From the projects I have seen lately, BC is moving fast, but the value is not always where the marketing slides put it. A few honest notes.
On AI and Copilot, the useful parts so far are the small things, bank reconciliation suggestions, sales line descriptions, the side-pane to ask questions on data. The big "agent" promises are still early. We use it mainly to save time on data entry and drafting, not for decisions. For workflows, standard approvals do the job, and Power Automate covers the rest. The trap is huge Power Automate chains that hit BC every minute and then everyone complains about performance. Better to keep the heavy logic inside BC with AL events.
On reporting, real-time works when the data is clean. Standard analytics views, Power BI on BC APIs, and the new analysis mode on lists cover most cases. Finance still ends up in Excel half the time, this is why Jet Reports is still very common.
For integrations, the rule is, always APIs and webhooks, never direct table reads. CRM through Dataverse, Shopify or Sana for eCommerce, Tasklet for handheld. Custom middleware that writes directly into BC tables is technical debt waiting to explode at the next upgrade.
On performance and upgradeability, boring advice but works. Customisations as small extensions, event-based, no objects in the wrong range, telemetry on, sandbox refreshed often. Most slow performance is bad SQL or a loop that should be a filter, the Performance Profiler shows it in five minutes.
On technical debt, usually it comes from old C/AL converted to AL and never cleaned up. The fix is to split the monolith into smaller extensions, replace table modifications with event subscribers, and retire legacy code slowly. Not glamorous, but every upgrade after that is painless.
Short story, BC is solid if you treat it with respect. Stay close to standard, integrate through APIs, keep customisations small and event-based, and use AI where it actually saves time.
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Regards
Gregory Mavrogeorgis
