Everyone wants AI. Few are ready for it.  The question isn’t “When do we start?” but “Are we prepared to get it right?”  Because switching on Copilots without fixing your foundations doesn’t accelerate you. it amplifies chaos.  This article will cover how to fix your foundations for AI so that the AI tools you deploy are accurate and reliable.  Challenges of deploying AI Directly  Some of the common challenges of directly deploying AI on top of your business applications are –   And these issues just render the AI implementation as a failure immediately dismissing trust in using AI at all.  But these challenges can be overcome once the foundations of AI are in place which we’ll discuss in the next section.  Foundation of AI  At CloudFronts, we call this the 3 Pillars of AI Readiness:  Here’s how I sum up the foundation of the systems for AI –  For example, when CloudFronts helped Tinius Olsen modernize their systems, the focus wasn’t just technical uplift. It was about ensuring every business process was cloud-ready so AI models could actually trust the data.   Upgrading from legacy systems And this is the foundation that needs to be had before AI can be implemented at your organization.  Data & AI Maturity Curve by Databricks  Given the above foundations in place for your AI Adoption strategy and choosing the right framework for your implementation, the Data & AI Maturity Curve shown below can be referenced to see where your organization is on the curve and where do you want to get to –   On a high level, the foundation will get you to look back at the data and see what has happened in the past and AI tools can help you get this information accurately.  Further, once trust is established, actions like making the AI predict the future state of operations, prescribe steps and even take decisions on our behalf can be achieved – provided you really want that to happen. It might be too soon just yet.  To conclude, AI success = Foundations × Trust.  Without modern systems, connected data, and governed access, AI is just noise.  But with these in place, every AI tool you deploy whether predictive analytics or Copilots becomes an accelerator for decision-making, not a distraction.  Before you deploy AI, fix your foundations. If you’re serious about making AI a trusted accelerator not a costly experiment start with modernization, connection, and governance. At CloudFronts, we help enterprises build these foundations with confidence. Let’s connect over our email: Transfrom@cloudfronts.com  

When we say building a bridge? Does it mean something isn’t connected together? And what is it?It’s AI itself and your systems that are not connected. What this means if although your AI can access your systems to derive information, it’s still unreliable, slow. What is needed for AI to be successful? In order for AI to be successful, below is what to avoid: In order to eliminate the above, we must have a layer of ‘catalog’ which will house all business data together so that a common vocabulary is established between systems. AI then pools from this ‘Data catalog’ to perform agentic actions. The diagram below best explains, on a high level, how this looks : And all this is defined by how well the integrations between these systems are established. How CloudFronts Can Help? CloudFronts has deep integration expertise where we connected cloud-based applications with each other with the below in mind – Often times, we find ready-made plug and play cloud-based integration solutions which come with their own hefty licensing that keeps going up every few years. Using such integration tools not only affects cash flow but also adds a layer of opaqueness, as we don’t control the flow of integration, and we cannot granularize it beyond what’s offered. Custom integration gives you better control and analytics, which readymade solutions can’t.Here’s a CloudFronts Case Study published by Microsoft, wherein we connected systems for our customer with multiple systems driving data and insights. To conclude, AI Agents are meant to be for your organization aren’t optimized to work right away. This disconnect needs to be engineered just like any other implementation project today. As this gap is real and must be fulfilled by something called Unity Catalog and integrations, CloudFronts can help bridge this gap and make AI work for your organization to continue to optimize cash flow against rising costs. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.

Since the turn of 2025, AI has been thrown around a lot in conversations – both individual and also at an organizational level. Major technology providers have started their own suite of tools to build AI agents.  While these tools are good enough for simpler AI use cases like fetching data from systems and presenting to us, but complex use cases like predicting patterns, collating data from multiple systems and driving insights from connected systems – that’s where AI implementations need to be looked at like projects which needs architecting and implementing with organization’s vision of AI.  Let’s look at how we can make sure that AI implementations give us over 95% accuracy and not just answers every time which we assume might be correct.  Is AI enough by itself?  Common perception that AI Agents are deployed on top of applications which can be used to interact with the underlying systems to do what users are supposed to get done from AI.  This perception stems from our use of AI tools like ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini as they interact with the Internet to get your queries answered. Since this is a tool available independently, there’s not technical setup and it is ready to go.  Speaking of being Copilot being enough on itself, it depends on where the data is sourced from – and what the intent of the Agent is. If your Custom Copilot / AI Agent is meant to only look at some SharePoint files, some websites and within 1 system in your M365 gated access, you should be able to patch to knowledge sources and be good enough to let AI Agent give you the information in the format you need.  Challenge occurs where you expecting the AI Agents to make sense of the data which is stored differently in different systems with different naming conventions – that’s when AI agents will fall through because it cannot understand when you are pointing to an “Account” in CRM, but the same is stored as a “Customer” in Business Central.  And this is where something like a Unity Catalog comes into picture. The term itself describes that the data comes together in a catalog for common access and AI agents to source from.  Let’s look at how we can imagine this unity catalog to be in the next section.  Unity Catalog  Unity Catalog can be thought of as an implementation strategy and collection of connected systems over which AI Agents can be based upon.  Here’s how I summarize this process –   Above diagram is a summary for how AI implementations will scale within organizations and have different variations of the same.  To encapsulate, while independent AI agents can be implemented for personal use within the organization, given the appropriate privileges, for AI to make sense of and enable trusted decision making, AI implementations need to have data readiness in place with clarity.  Hopefully, this topic summarizes the direction in which organizations can think of AI implementation, more than just building agents.  We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.

