Why Do Employees Spend So Much Time Searching for Business Information?
When employees spend hours each week searching for business information, the problem may not be a lack of data. It may be a lack of access to the information they need, when they need it.
A customer calls with a question about an outstanding invoice, a recent order, or the status of an open opportunity. The answer exists somewhere in the business. But finding it requires employees to navigate multiple systems, search through emails, review documents, and piece together information from different departments.
That information might be stored in:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Dynamics 365 Sales and CRM
- Outlook emails and attachments
- Microsoft Teams conversations and meetings
- SharePoint documents
- Excel spreadsheets and reports
- Contracts, PDFs, and customer records
Individually, these systems serve important business purposes. Together, however, they can create information silos that make it difficult for employees to see the complete picture.
Microsoft Copilot agents offer a way to make business information easier to access by helping employees retrieve and summarize relevant information across connected business systems. Instead of manually searching each application, employees can ask questions in natural language and receive a consolidated response based on the data and sources available to the agent.
For organizations using ERP software such as Dynamics 365 Business Central, this creates an opportunity to improve information access, streamline everyday workflows, and help employees make more informed decisions.
The Hidden Business Cost of Searching for Information
Time spent searching for information can seem like a minor inconvenience. Across an organization, however, those small delays can add up.
Consider an employee who spends five hours per week locating information, checking records, and switching between applications. Over a 50-week working year, that amounts to 250 hours per employee.
For a team of 20 employees, that represents 5,000 hours annually spent on information retrieval.
These figures are illustrative, not a measured OmniVue customer result. Your organization's actual impact will depend on how frequently employees search for information and how long those tasks take.
Beyond the time involved, fragmented business information can create several operational challenges:
- Delayed customer responses: Employees must locate information across multiple systems before answering customer questions.
- Slower decision-making: Managers may wait for reports or manual updates before understanding a customer's financial or operational status.
- Duplicated work: Different departments may independently gather the same information or recreate existing reports.
- Inconsistent information: Employees may rely on outdated spreadsheets, incomplete records, or conflicting versions of documents.
- Reduced productivity: Time spent navigating applications leaves less time for customer service, analysis, and problem-solving.
- Limited visibility: Sales, finance, operations, and customer service may each have only part of the information needed to make a decision.
The issue is not necessarily that an organization has too little data. It is that employees often need to know where information lives, which system contains the latest version, and how different pieces of information relate to one another.
THE HIDDEN COST OF INFORMATION SILOS
250 hours lost per employee, every year
Based on an illustrative scenario of 5 hours spent searching for information each week over 50 working weeks.
Illustrative calculation, not a measured OmniVue customer result.
Why Traditional Solutions Don't Always Solve the Problem
Businesses often respond to information silos by adding more reporting tools, documentation, and processes.
Common approaches include:
- Building additional dashboards and reports
- Creating shared drives and document repositories
- Maintaining spreadsheets to consolidate information
- Adding internal documentation and knowledge bases
- Scheduling more meetings to share updates
- Asking employees to enter the same information into multiple systems
These approaches can be useful in the right circumstances. Reports, dashboards, and documentation all have a role in effective business operations.
However, they do not always eliminate the underlying challenge: employees still need to locate, interpret, and connect information from different sources.
For example, a sales representative preparing for a customer meeting might need to review an open opportunity in Dynamics 365 Sales, check invoice status in Business Central, search Outlook for recent correspondence, and locate a contract in SharePoint.
Even when every system contains accurate information, assembling a complete customer picture can require considerable manual effort.
A more effective approach is to make relevant information accessible through a single, natural-language interaction, while maintaining the security and permissions of the underlying systems.
This is where Microsoft Copilot agents can help.
How Microsoft Copilot Agents Help ERP Teams Access Information
A Microsoft Copilot agent is an AI-powered assistant designed to help users complete tasks, retrieve information, and perform defined workflows using the data, tools, and instructions available to it.
Unlike a traditional dashboard that displays predefined metrics, an agent can be configured to respond to questions in natural language and bring together relevant information from supported sources.
For organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, a properly configured agent may be able to work with information from connected applications such as Business Central, Dynamics 365 Sales, Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint.
The specific capabilities depend on the agent's configuration, available connectors, data access, permissions, and the actions it has been authorized to perform.
