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How to empower existing ERP with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot
In this video episode of the EY Microsoft Tech Directions podcast, EY professionals discuss ERP systems in financial processes and how low-code technologies and AI can enhance these systems.
Join EY professionals as they dive into the topic of enhancing existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot. They chat about the hurdles traditional ERP systems face and how low code and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can come to the rescue.
The speakers discuss the evolving role of Power Apps in helping businesses adapt to market changes. It's all about finding cost-effective solutions and boosting efficiency.
The conversation gets into how AI and Copilot can take ERP systems to the next level. Imagine automating processes, getting insightful analytics, making better decisions and managing investments in the same project.
Speakers touch on key themes for making the most of the Power Platform. It's about building and innovating solutions, automating those tedious manual processes, empowering employees with low code tools and keeping data safe with strong governance and compliance.
Speakers:
Jonathan Kazemaini, Executive Director, Microsoft Contact Center and Microsoft Federal Sector Leader, Ernst & Young LLP
Amanda Easton, Associate Director, EY Microsoft Alliance Global Business Applications Go-to-market, Ernst & Young LLP
Nick Costanzo, Executive Director, Microsoft Power Platform and Sustainability, Ernst & Young LLP
Key takeaways:
The how and why of enhancing ERP systems with Low Code and AI: explore technologies that offer cost-effective solutions, streamline processes and provide adaptability to market changes.
Real-world applications and benefits: examine real world examples of how EY has successfully implemented low code solutions to improve efficiency and compliance.
Key themes for leveraging the Power Platform: build and innovate solutions, automate manual processes, empower employees with low code tools and safeguard data.
For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is available below.
Kristie Reid
When it comes to existing ERP systems, what are the challenges that are worth addressing, and how can you harness the potential of low code and AI?
Hello, I’m Kristie Reid, Microsoft Business Applications Lead for EY. This is Tech Directions, where EY and Microsoft professionals explore transformative cloud solutions.
In today’s conversation, we dig into this question and surface practical, and tested, solutions for organizations of all kinds.
Amanda Easton
ERP systems are the backbone of financial processes, and as things change and organizations grow, financial leaders are looking for ways to take their ERP and their teams to new levels. Across the world we are seeing low code technologies and AI step in to enhance existing ERP systems.
I'm Amanda Easton. I am our global leader for Microsoft Business Solutions, and I'm joined here today by Nick Costanzo. Nick.
Nick Costanzo
Hey Amanda. Thanks for having me. I'm Nick Costanzo, a director in our Microsoft Business Applications group, and I help build solutions on the Power Platform integrated with ERP systems for our clients across all sectors, including energy and sustainability.
Easton
Yes. And also Jonathan Kazemaini. Kaz, introduce yourself.
Jonathan Kazemaini
Appreciate it Amanda. Johnathan Kazemaini. I'm a peer of Nick's in the business application practice, also focusing on the power apps and Dynamic Suite.
Easton
All right. Kaz, we're going to start with you.
Kazemaini
Sure.
Easton
Organizations put a lot of time and effort into deploying an ERP, but what happens when processes, technologies and strategies change?
Kazemaini
That's a great question, Amanda. And that's really where Power Apps comes into place. It's a business process automation tool. So think about the way we did business pre-COVID versus post-COVID. Some organizations had a hard time adapting to that immediate market change, others did not. So ERP applications are these large, complex, heavy solutions. It's hard to change those, but when you're using a low code application like Power Apps, you can augment that business process and be able to adapt at the speed of the market.
Easton
Okay. Yeah, I mean that makes sense. But really when we're looking at this low code technology, the Power platform has so many possibilities, Nick. I mean, how do organizations even know where to start?
Costanzo
There's a lot of areas that they can look at, but they fall into a few categories. So simple things like, how do you find data more easily? How do you work with data outside of your ERP system in things like spreadsheets? And also, how do you streamline your processes and with things like approvals? So really it comes down to how can you reduce manual entry and how can you more easily automate your existing business processes.
Easton
And a lot of times we talked about these complex but also very robust ERP systems, right Kaz? And as we're looking at why would a Power Platform be an attractive alternative instead of replacing an ERP system?
