Generative AI has left its mark on computing, and it's only the beginning. The world of business applications will never be the same. For several years now, we have been iterating on and shipping copilot features in Microsoft Dynamics 365, and I'm pleased to announce our next wave of value. Today's customers demand tailored experiences that cater to their individual needs. They expect businesses to be responsive on all communication channels and to treat each individual with knowledge of their overall relationship and journey.

Microsoft Corp. today introduced Dynamics 365 Copilot, which takes the company's recent integration of OpenAI LLC's ChatGPT chatbot for search and puts it to work for business users. The new AI assistant will make use of ChatGPT's "generative AI" feature, which can comprehend user-written natural speech and instantly produce new content or responses. Microsoft is integrating the technology into applications where it can be quickly used to automate data entry, create email content for clients, and summarize meeting notes. By including it in customer service tools, users will be able to quickly create emails and chats powered by AI that can be handled entirely by a virtual agent and switch to a human when the AI is no longer able to handle it. Check Out The New Enterprisetalk Podcast.

Microsoft today introduced what it's calling the "next generation" of AI product updates across its business apps portfolio. They touch on both Power Platform, Microsoft's set of low-code tools for building apps and workflows, and Dynamics 365, the company's suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. In an interview with TechCrunch, Charles Lamanna, CVP of business apps and platform at Microsoft, described the updates as the logical next step on Microsoft's automation journey. Powered by tech from AI startup OpenAI and built using the Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft's service that provides enterprise-tailored access to OpenAI's API, the new capabilities follow the rollout of OpenAI text-generating AI models in Power Platform four years ago and the more recent debut of generative AI capabilities in Viva Sales, Microsoft's seller experience app. "Over the last four years, we've been on a journey to bring generative AI and foundation models to the workplace," Lamanna said via email, noting that Microsoft has a longstanding partnership with OpenAI to commercialize the vendor's tech in Microsoft's own products and through the Azure OpenAI Service.

Microsoft is targeting the supply chain market with its latest software release. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform is designed to help organizations maximize their supply chain data estate investment via a combination of Microsoft artificial intelligence (AI), collaboration, low code, security, and SaaS applications within one overarching platform, according to the company last month. This supply chain software rollout by Microsoft comes at a time of supply chain disruption worldwide. Whether due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the Great Recession, the "Great Resignation," quiet quitting, layoffs, legislation that impacted trucking and shipping, the war in Ukraine, or other factors, the global supply chain has stuttered of late. Chip shortages, cabling shortages, and much longer lead times for equipment have become the norm. Supply chain dovetails nicely into existing Microsoft strengths in enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), collaboration, project management, and the cloud.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Sales users will get new features later this month with an emphasis on conversational intelligence and Teams integrations. Dynamics 365 Customer Service will be more tightly embedded in Microsoft Teams. Contact center agents will be able to collaborate with co-workers by sharing AI-generated conversation summaries to resolve customer issues faster, and Teams chat will be embedded within Dynamics 365, which enables customer records of sales and service cases to be shared in Teams outside of their department or with supervisors and peers. Microsoft also previewed Azure Communication Services, a bundle of software workflow APIs that route public switched telephone network or VoIP calls within apps. All of the above features will also be compatible with Microsoft Digital Contact Center, a contact-center-as-a-service platform released earlier this year.

This year at Microsoft Ignite we explore how organizations can activate AI and automation directly in their business workflows and empower developers to use those same intelligent building blocks to deliver their own differentiated experiences. The global pandemic has created unprecedented levels of uncertainty, as well as the need to sense and reshape our physical and digital environments, sometimes in completely new ways. Leaders across industries recognize innovation as the only path forward. Critically, we've seen a shift from "innovation for innovation's sake" toward a desire to lower operating costs, anticipate trends, reduce carbon footprints, and improve customer and employee experiences. Automation and AI are key ingredients for digital perseverance and helping organizations drive efficiency.

While the cloud technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) keeps winning the business world, our CRM consultants give a closer look at what changes it can bring to the CRM market. But first, here's what the numbers tell about the AI use in CRM today. As cloud-based CRM is growing in popularity (with 62% of CRM software predicted to move to cloud by 2018, Forbes), machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies keep entering sales people's daily routines with products like Einstein or Dynamics 365. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit report, 75% of the executives surveyed plan to introduce AI in their companies till 2020. Application of AI in CRM is supposed to keep growing with the advancement of tools offered by incumbents. Already in 2015, 25% of leaders in customer service relied on the best-next-action functionality of a kind, and 74% of marketers used predictive intelligence to craft content for a better customer experience (Salesforce).

Contact centres for financial institutions have traditionally been a core touch point for customers to access various types of immediate support – from queries to complaints to fraud alerting. Today their role hasn't necessarily changed. However, the value organisations place on them certainly has. The focus is shifting from fitting customers around business processes to reshaping contact centres around customers' needs. For years, the role of contact centres was limited – often confined by traditional 9-5 working hours. It was predominantly aimed at driving down costs and improving efficiencies.

One of the bigger announcements at this year's Microsoft Inspire event was the launch announcement of its Digital Contact Center Platform. Intended to be a cross-channel contact platform, it brings together a mix of existing applications and services as well as the recently acquired Nuance voice recognition tools. Microsoft has had many of the features needed to build a contact center in its portfolio for some time, with Dynamics 365 offering a fully featured CRM platform, Power Platform providing no-code and low-code workflow tools, and Teams providing a multi-channel desktop with voice, text and video all built in to one application for internal and external communications. It's a timely response to competitors like Twilio and Salesforce who have deep experience in features essential for contact centers, but who lack the breadth of Microsoft's product portfolio. Putting all these tools together and adding features from Azure's Cognitive Services suite of pre-built machine learning models makes a lot of sense. Users expect companies to meet them where they are, not chase down phone trees to sit on hold for hours, and if contact can be automated where possible while still maintaining a natural flow, organizations can use smart tooling to triage and manage calls, only handing over to humans where necessary.

Field service organizations have traditionally operated under the break-fix model--that is, responding to a device failure after the customer reports an issue. This operating model has grown antiquated due to rising costs and inefficiencies in labor and operations. It is also proving less than effective in satisfying the customer's growing expectations. The field service industry is evolving quickly in new and exciting directions with cutting-edge technology continuing to enter the arena. These innovations in technology and workflows are helping to transform field service by providing customers optimal device uptime, along with greater visibility, efficiency, and profitability.