One of the highlights of my career has always been connecting with customers and partners across industries to learn how they are using technology to drive their businesses forward. In the past 30 years, we’ve seen four major platform shifts, from client server to internet and the web to mobile and cloud to now—the next major platform shift to AI.

As today’s platform shift to AI continues to gain momentum, Microsoft is working to understand just how organizations can drive lasting business value. We recently commissioned a study with IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI, to uncover new insights around business value and help guide organizations on their journey of AI transformation. The study found that for every $1 organizations invest in generative AI, they’re realizing an average of 3.7x return—and uncovered insights about the future potential of AI to reshape business processes and drive change across industries. 

Today, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft AI solutions to shape their future. In working with organizations large and small, across every industry and geography, we’ve seen that most transformation initiatives are designed to achieve one of four business outcomes:

1. Enriching employee experiences: Using AI to streamline or automate repetitive, mundane tasks can allow your employees to dive into more complex, creative, and ultimately more valuable work.
2. Reinventing customer engagement: AI can create more personalized, tailored customer experiences, delighting your target audiences while lightening the load for employees.
3. Reshaping business processes: Virtually any business process can be reimagined with AI, from marketing to supply chain operations to finance, and AI is even allowing organizations to go beyond process optimization and discover exciting new growth opportunities.
4. Bending the curve on innovation: AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development, reducing the time to market and allowing companies to differentiate in an often crowded field.

In this blog, we’ve collected more than 200 of our favorite real-life examples of how organizations are embracing Microsoft’s proven AI capabilities to drive impact and shape today’s platform shift to AI. We hope you find an example or two that can inspire your own transformation journey.

IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024 

Enriching employee experiences

Generative AI is truly transforming employee productivity and well-being. Our customers tell us that by automating repetitive, mundane tasks, employees are freed up to dive into more complex and creative work. This shift not only makes the work environment more stimulating but also boosts job satisfaction. It sparks innovation, provides actionable insights for better decision-making, and supports personalized training and development opportunities, all contributing to a better work-life balance. Customers around the world have reported significant improvements in employee productivity with these AI solutions:

