Overview: A new era for enterprise planning
Board, a leading Enterprise Planning Platform, announced a strategic expansion that redefines how organizations manage planning, forecasting, and decision making. By integrating Board Agents built on Microsoft Foundry, the company is delivering an intelligent, domain-specific suite of AI agents designed to operate at the core of enterprise planning. The collaboration signals a shift from manual, siloed planning processes to a unified, AI-assisted workflow that aligns finance, operations, sales, and supply chain in real time.
What Agentic AI means for planning teams
Agentic AI refers to autonomous, decision-support agents that can interpret data, apply domain-specific rules, and act within defined governance boundaries. For planning teams, this translates to:
- Automated data wrangling: Agents clean, normalize, and reconcile data across ERP, CRM, and BI systems, reducing the time spent on data preparation.
- Contextual forecasting: Domain-specific models adjust forecasts for market shifts, seasonality, and operational constraints, providing more accurate projections.
- Scenario planning at scale: Users can generate multiple what-if scenarios, evaluate risks, and surface actionable insights without heavy coding or model-building.
- Governance and compliance: Built-in controls ensure that AI recommendations adhere to corporate policies, financial controls, and regulatory requirements.
Why Microsoft Foundry is a strategic fit
Microsoft Foundry provides a specialized platform for building, deploying, and governing AI solutions at enterprise scale. The collaboration brings:
- Secure, scalable infrastructure: Foundry’s enterprise-grade security and governance features help Board Agents operate safely across complex organizations.
- Seamless data integration: Native connectors and data agreements streamline access to critical data sources, enabling faster time-to-value.
- Unified toolchains: A cohesive environment for development, testing, and deployment accelerates innovation while maintaining control.
How Board Agents work in practice
Board Agents are designed to plug into existing enterprise planning workflows and augment human judgment rather than replace it. Typical use cases include:
- Financial planning and analysis: Agents generate rolling forecasts, perform driver-based scenario analysis, and flag anomalies for review by finance teams.
- Operational planning: Production capacity, inventory optimization, and demand planning are continuously updated as new data arrives, helping to prevent bottlenecks.
- Sales and marketing alignment: Revenue forecasting is enhanced by AI-driven insights that correlate campaigns, pipeline health, and channel performance.
- Strategic planning: Long-term scenarios consider macroeconomic factors and organizational strategy, guiding leadership decisions.
Security, governance, and trust
As AI becomes embedded in core planning, governance becomes paramount. The Board Foundry integration emphasizes transparency and auditable AI behavior. Features include user-specific access controls, explainable AI outputs, and a clear division between automated actions and human approval workflows. This ensures planning remains accountable, auditable, and aligned with corporate risk appetites.
What this means for customers
For organizations already using Board, the new Agentic AI capabilities on Foundry promise a faster path to intelligent planning with less manual effort. Early adopters may experience improved forecast accuracy, shorter planning cycles, and stronger cross-functional collaboration. As AI agents learn from organizational data and governance rules, they become more adept at surfacing relevant insights and proposing recommended actions that executives can act on with confidence.
Looking ahead
The Board–Microsoft Foundry collaboration is positioned as a long-term strategic initiative. Beyond initial deployments, the partnership aims to deepen AI capabilities, expand integration footprints, and continually refine agents to address evolving business needs. In an era where data-driven decisions determine competitive advantage, embedding Agentic AI into enterprise planning could become a standard operating model for modern organizations.
