Webinar Title: Empowering Nonprofit Decision-Making – Introducing AI-Enabled ERP with Sparkrock 

Gary (Sparkrock): 

At Sparkrock, we partner closely with Microsoft. Today, our platform is built on top of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

In our experience working with nonprofit and human services organizations, we’ve found that while Business Central is a powerful solution, it was originally designed for for-profit businesses. As a result, it lacks critical functionalities that nonprofits require—things like invoice approvals, fund management, grant accounting, and the ability to generate specific financial reports. 

Nonprofits using solutions designed for businesses often end up wasting time and resources, relying on manual processes just to meet their basic needs. 

With Sparkrock, we bring together two worlds: 

• On one side, the security, stability, and interoperability of Microsoft’s infrastructure 

• On the other, the sector-specific functionality and expertise Sparkrock has developed over 20 years serving nonprofits and human services organizations 

We offer the best of both worlds. You get the benefit of Microsoft’s ongoing investment—not just in terms of privacy, security, and mobility—but also in productivity features and support. And then Sparkrock builds on top of that with vertical-specific features tailored to your sector. 

This slide shows an overview of the modules available within Sparkrock: 

• Finance & Procurement 

• HR Management 

• Scheduling & Time Entry 

• Payroll Administration 

• Reporting & Analytics 

Sparkrock is one of the only fully integrated solutions purpose-built for nonprofit organizations like yours. We won’t dive into each module today, but this gives you a sense of the breadth and depth of capabilities available—all designed with your unique needs in mind. 

Now that you have a clearer picture of Sparkrock, I’ll hand it over to Henrik from Microsoft to talk about the transformative impact of AI on nonprofits and the exciting developments with Microsoft Copilot. 

Henrik (Microsoft Tech for Social Impact): 

Thank you very much, Gary—super excited to be here today. 

Just a quick check: can everyone see my presentation? Great. 

My name is Henrik, and I work with Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact team. I focus on the nonprofit sector, specifically on ERP and CRM solutions. 

Let’s talk briefly about how Microsoft sees the AI transformation—not just across industries, but especially for nonprofits like yours. 

AI is changing the way we work across the board—from how we interact with constituents and donors, to how we streamline internal operations. With Microsoft 365, we’ve embedded AI capabilities into everyday tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It’s all about unlocking productivity. 

But it’s not just about productivity. It’s about reimagining how you engage with donors and constituents. How can we reinvent the donor or constituent journey using AI? 

There are also countless internal processes that can be streamlined and automated with AI—from finance tasks to case management. AI helps organizations work smarter, adapt faster, and become more efficient. 

AI isn’t entirely new—it’s been around for a while—but what’s changed in the last 12–18 months is accessibility. More organizations now have access to advanced AI tools than ever before. 

Microsoft’s approach to AI revolves around Copilots—virtual assistants embedded within the tools you already use. 

• Microsoft 365 Copilot lives inside your productivity apps. Want to find correlations in a complex Excel file? Just ask it in plain language. 

• Dynamics 365 Copilot is embedded directly into the CRM or ERP environment. It helps automate repetitive tasks, suggest the next best actions, and surface insights based on your data. 

• Power Platform Copilot lets you build apps just by describing what you want in natural language. 

We’ve integrated Copilot across all our solutions to help users work more efficiently and creatively. In Dynamics 365, for example, Copilot provides contextual assistance—supporting your daily tasks, whether it’s financial reconciliation or constituent management. 

Of course, all this is underpinned by Microsoft’s commitment to data privacy and security. Your data stays your data. It’s encrypted, housed within your Azure subscription, and never used to train AI models. Microsoft’s compliance and privacy standards ensure your information is protected at every step. 

To wrap up, I’m going to show you a short preview video. This hasn’t been launched yet—it’s still in development—but it gives a good sense of what we’re envisioning with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

[Video Voiceover – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Copilot Preview]  

Video narration excerpt: 

"You’re used to asking questions to uncover insights and solve problems by chatting with coworkers, customers, or vendors. 

Now, Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a new way to continue the conversation. 

Built on Microsoft’s industry-leading privacy and security framework, Copilot helps you find answers quickly and easily. 

For the first time, Business Central users can interact with their data using natural language—skipping traditional menu navigation and locating records faster. 

