Community Summit NA 2024 Keynote Program Highlights Customer, Partner, User, and Microsoft Voices
To officially kick off Community Summit North America 2024, over 5,000 attendees gathered to the keynote stage to hear from a variety of voices. This year’s keynote highlighted the event’s record-breaking participation, with over 600+ speakers and nearly 280 sponsors. Something unique about the 2024 Keynote Program was the variety of innovation, inclusion, and strength of the community which was demonstrated through the various speakers featured.
Continued Partnerships, Enhanced Collaboration
Dynamics Communities and Community Summit NA CEO John Siefert welcomed leaders of TechFluent, The Black Channel Partner Alliance (BCPA), and Microsoft, to highlight the importance of partnerships and promoting diversity and inclusion within the Dynamics Ecosystem.
Brion Reusche, Technology Sales Senior Director-Business Applications, Microsoft, and TechFluent Board Member explained the Mission of TechFluent – to provide technical and business skills to underserved communities, with a focus on job placement in the channel. Within the last year, TechFluent has scaled its impact and increased from 20 to 100 graduates.
Lucas Diaz, Vice President – Member Board of Directors, TechFluent & Managing Partner at Ludia Consulting, introduced the BCPA and its partnership with TechFluent. Nyasha Tunduwani, Founder of the BCPA, explained that the company’s mission is to build wealth and create job opportunities in the tech landscape within the Black community.
Regina Johnson, Senior Manager – Partner Engagement, Microsoft concluded the segement by expressing the power of collaboration and inclusion. “An inclusive economy is one where anyone can participate, where innovation is limitless, and really where we work together, to really transform communities. And so we need you to transform economies.”
User Journey and Partner Expansion
For the second year, the Keynote Program featured an “Innovation Spotlight.” This year, The Heico Companies’ Crystal Ahrens and Nicky Gulhar joined Stacey Hansen of AXIA Consulting to discuss how the two organizations worked together on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations implementation. Hansen noted the importance of continuous control, following proper standards and processes, and the value of collaboration to achieve tangible wins for the business.
Kenny Mullican, CIO of Paragon Films, joined John Siefert to give an update on the company’s migration. At Community Summit NA 2023, Mullican led a session on the “why and how” of Paragrom Films’ migration journey, from AX to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations.
He explained that “we are well beyond the point of having to address those initial needs or pain points, and it’s been much more about, how do we build here? What more can we do with it now that everybody’s already seen the benefit of the of the new system and what we’re doing now?”
In closing, he shared some of the biggest learnings and lessons from this implementation. “I learned how much I didn’t know what it would take to be successful at it.” For others beginning their implementation journey, Mullican suggested three things:
- Understand the project needs from the start
- Don’t underestimate the amount of company resources this requires
- Don’t underestimate data
Following the “User Journey” segment, attendees hear from Bartosz Szpiech, VP of Product, Executive Automats by XPLUS, who discussed the company’s exciting expansion efforts.
Szpiech gave an overview of the company’s journey since it was founded 12 years ago and its biggest learnings having developed a “codeless, cross-platform environment” that Executive Automats created, and noted that Executive Automats has “recently expanded to become more of a platform for customers based on the relationship with Microsoft,” prompting Microsoft’s Mike Ehrenberg, to join in via video-recording to deliver the exciting news.
“We recently announced the acquisition of IP from XPLUS to enhance the security management and license management within Dynamics 365 ERP…We were able to deliver a lot more and deliver a lot faster by incorporating the XPLUS IP. It was great to know that we were starting from capabilities proven in production in an extremely complex customer implementation,” said Ehrenberg.
Business Apps and AI
Vik Singh, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Copilot Apps at Microsoft and Summit NA featured Keynote speaker, rounded out the program with a discussion on Microsoft Business Applications and Copilot. First, Singh reviewed the structure of Microsoft Business Applications (Dynamics), Power Platform, and Microsoft Copilot, and specifically – how Copilots are infused into various Business Applications, such as Dynamics 365 CRM and Sales.
“We’ve been able to go really deep. Not only, in building these great products and platforms around AI, but we’ve also been able to deploy this a large set of customers.”
During his demo, Singh showcased a custom Copilot use case. He explains that when he joined Microsoft, he encountered a lot of unfamiliar information and documents in SharePoint. To learn more about his boss, Charles Lamanna, Singh built a Copilot that mimics Charles’s comments and interactions based on his feedback in the document. Singh gathered and tweaked Charles’s comments from various documents, even using some Python code to personalize the profile.
“A big benefit of using Copilot Studio is the fact that you have a variety of data connectors you can tap into bringing data to the Copilot… we have over 1,200+ connectors… this is really important because these Copilots are as good as the data that you provide.
Singh shared a brief video that demonstrates how all Copilot Studio and D365 apps tie together to create a “nice, seamless experience, unlocking the value of AI.” In closing, Singh advised users to “make it [AI] seamless, make it simple. Don’t brag too much of AI. Just do good work using period.
Final Thoughts
The Community Summit 2024 Keynote Program was a significant way to kick off a week of innovation, education, and training, that showcased the strength and innovation within the Dynamics community. Attendees left with strong impressions including the emphasis on partnerships, inclusion, and collaboration. Lastly, the insights from Singh into Microsoft Business Applications and Copilot highlighted the seamless integration of AI to enhance user experiences, showcasing the potential of AI-driven solutions in transforming business operations.
