We surveyed more than 500 CFOs and senior business leaders for our 2023 Future of Finance Trends Report and found that many organizations continue to struggle with lack of IT resources, overwhelmed employees, and disconnected systems. In fact, while 79 percent outlined that they were shifting to owning business model innovation and empowering transformation across the organization, 88 percent said they don’t have the IT resources or tools needed to drive operational efficiency and minimize busy work for their teams. Finance, human resources (HR), and project operations leaders need to reimagine processes to help their teams achieve more, faster. 

With the 2023 release wave 1, we are delivering enhancements across Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Dynamics 365 Human Resources that focus on helping our customers adapt faster, work smarter, perform better, and operate more sustainably.

Adapt faster with simplified financial consolidations and close

Financial reporting and closewhether year-end, quarterly, or monthlycan be challenging for finance teams as they must quickly aggregate data from across the organization and handle the close and consolidation process on time without compromising accuracy. With these latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365, we are further streamlining the close process while improving speed and accuracy, enabling organizations to adapt faster to changes.

Improved speed and accuracy

With these latest updates, we’re providing new features that take the hassle out of recording certain types of transactions, improving speed and accuracy. 

Changes in exchange rates cause the book value of open transactions in foreign currencies to vary over time. Recording these fluctuations accurately at a granular level is incredibly important, yet it’s difficult in practice. Our updated currency revaluation posting profile enables finance teams to post currency revaluation adjustments per currency and module. Accounts payable and accounts receivable subledgers are updated automatically to reflect the unrealized gain or loss, helping to ensure these adjustments are accurately recorded.

Similarly, determining how certain transactions, such as the disposal of a fixed asset as a scrap, should be recorded can be complicated. Elimination of these transactions affects balance sheet accounts, such as acquisition adjustment, depreciation adjustment, revaluation, and write-up and write-down accounts, so recording these adjustments accurately is incredibly important. These latest updates provide options that allow you to determine the posting details of fixed asset disposal scrap/sale based on your business needs.

More granular tracking and reporting

While businesses need to quickly consolidate financial data to close their books, it is also essential that they have sufficient granularity in their reporting to provide finance leaders with the visibility they need to drive strategic decisions. 

After transactions are posted, it’s common for organizations to require visibility into subledger data so that certain transactions can be analyzed. With this update, we are including new ways to define financial tags. Financial tags let organizations track user-defined fields on accounting entries posted to the general ledger. Financial tags can also be used to track the subledger data and are now available for matching within ledger settlement, reducing the number of transactions to be manually matched.

In addition to supporting new financial tags, we’re also improving how vendor and customer payments are recorded to the bank subledger. This feature allows an organization to post vendor and customer payments in separate vouchers but update the bank account in summary to match the bank statement, making reconciliation easier and ensuring smoother bank reconciliation.

Accelerate global expansion and operations

As companies look to better manage the complexities of international operations, globalization studio enhances the globalization capabilities for numerous countries’ new laws around reporting. With this latest update, we are bringing new capabilities to help make it easier for companies working in certain parts of the European Union (EU), Latin America (LATAM), and Asia Pacific area (APAC). 

These updates include the extension of multiple tax ID reporting to more EU countries, which helps ensure accurate tax numbers for transactions, streamline compliance, and raise operational efficiency for global companies. We’re also expanding out-of-the-box regulatory compliance coverage to additional LATAM countries, including Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Colombia, and Uruguay. By providing localized solutions, Dynamics 365 Finance users can confidently navigate the regulatory landscape, reduce compliance risks, and fortify their operational efficiency across multiple LATAM countries.

Work smarter with automation that minimizes repetitive tasks and data entry

For many companies, financial processes still involve many manual and repetitive tasks, which require a large number of resources and take finance leaders away from more strategic work. According to our 2023 Future of Finance Trends Report, 88 percent of financial leaders feel they are primarily responsible for transactional functions, such as creating financial reports, as opposed to the more strategic functions of running a business, like advising on innovations. Similarly, 88 percent of finance leaders reported not having the automation tools they need to automate repetitive tasks (for example, digital invoicing software and online payroll) and free up their time for more innovative work. With this latest release, we’ve added new capabilities to help finance teams work smarter by using automation to minimize manual and repetitive tasks. 

Streamline invoicing to reduce the time from procure to pay

Processing vendor invoices is a manual and repetitive task in every organization. Not only is this process resource intensiverequiring a high volume of document processingit is also ripe for human error.

