Dive Brief:

• Microsoft plans in coming weeks to roll out a new set of corporate finance planning tools with artificial intelligence capabilities, the software giant said Wednesday.
• The package, dubbed Dynamics 365 Finance Premium, will enable CFOs and their teams to build advanced financial plans and insights, all while leveraging familiar software products like Microsoft Excel, according to a blog post penned by Georg Glantschnig, Microsoft vice president of Dynamics 365 ERP Applications.
• “In the face of modern economic challenges, more advanced corporate performance management becomes essential for financial leaders,” Glantschnig said.

Dive Insight:

The announcement marks the latest effort by Microsoft to stake out a dominant position in the rapidly evolving AI-enabled business applications market. Software vendors big and small are racing to capitalize on the popularity of ChatGPT, a generative AI tool created by Microsoft-backed Open AI.

“We are rapidly infusing AI across every layer of the tech stack and for every role of business process to drive productivity gains for our customers,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during an October earnings call.

This year, Microsoft has unveiled a flurry of AI initiatives impacting a variety of its products and services, including its Bing search engine; its suite of office software products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook; and its Azure cloud computing platform.

The Redmond, Washington-based company has also begun to incorporate AI features into Dynamics 365, an enterprise resource planning platform designed to automate a range of business functions including finance, sales and human resources.

Besides Microsoft, other major players in the ERP market include SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Workday.

Wednesday’s announcement builds on Microsoft’s introduction of a new AI-powered version of Dynamics 365 in March. The new model “brings the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to Dynamics 365,” Emily He, corporate vice president of business applications marketing at Microsoft, said in a blog post at the time.

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