1. Access Holdings Plc adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating generative AI into daily tools and, as a result, writing code now takes two hours instead of eight, chatbots launch in 10 days instead of three months, and presentations are prepared in 45 minutes instead of six hours.
2. Adobe is connecting Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot to deliver generative AI-powered capabilities that enable marketers to increase collaboration, efficiency, and creativity.
3. Amadeus empowers its teams to focus their time and skills on value-added tasks with Microsoft 365 Copilot by summarizing email threads, chat, or transcripts, and summing up information from diverse sources.
4. ANZ has invested in Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Copilot in Microsoft Edge to boost productivity and innovation across its workforce. 
5. Asahi Europe & International (AEI) has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, saving employees potentially 15% of time previously spent on administrative tasks.
6. AXA developed AXA Secure GPT, a platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service that empowers employees to leverage the power of generative AI while targeting the highest level of data safety and responsible use of the tool.
7. Axon Enterprise developed a new AI tool with Azure OpenAI Service called Draft One, resulting in an 82% decrease in time spent on reports, which freed up officers to engage more with their community.
8. Aztec Group enhanced productivity and client experience by trialing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 300 staff, uncovering “unlimited” use cases and plans for a wider rollout.
9. Bader Sultan & Bros. Co. W.L.L implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance employee productivity and speed up customer response times.
10. Bancolombia is using GitHub Copilot to empower its technical team, achieving a 30% increase in code generation, boosting automated application changes to an average of 18,000 per year, with a rate of 42 productive daily deployments. 
11. BaptistCare Community Services is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to save employees time as they navigate workforce shortage challenges allowing them to focus more on the people they care for.
12. Barnsley Council was recognized as “Double Council of the Year in 2023” for its implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which modernized operations and reduced administrative tasks, leading to improved job satisfaction and increased creativity.
13. BlackRock purchased more than 24,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses spanning all employees, functions, and locations, helping improve the Copilot experience, including co-developing new features and functions.
14. British Heart Foundation is testing Microsoft 365 Copilot and in its initial test, users estimate that Microsoft 365 Copilot could save them up to 30 minutes per day.
15. Buckinghamshire Council deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot with staff reporting productivity improvements, quality enhancements, and time savings which are enabling the different teams to do more with less. 
16. Campari Group adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees integrate it into their workflow, resulting in time savings of about two hours a week from the support of routine activities such as email management, meeting preparation, content creation, and skill acquisition.
17. Capita is using GitHub Copilot for productivity improvements as well as improvements in developer satisfaction, recruitment, and retention.
18. CDW used Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve work quality for 88% of users, enabling 77% to complete tasks faster, and increasing productivity for 85% of users.
19. Chi Mei Medical Center is lightening workloads for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists with a generative AI assistant built on Azure OpenAI Service. 
20. E.ON is focused on Germany’s energy transition, leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to manage the complex grid in real-time, increasing productivity and efficiency for its workforce.
21. Enerijisa Üretim has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meeting summaries, reformat documents, and compile reports, enabling employees to concentrate on more strategic and fulfilling activities instead of spending six hours in meetings.
22. EPAM is deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to consolidate information and generate content and documents. 
23. Farm Credit Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot which resulted in time savings on routine tasks for 78% of users, with 30% saving 30 to 60 minutes per week and 35% saving over an hour per week, allowing employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
24. Finastra used Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate tasks, enhance content creation, improve analytics, and personalize customer interactions, with employees citing a 20% to 50% time savings.
25. Four Agency Worldwide increased employee productivity using Microsoft 365 Copilot to generate ideas for creative work and support administrative-heavy processes, data analysis, and report generation, allowing staff to focus on outreach and less time doing paperwork.
26. Goodwill of Orange County developed an AI-powered app using Azure AI capabilities to help more people, including those with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities, work in unfilled e-commerce positions.
27. Honeywell employees are saving 92 minutes per week—that’s 74 hours a year! Disclaimer: Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded.
28. Insight employees using Copilot are seeing four hours of productivity gained per week from data summarization and content creation.
29. Joos uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to grow its brand with worldwide collaboration by streamlining meetings, optimizing presentations, and improving communications.
30. Kantar is harnessing the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot by reducing costly, time-consuming IT processes and boosting productivity for employees.
31. KPMG Australia is using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, and Microsoft 365 Copilot to perform advanced text analysis of dozens of client source documents to identify full or partial compliance, or noncompliance, in a fraction of the time required for manual assessments.
32. LGT is launching Microsoft Copilot LGT to improve efficiency, showing users save an average of an hour a week even in the pilot phase. 
33. Lotte Hotels & Resorts has been creating a new work culture that allows employees to work more efficiently and focus on the nature of the work by adopting Microsoft Power Platform for automation.
34. MAIRE is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate routine tasks, saving more than 800 working hours per month, freeing up engineers and professionals for strategic activities while supporting MAIRE’s green energy transition by reducing their carbon footprint.
35. McDonald’s China chose Microsoft Azure AI, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Search to transform its operations, resulting in a significant increase in AI adoption, consumption, and retention from 2,000 to 30,000 employee transactions monthly.
36. McKnight Foundation adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for all staff, saving time, increasing productivity, and freeing space to focus on strategic priorities.
37. Morula Health is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity, streamline medical writing tasks, and ensure data security, ultimately improving efficiency and client satisfaction. 
38. Motor Oil Group is achieving remarkable efficiency gains by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into its workflows, with staff spending minutes on tasks that used to take weeks. 
39. Nagel-Group uses Azure OpenAI Service to help employees quickly access information which saves time, creates efficiency and transparency, and leads to higher-quality answers overall.
40. National Australia Bank is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot for daily productivity and data analysis and insights and Microsoft Security Copilot to quickly analyze millions of security event logs and allow engineers to focus on more important areas.
41. NFL Players Association integrated Azure AI Services and Azure App Service into their video review process, reducing review time by up to 73%, significantly increasing efficiency and enhancing player safety through consistent rule enforcement.
42. O2 Czech Republic boosts productivity and streamlines meetings with Microsoft 365 Copilot, revolutionizing how information is shared and making automation a part of daily work.
43. Onepoint developed a secure conversational agent based on Azure OpenAI Service, which delivers productivity gains of between 10% and 15% across all business lines.
44. Orange Group has more than 40 use cases with Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot across business functions to support employees in their day-to-day tasks, enabling them to concentrate on higher value-added activities.
45. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve staff report productivity by saving one to two hours a week, or simple formatting tasks down to a matter of seconds, enabling more resources to deliver frontline services.
46. PA Consulting transformed its sales operations with Microsoft 365 Copilot, so its people can invest more time on the activities that have the biggest impact for clients and maximize the strategic value they provide. 
47. Petrobras used Azure OpenAI Service to create ChatPetrobras, which is streamlining workflows, reducing manual tasks, and summarizing reports for its 110,000 employees.
48. Petrochemical Industries Company automates work processes to save time with Microsoft 365 Copilot from weeks to days, hours to seconds.
49. PKSHA Technology is optimizing their time on critical work by increasing efficiency in meeting preparations, data analytics, and ideation with the help of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
50. Providence has collaborated with Nuance and Microsoft to accelerate development and adoption of generative AI-powered applications, helping improve care quality and access, and reduce physician’s administrative workloads. 
51. RTI International adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to gain productivity wherever possible, allowing staff to focus on their areas of expertise, delivering even better science-backed solutions for clients.
52. Sandvik Coromant is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to drive efficiency and accuracy, shaving at least one minute off each transaction, allowing sellers and account managers to focus their expertise on responding to customers’ needs with analysis, creativity, and adaptability.
53. Sasfin Bank built a solution on Microsoft Azure that centralized 20,000 documents to analyze contract clauses and provide real-time snapshots, moving guesswork into data-driven decision-making.
54. Scottish Water implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot reducing mundane tasks to a minimum, and thus freeing up time for employees to work on the more meaningful tasks.
55. Shriners Children’s developed an AI platform allowing clinicians to easily and securely navigate patient data in a singular location, enhancing patient care, and improving the efficiency of their healthcare services. 
56. Siemens is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to improve efficiency, cut downtime, and address labor shortages.
57. Softchoice employees are experiencing firsthand how Microsoft 365 Copilot can transform daily workflows, realizing productivity gains of 97% reduction in time spent summarizing technical meetings and up to 70% less time spent on content creation.
58. Syensqo utilized Azure OpenAI Service to develop a custom AI chatbot in three months, which improved their internal data management, decision-making, and overall efficiency.
59. Teladoc Health uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to revolutionize its telehealth operations, automating routine tasks, boosting efficiency, and increasing productivity.
60. Telstra developed two cutting-edge generative AI tools based on Azure OpenAI Service: 90% of employees are using the One Sentence Summary tool which resulted in 20% less follow-up customer contact and 84% of customer service agents using the Ask Telstra solution.
61. Topsoe achieved 85% AI adoption among office employees in seven months, significantly enhancing productivity and business processes.
62. Torfaen County Borough Council utilized Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline back-office processes, resulting in significant time savings and enhanced productivity for both business and children’s services teams, with further rollouts planned.
63. Trace3 leveraged Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline and enhance processes across the business and with clients, such as reducing the time it takes human resources (HR) recruiting managers to respond to applicants within a couple of days instead of several weeks.
64. Unilever is reinventing their marketing process with Copilot, saving time on briefing tasks, automatically pulling in relevant market data, content and insights to accelerate campaign launches. 
65. Uniper SE implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce time spent on manual and repetitive tasks, and help workers focus on more pressing work, such as developing enhanced solutions to speed up the energy transition.
66. Unum Group built a custom AI application to search 1.3 terabytes of data with 95% accuracy using Azure OpenAI Service. 
67. Virgin Atlantic adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot and is seeing real business benefits, including productivity improvements, enabling new ways of working.
68. Visier built a generative AI assistant that leverages Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Services to deliver workforce analytics and actionable insights for more than 50,000 customers.
69. Virtual Dental Care developed an AI application Smart Scan that leverages Azure to reduce paperwork for mobile dental clinics in schools by 75% and frees dentists to devote more time to patient care.
70. Zakladni Skola As Hlavkova adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and saw a 60% improvement in handling administrative documents, decreased lesson preparation from hours to few minutes, increased inclusivity, and enhanced communication with students and parents.

