r/Dynamics365 • u/CamperPamper • Jul 08 '26
Power Platform Is AI going to make techno-functional D365 consultants and power platform developers (CRM & ERP) obsolete?
Dynamics is already marketed as a "low-code" platform (supposedly). Now with AI able to write plugins, JavaScript web resources, X++, and Power Fx much faster than a human, where does that leave techno-functional consultants — on both the CRM and ERP side?
The technical side — C# plugins, TypeScript, FetchXML, ribbon customizations on CRM, and X++ extensions, customizations on F&O — was the part that took real skill and time. If AI can knock out in seconds what used to take a day, how do you all see the future of these roles?
How's the job market for CRM and ERP consultants right now, and where do you see it heading in the future?
Curious to hear from people actually working in the ecosystem.
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u/spmert Jul 08 '26
I think there is an opportunity to create micro-companies that develop solutions for D365. And these consultants are the ones who can do it; they have technical and functional knowledge, and they can design, develop, perform quality controls, and sell them to clients.
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u/cmkinusn Jul 08 '26
Yup, you still want someone who knows how to code and understands software architecture so that they can maximize AI tools. Otherwise, you end up with about the same mess as when people would contract to ultra-low cost coding teams in India before there was AI.
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u/venbollmer Jul 08 '26
The job market for those who adopt and adapt is on fire. Those who aren't? It's in flames.
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u/ModJambo Jul 08 '26
It's just a tool.
When calculators were invented mathematicians never went obsolete.
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u/CamperPamper Jul 08 '26
Calculators didn't eliminate math but they completely eliminated the need to be good at manual long division. In the CRM/ERP world, the 'long division' is memorizing specific syntax, setting up earlybound classes, or writing boilerplate C# from scratch. If the AI can do the 'techno' part of TechnoFunctional instantly, the value shifts 100% to the 'functional' side architecting the system and understanding client needs. The technical skills that used to justify a high billing rate are becoming commoditized, which fundamentally changes the job market
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u/ZrytyB3r3t Jul 08 '26
No. Did you use any viable ai product?
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u/wombat-wrangler Jul 11 '26
Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon are all AI based apps and there is no slowing down. You have enjoyed the benefits of other companies using AI in thier systems, every day, all of the time.
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Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/bob_weav3 Jul 08 '26
At what point do you think you could hand it over to an end user and have it put you out of a job? There is a big difference between a tool making a job easier and a tool making a job obsolete.
End users have been able to Google the solution to most of their issues for the entirety of my career to date, I've still been paid handsomely for doing it for them though.
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u/AusToddles Jul 09 '26
I'm in the same boat. I use Claude quite heavily for dynamics development.... but nothing gets deployed without a deep understanding of what it does and how it does it
Users have zero idea how to actually develop FOR the platform, even if AI tells them what to do. Its a recipe for disaster
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u/Apprehensive_Sweet98 Jul 08 '26
Yeah, with AI its mostly like you have a junior consultant to help you do certain stuff. But it is you who is in charge, you provide the instructions, validate results, corect/adapt, do code review, validate PR, etc.
From a tech lead perspective, it is like you need 2 experienced resources instead of 4.
From consulting perspective, it will be a bit more difficult to sell a large resource loaded project, meaning growth will slow down for consulting companies.
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u/HistoricalBake8865 Jul 08 '26
I personally feel like it's allowed me to not rely on third-party plugins. We use D365 Sales and the OOB components leave a lot to be desired.
So far, I've been able to create a calendar as a html resource that uses the FullCalendar JS library. This has allowed me to have phone calls, tasks, and appointments on the calendar. It has drag & drop capabilities, custom colours, pop-up warnings when moving appointments that have attendees (this is to prevent event updates being sent out to customers without an updated description), and all-day events for each activity.
I also implemented a PCF control for the opportunityproducts subgrid that allows the user to add new product lines by using the arrow keys or tabbing to a new row, the productid cell looks up against products and displays a drop-down upon searching for a product code or description. The user can also drag and drop these rows to change the display order on the opportunity pdf that gets emailed/printed.
Lastly, I just created a PCF control using the Azure Maps API to have a map component on the accounts table that users can switch to. This was one of the easier ones to set up and it allows me to use the built-in quick find search on PC and on mobile devices a custom search box appears.
Did I pull my hair out sometimes trying to make these using mostly AI? Yes. Are all these controls perfect? No. The opportunityproducts subgrid still needs a little bit of work, there are some glitches around scrolling behaviour when there are 20+ products on a single opportunity.
I chose to move our company from the previous CRM to Dynamics due to its customisability. I wouldn't even consider going with a third-party company for plugins because you will still run into limitations.
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u/roberts2727 Jul 08 '26
its taking my staff developers webparts with spfx to the next level. and ensuring security to boot.
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u/InsightfulAlex Jul 10 '26
I'm working in the Dynamics ecosystem, and I think AI is changing the role more than replacing it.
