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AI is moving beyond analytics and into decision-making. Many organizations still use AI to analyze data and generate insights, but the next big shift points toward decision intelligence. Instead of asking “What happened?”, AI is increasingly answering: “What should we do next—and why?”

Decision Intelligence combines analytics, prediction, business rules, and risk logic to recommend specific actions, often from directly inside ERP, CRM, or finance systems. In practice, this looks like finance systems recommending budget reallocations with cash‑flow impact or CRMs suggesting deal prioritization based on capacity and margin, not just probability.

Where value is had in speed and defensibility, there is consideration to be made about a loss of autonomy. As AI systems automate decisions, there’s a real danger that people gradually stop deciding and start complying. When recommendations are fast, confident, and usually correct, it becomes easy to defer judgment even when context, ethics, or nuance matter.

All this to say, AI doesn’t replace human judgment. It augments it, allowing people to focus on strategy while AI handles complexity and probability at scale. Businesses that look to decision intelligence as a tool to improve rather than replace their own internal processes will maintain autonomy while reaping the rewards of instant informed decision-making.    

AI is fundamentally changing how research and development is conducted. Where R&D was once constrained by lengthy experimentation cycles and manual analysis, AI is now accelerating discovery by helping teams identify promising ideas earlier. R&D teams can analyze vast volumes of historical research, test results, and patent data to uncover patterns through the use of AI.

AI is changing how ERP systems are built, extended, and supported—and in many cases, how organizations get value from them. ERP consulting becomes even more critical in this sense. Having a solution architect and platform expert running your implementations and upgrades provides the peace of mind that your goals will be achieved as you envisioned them. AI is a powerful tool for improving efficiency and expanding capabilities that is meant to work alongside experienced consultants.

As is the case across many industries, AI has changed the way the financial industry operates. While there are some definite benefits to AI in the financial industry, the impact that it is having on the job market, particularly with entry level jobs, cannot be ignored. Entry level positions can be largely automated with AI, leaving many people without a place to land once they’ve finished their education. AI is changing what sort of skills are valuable in the workforce.

For the development and release of EzExpense Essentials, I got to try my hand at project managing. During the course of my education, I’ve learned some management theory and even project managed a small group for an assignment, but this was my first time putting those skills to the test in a live environment. The team I was working with was very knowledgeable which made things a bit easier for me. 

I had a few different roles throughout the development phase of EzExpense Essentials. Initially I worked on wireframing and ideation back before Christmas. This allowed me to have input on what features we were prioritizing for this release. I also created the development schedule and worked with the developers on the team to ensure that deadlines were reasonable. The app was worked on in phases, which led me into my third role as a QC tester. Every time a new feature or set of features was ready for testing, I made sure that things were working properly or offered my feedback if they weren’t. This led to iterative cycles of testing and improvements where our whole team worked to refine the app before ultimately ending up with a product we were proud to launch. 

One of the lessons I learned from this experience was the importance of continuous communication and feedback from all directions. I needed to be clear and consistent in my communications with the development team, and I needed to create a space for them to do the same with me. I also got to experience the reality of development cycles and how flexible a schedule needs to be. You never know how many bugs or feature changes are going to be required before a product is ready to launch, so it’s best to accommodate a flexible project timeline. Overall my first project management experience was very positive, and I look forward to our next big project.    
 

Over the past few weeks, my work has focused on strengthening the reliability of the application through testing, while also expanding my knowledge in areas outside of the core project.

A major part of this phase involved working with Test Studio to build and execute automated tests. These tests were used to validate key workflows and ensure that new updates did not break existing functionality. This process helped surface issues earlier and reinforced the importance of maintaining consistent behavior as the application evolves. Writing and maintaining test cases also gave me a clearer view of how users interact with the system in practice.

In addition to testing, I’ve been learning about SEO optimization independently. This included understanding how content structure, metadata, and page organization influence search engine visibility. Although this work is separate from the main application, it has provided useful insight into how software can be made more accessible and discoverable to users.

I’ve also been exploring front-end development using Power Pages as a separate learning track. This involved working on layouts, responsiveness, and overall user interface design. While not directly tied to the application, it has helped build a stronger foundation in front-end concepts and user experience considerations.

