Cutting Through the AI Noise: Practical Agent-Driven Gains for Business Central Users

Emma: Welcome to the deep dive. You know, if you’re involved in running a business that handles, say, physical inventory, or manufacturing

Ryan: Complex logistics, anything like that.

Emma: Exactly. And you use modern software like Business Central, you are probably kind of completely overwhelmed by the noise around AI.

Ryan: Absolutely. Everyone is promising a revolution.

Emma: Right. But what we need, what you need are specific, practical, measurable gains, things that actually make a difference in your day to day. So our mission today is to cut right through that hype. We’re going to look at precisely how AI agents are changing the, well, the fundamental math of efficiency for ISVs, the independent software vendors.

Ryan: Yeah. And we’re pulling these insights directly from an expert analysis. It was shared by Mark Hamblin of Insight Works. This was during the 2025 Biz Apps Partner Executive Summit, specifically in the ISV Partner Breakout session. So this isn’t, you know, theoretical marketing stuff.

Emma: Right. This is a technical blueprint.

Ryan: Exactly. For how these specialized logistics applications are fundamentally changing.

Emma: And that context is so crucial. I think we’re focusing on how AI is transforming the core job of the isv, which is, you know, making life dramatically easier for the users, the people who deal with complex physical products in that messy real world logistics environment.

Ryan: Precisely. And the goal itself hasn’t changed. ISVs have always wanted to maximize user output. Of course, what has fundamentally changed, and this is really the key takeaway here, is the execution. We finally have the tools to deliver on these, I mean, decades old aspirations.

Emma: Okay, let’s unpack that history, because I think it makes the current shift even more profound. For decades, the priority for every software vendor was just this relentless pursuit of efficiency.

Ryan: Right. How do you make the user faster at checking things in, moving things out or fulfilling an order?

Emma: And that focus, that historical focus, was really distilled into a concept that Mark Hamblin introduced years ago.

Ryan: Yeah, he called it more value per click.

Emma: More value per click. It’s such a powerful, simple metric, isn’t it?

Ryan: It is.

Emma: It just immediately frames that traditional goal. And back then it meant, you know, know reducing the number of user interactions to get something done.

Ryan: If receiving a shipment took 10 steps before, the goal was to find a way to make it five clicks.

Emma: And that was a huge undertaking.

Ryan: Oh, massive. Think about the complexity involved in shaving off just one click in a mission critical workflow. Yeah, I mean, that required huge database optimization, restructuring UI layouts, maybe combining several screens into One developers would spend months trying to squeeze out these marginal gains.

Emma: So an incredible amount of manual effort to save a user a little bit of manual effort.

Ryan: Exactly. But here’s the crucial context. When that idea was first introduced, it was largely aspirational, right? The technology just wasn’t there yet. To automate the most complex parts of the workflow, the user had to be the one to initiate those steps.

Emma: But that barrier is gone now. And this brings us right to the core of this technical shift and why this old aspiration is suddenly. Well, it’s completely attainable, Right?

Ryan: We’re transitioning from that aspiration to the current reality. AI and agents. These are the tools that finally turn more value per click into an expected standard.

Emma: And here’s where the mechanism of the shift becomes so powerful. We aren’t talking about AI as just a supporting tool, like helping you write an email or something.

Ryan: No.

Emma: According to the source material, AI is now an engine for efficiency. It’s fundamentally integrated into the application itself.

Ryan: And this is the key technical insight we need to focus on, especially for you in the logistics space. Historically, the user initiated almost everything based.

Emma: On what they saw on the screen.

Ryan: Exactly. Now, agents can respond dynamically to external events, and this is critical. Trigger automated processes entirely on their own.

Emma: That idea of responding to an external event, that changes the entire dynamic. What kind of external events are we talking about here?

Ryan: Well, we’re talking about real time data from the outside world that doesn’t depend on a user hitting refresh. Think about integrating webhooks from shipping carriers. An external event could be the carrier’s API pinging your system with an updated eta, or a confirmation that a load just left the depot.

Emma: So the agent sees that status change before the user even opens the order screen.

Ryan: Absolutely. Or in a warehouse, an external event might be a sensor reading, a temperature probe spiking, a door unlocking, a weight sensor tripping. When an item is placed on a loading dock, the agent observes the physical world, recognizes that trigger, and then autonomously performs the necessary software response.