Reinventing customer engagement

We’ve seen great examples of how generative AI can automate content creation, ensuring there’s fresh and engaging materials ready to go. It personalizes customer experiences by crunching the numbers and boosting conversion rates. It makes operations smoother, helping teams launch campaigns faster. Plus, it drives innovation, crafting experiences that delight customers while lightening the load for staff. Embracing generative AI is key for organizations wanting to reinvent customer engagements, stay ahead of the game, and drive both innovation and efficiency.

71. Absa has adopted Microsoft Copilot to streamline various business processes, saving several hours on administrative tasks each day.
72. Adobe leverages Azure to streamline the customer experience, harnessing the power of the connected cloud services and creating a synergy that drives AI transformation across industries.
73. Acentra Health developed Medscribe, a web application that uses Azure OpenAI Service to generate draft letters in a secure, HIPAA-compliant enclave that responds to customer appeals for healthcare services within 24 hours, reducing the time spent on each appeal letter by 50%.
74. Alaska Airlines is using Azure, Microsoft Defender, and GitHub to ensure its passengers have a seamless journey from ticket purchase to baggage pickup and started leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to unlock more business value for its customer care and contact centers.
75. Ally Financial is using Azure OpenAI Service to reduce manual tasks for its customer service associates, freeing up time for them to engage with customers. 
76. BMW Group optimizes the customer experience connecting 13 million active users to their vehicles with the MyBMW app on Azure, which supports 450 million daily requests and 3.2 terabyte (TB) data processing.
77. Boyner has tripled its e-commerce performance using Azure, seeing a rise in customer satisfaction, engagement, conversion rate, and revenue.
78. Bradesco Bank integrated Azure to its virtual assistant, BIA, resulting in reduced response time from days to hours, improving operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
79. Capgemini Mexico integrated GitHub Copilot to support scalable AI implementations which has led to improved customer experiences and increased efficiency.
80. Capitec Bank uses Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling their AI-powered chatbot to assist customer service consultants in accessing product information more efficiently, saving significant time for employees each week.
81. Cdiscount is leveraging GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service to enhance developer efficiency, optimize product sheet categorization, and improve customer satisfaction.
82. Cemex used Azure OpenAI Service to launch Technical Xpert, an AI tool used by sales agents to provide instant access to comprehensive product and customer solution information, significantly reducing search time by 80%. 
83. Chanel elevated their client experience and improved employee efficiency by leveraging Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service for real-time translations and quality monitoring.
84. City of Burlington created two AI-powered solutions: MyFiles system using Microsoft Power Platform for building permits, and CoBy, an around-the-clock customer support assistant using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
85. City of Madrid created an AI virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service offering tourists accurate, real-time information and personalized responses in more than 95 languages.
86. Cognizant is making performance management more effective and meaningful with Azure Machine Learning to help clients across industries envision, build, and run innovative digital enterprises.
87. Coles Group has leveraged Azure to enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement, rolling out new applications to its stores six times faster without disrupting workloads.
88. Commercial Bank of Dubai used Azure to upgrade its application infrastructure, improving transaction security and speed so individual customers can now open an account and start banking in about two minutes.
89. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has significantly improved productivity and customer satisfaction by integrating multiple Microsoft AI solutions, reducing task completion time from days to hours and achieving a 98% customer happiness rate.
90. Elcome uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve the customer experience, reducing response times from 24 hours to eight hours.
91. elunic developed shopfloor.GPT based on Azure OpenAI Service, leading to increased productivity for customers, saving 15 minutes per request.
92. Estée Lauder Companies is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to create closer consumer connections and increase speed to market with local relevancy.
93. First National Bank (FNB) is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to help bankers create professional, thoughtful emails in 13 native South African languages to enhance customer interactions, streamline communications, and reinforce its commitment to innovation and customer service. 
94. Flora Food Group migrated to Microsoft Fabric to offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.
95. Groupama deployed a virtual assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that delivers reliable, verified and verifiable information, and boasts an 80% success rate.
96. International University of Applied Sciences (IU) adopted Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize learning with a personalized study assistant that can interact with each student just like a human would.
97. Investec is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to enhance the bank’s client relationships, estimating saving approximately 200 hours annually ultimately boosting sales productivity and delivering personalized, seamless customer experience. 
98. Linum is using Azure to train their text-to-video models faster and more efficiently without losing performance or wasting resources.
99. Lumen Technologies is redefining customer success and sales processes through the strategic use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, enhancing productivity, sales, and customer service in the global communications sector.
100. McKinsey & Company is creating an agent to reduce client onboarding process by reducing lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.
101. Meesho leveraged Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot to enhance customer service and software development, resulting in a 25% increase in customer satisfaction scores and 40% more traffic on customer service queries.
102. Milpark Education integrated Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio and in just four months, improved efficiency and accuracy of student support, decreasing the average resolution time by 50% and escalations by more than 30%.
103. NC Fusion chose a comprehensive Microsoft solution to make marketing engagement activities easier and accurately target the best audience segments.
104. Medgate, a telehealth subsidiary of Otto Group, developed a medical Copilot powered by Azure OpenAI Service that summarizes consultations, supports triage, and provides real-time translations. 
105. Pacific Gas & Electric built a chatbot using Microsoft Copilot Studio that saves $1.1 million annually on helpdesk support. 
106. Pockyt is using GitHub Copilot and anticipates a 500% increase in productivity in the medium to long term as they continue adapting AI and fine-tuning their software development life cycle.
107. South Australia Department for Education launched an AI-powered educational chatbot to help safeguard students from harmful content while introducing responsible AI to the classrooms.
108. Sync Labs is using Azure to create AI-powered solutions that have led to a remarkable 30x increase in revenue and a 100x expansion of their customer base.
109. Syndigo is using Azure to accelerate digital commerce for its customers by more than 40% and expand its customer base.
110. Telkomsel created a virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in a leap in customer self-service interactions from 19% to 45%, and call volume dropped from 8,000 calls to 1,000 calls a day.
111. Torrens University chose to use Azure OpenAI to uplift its online learning experience, saving 20,000 hours and $2.4 million in time and resources.
112. Trusting Social integrated Azure services to launch AI-driven agents that are changing how banks function and transforming their customer’s banking experience.
113. University of California, Berkeley used Azure OpenAI Service to deploy a custom AI chatbot that supports student learning and help students with complex coursework.
114. University of Sydney created a self-serve AI platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service, to enable faculty to build custom chatbots for enhancing student onboarding, feedback, career simulation, and more.
115. Van Lanschot Kempen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce the time needed for daily tasks, freeing up time to invest in that crucial personal connection.
116. Virgin Money built an award-winning virtual assistant using Copilot Studio to help build customers’ confidence in their digital products and services.
117. VOCALLS automates over 50 million interactions per year, resulting in a 78% reduction in average handling time aside from a 120% increase in answered calls.
118. Vodafone Group is leveraging Microsoft’s AI solutions, including Azure AI Studio, OpenAI Service, Copilot, and AI Search, to achieve a 70% resolution rate for customer inquiries through digital channels and reduce call times by at least one minute.
119. Walmart is using Azure OpenAI Service to deliver a helpful and intuitive browsing experience for customers designed to serve up a curated list of the personalized items a shopper is looking for.
120. Weights & Biases created a platform which runs on Azure that allows developers to keep records, log successes and failures, and automate manual tasks.
121. World2Meet is providing better customer service and operations with a new virtual assistant powered by Azure.
122. Xavier College is modernizing its student information systems on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure to unlock powerful insights, fostering innovation and data-driven decision making.
123. Zavarovalnica Triglav implemented Dynamics 365 and Azure OpenAI Service to streamline its operations with automated responses and smart rerouting of customer enquiries.