Kazemaini
So number one is definitely costs. Reducing that cost. As I mentioned before, there are no cheap ERP implementations. However, when you're using a low code application like Power Apps, you can create processes surrounding that ERP application. The next one is around efficiencies and compliance. Business process automation is something that's very difficult to do in ERP, however, that's the backbone of the power platform. So being able to create that consistent process, that consistent experience following compliance and guardrails, you have now the ability to have a low-cost, quickly deployable application versus spending months in an ERP trying to customize that versus configuring it.
Easton
I heard a really interesting story from our Irish team around capital expenditures. One of our clients was trying to create a new capital expenditure system. It was very complex. And when EY came back with our proposal, we proposed instead of changing or augmenting their existing ERP, we proposed the Power Platform to create a capital expenditure system that was integrated to their legacy ERP system. And our proposal came in at 40% cheaper than any other proposal on the market. It was the only one that actually did that. It was like a new way to think about how to approach a solution with low code technologies and AI.
And it was actually live in eight months. So being able to add such an important piece into their ecosystem in eight months is quite impressive.
Costanzo
Yeah, that's great.
Easton
So the best way to really understand what a low code platform like Power Platform can do for you is really to talk about some scenarios. So we have at EY implemented what we call Power Post. It's around GL and financial postings across our many member firms to the Master ERP system. How did Power Post, Nick, how did that save time for professionals?
Costanzo
Yeah. Power Post is a very exciting solution because it streamlined and made our general ledger posting much more efficient. Our team was starting with a group of over 400 professionals around the globe trying to post on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And the process was really time-consuming, and by building a solution called Power Post, our team was able to integrate the power platform with our existing ERP system and streamline that process down to just a few hours. It also eliminated a lot of the back and forth. It also made the user experience much better in terms of how approvals were done, how selections were made, and how records were created and validated. So all in all, it was a big win for everybody.
Easton
Yeah, it's interesting. I think our 400 financial professionals, if I'm not mistaken, we went from an Excel spreadsheet through Outlook, an external vendor, then out to another external vendor, that took two to three days. And you're saying we got it down to one hour?
And I'm going to stick with you and talk about sustainability because people don't often think, I mean, sustainability in our world, we think about it on a day-to-day basis about how we impact our environment, but how do corporations and organizations impact the environment and the society around them? And then how do they track and actually manage that impact of, we've brought to market the sustainability ledger, how does that help organizations today?
Costanzo
Yeah, so sustainability Ledger is an exciting solution as well because it brings the platform to integrate with ERP systems to address many different types of sustainability challenges our clients are facing, whether it's recycled plastics or EV battery production, or even the production of clean hydrogen energy. Our solution is configurable and flexible to tie into existing value chains and processes across these different clients in different sectors, to work with them, streamline what they're doing, but also produce the key data and the key metrics that they need to run their business to meet the demands of their regulatory agencies, and also share that same information with their stakeholders and their customers. There's a great demand out there for customers to understand where their products are coming from, how they were made, how sustainable they are. And the only way they can do that is with trust-able, reliable and verifiable data. And that's what our sustainable ledger helps our clients achieve.
Easton
You know, when we're thinking about environmental impact, the data that we have to collect, it comes from so many different systems within the organization. How does the sustainability work with all those different data systems?
Costanzo
So the great thing about it is a lot of our clients already have the data existing in their ERP systems, whether it's in their procure to pay process and what they're purchasing from their suppliers, or their sales order process and what they are selling to their customers. And the magic is in how you then take that data, run the appropriate calculations and do the appropriate analysis and reporting to provide that information to the agencies that do the auditing, to the stakeholders or the customers that want to see that information. So it's a matter of taking that data that exists today and drawing the value out of it.
Easton
So let's change tracks and talk about a different alternative for the Power Platform. Kaz, when I think about inventory, I think about it being done in traditional ERP systems that sit in the headquarters of corporations, but we have clients that have the need for an inventory counting app. Why do they need this? Tell us a little bit about that.
Kazemaini
So we have created an EY inventory counting app accelerator, and the reason we did that is because we saw the exact same inventory use cases across all industries, whether it's retail, oil and gas, or even our military, we saw the exact same thing. All these large organizations have one or multiple backend ERPs, all have the same type of complexities in terms of, I don't have enough inventory or I have too many. I have to do audit reporting. I need to have compliance controls in place. I need the ability to go into a remote location without an internet connection and be able to do inventory counting and cycle counts. I need the ability to have deep analytics on where my products are, what's the status of those products, and how quickly can I get those into the hands of my end users?