Didn’t find exactly what you were looking for? You can ask follow-up questions to clarify and refine your search. 

Copilot acts as a virtual assistant—helping you track down the right information at the right time, all using natural language. Even complex searches become easy. 

Get answers to questions like how, when, or why to do things—so new users can get up to speed quickly, and long-time employees can learn new skills. Copilot gives your team an edge by guiding them to the next step, making processes easier to learn and problems easier to solve. 

With every day bringing something new, Copilot helps you reclaim time so you can: 

• Work smarter 

• Adapt faster 

• Perform better 

Be ready for what’s next—with Dynamics 365 Business Central.” 

🎵 [Music fades out] 

Henrik (Microsoft Tech for Social Impact): 

Great. So what you just saw in the video is a completely new way of engaging with your ERP system—using natural language to type queries and get exactly the information you need, when you need it. 

This is a more efficient and productive way of interacting with your Business Central solution. 

And this AI functionality doesn’t stop with Copilot's natural language interface. We’ve embedded AI capabilities across the platform: 

• Inventory Optimization 

• Marketing Text Generation (upload a product photo, and it writes marketing copy for your website) 

• Late Payment Forecasting 

• Cash Flow Forecasting 

There are many areas where AI is already built into Business Central. 

I’ve included a link in the slide deck to the official Release Wave Notes, where you can explore the latest features Microsoft’s engineering team is developing—along with their expected release timelines. 

Now, when we talk about practical AI use cases in the nonprofit sector, it really comes down to imagination. Look at your own organization: 

• What tasks are repetitive? 

• What processes can be automated or simplified? 

• Where could you use more insight, suggestions, or forecasting? 

The goal is to free up time for your team to focus on mission-critical outcomes. Across Microsoft’s solution portfolio, Copilot and AI are already transforming how we work—and this will only accelerate. 

In the slide deck, I’ve also added a link to a Business Central Guided Demo specifically designed for nonprofits. If you want a hands-on look at how it works in practice, I encourage you to explore that. 

With that, I’ll now hand it over to Ash, VP of Product at Sparkrock. 

Ash (Sparkrock): 

Thank you, Henrik! 

Hi everyone, I’m Ash, VP of Product at Sparkrock. I’ve been in the tech space for quite a while—starting from mainframes to PCs, then web, mobile, and now, this exciting new era of AI. 

And what a time to be here. 

Today, I want to share how Sparkrock is embracing AI to make your lives easier. Let’s start with this slide—our Five Pillars of Innovation. 

When we began defining Sparkrock’s product vision, we looked closely at Microsoft’s own digital transformation framework. At the center is what they call the Digital Imperative, which includes five key focus areas that every organization—nonprofit or otherwise—should prioritize. 

Here’s a quick overview: 

• Leveraging Cloud Infrastructure 

• Prioritizing Security 

• • Especially important for nonprofits and education organizations, which often lack sophisticated cybersecurity setups and are soft targets for attacks. 

• Enabling Collaboration 

• • Whether your teams are in-office, remote, or hybrid, your solution needs collaboration tools, APIs, and extensibility. 

• Empowering Development with Tools like Power Platform 

• Using AI Intelligently 

• • There's a wealth of data and tools available—are you using them to reduce effort and increase value? 

So, after aligning our strategy with Microsoft’s vision, the generative AI boom hit—led by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT. Suddenly, you could type a question in plain language and get a human-like, helpful response. 

That’s generative AI. It learns from existing data and gives you intelligent output. 

We asked: Can this help our Sparkrock customers? 

As Gary showed earlier, our ERP solution is rich in features—sometimes overwhelming. So we explored how AI could: 

• Help new users onboard faster 

• Assist experienced users by automating tasks 

• Improve efficiency across the board 

The timing was perfect. 

But of course, our customers raised an important concern: 
“Is AI secure?” 

There’s been a lot of media coverage about data privacy, especially around how tools like ChatGPT use your data. 

As Henrik explained, Microsoft has a Responsible AI framework focused on security and privacy. So, here’s what we did to make it clear: 

Take a look at this slide. On the right-hand side, you’ll see how OpenAI’s public version of ChatGPT works. When you use their platform, your interactions may be used to train their models—that’s in their terms. 

That raised a red flag for many nonprofits. 