For organizations, cashflow issues can be mitigated if billing happens on time. Having Project Operations and Business Central gets you covered from a Sales/Project standpoint and BC handles the accounting side, which is great. But when these systems are not connected end to end, it creates problems.  Let’s look at some of the issues and the need to have PO-BC integrated so that business transactions need not be left to manual dependency.  Disconnected Systems  Organizations like Professional Services or Project-based organizations in the SMB/SMC sector use Project Operations to handle Sales and Project Management and use Business Central as their backend Accounting.  Out-of-the-box, Project Operations and Business Central are not integrated from a transaction perspective. This leaves a gap for the organization to be filled manually and dependent on accounting/project management to ensure everything is accounted for in Business Central.  This adds human dependency to keep both the systems in sync and make sure everything gets billed on time.  But this is only the scenario, let’s talk about some problems with this scenario in the below section.  Why PO and BC Integration Matters  When we don’t have the systems connected all the way from Sales to Billing, the following issues start to add up resulting bigger cashflow issues –   These things add up causing loss in revenue and hence, causing cashflow issues. Profit and Loss statement might look great, but cash-in-hand makes organizations suffer and causes hindrance in growth.  Hence, the systems should be reliably integrated to eradicate the issues discussed above.  To give perspective of what all needs to be integrated to ensure that all transaction data between Project Operations and Business Central is taken care of, refer to the below architecture which we’ve incorporated in our PO-BC Integration Module –  To conclude that, when Organizations have their business systems connected to accounting and the financial transactions are taken care of, cashflow issues are eradicated so that organizations can bill on time and get paid on time.  Without this, cashflow chaos is difficult to overcome and fixing billing issues is of prime importance.  We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.

At the turn of 2025, AI has been infused in everything we do, both in our personal lives and at work. As AI becomes more mainstream in business, from mastering prompt engineering to having a solid data catalog, it’s become crucial for organizations to ensure their applications are fully AI-ready. This article will focus on how you can drive AI and Insights from your Sales to Billing cycle at your organization to establish a dependable AI strategy.  PO and BC – Data Catalog: The word ‘Data Catalog’ gives an impression of all the data being available through connected systems through a single source – this source is AI Agents.  Organizations which run their projects with Project Operations have Sales cycle, Project & Resource Management, Invoicing in Business Central with all the transaction data from Project Operations – they for a data catalog when connected.  AI Agents need a data catalog to have consolidated form a system which it can leverage to give reliable insights and take correct actions which you define in your business. For example – AI will give incorrect responses or not act accordingly if the two systems are not connected, and AI Agents are not able to make sense of it. This will throw off the AI Strategy planned for your organization.  A well-organized Data Catalog increases AI Agents’ reliability and accuracy, enabling correct results and supporting AI use-cases in your organization.  PO-BC Integration Module: There is an absence of an integration solution between Project Operations and Business Central which caters to connect Customers/Projects from Project Operations to transaction data in Business Central.  Now, the AI Strategy will align only when the systems are seamlessly connected end-to-end. And due to this disconnect, the Project Management as well as the Business Central data doesn’t align and is human-dependent for its reliability which is counter-intuitive. AI won’t give errors, it’ll give incorrect answers! And hence, the integration needs to be in place for data integrity to drive AI Agents off of this reliable data.  To fill this gap of Project Operations and Business Central not being connected out-of-the-box, CloudFronts has released PO-BC Integration Module to bridge this gap and connect Project Operations to Business Central. This solution connects Project Operations data end-to-end to Business Central and back so that the AI agents can take reliable actions against this data – either automatically or when asked.  Conclusion : For a reliable AI strategy, integrate systems like Project Operations and Business Central. Achieve this using CloudFronts’ PO+BC Integration solution. This ensures AI agents can use the data to improve cash flow for growth.  This will help optimize operations efficiencies so that both, resources and cashflow can be freed up to focus on growth at the organization.  We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com

