Every ERP buyer evaluating AI should be asking one question: will my agents actually understand how my business runs? Microsoft’s new documentation on Business Applications in Work IQ is its most direct answer yet, and it matters for current Dynamics 365 customers and for companies considering Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.
Work IQ already understands how people work across Microsoft 365, including who collaborates with whom and which content matters. Microsoft is now extending it into how the organization runs, bringing data, processes, and operational context from business applications into Copilot and agents. For ERP customers, that’s the difference between AI that summarizes meetings and AI that can reason about orders, inventory, and suppliers.
Know What’s Live and What’s Coming
The timing needs to be clear. The preview’s supported data sources today are Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Power Apps model-driven apps. According to Microsoft’s announcement, the Finance and Operations apps, which include Finance and Supply Chain Management, are scheduled to roll out in late October. It’s also a preview that Microsoft says isn’t meant for production use. The smart move for F&SCM customers is to use the coming months to prepare rather than deploy.
Why ERP Is Where This Gets Interesting
The architecture is worth understanding. Work IQ provides search, fetch, and execution tools, and business applications plug in by expanding what those tools can reach. Each application keeps its own data model, permissions, and governance. For finance and supply chain leaders, that design is critical. ERP security roles aren’t optional, and Microsoft isn’t asking customers to weaken them to get value from AI.
The two core capabilities map neatly onto ERP work. The semantic model gives agents a business-aware understanding of the data, which matters in a domain full of terms with precise, company-specific meanings. Business skills let organizations define a process once and reuse it across agents. Microsoft’s own example is a skill for recommending suppliers. ERP organizations have decades of process knowledge locked in SOPs and in the heads of senior planners and controllers, and business skills offer a way to capture it.
The Investment Case
For prospects, Work IQ sharpens Microsoft’s pitch. ERP selection has always come down to functional fit, cost, and implementation risk. Buyers now need to add a fourth criterion: how well will the system serve as a foundation for agents? Microsoft’s argument is that F&SCM data, sitting alongside Sales, Service, and Microsoft 365 context, lets agents reason across customer, order, and financial information in a single request. That kind of cross-functional scenario is hard for any single app to deliver. Microsoft is also extending the model to non-Microsoft systems through MCP, which matters for companies running mixed application estates.
For existing customers, Work IQ pays a dividend on past investment. The views, forms, and relationships already configured become raw material for the semantic model. Clean, well-governed implementations will benefit most, and messy ones will be exposed.
What to Do Now
There are three practical steps. First, get your Power Platform admins familiar with enablement, especially since Work IQ is replacing Dataverse intelligence, which is being retired as a standalone service. Second, review Work IQ licensing and usage-based billing so you can model costs before scaling. Third, start documenting the finance and supply chain processes that would make strong business skills.
Final Thoughts
ERP has long been the system of record. With Work IQ, Microsoft is positioning Dynamics 365 as the foundation agents reason over as well. Customers who get their data and processes in order now will be first in line to benefit when Finance and Operations support arrives.