But here’s the good news: Microsoft took a different path. 

Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service allows enterprise customers to access the same “brains” (AI models) in a secure, private, and controlled environment. 

That’s what we use at Sparkrock. 

When we embed AI into our product, we’re using Microsoft’s version of these models—secured within Azure, and further secured within your own infrastructure. 

• No one outside your org sees the data 

• Your data isn’t used to train external models 

• Everything stays encrypted and protected 

You heard it from Henrik, and I’m reinforcing it here: AI in Sparkrock, powered by Microsoft, is secure by design. 

Ash (Sparkrock): 

In just a couple of minutes, I want to show you how we're applying AI in real-world scenarios—starting with a story we heard from one of our customers. 

We were speaking with a superintendent from a school district. He shared that his HR department needs at least two full-time staff just to answer phone calls. And even he, as a superintendent, had to call HR to find out whether his dental visit would be covered. 

Yes, the information technically exists—in a handbook—but it’s buried, complex, and possibly outdated. So most people just pick up the phone. 

That’s where our goal comes in: empowering employees to self-serve. 

We want to make it easy for them to find information by simply asking natural-language questions—and get accurate answers. The same applies within the ERP system: new users should be able to interact easily, even without prior training. 

Let me switch over to demo mode now and show you what this looks like in practice. 

[Live Demo – Sparkrock AI Capabilities] 

Here I have two different applications open: 

• MySparkrock – our employee-facing portal 

• Sparkrock ERP, built on Microsoft Business Central 

• MySparkrock (Employee Portal):

This is where employees access pay stubs, policies, and procedures. We’ve integrated a chatbot, powered by Microsoft AI, that lets users ask questions directly—no need to open multiple PDFs or navigate menus. 

For example, I’ll demo this chatbot in a second. But first, let’s take a look at the second environment. 

• ERP Interface (Business Central):

As Gary mentioned earlier, our ERP is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. What we’ve done is embed an AI-powered interface—similar to ChatGPT—right into the ERP. 

Let me show you how it works. 

Prompt: “List the vendors in the system” 
It takes a second to respond—still being fine-tuned—but then returns a list of all vendors in the ERP. 

Follow-up: “Which vendors have the most balance?” 
It understands the question and shows the ones with the highest balances. 

Further refinement: “Only those with positive balances” 
Sometimes it interprets these accurately, sometimes less so—but the key is, I'm interacting conversationally, just like I would with a colleague who understands the system. 

If I didn’t use AI, I’d have to: 

• Open the vendor list 

• Apply filters 

• Manually search for balances 
  That’s several steps—whereas here, I just ask. 

Let’s try one more: 

Prompt: “List employees in my system” 
It returns a list. 

Follow-up: “Who are the caretakers?” 
It understands the context and shows me just the caretakers. 

Another question: “Anyone with police duties?” 
Again, it searches and returns relevant results—all with just a few words. 

The power of this AI isn’t just in data retrieval—it’s in context awareness and conversation flow. 

Now, back to MySparkrock: 

I’ve prepared a few sample questions. 

Employees can browse policy documents manually—or just use the chatbot to ask a question. 

Example: “When is the Provincial Collective Agreement effective?” 
The chatbot reads the indexed document and instantly retrieves the correct information. In this case, it pulls the answer from the first page of the PDF. 

Another example: “Highlight the health coverages in the bargaining unit benefits plan.” 
It scans the large document and returns a summary of the relevant information—without the user having to open or search the PDF. 

This is a glimpse of what's possible when you bring AI into your daily workflows. You interact with your system like a human—ask in your own words, and the AI understands and responds in context. 

Gary (Sparkrock): 

Thank you, Ash, for that exciting presentation. 

As an innovative and forward-thinking organization, we always welcome feedback and ideas. These are the fuel that help us improve and grow. 

If you’re feeling inspired by what you’ve seen today and have suggestions or questions, please use the Q&A section to share them. We’ll also follow up with you after the session. 

Just a reminder: the session will stay open for another 3–4 minutes so you have time to submit your feedback or comments. 

Thank you again for spending 30 minutes with us for this Lunch & Learn. If you have any questions or would like more information, please reach out at: 

👉 connect@sparkrock.com 

Our team would be happy to assist you. 

Thanks again, and have a wonderful rest of your day!