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From Copilot to AI Agents: how Dynamics 365 is shaping the intelligent enterprise

AI is no longer a futuristic concept. It’s here, and it’s changing the way enterprises operate. For companies considering Microsoft Dynamics 365, the conversation has moved beyond core ERP and CRM capabilities.
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AI is no longer a futuristic concept. It’s here, and it’s changing the way enterprises operate. For companies considering Microsoft Dynamics 365, the conversation has moved beyond core ERP and CRM capabilities. Today, it’s about how AI – specifically Copilot and AI agents – can streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and deliver insights that create a competitive advantage. At 9altitudes, we help organizations navigate this transformation. Our approach is not about chasing the latest hype, but rather about turning AI into measurable business value.

Daniel Hillebrand Hansen

AI Lead

AI Agents vs. Agentic AI

If you follow AI news, you have probably heard the term agentic AI. It has become a buzzword, but in reality, true agentic AI – systems that operate fully autonomously and make decisions without human input – is still on the horizon.

Right now, most businesses work with AI agents. “Think of them as an expert by your side,” says Daniel Hillebrand Hansen, AI Lead at 9altitudes. “These digital assistants are specialists in a narrow domain of your operations, like finance, supply chain, or customer service. They can monitor specific processes, learn from your business data, and prompt you with relevant insights and recommendations.”

Microsoft’s vision is moving toward more autonomous, multi-capable systems. Already today, you can create multi-agent setups, a combination of specialized agents that coordinate with each other. For example, one agent might focus on supplier communications, another on customer demand forecasting, and a third on logistics planning. Together, they can orchestrate an entire process, end to end.

The value of AI agents in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 comes with Copilot capabilities built right in. Copilot delivers intelligent, context-sensitive assistance, bringing the right insights to you in the exact task or form you’re working on. In CRM, that might mean summarizing a customer record. In ERP, it may mean surfacing key data points from an order or invoice.

AI agents, however, go beyond the screen in front of you. They can:

    • Break context barriers by drawing information from across multiple systems.
    • Work together in multi-agent scenarios to solve complex problems.
    • Retain and build expertise over time, preserving institutional knowledge.

“And here’s a crucial point,” says Daniel Hillebrand Hansen. “Both Copilot and AI agents operate within the secure Microsoft ecosystem. They use the permissions and security settings of your organization, which means agents only access the data you already have access to, and they keep that data inside your enterprise. This is vital for building trust in AI-generated answers.”

Practical use cases of AI agents in Dynamics 365

For business leaders, AI needs to go beyond the buzz talk. It must deliver measurable results. Here are some examples where AI agents in Dynamics 365 can make an impact:

    1. Customer service
    • Provide consistent, 24/7 self-service answers based on your own knowledge base.
    • Personalize interactions using past preferences and behaviors.
    • Create and update support cases in real time, track cases needing attention, and follow up automatically
    • Improve intent detection and surface relevant knowledge articles instantly, supporting both self-service and live agent channels.
    1. Non-conformity reporting
    • Replace paper-based defect reports with AI-driven capture and categorization.
    • Ensure data is instantly available for compliance and quality analysis.
    1. Customer sentiment & churn prediction
    • Monitor customer emails, chat logs, and call transcripts.
    • Score sentiment and flag accounts at risk of churn.
    • Suggest retention actions (discount, loyalty program, proactive outreach).
    1. Dynamic SLA monitoring
    • Monitor open cases in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
    • Predict which cases are at risk of breaching SLA and escalate automatically.
    1. Multi-agent production planning
    • One agent optimizes schedules, another monitors resource availability, a third predicts demand. All can work together to keep production efficient.

ROI and business impact

The business value of AI agents comes in two main forms:

    • Direct efficiency gains: Automating repetitive tasks, reducing manual data searches, accelerating workflows.
    • Indirect quality improvements: Better insights lead to fewer errors, improved compliance, and stronger customer satisfaction.

“Yes, AI agents will help organizations to save time, but they are about so much more,” says Daniel Hillebrand Hansen. “The strategic choice for leadership is whether to regard AI as a tool to increase efficiency and reallocate resources, as an innovation driver, or both. Will organizations use AI just to cut costs, or rather explore it to unlock innovation capacity and to position their teams to lead in intelligent operations?”

Learn more about how you can leverage AI

AI offers many opportunities.

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How to start your AI journey

We recommend a start small, think big approach.

  1. Pick one process that’s manual, repetitive, and measurable.
  2. Deploy a single agent to prove value quickly and build internal trust.
  3. Expand into multi-agent setups as your AI maturity grows.

Small-scale pilots deliver faster ROI, adapt more easily to evolving technology, and avoid the rigidity of “monolithic” agents that try to do everything at once.

However, there’s one important caveat. “An AI agent can only be as good as the data it works with,” says Dennis Houthoofd, Data & AI Solution Architect at 9altitudes. “To make predictions, do proactive recommendations, or execute reliable process automation, your business systems need accurate, up-to-date records and well-structured information.”

This is especially true for more advanced use cases like supply chain forecasting or predictive maintenance. Agents rely on accurate intent detection and real-time knowledge retrieval. These are capabilities that only work when the underlying data is trustworthy.

“In our experience, larger organizations with mature Dynamics 365 deployments often have their data foundation in place. Other companies may first need to improve data quality before they see the full value of AI agents,” says Dennis Houthoofd.

From vision to action: exploring AI agents with 9altitudes

At 9altitudes, we believe AI should start with your business goals, not with technology for technology’s sake. Whether you’re exploring AI for the first time, embedding Copilot into your Microsoft ecosystem, or building AI agents to automate processes, our focus is always the same: delivering measurable value. 9altitudes can work with you to identify where AI can have the greatest impact: strengthening resilience, improving service quality, or driving operational efficiency.

Now is the time to move. Your competitors are already experimenting with AI, and the advantage will go to those who act early. The journey to the intelligent enterprise can start with something as simple as your first AI agent in Dynamics 365.

Ready to explore? Let’s identify your quick wins, design your AI roadmap, and turn AI from a buzzword into a business advantage.

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