GoTech World is the most important B2B expo-conference in Central and Eastern Europe, attracting over 15,000 business professionals each year. GoTech World already has a tradition, with the first edition taking place in 2012. This year, the event was held in November, and over the course of two days, both international and Romanian speakers delivered various presentations on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital marketing, smart cities, software development, and more. Attending such an event allows participants to understand market trends and discover the latest developments in the field.
Elian Solutions participated to take the pulse of the market, identify the technologies that will shape the future, and explore potential opportunities for clients in its portfolio. Below, we share several ideas that we believe are relevant for any company wishing to begin—or continue—its digital transformation.
Artificial intelligence – beyond marketing and advertising
Unsurprisingly, many presentations focused on AI and what companies need to do to implement it correctly. First and foremost, expectations regarding the current capabilities of the technology must be tempered. With the release of ChatGPT in 2022, many believed AI would soon be able to correctly and efficiently handle almost any type of digital task and replace the work of many categories of employees. Three years later, reality contradicts these expectations: while AI implementations exist within companies, they are applied to narrow domains, specific types of activities, or particular processes. Unreasonable expectations have often led to failed AI implementations.
Successful AI implementations – AI agents
Successful implementations have mainly occurred when AI agents were used. An AI agent is a software system based on artificial intelligence that can perceive, decide, and act autonomously to achieve a goal. However, the process must be clearly defined (for example, sorting emails based on specific criteria, generating conversation summaries, visually identifying products with manufacturing defects, etc.), and it must be relatively simple with well-defined rules.
The level of autonomy also needs to be realistically determined. For repetitive and automatable tasks, the agent can operate fully autonomously, but if complex decisions must be made based on poorly structured data, human intervention becomes necessary.
Digital transformation – it cannot rely solely on AI
For an AI implementation to be successful, a digital infrastructure must already be in place. An AI system is only as good as the data it has access to. Anyone imagining they can successfully implement AI in a company without ERP or CRM systems—where most work is done in Excel files—is mistaken. These systems must exist, and their gradual adoption is in fact the recommended path for digital transformation. To better understand what digital transformation involves, you can consult the article What is digital transformation.
Implementing AI – people and processes
Perhaps surprisingly, the success of an AI implementation depends less on technology and more on people and processes. Above all, people need to be taught how to use AI and to see it not as a threat, but as an opportunity. AI agents will mostly take over automatable, repetitive, and low-value tasks, allowing employees to make more decisions and manually handle fewer data operations. The employee of the future will work assisted by a series of AI agents, each specialised in different activities, and their main role will be to coordinate this “orchestra” of agents.
Regarding processes, it makes no sense to implement AI where processes are not clearly defined and documented—where it is unclear how information flows between departments, what the roles and responsibilities of each employee are, or what business rules govern the company’s activities. Such a process analysis is typically conducted, for instance, when implementing an ERP system.
Dynamics Business Central – AI functionalities within the ERP system
If you already have the Dynamics Business Central ERP system implemented in SaaS, you probably know that you benefit from AI functionalities built directly into Business Central. We have previously presented several of these features (see, for example, Business Central Copilot Chat), and we will continue showcasing them in future communications.
These functionalities are standard, with no additional cost. However, if you wish to implement AI-based features tailored to the specific business scenarios of your company, this can be done easily from a technical standpoint by integrating third-party AI service providers.
Elian Solutions is part of the Bittnet Group, active for over 15 years as an implementer of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP system. With a team of over 70 employees and a portfolio of over 250 clients, Elian Solutions is one of the key Microsoft partners for ERP systems.