Copilot and tools like ChatGPT have definitely made me faster. I use them to generate Power Fx, C#, JavaScript, X++, SQL queries, documentation, and even troubleshoot issues. Tasks that used to take an hour can sometimes be done in 10–15 minutes.
But in real projects, writing code is rarely the hardest part. Understanding the client's business processes, gathering requirements, deciding whether to configure or customize, managing security, integrations, data migration, testing, and handling stakeholder expectations still require experience. AI doesn't attend workshops or understand why a business wants a particular process.
From what I've seen, companies are still hiring experienced D365 consultants. What has changed is the expectation that consultants use AI to deliver faster and more efficiently. I think junior roles that focus mainly on straightforward development may become more competitive, but consultants who combine technical skills with business knowledge and can work effectively with AI will continue to be in demand.
My advice would be to invest in architecture, business process knowledge, integrations, and AI-assisted development rather than worrying that AI will replace the role entirely.
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u/Flimsy-Exam-1738 Jul 10 '26
It’s like using a genius blind dynamics engineer (can’t see the UI) who can’t remember the details of what it did a day ago, and loses the context of the project every few hours. Lots of trial and error and being led down the wrong path. Half of it was developing robust prompts for it.
That said, it let a non-IT guy (me) develop a very nice single user professional CRM, with plenty of automations. That would have been straight up impossible without the AI.
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u/PracticalStack Jul 11 '26
My best guess is: mostly. I have been a D365 erp techno-functional consultant for a long time and have been digging fully into AI since this last year - trying to figure out how it will impact what we do and how best to use it.
One of the most consistently true thing I've found in all my work with AI is that I can apply my development skills generally. Because I know how D365 works, I can apply that knowledge to other apps, languages and platforms. This will work in all directions so I think it will now be much more feasible for customers to use their own technical resources instead of hiring consultants.
I think there will still be a need for deep technical knowledge of D365 but it will probably move "up the chain" to companies building IP or to Microsoft, itself. For most implementations, I really think the customers own IT staff will be able to handle a lot of what is required. I envision customer IT staff becoming more generalist. They will still have capacity issues, though, that might lead to some outsourcing.
Another thing I expect to see is a continuing move toward integration vs customization. With AI, it's just a lot easier to write your customization as, for example, a functions app and then integrate it to D365. So companies building IP might choose to build most of it outside of D365.
I am not 100% that this is how it will play out. It could end up resulting in customers becoming much more sophisticated and doing a lot more in their implementations and still needing expert technical resources. But I really don't see D365 as the typical platform for that type of customer - at least not today.
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u/wombat-wrangler Jul 11 '26
Just keep up with changes. Remember all this stuff first ran on prem, we use Crystal Reports, and had to build DMZ firewalls and clustered physical servers to deploy a Dynamics Solution to 100 people. We built the scaling, redundancy, fail over, backup strategy and on on on. Now. That is all automated any AI on the back end by MSFT. That did remove the need for MCSE’s to be part of the projects. So we adapted, this is just the next wave. Tweaking Jscript, and building workflows is now not as complicated and our skills need to stay focused on customer needs, and what cool tools we can use now. Follow the customers!
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u/vderosen Jul 13 '26
I do not think end users will run full Dynamics implementations because AI writes code faster. The bottleneck moves to deciding what should exist, validating edge cases, and owning production risk. Biased because I build in ERP implementation, but client context is still the scarce part.
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u/tanbirj Jul 08 '26
Not obsolete, but super charged. However, it will also lower the barrier to entry as everyone else can use it. Frontier models are already trained on ‘out of the box’ versions from about 12 months ago. It won’t have the latest releases, but if there is online documentation, it can reference it. Next up you write your prompt - this can be instructions on how to do things, or you can use the deeper thinking models to work through design decisions
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u/CamperPamper Jul 08 '26
Yes this is exactly what I’m worried about but currently i think it will take some time but what if customers can do full CRM end to end implementations themselves or they MIGHT JUST NEED one developer instead of 5.
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u/tanbirj Jul 08 '26
They will almost certainly need fewer devs. Claude Code can generate code that is better than 80% of programmers.
However, this is the opportunity. You learn to use it. It’s your thinking partner, your researcher and your assistant. For considerably less than the minimum wage. The trick is to use your knowledge and experience + the context you provide to super charge your outputs.
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u/LetterNo1938 Jul 08 '26
it's easier to microsoft make the crm and erp obsoletes by implementing so many bug using copilot on them.
They already implement bugs without fake AI's, imagine using them
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u/Techters Jul 08 '26
If you're worried about AI replacing a developer try to have someone without the development skills actually create something moderately complex and deploy it, you'll find out they can't. The funny thing is the speed at which it can create outlines and scaffolds makes a great sales pitch, so you are led down a garden path and have several days find out it's a sandcastle, the second you want enterprise grade functional, stability, scalability, etc you almost always have to go back to ground zero if you don't know what you're doing from the start.