Nancie Calder
Turning AI, data, and CRM strategy into practical business outcomes using Microsoft ecosystem
Toronto, Canada
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Nancie Calder is a senior technology executive, Microsoft ecosystem leader, and AI strategy advisor who helps organizations and partners turn emerging technology into practical business value, with deep experience in Dynamics 365, Power Platform, CRM transformation, and enterprise delivery. A frequent speaker and community contributor, she is known for candid, actionable sessions that connect data, trust, process redesign, and AI to help leaders make smarter decisions in a rapidly changing landscape.
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Roundtable: Leading in AI as a Frontier Partner
This is an executive roundtable not a slide deck session. We’ll take the “Frontier Partner” message and pressure-test it together: what it really means in practice, what “customer-ready” looks like, and how leaders should organize, govern, and scale AI delivery without slowing down the business.
Bring your real-world challenges. You’ll leave with a shared set of leadership checkpoints: customer-ready criteria, a lightweight operating model, and an AI delivery blueprint, that you can apply immediately across your teams to move from pilots and point solutions to scalable, trusted outcomes.
Just Because You Can… Doesn’t Mean You Should: Recommending the Right Solution, Not the Familiar One
Too many customer solutions are shaped by what partners know, sell, or are staffed to deliver rather than what the client actually needs. The result is often over-customized solutions, the wrong mix of technologies, or implementations that miss the mark. Customers say it best after go-live: “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
This roundtable tackles that tension directly. When should partners lead with Microsoft first-party capabilities out of the box, when is custom truly justified, and when is a hybrid approach the better path? Join a candid peer discussion on the commercial, technical, and delivery habits that drive poor choices, and leave with practical lenses for making better client-first decisions.
Building an Agent-Ready Unified Data and Context Estate with Fabric Across Microsoft BizApps
Many organisations want better outcomes from Copilot and AI agents, but the real challenge is often not the agent design itself. It is the data and business context underneath it. When information is fragmented across Dynamics 365 CE & Business Central, Dataverse, SharePoint, documents, and operational systems, agents struggle with incomplete grounding, weak reasoning, and low-trust outputs.
Using a practical Eddie the Seller scenario, this session shows how to build an agent-ready foundation across Microsoft Business Applications. It explores how Dynamics 365 CE & Business Central, Dataverse, SharePoint, Microsoft Fabric, and OneLake can be combined to provide the operational data, document knowledge, and business context agents need across sales, service, and downstream operational workflows. It also compares this foundation with Model Context Protocol (MCP), highlighting where MCP helps agents connect to tools and external context, and where better data design is still required to produce reliable, governable business outcomes.
Attendees will learn practical patterns for deciding what belongs in Dataverse, when Fabric adds value, how SharePoint and documents contribute to grounding, and how to avoid common anti-patterns such as stale data, missing business context, unclear ownership, and weak governance. This is a Level 300 session for architects, consultants, and technical leads who already understand the basics of Microsoft Business Applications, automation, or data architecture and want a practical framework for making business data more usable by Copilot and agent solutions.
Revolutionizing Customer Engagement with AI: Integrating D365 Contact Center and Custom Copilots
Session Description: Dive into the transformative power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, a Copilot-first solution that reshapes customer engagement by integrating generative AI across voice, chat, email, and social media channels. This session will showcase how D365 Contact Center’s AI-driven capabilities enable quicker response times, personalized interactions, and improved service quality. In addition, explore how custom copilots built using Microsoft Copilot Studio and deployed on Power Pages portals can further enhance both external support and internal efficiencies. With real-world demonstrations and best practices, this session provides a roadmap for leveraging AI to streamline workflows, reduce operational costs, and empower customer support agents with second-line assistance for complex inquiries.
From Bricks to Sets: Designing Fleets of AI Agents That Work Better Together
Most teams begin their AI journey by building a single agent. While useful, real business value emerges when agents are designed to work together as a coordinated system. Using a LEGO‑inspired model, this session shows how to design individual agent “bricks” that can be safely composed into larger agent “sets.”
Attendees will learn practical design patterns for multi‑agent solutions built with Copilot Studio, Dataverse, and Power Automate, including orchestration, peer collaboration, escalation, and reuse. The focus is on building systems that remain maintainable, governable, and adaptable as requirements evolve.
Key Takeaways
• LEGO‑style principles for modular agent design (bricks → sets)
• Clear patterns for agent responsibilities, boundaries, and tool contracts
• Common multi‑agent architectures: orchestrator/worker, peer collaboration, escalation
• Anti‑patterns that lead to tightly coupled or brittle agent systems
• A reusable checklist for designing evolvable multi‑agent solutions
Breaking the Iceberg: Harnessing AI to Support Deeper Business Application Innovation
AI is often seen as a tool for routine tasks like data entry or document generation, but its true value lies much deeper. This session will unveil the AI iceberg, showcasing how AI can tackle complex, strategic challenges to transform the core of your business. We'll explore real-world examples, from contact center automation to D365 and Power Platform innovations, such as predicting asset wear to schedule maintenance, forecasting service demand for optimized hiring, and automating onboarding processes. Discover how AI can streamline operations, drive innovation, and position your business as a market leader. Join us to rethink AI’s role and unlock its full potential through strategic insights and impactful use cases.
Beyond Copilot: Driving Business Value and Automation with Agentic AI
In this session, we dive into the transformative power of AI agents, which go beyond Copilot's insights to take autonomous action in various business contexts. Attendees will learn the fundamentals of AI agents, explore types of agents like Azure OpenAI assistants and custom engines, and understand how these capabilities translate into measurable business impact. By the end, participants will be able to identify strategic areas within their organizations where AI agents can optimize processes, improve customer interactions, and drive efficiency. Real-world examples and an interactive Q&A will provide practical insights and inspire actionable next steps.
Autonomy with Accountability: A Playbook for Agentic Processes
Most teams try to bolt “agents” onto brittle workflows and hope for magic. This session shows a safer way to redesign processes so agents add value without losing control. Using an end-to-end Sales→Cash storyline (lead triage → CPQ → ATP/CTP promise dates → buy/make orchestration → fulfillment → invoicing/collections), we map where stochastic reasoning helps and where deterministic steps should stay. You’ll learn the autonomy ladder (L0–L3), an Agentic Redesign Canvas, and the safety envelope: policy cards, decision thresholds, human-in-the-loop, signed-intent commits, and rollback. We’ll finish with a Microsoft build path (Copilot Studio + Power Automate + Dataverse + Fabric) and a metrics plan to graduate autonomy by evidence, not hype.
AI for Sales & Service: Transforming Your Dataverse into a Copilot Goldmine with Fabric
Many businesses find AI innovation hindered by an underdeveloped or poorly managed data estate, including their Dataverse environment(s). Without a solid data foundation, even advanced AI initiatives can stall, leading to frustration and missed opportunities. This session will show how Microsoft Fabric can transform your data estate from an innovation inhibitor to an accelerator. We’ll explore populating Fabric with data from all sources (Dataverse, APIs, Azure, etc.) and leveraging OneLake to model and prepare this data for advanced AI. By integrating with Azure AI and Copilot Studio, you’ll unlock your data’s full potential, powering AI models and driving meaningful business transformation. In this session we leverage an "Eddie the Seller" demo use case and help the audience conceptualize similar use cases for Customer Service, Contact Centre, and Field Service.
Nancie Calder
Turning AI, data, and CRM strategy into practical business outcomes using Microsoft ecosystem
Toronto, Canada
Links
Actions
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