Reshaping business processes

Transforming operations is another way generative AI is encouraging innovation and improving efficiency across various business functions. In marketing, it can create personalized content to truly engage different audiences. For supply chain management, it can predict market trends so companies can optimize their inventory levels. Human resources departments can speed up the hiring process, while financial services can use it for fraud detection and risk assessments. With generative AI, companies are not just refining their current processes, they’re also discovering exciting new growth opportunities.

124. Accelleron used Microsoft Power Platform to support numerous business applications and simplify processes for service agents and employees, resulting in the onboard of new agents in 30 minutes, compared to two days for other solutions.
125. Accenture developed an AI-powered financial advisor that leverages RISE with SAP on Azure to enhance their infrastructure and integrate financial data.
126. Atomicwork leverages Azure OpenAI to bring together three power capabilities: a conversational assistant, a modern service management system, and a workflow automation platform.
127. Blink Ops fully embraced generative AI to build the world’s first Security Automation Copilot with more than 8,000 automated workflows to help any Security/IT task through prompts.
128. Chalhoub Group is using Microsoft Fabric to modernize its data analytics and streamline its data sources into one platform, increasing agility, enhancing analytics, and accelerating processes.
129. Cineplex is developing innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments, saving the company more than 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.
130. ClearBank moved its services to Azure to gain scalability and efficiency, pushing out 183% more monthly system releases, gaining both scalability and efficiency.
131. Danske Statsbaner increases productivity up to 30% with help from Microsoft AI solutions.
132. Eastman implemented Microsoft Security Copilot realizing the benefits of accelerated upskilling, step-by-step guidance for response, and faster threat remediation.
133. Fast Shop migrated to Azure creating a self-service culture of access to data, eliminating delays, reducing costs, and increasing leadership satisfaction with data while providing more agility in reporting.
134. Florida Crystals adopted a value-added solution across Microsoft products including Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce telecom expenses and automate industrial process controls.
135. GHD is reinventing the request for proposal (RFP) process in construction and engineering with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
136. GovDash is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that leverages AI to streamline the entire business development lifecycle for government contracting companies using Azure OpenAI Service.
137. Grupo Bimbo is deploying Microsoft’s industrial AI technologies to modernize its manufacturing processes, optimizing production and reducing downtime, driving significant cost savings, and empowering global innovation.
138. Insight Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline business operations, realizing a 93% productivity gains in functions including sales, finance, and human resources.
139. Intesa Sanpaolo Group enhanced its cybersecurity with AI-enabled Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Security Copilot, resulting in faster threat detection, increased productivity, and reduced storage costs.
140. Kaya deployed a custom implementation of Dynamics 365 and Power BI to modernize its supply chain, leading to enhanced visibility, improved planning, and streamlined inter-department operations.
141. Lionbridge Technologies, LLC is using Azure and Azure OpenAI Service to accelerate its delivery times and improve quality, reducing project turnaround times by up to 30%.
142. LTIMindtree integrated Microsoft Security Copilot, offering automated incident response, integrated threat intelligence, and advanced threat analysis.
143. Mania de Churrasco used Azure, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft 365 to achieve high efficiency, security, and scalability in its operations, in addition to improving its data intelligence, which indirectly participated in a 20% increase in sales year on year.
144. National Bank of Greece built an Azure-powered Document AI solution to transform its document processing, improving the bank’s accuracy to 90%. 
145. Nest Bank has revolutionized its operations by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in doubled sales and increased daily transactions from 60,000 to 80,000 showcasing the transformative impact of generative AI in the financial sector.
146. Network Rail modernized their data analytics solution with Azure, helping engineers understand data 50% faster than before and improve efficiency, passenger experiences, and safety—all while saving costs.
147. Nsure developed an AI-powered agent that uses Copilot Studio and Power Automate to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%.
148. Oncoclínicas implemented Azure to transform its entire data ecosystem with a web portal and mobile application that performs all image processing and storage.
149. Pacífico Seguros has adopted Microsoft Security Copilot to optimize its security operations and anticipate and neutralize threats more efficiently and effectively.
150. Parexel adopted Azure Databricks and Power BI, achieving an 85% reduction in data engineering tooling costs, a 30% increase in staff efficiency, and a 70% reduction in time to market for data product delivery.
151. Paysafe used Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meetings, information management, and document creation, addressing language barriers, eliminating time-consuming tasks, and boosting creativity along the way.
152. Planted is integrating Azure OpenAI Service to manage everyday tasks more efficiently and facilitate the search for information for innovative process development.
153. Presidio realized dramatic productivity gains saving 1,200 hours per month on average for the employees using Microsoft 365 Copilot and created 70 new business opportunities.
154. Qatar Charity used Copilot Studio to increase its call center efficiency, reducing average handle time by 30%, increased customer satisfaction by 25%, and achieved a 40% reduction in IT maintenance costs.
155. Saphyre uses Azure and AI to provide an intelligent cloud-based solution that automates and streamlines financial trading workflows around client and counterparty life cycle management, reducing manual efforts by 75%. 
156. Swiss International Air Lines migrated and modernized with Azure, achieving up to 30% cost savings, a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility.
157. ZEISS Group uses Microsoft Fabric to create a secure and trusted data supply chain that can be shared effortlessly across a range of business units.
158. ZF Group builds manufacturing efficiency with more than 25,000 apps and 37,000 unique active users on Microsoft Power Platform.