So what we've done is we've created an accelerator that is specifically designed to integrate with the world's backend enterprise ERP. So you name it, those large organizations. We've built an integration. And we have now the ability to, without the need of enhancing that ERP, bringing the data over, performing those inventory processes with or without an internet connection, and then having the data flow back to the appropriate ERP for financial execution or supply chain updates.
Easton
All right. So we've been talking about how the Power Platform can help organizations be agile in change, but technology is changing today and has been changing for the past year around generative AI. So how can AI and Copilots help businesses that have already invested in an ERP? Nick?
Costanzo
Yeah. Well, a couple of different ways. Number one, it can help them utilize things like agents to streamline and repeat a standard process for an organization. So once you've defined how you do your business, you can now use Copilot agents to do that without requiring manual intervention. Another way that Copilot and AI can help organizations is using the data in their ERP system to gain more insights with analytics and what-if analysis. What if they change their process? What if they look to enhance how they're doing business today? What would the ramifications be? And that's something that's really powerful that AI can do.
Kaz, where do you see it helping?
Kazemaini
So I'm with Nick. Agents is a huge benefit with Copilot. So being able to just ask in natural language, what's the status of this item? Where is it located? Or I might be out of a specific product, is there a substitute that would fit into this machine? And how fast can I get that? Going into AI itself? Think about image object detection. So instead of an associate going out and start counting how many pipes might be in a yard or how many shoes we have in stock, just take a picture and leverage AI actually consume that image and identify what are those objects, and how many of those objects do we actually have? And then update our backend financials.
Easton
Well, as we're wrapping up here, when we think about everything Power Platform and AI, are there some key themes that we can leave our clients with?
Costanzo
Yeah, A couple key themes. So number one, build. Allow your people to build and innovate solutions on the power platform that can tie into your ERP systems. Another would be, automate. So eliminate manual processes by automating where you can. Empower, empowering your people to use things like low code solutions to make their day-to-day jobs easier. And then lastly, safeguard. You want to think about governance, you want to safeguard your data, making sure things are getting built in the right way that align with your organization's policies and principles.
Easton
Yeah, that's interesting. As we think about low code options, the Microsoft Power Platform obviously leverages Microsoft Azure and the security behind it. Right? So we have that power of that secure and robust environment that we leverage through Microsoft itself.
All right, Kaz, what are some key takeaways that you would want people to remember?
Kazemaini
So I think one of the biggest key takeaways is, I keep getting asked. "Why should I use power apps with my ERP?" My point back to them is, why not? Microsoft has partnered with these large organizations. Together they've actually built the connectors because they know that business process automation is hard to do in their applications. So why not use a low code application to create that business process automation layer, that creates that consistency and compliance across the board?
Easton
Yeah. Now one of the things we've been talking about too is the adaptability. And that adaptability brings the opportunity to quickly prototype those things that we want to see, then adjust them as they get down into the field or to the people that are using them. We can make those adjustments very quickly and iterate on what we really want as an end result, so we can hit those metrics that we're trying to tackle. So I love that.
But here we are. There are so many options when it comes to the Microsoft Power Platform, when it comes to Copilots. How do we even get started, Nick?
Costanzo
You got to encourage collaboration, get people together, workshop, whether it's remotely, in person. You know, business users have the knowledge of how your business runs. Your ERP system has the data, get people together to collaborate. We have a great way of bringing people together in our Wave Spaces. We can prototype like you just mentioned, and we can innovate quickly, get results out there and start to improve your business incrementally and get you on the path to success.
Easton
Yeah. In everything that we do, there's always ways to think about what are the challenges that are worth addressing to help save that time and money? And so it's an exciting thing to do. And we want it to empower those ERP systems with a low code platform.
Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you enjoyed our session. Thank you.
Reid
Thank you for joining us, I hope this conversation gave you some ideas about how low code and AI can help your finance teams.
For more insights from EY and Microsoft leaders, visit us on ey.com/techdirections