Instead of asking employees to navigate every application individually, an organization can create workflows that help them retrieve and summarize the information relevant to a particular task.
For example, an employee could ask:
“Prepare me for my customer meeting this afternoon. Summarize the account status, open opportunities, outstanding invoices, and recent communications.”
Depending on its configuration and connected data sources, the agent could:
- Retrieve relevant customer and opportunity information from Dynamics 365 Sales.
- Check available financial and invoice information in Business Central.
- Find relevant emails and communications from Outlook.
- Identify useful meeting notes or conversations from Teams.
- Locate supporting contracts and documents in SharePoint.
- Combine the retrieved information into a concise customer briefing.
The employee receives a consolidated summary instead of manually compiling the information from multiple applications.
This does not replace the ERP or CRM systems that manage the business. Instead, it provides another way for employees to interact with the information those systems contain.
From disconnected systems to connected insights
An illustrative workflow for a properly configured Copilot agent
Business Central
Financial and ERP data
Dynamics 365 CRM
Accounts and opportunities
Outlook and Teams
Emails and conversations
SharePoint
Documents and contracts
Microsoft Copilot Agent
Retrieves and summarizes relevant information from connected, authorized sources.
One consolidated customer briefing
Relevant account details, financial status, communications, and follow-up items.
Actual data sources and capabilities depend on the agent's configuration, integrations, and permissions.
A Practical Example: Preparing for a Customer Business Review
Consider a customer success manager preparing for a quarterly business review with an important account.
Before the meeting, the manager wants to understand the customer's current relationship with the business, identify potential risks, and prepare recommendations for the next quarter.
Without an integrated information-access workflow, the preparation might involve several steps:
- Open Dynamics 365 Sales to review opportunities, account activity, and sales history.
- Open Business Central to check relevant invoices, payments, and financial records.
- Search Outlook for recent customer correspondence.
- Review Teams conversations and meeting notes for unresolved issues.
- Locate contracts, proposals, and supporting documents in SharePoint.
- Consolidate the findings into a briefing document.
The time required depends on the account's complexity, the volume of information, and the systems involved. For a customer with extensive activity across multiple departments, the process can become time-consuming.
With a properly configured Copilot agent, the manager could instead ask:
“Summarize this customer's current status, highlight outstanding financial items, identify unresolved issues, and list the opportunities or risks I should discuss during the review.”
The agent could retrieve relevant information from its connected sources and organize the results into sections such as:
- Account overview: Relevant customer information and recent activity.
- Sales pipeline: Open opportunities and notable changes.
- Financial status: Available invoice and payment information.
- Recent communications: Relevant emails, meetings, and conversations.
- Outstanding issues: Identified concerns or unresolved items in accessible records.
- Recommended follow-up: Potential discussion points based on the information retrieved.
The manager can then review the underlying records, validate important details, and use the summary to prepare for the meeting.
The benefit is not simply faster searching. It is the ability to bring relevant business information together in a format that supports a specific decision or workflow.
What Are the Business Benefits of Copilot Agents for ERP Users?
When implemented around well-defined business processes, Copilot agents can help organizations improve how employees access and use ERP and CRM information.
1. Faster Access to Business Information
Employees can ask questions in natural language rather than remembering which application, report, or document contains the answer.
This can reduce manual searching and make information easier to retrieve during everyday tasks.
2. Better Visibility Across Departments
ERP, CRM, and productivity applications serve different purposes. Connecting relevant information from these systems can help employees understand how financial, sales, operational, and customer activities relate to one another.
For example, a sales manager may benefit from seeing relevant opportunity details alongside available invoice information when preparing for a customer conversation.
3. More Informed Decision-Making
A consolidated view of relevant information can help employees identify issues, recognize patterns, and ask better follow-up questions.
Employees should still validate important figures, recommendations, and conclusions against authoritative business records, particularly when making financial or operational decisions.
4. Reduced Manual Information Gathering
Employees may spend less time copying information between applications, compiling summaries, and preparing routine briefings.
The greatest opportunity often comes from identifying repetitive workflows in which employees repeatedly collect the same types of information from multiple sources.
5. Greater Value From Existing Microsoft Business Applications
Organizations invest in ERP, CRM, and collaboration platforms to manage business processes and information.
Copilot agents can provide an additional way to access and use that information, helping employees get more value from their existing systems without treating AI as a replacement for their core business applications.