Bending the curve on innovation

Generative AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development. It’s helping companies come up with new ideas, design prototypes, and iterate quickly, cutting down the time it takes to get to market. In the automotive industry, it’s designing more efficient vehicles, while in pharmaceuticals, it’s crafting new drug molecules, slashing years off research and development (R&D) times. In education, it transforms how students learn and achieve their goals. Here are more examples of how companies are embracing generative AI to shape the future of innovation.

159. Air India has incorporated Microsoft 365 Copilot into multiple departments, unlocking a new realm of operational insights that not only provides critical data on flight punctuality and operational hurdles, but also empowers proactive, collaborative decision making.
160. Agnostic Intelligence deployed Azure OpenAI Service to eliminate time-consuming tasks, saving users up to 80% of their time, and enabling IT managers to focus on innovation and quality assurance.
161. Albert Heijn is using Azure OpenAI Service for everything from customer personalization to demand forecast and food waste projects, making it easier for its customers to change their lifestyle.
162. Amgen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity and has the potential to speed up drug development and support advancements in their business processes.
163. APEC leverages Azure and deep neural network algorithms to develop an app that enables healthcare providers to capture retinal images, increasing the accuracy to identify Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP) to 90%.
164. ASOS is using Azure AI Studio to help customers discover new looks with genuine shopping insights, personalized conversations, naturalism, and even humor to enliven the shopping journey.
165. Auburn University is incorporating Microsoft Copilot to promote AI literacy, accessibility, and collaboration, with the aim to expand educational and economic opportunities for its entire academic community with AI-centric tools.
166. B3 launched an AI assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that aids 10,000 users a day to answer Brazilians’ questions about how to start investing.
167. Basecamp Research aims to build the world’s largest database of national biodiversity and apply AI and machine learning to advance bioscience.
168. Bayer is using Microsoft Copilot to contribute to feeding a growing global population and helping people lead healthier, disease-free lives.
169. Brembo leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to develop ALCHEMIX, a solution to generate innovative compounds for its brake pads, drastically reducing the development time of new compounds from days to mere minutes.
170. Canary Speech can now train new vocal models in as little as two months and handle millions of transactions per month with Azure. 
171. CapitaLand simplified internal processes increasing efficiency to more than 10,000 man-days saved per year and deployed Azure OpenAI Service to build the first AI hospitality chatbot for its lodging business.
172. Cassidy is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance efficiency across various industries, supporting more than 10,000 companies.
173. Coca-Cola is implementing Azure OpenAI Service to develop innovative generative AI use cases across various business functions, including testing how Microsoft 365 Copilot could help improve workplace productivity.
174. Denso is developing “human-like” robots using Azure OpenAI Service as the brain to help robots and humans work together through dialogue.
175. eFishery is using Azure OpenAI for farmers to get the data and insights on fish and shrimp farming, including more precise feeding and water quality monitoring.
176. EY developed an application that automatically matches and clears incoming payments in SAP, resulting in an increase from 30% to 80% in automatically cleared payments and 95% matched payments, with estimated annual time savings of 230,000 hours globally.
177. FIDO is using Azure OpenAI Service to develop an AI tool that uses sound to pinpoint leaky pipes, saving precious drinking water. 
178. Georgia Tech is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, achieving rapid data classification and predictive modeling, highlighting the reliability of networked chargers over non-networked ones.
179. GigXR developed a solution to create the intelligence for specific AI patients using Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure services.
180. GoTo Group is significantly enhancing productivity and code quality across its engineering teams by adopting GitHub Copilot, saving over seven hours per week and achieved a 30% code acceptance rate.
181. GovTech used Azure OpenAI Service to create LaunchPad, sparking more than 400 ideas and 20 prototypes, laying the foundation for the government to harness the power of generative AI.
182. H&R Block is using Azure AI Studio and Azure OpenAI Service to build a new solution that provides real-time, reliable tax filing assistance.
183. Haut.AI provides skin care companies and retailers with customizable, AI-based skin diagnostic tools developed with the help of Microsoft AI.
184. Helfie is building a solution that caters to healthcare providers who can arm their patients with an application to more quickly and accurately access the care they need.
185. Hitachi will implement Azure Open AI Service, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and GitHub Copilot to create innovative solutions for the energy, mobility, and other industries.
186. Icertis is providing AI-based tools that will recognize contract language and then build algorithms to automatically choose the right approach based on the content of the contract.
187. ITOCHU is using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio to evolve its data analytics dashboard into a service that provides immediate recommendations by automatically creating evidence-based product proposals.
188. IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is using the power of Azure OpenAI Service to develop Syntea, an AI avatar integrated into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, making learning more personalized, autonomous, and flexible.
189. Khan Academy has partnered with Microsoft to bring time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators.
190. Lufthansa Group developed an animated 3D avatar called Digital Hangar to help guide passengers from initial travel inspiration to flight booking through an exchange with an avatar in natural language.
191. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is using Azure OpenAI Service to help accelerate digital innovation in power plants.
192. Molslinjen has created an AI analytics toolbox that has reduced fuel emissions, improved customer satisfaction, and brought in millions of additional revenue.
193. Novo Nordisk recently published initial results with predictive AI models for advanced risk detection in cardiovascular diseases, including an algorithm that can predict patients’ cardiovascular risk better than the best clinical standards. 
194. Paige.AI​ is using AI and Azure to accelerate cancer diagnoses with data from millions of images.
195. Pets at Home created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions.  
196. Plan Heal is using Microsoft AI to create solutions that enable patients to monitor and report health metrics so care providers can better serve them.
197. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is testing a new battery material that was found in a matter of weeks, not years, as part of a collaboration with Microsoft.
198. Rijksmuseum is harnessing the power of Copilot to make art accessible at scale by joining forces with Microsoft to improve and expand the art experience for blind and low-vision community members.
199. Royal National Institute of Blind People is using Azure AI Services to develop an AI-based solution that quickly and accurately converts letters to braille, audio, and large print formats.
200. Schneider Electric provides productivity-enhancing and energy efficiency solutions and is using a whole suite of AI tools to hasten its own innovation and that of its customers.
201. SPAR ICS created an award-winning, AI-enabled demand forecasting system achieving 90% inventory prediction accuracy.
202. Suzuki Motor Corporation is adopting Azure OpenAI Service for data security, driving company-wide use with five multipurpose apps.
203. Tecnológico de Monterrey created a generative AI-powered ecosystem built on Azure OpenAI Service with the goal to personalize education based on the students’ needs, improve the learning process, boost teachers’ creativity and save time on tedious tasks.
204. TomTom is using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to revolutionize the driver experience.
205. Unilever is partnering with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation forward, from unlocking the secrets of our skin’s microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multibillion-dollar business.
206. Unity used Azure OpenAI Service to build Muse Chat, an AI assistant that can guide creators through common questions and help troubleshoot issues to make game development easier.
207. University of South Florida is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to alleviate the burden of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so faculty and staff can spend this time creatively solving problems, conducting critical research, establishing stronger relationships with peers and students, and using their expertise to forge new, innovative paths. 
208. Visma has developed new code with GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Visual Studio, as much as 50% faster, contributing to increased customer retention, faster time to market, and increased revenue.
209. Wallenius Wilhelmsen is implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot and using Microsoft Viva to drive sustainable adoption, streamlining processes, empowering better decision making, and cultivating a culture of innovation and inclusion.
210. Wipro is committed to delivering value to customers faster and improving the outcomes across the business by investing $1 billion in AI and training 200,000 employees on generative AI principles with Microsoft Copilot.

