these new features in the upcoming Cortana Integration:
- Sales Digest
An overview of all recently updated items and their impact on the pipeline. - Account Overview
A full view of an account’s details, like account address, opportunities, and leads along with the company’s news and location on the Bing map. - Deal Overview
See key details like product and competitor SKUs. - Meeting prep
Account and deal details using Cortana’s native meeting prep experience.
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Conclusion
More companies are adopting business solutions to automate their processes. Microsoft has played an active role in this area for a long time and continues to make advances.
It’s true that the introduction of Dynamics 365 has been recent, but it contains technologies that are developing and improving for the past ten years or more. With deployments moving to the cloud, it’s easier to push regular updates, and that’s exactly what Microsoft is doing.
Competition is fierce, and the only way to keep up with growing technology is to follow trends and add features while keeping the solution user-friendly and easy-to-use. Artificial Intelligence is not new, but its exponential growth in the past couple of years indicate great potential for the future.
Microsoft is not willing to lag behind in this race (cough…Mobile…cough), so they’re putting much R&D resources in that area to get better integration to produce the best possible results.
Cortana is already a strong product by Microsoft with much analytics power baked in it. Dynamics 365 has amazing amounts of data that can be further analyzed to bring smart predictions and to better automate processes. The integration between the two is good, better, and this is great news for all customers around the world.
