Finance and supply chain teams don’t have time to hunt through menus, export to spreadsheets, or wait in a report request queue just to answer everyday questions. “What orders are at risk?” “Which vendors are late?” “Where are exceptions piling up?” Natural Language Queries in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (F&SCM), powered by Copilot, are designed to reduce that friction by letting users ask questions the way they already think, using plain language, and receive clear, actionable answers.
Using Natural Language Queries, Copilot provides a conversational experience on top of your existing ERP data. Instead of building a custom report or navigating multiple screens, a user can type a question about orders, inventory, vendors, or exceptions and get a response that’s grounded in the data they already have access to. Because the experience respects user permissions, people see answers that align with their role—helping organizations support self-service analytics without compromising security.
The value is straightforward: faster decisions with less effort. Natural Language Queries help reduce ad-hoc reporting requests, shorten the time from question to insight, and make analytics more accessible to non-technical users. For operations leaders, it can mean spotting delays earlier. For finance leaders, it can mean getting to the “why” behind variances faster. And for IT, it can mean fewer one-off report builds and a more scalable path to insight.
Where teams can use it right away
- Supply chain visibility: Ask which purchase orders are overdue, what’s backordered, or where lead times are trending up.
- Inventory health: Identify items with low on-hand stock, excess inventory, or recent demand spikes without hunting through multiple inquiry pages.
- Order management: Get quick answers on open sales orders, late shipments, or customer-specific exceptions that need attention.
- Exception-driven work: Surface the “top issues” (by volume or impact) so teams can prioritize fixes instead of reacting to individual alerts.
- Finance insights: Explore variances, outstanding invoices, or spend patterns with questions that match how finance teams talk about the business.
To get the most out of Natural Language Queries, treat it like any other analytics capability: confirm your data model is trustworthy, align on definitions (for example, what counts as “late”), and establish governance so users know which answers are authoritative. When those foundations are in place, Copilot becomes a practical front door to ERP insight. It is not a replacement for reporting, but is a faster way to answer the questions that come up all day long.
If you’re evaluating Copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 F&SCM, Natural Language Queries is a strong place to start: it’s intuitive for end users, valuable for leaders, and scalable for IT.
Want to see what questions your team could answer in minutes instead of days?
Contact us to map out a few high-impact scenarios and identify the data, security, and rollout approach needed to put this capability to work.
This publication contains general information only and Sikich is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or any other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should you use it as a basis for any decision, action or omission that may affect you or your business. Before making any decision, taking any action or omitting an action that may affect you or your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. In addition, this publication may contain certain content generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) language model. You acknowledge that Sikich shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by you or any person who relies on this publication.