Actual results depend on the quality of the underlying data, the design of the workflow, user adoption, and how effectively the agent is implemented.
MAKE YOUR MICROSOFT INVESTMENT WORK HARDER
Your business data should work together.
Discover how Copilot agents could help your team connect ERP, CRM, and Microsoft 365 information to reduce manual searching and improve access to business insights.
How Should Your Business Get Started With Copilot Agents?
The most effective Copilot agent strategy begins with a business problem, not the technology itself.
Before implementing an agent, consider the following steps.
1. Identify repetitive information searches.
Ask employees where they spend the most time locating information. Customer meeting preparation, order status inquiries, invoice questions, and internal research can be useful starting points.
2. Map the relevant data sources.
Determine which systems contain the required information. These may include Business Central, Dynamics 365 Sales, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, or other business applications.
3. Define the agent's purpose.
Establish what the agent should retrieve, summarize, or help the employee accomplish. A clearly defined use case is easier to design, test, and measure than a broad goal such as making all company information accessible.
4. Review security and permissions.
Ensure that the agent accesses only the information it is authorized to use. Configure appropriate identity, access controls, data connections, and safeguards for sensitive business information.
5. Test the results against real workflows.
Evaluate whether the agent retrieves accurate, relevant information and whether its output genuinely reduces the manual effort required to complete a task.
6. Measure business outcomes.
Track indicators such as time spent preparing for meetings, time required to answer common customer questions, employee adoption, and the accuracy of retrieved information. Establish a baseline before implementation so that improvements can be measured.
Starting with a focused use case allows organizations to demonstrate value, address implementation challenges, and expand their approach as additional opportunities emerge.
The OmniVue Perspective: Turn Disconnected Business Information Into Actionable Insight
Businesses have invested in ERP software, CRM platforms, and collaboration tools to help employees manage information and run operations effectively. Yet having information stored in these systems does not automatically mean employees can find and use it efficiently.
The challenge is making the right information accessible in the context of the task at hand.
Microsoft Copilot agents offer a way to bridge that gap by helping employees interact with relevant information across connected business applications. Rather than manually searching multiple systems, employees can ask questions, retrieve useful context, and spend more time acting on what they learn.
At OmniVue, we help organizations explore how Microsoft business applications and AI capabilities can work together to address practical business challenges. By aligning Copilot agent solutions with existing ERP and CRM workflows, organizations can identify opportunities to reduce manual effort, improve information access, and make better use of their Microsoft technology investments.
Your employees were hired to solve problems, serve customers, and make decisions—not spend their day searching for information.
If your team relies on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Microsoft 365, OmniVue can help you explore where Copilot agents may fit into your business processes.
Ready to explore how Copilot agents could work with your ERP system? Contact OmniVue to discuss your business challenges and identify a practical starting point.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Microsoft Copilot agent?
A Microsoft Copilot agent is an AI-powered assistant configured to help users answer questions, retrieve information, or complete defined tasks using available data sources, tools, and instructions. Its capabilities depend on its configuration, permissions, and integrations.
Can Copilot agents work with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Copilot agent solutions can be designed to work with Business Central data through supported integrations, connectors, APIs, or other configured access methods. The available capabilities depend on the specific implementation, licensing, permissions, and business requirements.
Can a Copilot agent connect ERP and CRM data?
Yes. A properly configured agent can bring together relevant information from supported ERP and CRM data sources, such as Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales. This can help employees understand financial, sales, and customer information in one workflow, subject to data access and integration requirements.
How do Copilot agents improve ERP productivity?
Copilot agents can help reduce manual information gathering by allowing employees to ask questions in natural language and retrieve relevant information from connected systems. Potential productivity improvements include faster customer meeting preparation, less repetitive searching, and more efficient access to business records. Results vary by use case and implementation.
Are Copilot agents a replacement for ERP software?
No. ERP software remains the system used to manage core business processes and records. Copilot agents can complement ERP systems by providing an additional way to access, summarize, and act on information, depending on the agent's authorized capabilities.
What should a business consider before implementing Copilot agents?
Businesses should identify a clear use case, confirm data availability and integration requirements, review security and permissions, validate output accuracy, and establish measurable success criteria. Starting with a focused workflow can help demonstrate value before expanding to additional processes.
