#BCTalent and AI: A Partner’s Guide
Partner-focused interview on AI skills in the Business Central ecosystem. The Microsoft speaker says partners should understand AI more deeply, work with other partners, ISPs and Microsoft on long-unsolved customer problems, and train domain experts such as accountants to become AI power users, since AI engineers are scarce. Viewers are urged to visit the BC talent page; the talk is opinion and approach, not product feature details.
- Introduction and AI's Impact on Partner Business Models
- Why Partners Must Become More Technical in AI
- Solving Long-Standing Customer Problems Through AI
- The Talent Gap and Upskilling Challenge
- Growing AI Capability in Existing Professional Communities
- Building AI Power Users and Structured Training
- BC Talent Program and Call to Action
Overview
The talk looks at how AI changes partner business models and why partners need to become more technical in AI instead of adopting it at surface level. It says Microsoft has 150 products with AI functionality and that custom-built partner solutions will likely include AI going forward.
The speaker describes an industry-wide shortage of AI people, with partners asking for AI hires that are hard to find. The proposed answer is to train existing professionals, in the way accountants and finance people were turned into BC consultants. They would become AI power users who identify suitable workflow steps and build prompt libraries. The talk ends with a call to join the BC Talent Program, which needs more participants and whose structure is still being developed.
Key points
- The speaker says Microsoft has 150 products with AI functionality, any product released going forward will have it, and custom-built partner solutions will probably include AI too.
- Partners are told to understand AI in depth rather than blindly making an API call.
- Partners, other partners, ISPs and Microsoft are encouraged to work together on long-running customer problems that are still unsolved, rather than relying on a solo hero.
- Most companies cannot hire AI engineers and researchers because there are not enough of them, so the capability has to be grown in experts from other problem areas, just as accountants were once turned into BC consultants.
- An AI power user is someone such as an accountant, tax preparer or financial analyst who maps which steps of their workflow suit AI and keeps prompt libraries for those steps.
- The speaker says upskilling needs more structure than telling people to figure out AI on their own, and asks viewers to go to the BC talent page, click learn more and join.
Features
Every feature below: status not stated.
| Feature | At |
|---|---|
| AI Functionality Across Microsoft Products | 0:44 |
| BC Talent Program | 2:31 |
| Partner Technical Upskilling in AI | 0:27 |
| Collaborative Ecosystem for Problem Solving | 1:10 |
Quotes
- 0:44 “I think we have 150 Microsoft products that have AI functionality in them and that’s going to be any product we release going forward”
- 3:01 “The number of people in the world who are AI people, okay, AI people, AI engineers, AI researchers, AI engineers, machine learning people is”
- 3:11 “most normal companies are never going to be able to hire these people because there are not enough”
- 3:36 “we turned lots of accountants and finance people into bc consultants we’re going to have to do that”
- 4:35 “Because probably the most important thing they can be doing right now is creating their own workflow or here’s a standard workflow. AI is”
- 4:45 “If people can do that, they’re now called what is in my jurisdiction called an AI power user. And once we build up a”
- 5:21 “the most important thing all of you should be doing is going to the BC talent page and clicking on learn more”
- 5:42 “I have five partners right now in my inbox saying we need to hire AI people. bring us some AI people. I’m saying my”
Presenters (as heard): Lena Casten, Unknown second presenter.