Optimising Your Supply Chain with Dynamics 365 Copilot

80% of businesses experienced supply chain disruptions in 2023.

Synchronising all the moving parts in a supply chain has never been easy, but in the last few years the pandemic, global conflicts and rising prices of raw materials have made it harder than ever.

The latest research also indicates that six out of ten companies are increasing their technology investments to help build more efficient supply chains.

Microsoft Copilot is designed to help businesses operate more efficiently. Investing in Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain will not only help you keep up with the competition, but it will also enable you to build a more efficient supply chain.

We’ll show you how AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 can assist you in optimising your supply chain and improve your decision-making process across all distribution channels.

Making Better Procurement Decisions with Copilot

In its simplest form, the procurement process sounds straightforward – identifying, purchasing and managing the services or goods your company needs to run its daily operations.

However, developing a reliable procurement strategy is often complex because estimating or anticipating sudden cost spikes and delivery delays isn’t always possible.

Integrating Copilot into your supply chain mitigates the risks associated with purchasing goods or services from unreliable suppliers. The AI assistant makes it easier to compare different procurement options by showing you real-time data and detailed analysis for each option.

Moreover, the tool helps you build a comprehensive procurement strategy designed to mitigate risks and minimise costs. Copilot integrates market and supplier data to identify the best supply sources and helps businesses mitigate the risks of raw material shortages.

Copilot can also help you adjust your organisation’s procurement process by suggesting alternative methods of dealing with raw material shortages while keeping the procurement costs at a minimum.

Using Copilot to Update Purchase Orders

Updating purchase orders manually often causes mistakes that impact the supply chain. This in turn decreases customer satisfaction and prompts clients to purchase products or services from competitors. Besides saving valuable time, Copilot ensures that each purchase order update is timely and accurate.

The tool lists the confirmed purchase orders and places them into these categories:

Low impact changes – The category contains purchase orders with no or minimal impact on the distribution chain.

High impact changes – You can find all purchase orders with a significant impact on the downstream demand in this category. Copilot creates summaries of high impact changes containing an explanation of how these changes affect the downstream demand.

Impacted downstream orders – The AI companion creates summaries of impacts on different types of orders and displays them in this category to give you an overview of what caused them and how they might affect your supply chain.

Moreover, Copilot uses predetermined parameters to confirm purchase orders automatically to help streamline a company’s supply chain.

Harnessing the Power of AI to Minimise Supply Chain Disruptions

The wealth of data available to Copilot makes it a powerful forecasting tool capable of making highly accurate predictions. The AI assistant can analyse market data to predict trends and help companies prevent overstocking or understocking products.

Its forecast model is trained to select the algorithm best suited for a certain type of product to ensure accurate results. You can adjust the parameters the AI assistant is using to generate a forecast based on your requirements to increase its accuracy within a specific context.

The AI companion considers the long-term weather forecast and countless other factors that can cause supply chain disruptions when generating predictions. Companies can rely on Copilot to anticipate an increase in demand for a certain product and prevent costly shortages.

The tool simplifies the process of updating product information, scheduling orders, and ensuring that all products are delivered on time, reducing the time employees at different points of the supply chain must spend performing repetitive tasks.

Optimising your company’s supply chain with Copilot will ensure faster delivery times and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.

Mitigating Risks and Boosting Efficiency with Copilot

Supply chain disruptions are often the result of the lack of communication between different teams. Copilot makes it easier for cross-functional teams to remain efficient by providing them with the information they need to act. The AI companion provides easy access to the inventory overview to all team members with the necessary permissions to facilitate collaboration.

For instance, whenever a product stock is low, Copilot will inform members of different teams to take action before the product goes out of stock. In doing so, the AI assistant improves the efficiency of the company’s supply chain and prevents potential revenue losses.

Its risk assessment capabilities are equally impressive. The AI companion analyses the latest news in search of global events that could disrupt an organisation’s supply chain. It also monitors the latest logistics trends to recommend supply adjustments that could reduce the company’s costs and bring products to customers faster.

Companies looking for ways to improve the sustainability of their supply chains can benefit from using Copilot in the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain app.

Even though the AI companion isn’t optimised to search for the most environmentally friendly supply chain solutions it can help organisations reduce waste and lower CO2 emissions by suggesting the most efficient distribution methods.

Copilot can generate detailed analysis of material consumption within a specific industry to help businesses minimise waste and reduce production costs.

Modernising Your Supply Chain with Dynamics 365 Copilot

Stock-outs, late deliveries or obtaining production materials from unreliable sources can disrupt your supply chain and cause substantial revenue losses. Copilot helps you avoid these risks and maximise the efficiency of your supply chain.

Its analytics capabilities can provide you with market insights and help you prepare for spikes in demand for certain products caused by global events and various other factors.

Copilot’s role in planning your organisation’s long-term procurement strategy or reevaluating its current supply chain is invaluable because it enables you to generate highly accurate forecasts with simple, natural language prompts.

Optimising your supply chain with Dynamics 365 Copilot may prove to be a pivotal decision that will modernise your operations, improve customer satisfaction and help your company maintain a competitive edge.