If there is one thing Directions EMEA 2025 made clear, it is: AI in Business Central is no longer a future concept or a keynote demo. It is becoming part of how finance teams, controllers and executives actually work with their numbers every day.
We have spent nearly 20 years working in data, reporting and analytics, supporting more than 650 customers across over 30 countries through the partner channel. Long before AI became a headline topic, we were already focused on the same fundamental challenge:
How do you help people understand their numbers without forcing them to become reporting or BI experts?
This question has guided our work from classic reporting, through analytics, and now into embedded AI inside Business Central. At Directions EMEA 2025, it finally felt like the ecosystem had caught up to that conversation.
The opening of the keynote in Poznań played with the idea of going from clay to code. Ancient tools, dashboards, a fictional Abbey Intelligence that hallucinates, and then a shift back to reality where AI finally delivers something useful.
Behind the humor was a serious point.
Most finance teams do not need more dashboards. They do not need more filters, parameters or tools to learn. What they need is the ability to ask a clear question about their business and get a clear, defensible answer.
This is why the focus has shifted from visual complexity to conversational clarity.
Instead of asking users to navigate reports, AI can now sit directly inside Business Central and work with the data that already exists there. The result is functional AI that supports real work, not AI theater.
Across the ecosystem, a clear pattern has emerged.
Partners and customers are no longer asking whether they should use AI. They are asking how to use it in a way that delivers value quickly and does not create additional complexity.
They are not looking for abstract enterprise case studies or examples that only apply to global corporations. They want practical solutions that a CFO, controller or accounting team can use immediately, inside their existing Business Central environment.
The expectations are simple and demanding at the same time: real scenarios, clear return on investment, AI that reduces work instead of adding new layers of effort.
This is where embedded AI inside Business Central becomes critical.
AI Financial Intelligence is built to act as a CFO assistant directly inside Business Central. In practice, it allows finance teams and executives to:
A single open question such as assessing operational efficiency for a given month can trigger calculations that traditionally require multiple reports, spreadsheets and follow-up questions. Asset turnover, days sales outstanding, cash conversion cycle and margin trends can be analyzed together and presented in a board-ready format.
This happens without code, without exporting data and without relying on custom-built reports.
Because the app respects existing permission sets and works with Team Member licenses, executives can access insights without needing to live inside Business Central or depend on someone else to prepare reports for them.
Month-end and year-end close are not slow because accounting teams lack expertise. They are slow because too much time is spent hunting for issues instead of resolving them.
Chief Accountant Assistant is designed to remove that hunt.
It allows teams to define closing tasks and checks using plain language and link them to specific accounts or ranges. Questions like whether deferrals were posted correctly, whether documents are missing dimensions, or whether unusual posting patterns exist can be answered automatically.
Instead of manually scanning the general ledger, accountants receive a focused list of exceptions and can jump directly to the relevant entries to take action.
For many organizations, this has reduced month-end close from weeks to days. When checks are scheduled automatically, a large part of the close can be validated before the new month even begins.
For Business Central partners, the best first step is simple. Install AI Financial Intelligence internally and use it to analyze your own data. Design your AI strategy based on real numbers, then use the same approach with customers.
For customers, the starting point is a conversation with your partner about embedded AI inside Business Central. If needed, we can help connect you with a partner who is already working in this way.
Our apps are available on Microsoft AppSource. Visit AppSource to download and try the apps for yourself.
We have spent nearly two decades helping people work with data. Today, AI allows us to put that experience directly into Business Central, where people already do their work.
From clay to code, the tools have changed. The goal has not. Helping people understand their numbers clearly, quickly and with confidence.