By digitizing and automating invoicing, businesses can save time and reduce errors. Dynamics 365 Finance includes accounts payable automation with invoice capture to provide continuous AI-driven automation with reading and recognition of vendor invoices. With this release, we added additional capabilities for non-purchase order (PO) invoices and the vendor invoice journal. We’ve also enhanced the invoice process with the ability to process free text invoices faster and invoice automation that enables the processing of vendor invoices during import, all of which save time and effort while helping to improve accuracy. This eliminates the need for additional background processing and frees accounts payable staff to focus their efforts on exceptions.

Improve processes

Working smarter as a company requires integrating systems of record to provide greater visibility and continuity across the organization. With this update, we have added some key integrations that will make it easier for companies to operate strategically.

In this update, we’ve enabled resource management integration. By significantly streamlining the project resourcing process for organizations by consolidating employee data, resource managers can swiftly identify and allocate suitable resources based on skills, certificates, and availability. We’ve also enabled learning management integration, which offers users a centralized view of training data and other employee information, streamlining workforce development, boosting productivity, and fostering a more informed decision-making process.

Simplify manual processes

Organizations are often burdened by manual tasks, which draw valuable resources and are prone to error. For those tasks that require manual inputs, making those experiences as simple and intuitive as possible is critical. 

One such experience is time entry. We’ve taken steps to modernize the user experience for time entry in Dynamics 365 Project Operations, making it more efficient and user-friendly. The modernized interface optimizes usability, accessibility, and extensibility, allowing consultants to enter time more effectively and accurately.

Perform better with enhanced business performance analytics

As finance leaders continue to take on more strategic responsibilities with organizations, the need for high-quality data and insights is increasingly important. Yet getting this visibility across the organization remains a challenge for many businesses. The new Dynamics 365 features significantly improve business performance analytics. 

Turn data into insights

To be successful, business leaders don’t just need data; they need actionable insights that help drive corporate strategy. New record to report and procure to pay data models will provide financial and non-financial data and metadata into Microsoft Dataverse and transform it into analytical tables. Structuring this complex data provides a single data source for reporting, allowing users to build well-defined and readily available relationships between ledger, subledger, and source documents from multiple systems.

The new reporting hub and base reports on data governance, as well as row-level and role-level security. These features help finance teams quickly locate, edit, and share relevant reports by business process easily and quicklyhelping to put insights into action.

Advanced data gets enhanced security

Security is paramount for financial data. We’re furthering our investment in security by providing additional security controls in Dynamics 365 Finance. Business performance analytics provides row-level and role-level security capabilities to multiple users in your organization’s finance and accounting teams, as well as to the staff in other departments. This helps ensure that reports are only seen by those with appropriate permission.

When paired with the extensibility of the data model, users can be set up to view reports by dimension and legal entity. This lets teams create refreshable, prewritten reports that can be distributed beyond the finance organization, making it easier and safer to circulate data.

Making it easier to navigate taxes

Streamline tax calculation and reporting processes for import/export businesses through direct currency conversions and localized support for Indian taxation. Additionally, you can simplify interoperation with tax solution ISVs, enabling efficient management of complex tax rates across multiple jurisdictions. The withhold tax calculation during invoicing also helps customers meet their compliance obligations, reducing manual effort for businesses operating in countries with specific tax requirements.

By integrating these features into a single comprehensive solution, businesses can achieve greater accuracy in tax declarations, seamless integration between project management and accounting modules, and improved tax management across various jurisdictions. These capabilities ultimately help organizations drive efficiency, fulfill legal compliance, and make better decisions, allowing businesses to thrive in an increasingly globalized market.

Operate more sustainably

We are introducing new features aimed at helping businesses improve traceability tied to sustainability by utilizing the power of automation, digitization, and compliance with evolving global regulations. These features include archiving data and electronic invoicing services for various countries. Implementing these solutions can help organizations reduce power usage, improve efficiency, and comply with local and international regulations.

Reduce data storage energy expenditures

The archive data feature allows companies to save storage space and improve performance by reducing the data set they work against. This enables organizations to archive data consistently and securely while still allowing for reporting and analysis of historical data through standard reporting.

Eliminate paper waste

Electronic invoicing services support the move towards a paperless environment by helping companies automate the entire invoicing process. By eliminating the need for physical paperwork, electronic invoicing reduces paper waste. This newest release offers electronic invoicing services for France, Poland, and Japan.

Additionally, the global e-invoicing feature addresses the growing market driven by tax digitization and invoice automation. By interoperating with government services and intermediate-certified operators, the global e-invoicing feature helps businesses efficiently exchange electronic invoice documents with tax authorities and other businesses.

Try out the capabilities

Many users started testing the new features in an early access period starting January 30, 2023. This allowed users and partners to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. For those already in an early access non-production environment, these new features will be automatically enabled with the April 2023 upgrades.

Watch this YouTube video to learn more about these updates.

