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4 min read

The latest on AI at work: November 2024

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For Microsoft and our customers, work is changing at the speed of AI. To help you stay ahead, we’ll share monthly highlights of new Microsoft Copilot innovations, plus the latest from our customers on how they’re getting the most value from Copilot.

In September, we kicked off wave 2 of Copilot, including Copilot Pages for AI collaboration; enhanced Copilot features in Microsoft 365 apps like Microsoft Teams, Excel, and PowerPoint; and new Copilot agents to automate business processes. Based on customer feedback, we’ve dramatically improved performance: Copilot responses are more than two times faster on average, and response satisfaction has improved by nearly three times.1

In October, we continued this next innovation wave by introducing the ability to create autonomous agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio, along with new agents that automate business processes. These new agents build capacity for sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams, helping you move from legacy line of business applications to AI-first business processes. Copilot is how you’ll interact with agents.

We’ll have much more to share at Microsoft Ignite 2024, which runs from November 19 through November 21. You can register here to follow the event live online for free. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of what else is new this fall.

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New in Copilot

  • You’ll soon be able to use Copilot to personalize your Outlook app like never before. With Themes by Copilot in Outlook, you’ll be able to create a unique theme that speaks to you—it could even change with the weather. It shows how AI can enhance not only how you work, but also how you feel at work. These AI-powered themes are accessible to all users with a Microsoft Copilot Pro consumer subscription and business accounts with Copilot enabled.
  • You’ll also be able to use Copilot to prep for your next meeting in minutes. When you have an upcoming meeting, a “Prepare” button will proactively be shown at the top of your inbox. This will help you quickly get context for the meeting by creating an agenda summary and showing and summarizing relevant files. This feature is rolling out in December on web and new Outlook.
  • We’ve heard from customers that while Copilot has transformed the way they work in Teams, it could use a little help in PowerPoint. We’re thrilled to have taken the first steps toward a new Copilot in PowerPoint. It starts with Narrative builder. Rolling out this fall, this new capability allows you to tell a story with Copilot as your partner. Rather than jumping from idea to complete presentation, Narrative builder will now write a draft outline for you—one you can edit, add to, reorder, or rework. It puts you in creative control, telling Copilot what you want to see from the presentation. We also added a brand manager feature, which lets you create presentations using your company’s brand guidelines. It’s all part of a new experience, designed to help you tell the most effective story.
  • Plus, you no longer need to be a coder to use Python in Excel. This fall, we added Copilot in Excel with Python capabilities, democratizing one of the most popular programming languages on the planet. Using natural language, you simply tell Copilot what you’re trying to learn, and it will run the analysis for you, writing Python code that you can review and even edit.

Getting ROI on AI

Copilot has been generally available for only one year, and already, nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies are using it. Customers continue to adopt it at a faster rate than any other new Microsoft 365 suite. And they’re seeing the impact on their business.

  • With Copilot supporting sales associates, Lumen Technologies projects $50 million in savings annually.
  • Vodafone is deploying 68,000 licenses after seeing average time savings of 3 hours a week per person, with 90% of users praising the benefits.
  • Finastra is reducing creative production time from seven months to seven weeks.
  • For one business group here at Microsoft, Copilot is providing a 9.4% increase in revenue per seller and a 20% increase in close rates among high users of the tool.2 That’s according to this WorkLab article on how AI is already changing work. It’s just one example of how you can use AI to go on offense, not just for defense.

“Don’t just think of Copilot as a way to drive costs out of the business. Think of it as a way to free up resources that can be reinvested into your function.”

—Nathalie D’Hers, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Digital

Check out the article for more data and insights from Nathalie and six other functional leaders on what they’re learning—and how AI can help future-proof any organization.

Tip of the month

  • Be the change you want to see at your company, when it comes to using AI. Kate Johnson, President and CEO of Lumen, said one way she got more employees to adopt Copilot was by increasing her own usage and noting what she learned. “Then we started talking about those tips and tricks with other leaders so that they could demonstrate that behavior, and then showing reports of adoption to our employees,” Johnson said on the WorkLab podcast.

Go deeper

1 Among Copilot responses in English.

2 Internal Microsoft sales team data based on 687 sellers of Microsoft 365 Copilot from January 2024 through June 2024, as compared with sellers with low usage of Copilot. Regular usage of Copilot means sellers who use Copilot daily at least 50% of the time during the testing period.