If you are a decision maker at an organization and looking to strategize the information at your organization and how the systems should source information from one to another, then this post is for you.  Systems for source of truth at the organization is the question you are looking to get answered.  Dynamics 365 Applications involved for Professional Services firms  Let’s break down the systems from Dynamics 365 Application stack-standpoint –   Sales and Project Management  If you are a Professional Services firm in Construction, Engineering, Accounting, IT Services etc. and you have a Sales cycle running from Opportunity generation all the way to Project and Resource Management, then you need Dynamics 365 Project Operations – below is what Project Operations handles –   Accounting  Dynamics 365 Project Operations itself isn’t designed as an Accounting platform – it can create up to Pro-forma Invoices. But here’s to consider some options for Accounting –   Marketing  Marketing is a key aspect for an organization which primary deals with data like Accounts and Contacts – Here are some options to look out for –  HRMS  Maybe you are coming from an existing HR platforms, but here are some thoughts –   Tying it all together  As you’ve seen so far, the source of truth being Dynamics 365 Project Operations or core CRM application because of its flexibility, it is pivotal to source data from this system to other systems and all CRUD operations are tied to Project Operations upon integration.  Other systems are then used to perform their respective operation and send updates back to Project Operations through integration.  Conclusion  Making Dynamics 365 Project Operations as source of truth works for our customers as they find the information clean, consistent and available for correct reporting through just one system.  This gives a true view of the organization without having siloed systems which result in inconsistencies in data and information mismatch if integrations are not architected correctly. Making a system as source of truth gives you improved accuracy and trust in your organizations’ data and drives efficency in the longer run.  We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com

Problem Statement  After an implementation has gone live, do we experience that the user participation tapers off before starting to decline? That’s when we feel the need to have an adoption strategy and metrics into place.  Strategizing User Adoption  Here are some thoughts on thinking about how to plan for User Adoption –   User Adoption Measurements  Here are some of the measurements and steps to take for User Adoption –   Conclusion  When you measure user adoption through trackable metrics and numbers, you can monitor the implementation’s success path.  This helps in rethinking the implementation and taking corrective action before the implementation itself is in question and why was it planned in the first place. Participation of partners, peers and all stakeholders share equal responsibility to make the implementation a resounding success.  We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com

Introduction  If you are in the middle of a Dynamics 365 implementation or want to get onboarded into the Dynamics 365 ecosystem of business applications, consider your overarching approach for this implementation.   And the approach I’ll be discussing below is around having customized systems vs. using out-of-the-box systems. I’ll try to list some pointers on the two approaches that speak about the pros and cons of each of the approaches:   Customization   Choose to customize the system, keeping in check the following:   Out of the Box   Choose to adapt to the out-of-the-box system keeping in check: Conclusion  The choice between customization and out-of-the-box features when thinking about a Dynamics 365 deployment depends on the size, complexity, and growth trajectory of your company. Customizations are perfect for larger organizations with dynamic needs and strong IT support because they provide a customized approach that fits the system with your specific processes. On the other hand, out-of-the-box solutions simplify implementation and are especially useful for smaller businesses with simple workflows. By carefully assessing the unique needs and capabilities of your company, you can select the strategy that will optimize productivity and advance your long-term corporate objectives.  We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com 

Introduction Small and medium businesses today have systems that were put in place based on the need back in time and served the purpose well. As organizations grow, they feel the need to consolidate information that is in these siloed systems. Siloed systems work well on their own but also pose challenges as business grows and more visibility into the systems is needed.   This article puts forward some thoughts on re-thinking siloed systems vs. integrated systems under one platform.  Challenges with Siloed Systems Need for Integrated Systems Conclusion   Read more about our Customer Success Stories. We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com  

On some instances, there are Managed fields in Dynamics 365 CRM (or CE if you want to call it) where we can’t change the required level of the field from Fields i.e. on the database level. And you get the below error – Here’s an alternative way to do it. Scenario Let’s consider this scenario. Although Microsoft suggests you don’t change the behavior of Managed fields since they are designed with a purpose. However, let’s consider this scenario where you want to make the Parent Account for Lead as required on the form.When you try to change the Requirement Level as follows And while saving this change, you get this error. So how do we do it? Let’s see. Workaround – Business Rule Now, to overcome this particular scenario you can implement a simple Business Rule to make it required as follows – If the field can’t be made Required on a database level, you can make it required on the form using Business Rule. Here’s how you create your Business Rule.As the Business Rule starts with the condition, here’s the check you need to add in case the field value is not entered. The condition I used is as below – Check if Parent Account for lead Does Not Contain Data If this is True, then go ahead and add a Step for True condition. Add Set Business Requirement Level And in this, you need to set the Business Required Status to Business Required as show below. And the result is the Business Rule which looks like in #1 above. Now, save your changes, Publish the Rule, Activate and check. The result will be that the field is not required once it doesn’t have data forcing the user to enter data for the same. Hope this is helpful!