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• Check out the top 5 AI trends to watch from IDC and Microsoft.
• Explore Microsoft AI solutions.
• Assess your AI readiness.
• Build a strategic plan for AI.

The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

If you’ve read The AI Strategy Roadmap: Navigating the stages of value creation, you’re already familiar with the five drivers of AI value. This research paper and blog series explore what organizations need to succeed with AI, including establishing a clear strategy and securing senior leadership support. Our research found that AI success isn’t solely about technology—strategic, organizational, and cultural factors are equally critical.

We’ve heard from customers that it’s crucial to consider how prepared your organization is for this technological leap. In this blog post, we’ll share some learnings to help you gauge your AI readiness so you can plan how to move forward effectively.

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Assess your AI readiness

When I meet with customers, they often share that they’re not sure where to start when it comes to assessing their readiness for large-scale AI transformation. It requires a strategic approach to understand your current capabilities, identify areas for improvement, and align these efforts with your business priorities to focus on the areas that will deliver the highest value. We’ve created a new AI Readiness Wizard to help you get started in evaluating your preparedness. Use the assessment to:

• Evaluate your current state. The assessment includes questions that help you determine how well your AI objectives align with your business priorities and the effectiveness of your current data access and security measures. Understanding your starting point is essential for identifying the right next steps.
• Identify gaps. By scoring your responses in the assessment, you can identify focus areas that may need more attention, such as business strategy, AI governance principles, or team expertise. This step helps prepare you for formulating a clear path forward and addressing specific areas for improvement.
• Plan your next steps. Based on your scores, the assessment categorizes your readiness into one of five stages: exploring, planning, implementing, scaling, or realizing. Each stage represents a different level of AI maturity and preparedness, guiding you on where to focus your efforts:
  • Exploring—At this stage, focus on building your AI strategy and experience. You might want to learn about key AI concepts and explore how AI is transforming the business landscape.
  • Planning—Here, you’ll concentrate on formalizing your business strategy. Look at the ways other organizations are driving value with AI and develop an informed plan for prioritizing AI projects.
  • Implementing—This stage involves focusing on leadership support and scaling AI expertise. Ensure you have the necessary resources and expertise to execute your AI initiatives effectively.
  • Scaling—At this level, you’ll aim to create an organization and culture of innovation. Scale your AI initiatives and begin analyzing the impact of AI in your organization.
  • Realizing—Focus on fostering continuous innovation within every team and the organization. Aim to embed AI technology in your operations and culture for sustained value creation.

Assessing your AI readiness requires a strategic approach to understand your current capabilities and identify areas for improvement.”

This assessment offers a structured way to reflect on your current practices and identify key areas to focus on as you develop your strategy for the future. You’ll also find resources for each stage to help you advance.

How AI is reshaping industries

Financial services

We’re seeing the financial services sector make rapid advancements in AI readiness, with 40% of organizations currently in the “implementing” stage. According to recent research, 70% of financial services organizations are using big data analytics in their operations, and 27% have piloted AI applications or AI-assisted solutions.

Additionally, more than half are allocating budgets for AI projects, providing AI-specific training, and fostering internal knowledge sharing. This commitment has enabled 27% of firms to reach the “scaling” and “realizing” stages, surpassing the 25% industry benchmark.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry shows a diverse mix of AI readiness, with 28% of organizations in the “scaling” and “realizing” stages, according to one study. Notably, 44% are actively laying the groundwork in the “exploring” and “planning” stages, focusing on learning and developing their AI strategies. The sector leads in overall maturity, but 14% of organizations report receiving no discernible value from AI, highlighting challenges in measuring the impact of AI investments within their broader business strategies.

Manufacturing

With 38% of organizations in the manufacturing industry still in the “exploring” and “planning” stages, many are focused on learning and developing AI strategies. Research shows that manufacturers actively deploy AI across operations, research and development (R&D), and supply chain management to address key business challenges. 25% believe they achieve significant value from AI implementation.

