What’s New? 10 2024 Release Wave 1 Features for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations
New features in the 2024 Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations are focused on helping you adapt faster to get ahead in highly competitive business markets.
Autonomous finance, as defined by Microsoft, involves implementing a system that combines intelligence, automation, and recommendations to empower financial professionals to contribute human expertise in critical decision-making moments. However, achieving autonomous finance faces challenges such as:
- Data silos
- Skill gaps
- Security concerns
- Change management issues
- Complex processes
- Reliance on offline tools
- Time-consuming financial close procedures
In the latest release of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, the focus is on continual improvement by introducing enhancements and AI-powered features for business performance planning. Here are 10 features we’ve identified as top features to look out for this year.
Cross-Platform Features for Apps Across Your System
Some exciting new features in this release can be used in all finance and operations apps, including:
Here are two highlights from this release.
Dual-Write Asynchronous Merge
This feature enhances dual-write functionality by enabling asynchronous business processes for finance and operations apps, facilitating continuous and asynchronous data movement between systems for eventual data consistency. In this release, dual-write supports both initial and live synchronization modes, allowing for more efficient bulk create and update operations in asynchronous mode to avoid session timeout issues and delays associated with synchronous operations.
Dataverse Integration – Virtual Entity Performance
This feature enhances the utilization of Finance and Operations data on Dataverse for customers, ISVs, and partners by expanding entity coverage through virtualization. The improvements focus on enhancing virtual entity infrastructure, allowing exposure of thousands of entities, and reducing restrictions on various finance and operations data. Additionally, it provides you with:
New publisher properties for entity source differentiation, enabling headless form-bound functionalities through virtual entities
More comprehensive user guides for administrators, developers, and makers on virtual entity Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Innovative Features for Dynamics 365 Finance
Here are some of the main features we’ve identified for Dynamics 365 Finance:
Tackle Tasks/Reports with Generative AI
By incorporating generative AI into administrative tasks and report generation, businesses can save time, enhance accuracy, and cut costs, allowing employees to concentrate on higher-value and strategic activities. This feature enables users to utilize conversational language for tasks like setting up security, organizing and searching for reports, and creating new reports and visuals, offering a competitive edge in terms of efficiency and strategic advantage.
The reduction in cognitive load on employees further enables them to focus on creative and complex problem-solving tasks.
Collections Coordinator
The new workspace page in Dynamics 365 Finance streamlines collections processes, providing collections agents with a summary of past activities and essential information, reducing the time spent searching from 15-30 minutes to a more efficient workflow. With Copilot, collections managers can access credit and payment history, enabling them to prioritize and personalize customer communications using AI-tailored content, leading to improved collection rates and proactive customer management. The AI-driven summarization feature presents relevant data on one page, and a timeline view is available for detailed insights into past activities, payment history, and customer communications.
Receipt Matching with Copilot
Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance simplifies the vendor invoice automation process by addressing exceptions directly within the pending vendor invoice list and vendor invoice center. AP clerks can efficiently analyze and correct errors without the need for repeated navigation, streamlining the correction process for receipt matching errors caused by various factors such as warehouse issues or pending deliveries. In upcoming releases, Copilot will extend its support to address corrections related to failed prepayments and workflow submission errors.
Increased Efficiency in Bank Reconciliation Report
This update introduces a new advanced bank reconciliation feature, enhancing automation and functional capabilities to streamline the bank reconciliation process for businesses. This functionality reduces manual work, saving time for cash management clerks and improving overall financial management.
The redesigned report in advanced bank reconciliation includes enhanced header and body information, providing a snapshot feature that retrieves data from a saved snapshot when generating reports, contributing to more efficient and accurate financial reporting.
Optimizing Business Processes in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain
New updates and functionalities in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain include:
Copilot Integration with Demand Planning
You can now use planners in-product guidance, forecast insights, and the ability to analyze trends, anomalies, and influencing factors using natural language. This empowers demand planners to make informed decisions, enhance forecast accuracy, and optimize supply chain operations by efficiently creating, monitoring, and executing demand plans with the assistance of Copilot's intuitive features.
Procure to Pay Purchasing Decisions with Copilot
This feature helps purchasing agents efficiently handle changes to purchase orders and assess their impact on downstream processes like production, service work, or sales orders. Additionally, it promotes:
- Intelligent decision support
- Streamlined change management
- Improved collaboration with stakeholders
- Effective risk mitigation
This will enhance operational efficiency, decision quality, and overall supply chain agility.
Approve PO’s and Requisitions on Mobile Devices
This new mobile approval experience will streamline and expedite the approval process for purchase requisitions and purchase orders. This feature allows users to respond to approval workflow tasks directly from their mobile devices, enhancing flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness. The mobile app provides an overview of assigned tasks, allows detailed review, and enables users to choose from configured approval options, including approve, reject, request change, or delegate to another user, without switching context.
Empower Employees and Maximize Profitability in Dynamics 365 Project Operations
For the 2024 release wave 1, Microsoft has announced several great new features your organization can use to drive success.
Insight Generator for Status Reports
This enhancement in project management provides flexibility for project managers to customize report sections based on their unique business requirements, ensuring alignment with diverse audience needs. Utilizing the insight generator, the feature captures data from predefined entities, allowing users to seamlessly incorporate them into project status reports. Additionally, users can save and share the tailored reports with different audiences, enhancing communication and alignment within the project.
Brand New Expense Mobile App
This release introduces a user-friendly expense mobile app for Project Operations, streamlining the expense entry process for employees and expediting reimbursement. The app is designed for ease of use and adaptability, allowing users to enter expense details on the go. The flexibility of the app enables continuous improvements based on customer feedback received after its general availability release.
Interested in More Information About the 2024 Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations?
Get in touch with Stoneridge Software! Our team is actively learning about these new features and functionalities so we can help you utilize them at your organization.
You can also view the full release notes here.
Under the terms of this license, you are authorized to share and redistribute the content across various mediums, subject to adherence to the specified conditions: you must provide proper attribution to Stoneridge as the original creator in a manner that does not imply their endorsement of your use, the material is to be utilized solely for non-commercial purposes, and alterations, modifications, or derivative works based on the original material are strictly prohibited.
Responsibility rests with the licensee to ensure that their use of the material does not violate any other rights.