The Rational Reminder podcast - favorite episodes from 2024

I started listening to the Rational Reminder Podcast somewhere around the beginning of this year and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in sensible investing and financial decision making. 

The Rational Reminder podcast is weekly podcast about personal finance and investing from a couple of Canadians, Benjamin Felix and Cameron Passmore - both work at PWL Capital. The hosts are experienced portfolio managers who share their knowledge about a broad range of financial topics and the show often features interviews with industry experts, offering diverse perspectives and deep dives into specific areas of finance.

Benjamin Felix also creates educational content on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@BenFelixCSI where he shares insights on investing and financial planning

Both advocate for evidence-based investing, which often includes passive investment strategies such as index funds and they emphasize the benefits of low-cost, diversified, and long-term investment approaches, which align well with passive investing principles.

Episodes which I really liked:

• Episode 321 - Evidence in Practice with Håkon Kavli (CIO of Reitan Kapital)
• Episode 320 - Kyla Scanlon: In This Economy?!
• Episode 316 - Andrew Chen: "Is everything I was taught about cross-sectional asset pricing wrong?!" about Open Source Asset Pricing
• Episode 313 - When Should You Hire a Financial Advisor?
• Episode 310 - Professor Antoinette Schoar: Consumer Finance, Crypto, and Private Equity
• Episode 303 - Scott Galloway: The Algebra of Wealth
• Episode 302 - Michael Green: Market Efficiency Is Not The Question
• Episode 292 - Rob Copeland: Ray Dalio and Bridgewater
• Episode 291 - The Quant Winter, and is Canada Pension Plan a Scam?
• Episode 289 - Retiring Retirement Income Myths with the Retirement Income Dream Team
• Episode 286: Errol Morris: Tuning out the Noise

Hidden gem : the business process catalog for Dynamics 365 apps

The business process catalog for Dynamics 365 apps is an Excel workbook that contains more than 700 processes grouped by end-to-end scenarios and business process areas for different products (Dynamics 365 SCM, Business Central, Customer Service etc ...). It can be used as a blueprint for requirement-gathering and implementation templates. 

Microsoft updates the catalog at least four times each year and the latest November 2024 release was recently made available. This latest releases includes:

• Azure DevOps templates that you can use to track your implementation
• Configuration deliverable downloads for Finance and Operation apps as well as Customer Engagement apps.
• AI generated process flow diagrams for level 3 processes to accelerate the discover process.

Download the latest version on https://aka.ms/businessprocesscatalog and explore AI generated flow diagrams at https://aka.ms/businessprocessflow

Dynamics 365 Contact Center - the new kid on the block

 In July 2024, Microsoft announced general availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center. This Contact Center As A Service (CCAAS) offering allows Microsoft to compete against players such as ...

It most likely is also a way for Microsoft to embed the Nuance offering more directly into the Dynamics 365 platform. It can be quite a daunting task for consultants and customers trying to come up with a cost simulation since licensing is not that easy taking into account the different capabilities in the platform (or as Tricia calls it "licensing a contact center deal can be a special place in hell" - in Licensing the Dynamics 365 Contact Center Part 1

Data flow and components in Dynamics 365 Contact Center architecture:

1. Customers can connect through preferred channels including Teams for internal helpdesks. Licensing and operational cost vary depending on the required channels to support
2. Azure Communication Services (ACS) offers PSTN integration for voice 
3. Works not only with Dynamics 365 CRM (Customer Service) but also with other CRM platform such as Salesforce and ServiceNow
4. Use Copilot Studio to configure AI agents and IVR setup
5. Routing based on Unified routing framework
6. Agents work in the Agent Workspace or Customer Service Workspace if you are using Dynamics 365 
7. Connectors allow easy integration with Microsoft 365
8. Typical AI scenario's supported such as case summary, conversation summary, draft e-mails and knowledge article support (mainly existing functionality which already surfaced earlier in Dynamics 365 Customer Service)
9. Built on top of Power Platform with Dataverse as the core building block
10. Built in monitoring, management and analytics & reporting functionality

If you want to learn more about this platform - I suggest that you follow Chris Goodwill on LinkedIn and join the Dynamics 365 Contact Center LinkedIn Group

Related posts:

• Dynamics CCAAS Cost Calculator
• Configure direct routing

Thoughts about Artificial Intelligence and business value

The question that a lot of companies have, is  how to realize business value from AI. Obviously companies don't invest millions (billions) of dollars in artificial intelligence just to play around with LLMs. Companies need to quantify the business value they want to realize.

To get an answer to this question, you might want to take a look at the white paper  Research paper - Artificial Intelligence and business value: a literature review (2021, Ida Merete Enholm, Emmanouil P., Patrick Mikalef and John Krogstie) which provides a framework for connecting AI with business value.

The white paper distinguishes between first and second order effects of GenAI. First order effects are the immediate, direct impacts of implementing Generative AI whereas second order effects are indirect, longer-term impacts that result from the first-order effects. 

While first order effects (e.g. enhancing business decisions, increasing process efficiency and transforming business processes) are crucial for justifying the initial investments and demonstrating immediate ROI, second order effects (impact on operational and financial improvements, sustainability etc...) are essential for long term strategic planning and understanding the broader implications of Generative AI.

API Playground in Dataverse Accelerator App

 The API playground is a pre-authenticated software testing tool which is part of the Dataverse Accelerator App. API playground  allows you to quickly interact with the Microsoft Dataverse Web API - check out Explore and test Dataverse in the Web API playground (Preview)