Manufacturing organizations also have a greater likelihood of appointing AI leadership, which we’re learning enables them to excel in fostering the operational and cultural factors that support value creation, resulting in more firms reaching the “realizing” and “scaling” stages.

Retail

We’ve seen a wide range of AI readiness in the retail sector. While some retailers use AI to enhance customer relationships and drive revenue, research shows that 43% are still in the “exploring” and “planning” stages. This divide is evident between those who adopted cloud technology early—about 25%—and those who have yet to embrace it, with 8% still not using cloud services. Notably, 21% of retailers have a chief AI officer, highlighting commitment among leadership to embed AI into their operations.

Map your AI journey

After assessing your readiness and gathering insights, you’ll want to outline a plan to address gaps and advance through the stages of AI maturity. Our findings at Microsoft have shown that crafting a strategic plan outlining how AI technology will fit into your organizational framework is a great place to start. The AI Strategy Roadmap: Navigating the stages of value creation is a valuable resource designed to guide you through this process.

As you define your AI strategy and roadmap, you might find our e-book, Building a Foundation for AI Success: A Leader’s Guide, helpful in identifying key focus areas for AI implementation.

The post A strategic approach to assessing your AI readiness appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

At the heart of this initiative are industry prompts in Copilot Lab and industry templates in Microsoft Copilot Studio—two platforms tailored to meet the unique demands of various businesses. These platforms are not just about providing tools; they’re about delivering a seamless experience that aligns with our customers’ operational workflows, enhancing productivity and fostering creativity.

Copilot Lab serves as a portal for innovation, offering diverse industry prompts that cater to the specific needs of job functions and industries. Getting up to speed on AI prompts can be challenging from both a technical and practical standpoint. If AI prompts are vague or lack necessary details, AI models can produce off-target responses. Copilot Lab provides a repository of prompts that resonate with industry professionals, enabling them to generate meaningful outcomes with Microsoft Copilot’s assistance.

Copilot Studio includes industry copilot templates that can simplify the adoption process for businesses. These templates incorporate industry-specific business logic and custom prompts that streamline operations and decision-making processes. These templates, available in the Copilot Studio Gallery, represent fully working copilots that often only require configuration or integration for an organization to adopt them.

As we continue to build and co-create, our vision is to not only enhance the capabilities of Microsoft Industry Clouds but also to help redefine the way industries operate. By providing accelerators that drive mainstream adoption and co-building with industry partners, we’re setting a new standard for industry solutions.

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Industry AI prompts in Copilot Lab

In our continuous pursuit of empowering organizations across various industries, Microsoft has introduced a suite of industry-specific prompts within Copilot Lab. These prompts are a culmination of our efforts to provide a more context-aware AI experience that leverages users’ domain expertise to drive better outcomes. Our new industry prompts help customers quickly get started using Copilot for sector, job, and role-specific scenarios and can be customized with domain-specific details, best practices, and industry context to reduce trial and error and ensure high-quality output. These prompts can create an interactive experience for sector-, job-, and role-specific users, which can enhance prompts and deliver tailored responses, continually improving based on user interactions.

The genesis of these prompts was a collaborative effort, drawing on insights from industry professionals to ensure quality and relevance. The initiative begins with the financial services, retail, and manufacturing industries, introducing 24 industry-specific prompts within Copilot Lab, marking the start of a broader vision to integrate industry-specific intelligence into business operations.

These prompts are readily accessible in Copilot Lab, where users can select prompts that resonate with their professional needs. They are designed to help users ask relevant and specific questions, enabling Copilot to generate insights from data that are finely tuned to their industry’s nuances.

The introduction of these prompts is part of our broader vision to bring industry-specific intelligence to the forefront of business operations. By providing these tailored tools, we aim to enhance productivity and foster innovation within the Microsoft 365 environment.

Accessing these prompts is simple. Within Copilot Lab, a collection of pre-built prompts categorized by industry. Users can select the one that fits their role, and let Copilot do the rest. Users can further customize the prompts with domain-specific details and best practices.

Industry copilot templates in Copilot Studio

Industry copilot templates in Copilot Studio help users streamline the adoption of AI solutions across various sectors, providing pre-built dialogs, intents, entities, prompts, and actions that can be easily customized and extended according to the user’s needs using a low-code/no-code experience.

The templates offer a quick and efficient way to get started with AI, with configurations and rollout typically taking only a few hours. They include publicly accessible and customizable data sources, allowing customers to change the default data source with their own to get the copilot ready for business. This feature is particularly beneficial for industries that require rapid deployment and flexibility, such as retail and sustainability.

For instance, the sustainability insights template in Microsoft Copilot Studio empowers users with easy access to data and insights regarding a company’s sustainability goals and progress, while the Copilot template for store operations is designed to enhance the efficiency of retail frontline workers by providing easy access to store procedures and policies. These templates were part of the Microsoft Copilot template gallery unveiled at Microsoft Build 2024 and represent Microsoft’s commitment to empowering users with AI tools that are both powerful and adaptable to their specific industry needs.

Copilot Studio is available worldwide, across 22 datacenters, and supports multi-lingual experiences, making it a versatile tool for global enterprises. The studio’s capabilities are continually expanding, with support for 23 languages and growing, helping to ensure that users can build solutions and respond in their preferred language.

For more detailed information on how to utilize these new features and to stay updated on future releases, users can refer to the resources provided by Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Learn more about industry-specific AI tools

Microsoft remains dedicated to empowering customers through innovation. Our latest offerings in Copilot Lab and Copilot Studio reflect our commitment to providing industry-specific AI tools that are not only powerful but also intuitive and accessible. By continually investing in these technologies, we aim to help ensure that organizations, regardless of size or sector, can harness the full potential of AI to drive efficiency, creativity, and growth.

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Get started by exploring detailed guides and information on our industry prompts and templates at Copilot Lab and Copilot Studio. Learn more and stay informed about Microsoft’s advancements in AI by exploring Copilot for Microsoft 365 Tech Community Blog and the Microsoft Industry Blog for insightful articles, or discover more at Copilot learning hub. Together, let’s shape the future of industry innovation with AI.