Finally, I gained exposure to deployment processes, understanding how changes move from development environments into production. This highlighted the importance of stability, proper validation, and controlled releases to ensure smooth updates.

Overall, this period has been less about building new features and more about improving reliability, while also developing complementary skills in areas like SEO and front-end design. It’s a more complete view of development, beyond just writing code.

Over the past few weeks, my focus has shifted more heavily toward active application development, working directly on the EzExpense platform as it continues to evolve. Much of this phase has centered around improving the core experience of the application while ensuring it works effectively across both mobile and desktop environments.

A major part of my work has involved developing and refining the EzExpense Mobile and PC versions. Designing an application that functions smoothly on multiple platforms introduces new considerations around layout behavior, responsiveness, and how users interact with different screen sizes. This has required careful adjustments to UI components, gallery structures, and logic to ensure the experience remains consistent regardless of whether the user is on a phone or desktop.

Alongside implementing new functionality, I have also spent time debugging issues and resolving edge cases that appear as the application grows. Small inconsistencies in logic or data handling can quickly surface when features expand across multiple platforms, so identifying and correcting these issues has been an important part of maintaining reliability.

Quality assurance has also played a significant role in this phase of development. Testing different workflows, validating user inputs, and ensuring the system behaves as expected under various conditions has helped uncover areas where improvements were needed. Feedback from QA testing often leads to adjustments in logic, interface behavior, or data structure decisions.

These iterations highlight an important aspect of real-world software development: building the feature is only the beginning. Ensuring it behaves correctly, integrates well with existing systems, and provides a smooth user experience requires ongoing refinement and testing.

Through this process, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of how application behavior can vary across environments and how thoughtful design decisions help maintain stability and usability as a system evolves. Moving forward, continuing to refine the EzExpense platform will remain a key focus as new features and improvements are introduced.

If your enterprise reporting and automation still depends on spreadsheets, manual extracts, and half-retired systems… you don’t really have a data strategy. You have a risk strategy. 

That’s the realization one international telecommunications company came to—and it kicked off two major transformation initiatives that I had the opportunity to support using the Dynamics ecosystem. 

Different regions. Different challenges. Same underlying problem: legacy complexity slowing the business down. 

Over the past little while, my learning focus has continued to evolve from initial onboarding into more advanced, practical development and Azure-related concepts. Building on earlier foundations, I’ve been expanding my understanding of Azure Pipelines and Azure Application Insights, while using these ideas in real application work.

The focus of my work during this phase has been the development of the EzExpense Mobile and PC versions. Working across both platforms has required careful attention to UI behavior, responsiveness, data flow, and usability. This experience pushed me to think beyond simply implementing features and toward designing solutions that remain stable, maintainable, and user-friendly.

Alongside this development work, I’ve been exploring Azure Pipelines and how CI/CD workflows structure the way modern software is built, validated, and delivered. Learning how builds, tests, and deployments can be automated highlighted how critical consistency and repeatability are in reducing errors and ensuring reliable releases.

In parallel, I’ve also been learning about Azure Application Insights and the role of telemetry in production systems. Understanding performance monitoring, failure detection, and runtime analytics reinforced the importance of visibility once applications are deployed. Rather than reacting to issues after they surface, Application Insights enables proactive identification of exceptions, slow dependencies, and behavioral anomalies.

These Azure concepts have directly influenced how I approach application development. While designing screens, refining Power Fx logic, and structuring Dataverse tables, I’ve become more aware of how small implementation decisions can affect build reliability, runtime performance, and overall system stability.

Another important takeaway during this phase has been recognizing how automation and QA complement each other. Azure Pipelines strengthens validation through automated checks, while Application Insights provides insight into real-world application behavior. At the same time, QA remains essential for evaluating user experience, edge cases, and interaction flows that automation alone cannot fully capture.

Beyond technical growth, working in this environment has reinforced a broader engineering mindset. Development is not limited to building features. it includes designing reliable workflows, validating changes, monitoring performance, and continuously improving system behavior.

As I continue progressing, my goal is to further deepen my understanding of CI/CD practices, monitoring strategies, and scalable application design. Strengthening these areas will help me build solutions that are not only functional, but robust and production ready.

EzExpense Mobile takes the hassle out of work-related travel. It can keep track of your receipts and mileage in real time so that you can focus on what you came for – the trip!