In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, Shawn Dorward is joined by Søren Alexandersen, Principal Program Manager, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft. The two discuss the potential of AI and Copilots to streamline the accounts payable (AP) process. Alexandersen highlights the upcoming public preview of the Payables Agent, which will help process invoices from various sources, and shares future developments for the tool.
Key Takeaways
- Overview: Alexandersen is a product manager on the Business Central engineering team in Denmark, with 28 years of ERP experience and nearly a decade at Microsoft. He currently leads the finance area of Business Central and the Payables Agent, drawing on a background in both consulting and engineering.
- AI impressions: Generative AI is still a very new field, and many, including Alexandersen, are working to fully grasp its capabilities, boundaries, and best use cases. While there’s tremendous potential, especially with tools like Copilot, it’s essential to understand that these systems are not human but statistical machines, which helps in using them more effectively. In high-stakes areas like finance, trust, transparency, and reliability are critical for adoption.
- Payables Agent: The Payables Agent supports finance professionals by processing invoices in various formats, whether received via email, stored on SharePoint, or accessed through e-invoicing networks. It uses OCR to extract human-readable data from PDFs, enabling Business Central to understand it. “Now, we can start to really understand what to do with this invoice.”
- Backed with LLMs: Large language models (LLMs) are unlocking new capabilities in invoice processing by enabling systems to interpret the content of an invoice much like a human would. Alexandersen explains that LLMs can now determine whether an invoice is for services, subscriptions, or products, and how it should be coded. “That’s what we can now do with LLMs.” The first public preview of the Payables Agent is expected to launch in July with a limited scope to gather early feedback.
- Future developments: A major focus for future developments for the Payables Agent includes building “three-way purchase” order matching into the agent experience and exploring how customers expect that to function, with an open invitation for feedback, explains Alexandersen. Additionally, there’s strong interest in modernizing the invoice approvals process, and eventually incorporating paid invoices and employee expense receipts into the system to create a more comprehensive financial workflow.
- Human influence: The Payables Agent is designed to guide, not act. “The agent won’t post anything. It’s always the user who posts,” but it will suggest values and explain its reasoning based on historical data and LLM insights. The team is also exploring how to incorporate confidence levels to help users quickly assess the reliability of suggestions, and is planning for future capabilities like multi-agent handoffs for tasks such as inventory validation and approvals.
- Feedback shaping future development: Alexandrsen explains that the team is embracing early releases of production-quality features to foster valuable user feedback and co-development. As he puts it, “that friction is good, that friction helps us all learn which next steps to take,” highlighting a shift toward open experimentation, including potential sandbox environments where customers can try out experimental features and provide input to shape future development.
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