Success Story: How a manufacturing finance team transformed their month-end
What happens when a finance team no longer has to wait days for reports, chase down spreadsheet errors, or rely on IT for answers?
4 min read
Finance teams today are navigating a uniquely demanding landscape. With evolving compliance requirements, tighter margins, and a growing need for agility...
the role of finance is no longer limited to historical reporting. Finance leaders are expected to deliver timely insights, guide operational decisions, and support long-term strategy — often with leaner teams and systems that weren’t built for this pace.
For organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, there’s no shortage of data. The challenge lies in accessing it efficiently, understanding it in context, and acting on it — without bottlenecks or long waits for reports.
When the ERP is full of data… but short on answers
Business Central provides a robust foundation: general ledger data, dimensions, customer transactions, cost centers, and budgets are all there. But day-to-day financial questions still require jumping between Excel, prebuilt reports, and Power BI dashboards. Finance professionals face hurdles such as:
- Time-consuming report preparation
- Reliance on IT for ad hoc queries
- Manual comparisons between periods
- Lack of visibility into the causes behind changes in key metrics
Many teams still spend more time compiling data than analyzing it. And when fast answers are needed — in meetings, across departments, or during month-end — the gap becomes clear.
The need for on-demand financial insight
Modern finance teams need more than access to data — they need a way to interact with it, uncover context, and gain clarity at speed. What’s changing in revenue and why? Where are margins slipping? How do costs compare across regions or time periods?
To meet this demand, companies are rethinking the role of their ERP — not just as a system of record, but as a system of insight.
Key capabilities that support this shift include:
1. Automated Financial Reporting
Instead of relying on Excel templates or waiting for static reports, finance teams increasingly expect automated P&L and balance sheet generation — tailored to their specific chart of accounts and available in real time.
2. Natural Language Interaction
Rather than clicking through layers of menus or designing complex queries, finance users want to ask questions directly — in plain language — and get structured, trustworthy answers instantly.
3. Multi-dimensional Analysis
To understand the business, users must slice performance by region, product, department, or customer segment — ideally without building new reports for every scenario.
4. Comparison Across Periods
Analyzing variances month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, or year-over-year is core to financial storytelling. Comparing performance with context should be easy, not an exercise in spreadsheet gymnastics.
5. Multilingual Accessibility
For global finance teams, the ability to query and interpret financial data in multiple languages is essential. It supports collaboration and ensures alignment — especially across European and international teams.
Practical finance use cases in Business Central
Let’s consider a few scenarios many Business Central users will find familiar:
-
A finance manager wants to prepare for a board meeting by understanding which product lines contributed most to gross profit changes.
-
A CFO receives a question during a leadership call about balance sheet trends by region — and needs to answer without deferring to the BI team.
-
A controller needs to validate that month-end variances in operating expenses align with forecasts, and share findings in both English and French.
These use cases aren’t solved by just “more dashboards.” They require tools that bring together the ERP’s transactional depth with flexible, intelligent access to financial narratives.
What modern finance tools should offer
For finance teams to become more strategic and less reactive, tools should offer:
-
Real-time, self-service insight without waiting for IT
-
The ability to go from question to answer in seconds
-
Insightful summaries and variance commentary
-
Support for distributed teams with different language needs
-
Deep integration with Business Central to ensure consistency
AI is a natural fit for finance - when applied thoughtfully
AI is often discussed in abstract terms, but in finance, its impact is tangible when it supports everyday work. Whether through automated report generation, conversational queries, or built-in commentary that highlights performance drivers, AI is becoming a practical tool for modern finance functions.
It doesn’t replace the analyst’s judgment or the CFO’s strategic acumen — but it removes the noise and accelerates the journey from data to decision.
Where to begin
For Business Central users looking to add clarity, speed, and structure to their financial processes, there’s a clear opportunity to enhance the ERP with intelligent tooling. The best solutions build directly on top of Business Central, require minimal setup, and reflect the language and logic finance professionals use daily.
AI Financial Intelligence by Data Courage
AI Financial Intelligence is one such solution. Built specifically for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, it enables finance teams to:
- Generate P&L and balance sheet reports automatically
- Ask financial questions in natural language and receive structured, multilingual responses
- Compare performance across periods with AI-generated commentary
- Spot risks, trends, and anomalies without building dashboards
- Access all of this — even from a mobile device
Whether you’re closing the month, preparing for a board meeting, or answering leadership questions on the fly, AI Financial Intelligence helps transform Business Central into a true financial decision-making platform.
Because when finance teams stop spending time gathering numbers — and start focusing on what they mean — real impact follows.
Ready to rethink what your finance stack can do?
How AI can transform financial reporting in D365 BC
Financial leaders need real-time insights to make fast, informed decisions. Yet for many CFOs, CEOs, and finance analysts, financial reporting...
The Role of AI in Transforming Financial Reporting
In the financial world, accuracy is everything, and there's little room for error. That's precisely why AI has become such a game-changer, especially...
Success Story: How a manufacturing finance team transformed their month-end
What happens when a finance team no longer has to wait days for reports, chase down spreadsheet errors, or rely on IT for answers?
How AI can transform financial reporting in D365 BC
Financial leaders need real-time insights to make fast, informed decisions. Yet for many CFOs, CEOs, and finance analysts, financial reporting...
The Role of AI in Transforming Financial Reporting
In the financial world, accuracy is everything, and there's little room for error. That's precisely why AI has become such a game-changer, especially...
