Do AI agents change the role of the Business Central partner?

Yes, fundamentally. As long as a partner's value sat in customising, it was about development hours, and the more custom code was written, the higher the revenue. That created a quiet incentive to build complexity rather than remove it. Nobody had to act in bad faith; the business model did it on its own. AI agents reverse that. Agents take over the recurring execution, and the value no longer lies in building individual special routes, but in processes being governable, data being clean and agents being sensibly bounded. That is exactly where a senior partner becomes more important, not redundant: somebody has to decide which task an agent may take on, which rule applies, and where a human is required. That is steering, not programming. Whatever an agent does, somebody has to own it and bound it. Control on your side becomes more important, not less.

How is the partner role shifting: from customising to control?

The old pattern was clear: the partner earned on customisations, and the more custom code was written, the higher the revenue. That set a quiet incentive to build complexity up rather than reduce it. Nobody had to act in bad faith; the business model produced that shift by itself.

The new pattern reverses it. Agents take over the recurring execution. The value no longer lies in building individual special paths but in processes being governable, data clean and agents sensibly bounded. That is exactly where a senior partner becomes more important, not redundant.

Somebody has to decide which task an agent may take on, which rule applies to it and where a person is required. That is steering, not programming, and it calls for experience with the consequences of such decisions across years rather than knowledge of a programming language.

What should you look for in a partner from now on?

• Does the partner strengthen you in governance and the data foundation, or do they still depend on development hours that an agent will make redundant anyway?
• Do they reduce complexity so processes become rule-able, or keep it alive?
• Do they talk about responsibility and about the limits of the agents, or only about features?

Source: Microsoft Learn: Configure Copilot and agent capabilities

AI without hype means: the agent takes the execution off your hands, not the responsibility. The responsibility stays a steering task, and that belongs on your side. The third question is the most telling here, because features are publicly documented and the limits come exclusively from experience.

If you want to work out how your partner's role shifts with AI agents, we discuss that in a conversation. Control stays on your side, with Business Central as home.