Dynamics 365 release planner

See the new features for Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations

Explore release planner

The post 2023 wave 1 releases AI, automation, and analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we launched 2023 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a rollout of new features and enhanced capabilities slated for release between April and September 2023.

The updates include Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Copilot for Microsoft Power Platform, bringing the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to business processes. Release wave 1 also introduces hundreds of new and updated user experiences to collaboratively solve challenges, streamline workflows, and help individuals and teams focus on what matters most.

The 2023 Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, available to view on demand, is a great way to get up to speed on the release wave and learn how organizations are already using these capabilities to transform end-to-end business processes today.

Some of the major themes that we’re excited to highlight include:

• Enhancing end-to-end customer experiences with AI and Dynamics 365 Copilot. 
• Modernizing every link across supply chain and operations.
• New ways to accelerate development with Microsoft Power Platform.

Enhancing end-to-end customer experiences with AI

Release wave 1 supercharges end-to-end customer experiences while improving collaboration and information sharing across the organization. New capabilities provide more insight into audiences’ needs, and more ways to engage customers with personalized content and conversations at scale. AI takes center stage in this release wave, with new Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities that help to streamline processesfrom audience research to content development.

For example, automaker Lynk & Co. is attracting new customers to its innovative, membership-based approach to car ownership by using new AI capabilities in Dynamics 365, as well as enhancements to build relationships with the right audience. Learn more in this fireside chat with Lynk & Co by visiting the bonus content during the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will enable marketers at organizations like Lynk & Co. to use natural language capabilities in Copilot to query, group, and measure their customer data, allowing them to discover hidden patterns. Marketers can quickly identify the best audience for upcoming events and create a segment directly from the results.

In addition, users can see all Customer Insights activities in the unified activity timeline in Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing. Valuable data from Customer Insights can be embedded directly within the Contact, Account, and Lead forms within Dynamics 365 Sales, giving sellers a more complete picture of their customer in the flow of work.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Dynamics 365 Marketing delivers Copilot capabilities to help marketers learn more about their customers, create targeted customer segments, and generate personalized content. We’ve enhanced the query assist feature with generative AI capabilities, enabling marketers to accurately target customers using conversational, everyday language to quickly build targeted segments. Content ideas helps to find inspiration and provide a starting point for copy when composing emails for audiences.

We’ve also made it easier to add lead capture forms to a website. With the new intuitive forms experience in real-time marketing, you can easily create modern forms with advanced capabilities without depending on developers. Also, marketers can use out-of-the-box dashboards to track pipeline development and analyze the impact and contribution of journeys, marketing messages, and content at different stages of the business process.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Dynamics 365 Sales delivers enhancements to streamline seller tasks and improve effectiveness. Rather than manually tracking next steps, Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers to automate the creation of follow-up tasks. This saves valuable time to focus on higher-priority items and avoid tasks from falling through the cracks. Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales creates email content for faster customer replies and AI-generated meeting follow-ups that compile discussed topics.  

In addition, updates include a new manager insights dashboard for conversation intelligence, as well as extended support for conversation intelligence with calls made through third-party telephony providers. This gives sellers a seamless experience irrespective of the call provider they are using.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Viva Sales.

Release wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 Customer Service include enhanced case creation, channel-based swarming with Microsoft Teams, and robust real-time analytics with customization, in addition to availability of the voice channel in more regions.

Organizations like MVP Health Carea nationally-recognized regional not-for-profit health plan providerwill soon use Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service to provide agents with real-time AI-powered assistance, helping them to resolve issues faster, handle cases more efficiently, and automate time-consuming tasks so they can focus on delivering high-quality service to their customers.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Modernize every link across supply chain and operations

Updates to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management deliver increased agility and resilience across the supply chain. By applying appropriate valuation methods and selected currencies, you can now account inventoriesinventory and work in progress (WIP)in multiple representations, to help comply with local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), internal management accounting, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) principles.

A new Asset Management mobile app helps ensure smooth operation of production equipment. From one app, your team can create new maintenance requests, track and update work orders, and access key information. Updates to the Warehouse Management mobile app include a new version for iOS devices and features to speed the packing process, such as optimized screen layouts with more prominent product images to help workers more quickly identify items.

Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is officially included in Microsoft Supply Chain Center, helping to provide faster, more reliable delivery times. Updates include the ability to create a purchase order from a sales order and check order status updates without switching to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, as well as new purchase orders for business-to-business (B2B) capabilities. At the launch event, we demonstrate new capabilities that help organizations like Northern Tool + Equipmenta manufacturing and omnichannel retail business with 130 stores across the United Statesto experience faster, more reliable delivery times, so their customers get the tools and supplies they need exactly when they expect.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Intelligent Order Management, and the Microsoft Supply Chain Center.  

Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations

In this wave of updates, we’re helping finance organizations adapt faster, work smarter, and drive business performance with features and enhancements focused on the three As of rapid finance-first innovation.

Organizations like The Robert Walters Group, a specialist recruitment agency operating in 31 countries, can now use our newly generally available Expense mobile app. The release wave 1 updates also include expense itemization and the ability to capture receipts using optical character recognition (OCR), enter per diems, and log mileage.

Enhancements for Dynamics 365 Finance include further automation of complex tax scenarios and full end-to-end automation of accounts payable and ledger settlements, helping finance professionals to expedite the close and spend more time focusing on value-added activities.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations, and Human Resources.

Accelerate development with Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platformour comprehensive and intelligent low-code platformenables users and organizations to create innovative apps, bots, and automations seamlessly. In our launch event, we explore how customers like Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) use Microsoft Power Platform to automate and eliminate redundant and manual processes throughout their organization.

This release wave builds on our commitment to create tools and experiences that add value to every role by breaking down silos between data, insights, and people. The union of AI and low-code will revolutionize the way solutions are built and fundamentally transform the way people work, collaborate, and create.

With Power Apps, we continue to support the scaling of organizations by empowering makers and developers of all skill levels to be more productive and to build apps, and manage data and logic. We are helping organizations reduce risk with advanced governance capabilities, such as automated tests for custom pages and model-driven apps, enabling customers to further benefit from modernization of web and mobile experiences ensuring modern and fast experiences across apps.

See the release plans for Power Apps.

Power Pages supports low-code and no-code makers, as well as professional developers, with more out-of-the-box capabilities, like new solution-based application life cycle management and migration of website configurations from one environment to another. With virtual tables and cloud flow integration, Power Pages can now connect seamlessly to your external data and service and enable both low-code makers and pro developers to build amazing user experiences.

Explore what’s new for Power Pages.

Power Automate is reimagining the process of creating flows with natural language authoring capabilities that allow you to simply describe the flow you want to create. It has never been easier for new users to start creating and authoring flows. Other improvements include introducing work queues where automatable tasks can be viewed and managed together, as well as providing streamlined connectivity to a machine for desktop flows, which eliminates the need for additional installs and password management. Lastly, we’re making it easier for organizations to contextualize the impact of their technical investments with ROI performance tracking capabilities in Power Automate desktop flows, which helps organizations invest in the most valuable automation efforts.

Explore what’s new for Power Automate.

Power Virtual Agents is the Microsoft single conversational AI studio and unified authoring canvas for all bot-building needs. We’re making it easier for developers and makers to build bots with Copilot in Power Virtual Agents, greatly accelerating bot development via natural language authoring. Developers can then extend their bots to handle more complex workloads with Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services capabilities in Power Virtual Agents.

Explore what’s new for Power Virtual Agents.

Power BI infuses AI-driven insights into everywhere that people get work done. For Teams, we’re bringing enhancements to meetings and multitasking to help users work with their data wherever they may be. And, for individuals, we’re enhancing the creation experience, bringing more parity on the web, and adding the Power Query diagram view into Power BI.

Explore the release plans for Power BI.

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

We encourage you to watch the launch event on demand for more details and demos of new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. In addition, you can explore several special topic presentations covering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Physical Operations, and our AI transformation journey in business applications.

Be sure to explore the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, and keep track of what’s new and upcoming, as well as create a personalized release plan, in the release planner.

Release planner

Explore Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform features coming soon or available to try now.

View the release planner

The post Release wave 1 expands agility, automation, and innovation across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The implementation portal is a self-serve tool that helps Dynamics 365 customers and partners manage their project data, users, and reviews. It also provides access to tailored implementation guidance to help ensure a successful cloud deployment.

• Manage project data: Manage project data and users, profile projects by selecting the relevant Dynamics 365 products and features, and define other project characteristics.
• Execute project reviews: Identify potential risks, mitigation recommendations, and other best practices based on the Success by Design framework to support a successful go-live.
• Access tailored guidance: Access tailored implementation guidance, including feature and product documentation, TechTalks, training materials, and case studies.

The implementation portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution.

Eligible customers may also collaborate with Microsoft FastTrack solution architects. The FastTrack team of product experts can help you validate the architecture of your solution, mitigate risks, and overcome deployment blockers.

The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal represents a significant step in equipping all Dynamics 365 customers with the necessary resources to go live with confidence.

Next steps

Sign up for the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal: https://aka.ms/D365ImplementationPortal

Learn more about the implementation portal: https://aka.ms/D365ImplementationPortal-Docs

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a tour and get a free trial.

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