Written by,
Guðrún Ólafsdóttir, Chief Product Officer at Annata
A365 is our cutting-edge, cloud-based ERP, CRM, and DMS platform designed for the automotive, trucks & buses, and equipment industries. Whether you’re looking for a comprehensive, all-in-one platform or specific modules to address key areas, A365 has you covered.
In his recent talk “Accelerating AI Agent Development for D365 ERP,” Jared Hall from Microsoft described how ERP systems are evolving from deterministic, rule-based designs toward intelligent agents that act with context and precision. It’s a vision that resonates deeply with us at Annata, as this evolution is exactly what we’ve been preparing for with A365 and DriveAI.
And that is exactly where A365 shines.
ERP was built deterministic and that’s both its strength and its limit
Jared Hall explains that ERP systems were designed to be deterministic. They are built around predictable rules and defined workflows, the logic of “if this, then that.” That determinism is what ensures compliance, reliability, and process integrity. It’s also what allows ERP to deliver quantifiable value, measurable impact on revenue, cost, efficiency, and compliance.
But deterministic design also meant that ERP could only expose options and user interfaces for people to figure things out. Every process step had to be explicitly modelled and presented, leaving users to interpret intent, make manual choices, and navigate complexity through menus and screens.
Microsoft reminds us that ERP’s success came from building specific tools for specific processes, predictable, repeatable, and measurable. That design gave businesses structure and accountability. With DriveAI, we take that same principle forward. We don’t abandon processes; we map them, so AI can operate safely within their context. DriveAI transforms rigid workflows into intelligent frameworks, simplifying complexity while preserving control.
But the world no longer behaves deterministically. Customer expectations shift daily. Supply chains are disrupted overnight. Data and decisions flow across boundaries.
Traditional ERP wasn’t built to interpret uncertainty, it executes rules, not judgment.
That’s why Microsoft’s next wave, Industry AI and Agents, isn’t about replacing ERP. It’s about extending it with intelligence that can reason, adapt, and act dynamically within the guardrails of governance, while preserving the ability to measure impact with precision.
From copilots to agents
At Ignite and in Jared’s session, Microsoft showed how AI is evolving from copilots to autonomous agents, each with its own Entra Agent ID, governed by permissions and telemetry. These agents understand workflows, act on data, and collaborate with humans inside business systems. They don’t just summarize information; they make things happen.
In that world, A365’s data model, process framework, and governance are not optional add-ons, they are prerequisites.
DriveAI: Built for this future
Our DriveAI initiative bridges the deterministic and the adaptive. It translates years of business expertise into reusable, responsible DriveAI Actions, turning complex workflows into safe, governed automations.
As Jared Hall noted, “the prompt needs to be specific.” That’s exactly where DriveAI helps. It connects natural-language intent with governed process logic, ensuring that every “prompt” produces the right, auditable outcome. DriveAI turns prompting into precision, and ideas into measurable results. Every DriveAI Action carries context, structure, and compliance by design.
In Microsoft’s language, these are production-grade industry agents, not demos, not experiments, but real, auditable, value-creating actions.
Agents will define productivity. Context will define trust.
As the world moves from systems of record to systems of intelligence, trust becomes the new currency.
A365 and DriveAI are not just compatible with Microsoft’s agentic vision, they are its natural continuation. The real agents of transformation are not algorithms. They are the people, products, and platforms that built the discipline before the hype.
Let’s keep the conversation going. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or reach out via our Annata Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you.
About the writer
Guðrún Ólafsdóttir is the Chief Product Officer at Annata, bringing over two decades of global experience in product development. Her career has taken her from Iceland to Denmark and Malaysia, where she has worked as a developer, consultant, and trainer primarily with solutions from LS Retail, a Microsoft ISV. From her early days as a hands-on developer to leading cloud transformation efforts as Development Director, Guðrún has continuously shaped innovation and streamlined development processes to support partners through digital change.
Since joining Annata in 2023, she has been driving product strategy for A365, applying her deep knowledge and unique perspective from Business Central to the Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations space. Guðrún is passionate about building impactful solutions and helping teams and partners thrive in a cloud-first world.
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