Emma: Which means the user is suddenly relieved of one of the biggest burdens of business software. They are no longer required to babysit every single transaction. The software is starting to think ahead for them.

Ryan: That’s it. If we connect this to the bigger picture, it means the system handles all those routine actions in the background. Confirming a delivery notification, generating a goods.

Emma: Received note, all the little repetitive steps.

Ryan: The system just manages those, reducing the need for that constant manual interaction.

Emma: But wait, this sounds amazing, but where does the margin for error creep In, I mean, if you’re relying on the system to confirm a receipt automatically, doesn’t that demand almost perfect pristine data quality?

Ryan: That’s a critical question. And yes, achieving this no click efficiency absolutely requires extremely high data quality. Okay, but that’s the beauty of the agent structure. The system is designed to handle the say 80 or 90% of transactions that are routine. And the exceptions, it’s the 10%, the exceptions that it flags for human intervention.

Emma: Okay, so let’s focus on the outcome of that. The no click workflow.

Ryan: This is where we see that aspiration of more value per click get radically leap frogged since the agent is constantly monitoring and acting on these events.

Emma: In many routine scenarios, users don’t even need to click at all.

Ryan: Not at all.

Emma: We’ve gone from seeking five clicks where it used to take 10, to demanding zero clicks required for the routine stuff.

Ryan: Right.

Emma: Can you give us a concrete example of what that looks like in a typical logistics application?

Ryan: Sure. Let’s take receiving inventory into a warehouse. Traditionally, the truck arrives, a worker checks the manifest against the purchase order in the system, confirms the quantity, and then clicks post receipt.

Emma: Multiple steps, multiple clicks.

Ryan: Now with agents, the carrier confirms delivery with an API ping. That’s the external event. The agent cross references the items against the po. When the receipting bay door opens, the worker just scans the master pallet label.

Emma: That’s the only interaction.

Ryan: That’s it. The system uses the agent to automatically verify the shipment, post the receipt and print the put away labels and push the task to the nearest forklift driver’s device. All without the worker navigating a single screen.

Emma: That is genuinely transformative, that kind of automation. It streamlines workflows in a way that’s about far more than just saving keystrokes.

Ryan: It is. It drastically improves both efficiency and the user experience.

Emma: You spend less time wrestling with the interface and more time actually moving product.

Ryan: Absolutely. The user experience benefit is profound because the software just. It recedes into the background. It becomes a silent partner executing your business rules, not a taskmaster demanding constant input.

Emma: So what does this all mean for the user who is interacting with this software every day? I mean, the practical consequences. They’re relieved of spending time on all those repetitive low value tasks. Right?

Ryan: It is. Which raises a really important question for management. What exactly do we want our highly paid, experienced staff focusing on instead?

Emma: Exactly. Are we finally ending the age of operations professionals acting primarily as data entry clerks?

Ryan: We should be. With the administrative burden removed, they can concentrate on the higher value work. They become analysts of the exception. Right? They focus on the complex strategic tasks. Investigating a supply chain bottleneck, negotiating a complex return, troubleshooting a quality control failure. The things that truly require human judgment.

Emma: I think this reframes AI perfectly. It’s not some theoretical futuristic thing that might write to It’s a deeply practical solution to a long standing business challenge.

Ryan: How do we help users get exponentially more done with less effort? Yeah, and it’s proof that ISV priorities haven’t changed. They still want to maximize output, but their ability to systemize processes has been revolutionized.

Emma: It’s all about delivering smarter, more seamless solutions.

Ryan: Our final synthesis here is that maximizing user efficiency isn’t about redefining the business goal. The goal is the same move product, process transactions correctly. It’s about executing that goal exponentially more effectively by using these new agent capabilities that reduce human friction to well near zero.

Emma: And if more value per click was the decades old aspiration and now these systems require zero clicks for routine work, that leads to a really provocative thought for you to consider. Does the most efficient future interface for business software become one we barely interact with at all? If the best software is invisible, what does that monumental shift mean for how we even define using business software?

Ryan: And you can extend that thought into your own industry. What other decades old aspirations? Whether it’s billing, reporting, scheduling? What might now be instantly solvable not by a better ui, but by an invisible proactive agent just working in the background?

Emma: Something to chew on as you review your own systems. Thanks for diving deep with us. We’ll catch you next time.