The post Innovating at the speed of AI: Microsoft’s industry Copilot solutions appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

1. Amplify human ingenuity with a copilot for everyone: Offering built-in and extensible AI capabilities in Microsoft Copilot to help people be more productive, creative, and efficient.
2. Deliver transformational experiences with build-your-own intelligent apps: Making it easy for customers and partners to build their own copilot solutions using the same stack and AI services Microsoft used to build its own copilots.
3. Safeguard business and data with a trusted AI platform: Microsoft has demonstrated leadership and delivered powerful tooling to help build safety and responsibility into AI solutions from the start—this includes guidance and best practices around responsible AI as well as secure AI principles that empower organizations with an end-to-end cyber risk approach that reinforces human control.

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Part of enabling customers to adopt AI and deploy copilots includes empowering partners. Microsoft helps partners benefit from its unified data estate platform to create personalized, role-specific AI that can empower customers with meaningful and relevant experiences. Copilots can enhance development capabilities and allow partners to share the value of their domain experience with customers, reinforcing their commitment to innovation and excellence. Partners can extend and customize existing copilots from Microsoft or modify how copilots assist with core business functions, such as human resources, sales, or customer service interactions.

Building with partners

Partners play a crucial role in extending Microsoft’s offerings to customers with their domain expertise. When tailored to specific roles, copilots can personalize generative AI experiences, offering access to relevant business flows and data, when and where users need it.

The partners featured here have created copilots and AI platforms that support a wide range of industries and lines of business:

• TomTom has created its Digital Cockpit to turn cars into conversational companions.
• Modern Requirements has created an AI work item and requirements management assistant for healthcare, finance, automotive, aerospace, government, and defense industries.
• Dynatrace has developed Davis® AI which empowers countless use cases, supporting Microsoft Azure customers in areas like observability and security.
• Intellect Design has developed generative AI-powered copilot which allows a relationship manager to generate valuable insights from ISO 20022 payments repository data thereby helping corporations manage their funds better.
• Datamatics has created a partner onboarding copilot to help streamline and reduce the time spent on the onboarding process for vendors, partners, and more.
• MiHCM has developed an AI-powered human resources (HR) copilot called MiHCM SmartAssist.

TomTom

The TomTom Digital Cockpit is an open, modular in-vehicle infotainment platform. Their new AI-powered voice assistant enables users to engage in natural conversation with their cars and tackle complex driving requests. The voice assistant can handle follow-up questions and maintain contextual understanding, which means users can engage in multi-turn conversations and get relevant responses.

Key features include:

• AI-powered voice interaction: The digital cockpit enables natural voice communication with the vehicle, allowing drivers to control navigation, infotainment systems, and vehicle settings through voice commands.
• Integration with Microsoft Azure: TomTom utilizes Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to provide a robust and scalable infrastructure, supporting advanced data handling and AI capabilities that enhance responsiveness and personalization.
• Customizable user interface: Automotive manufacturers can customize the digital cockpit to match their brand’s aesthetics and functionalities, making it adaptable to different vehicle models and consumer preferences.
• Cost efficiency: The system offers a cost-effective solution that reduces development expenses by up to 80%, providing a sustainable and economically viable option for car manufacturers.

Modern Requirements

Copilot4DevOps Plus is an AI-powered work item and requirements management assistant, which can be utilized by multiple industries such as healthcare and medical devices, finance, automotive, services and technology, aerospace, government, and defense. This tool, seamlessly integrated with Azure DevOps, optimizes requirement workflows with an easy-to-use interface and improves the requirements management process by enabling several key functions:

• Efficiency and productivity: It allows teams to focus on meaningful work by automating repetitive tasks and improving collaboration. In addition to powerful AI elicitation, analysis, conversion, and summarization, it gives teams cutting-edge features like pseudocode generation, dynamic prompts, and test script creation.
• Enhanced quality and security: Copilot4DevOps improves the quality of requirements by analyzing and refining them according to best practices in technical writing. It also incorporates Microsoft and OpenAI’s latest security features to help ensure data security.
• User control and customization: Users have the final say over the AI-generated content, with options to pick, edit, and refine outputs as per their specific needs.

Copilot4DevOps Plus is available as an add-on with Modern Requirements4DevOps or as a standalone in the Azure and Visual Studio Marketplaces.

Dynatrace

The Dynatrace platform delivers AI-enhanced cloud observability, security, and overall operational efficiency for global enterprises across all industries. With Davis® AI copilot, Dynatrace combined its predictive and causal capabilities and generative AI, built with Azure OpenAI, to bring Dynatrace Davis® hypermodal AI to market. This boosts the technical capabilities of IT teams by simplifying complex processes, enabling businesses to focus more on innovation and less on operational management.

Key features include:

• Davis® AI Engine: This core component leverages predictive, causal, and generative AI to provide deep insights and actionable recommendations. It automates tasks like anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and workflow automation, significantly reducing the manual effort required in managing complex IT environments.
• Predictive operations: The platform predicts potential issues before they impact operations using AI to forecast and automate responses, thereby ensuring reliability and proactive management of IT systems.
• Intelligent observability: Dynatrace uses AI to analyze real-time data across applications, services, and infrastructure. This helps in pinpointing issues quickly and accurately, which is crucial for maintaining optimal operational performance.
• Automation and integration: The platform’s automation capabilities extend to auto-discovery, auto-instrumentation, and auto-baselining, ensuring comprehensive coverage and real-time, dynamic responses to changes within the IT landscape.
• Azure native software as a service (SaaS): Azure Native Dynatrace Service seamlessly provides deep cloud observability, advanced AI for IT operations (AIOps), and continuous runtime application security capabilities native to all Azure customers empowered with Azure OpenAI generative capabilities.

Intellect Design

The iGTB Copilot helps banking professionals generate insights and provide cross-sell assistance in commercial and corporate banking. It leverages generative AI to streamline operations and client interactions, allowing relationship managers to spend less time on manual data analysis and more on strategic client engagement. Here are the key functionalities:

• Comprehensive payment analysis: It enables users to perform detailed analyses of historical payment data, helping to identify trends and patterns without the need for any programming skills. It also helps in identifying delayed payments.
• Visual data summarization: The iGTB Copilot can automatically transform complex data into easily understandable visual graphics and provide insights and suggested actions.
• The iGTB Copilot, composed on the Purple fabric of eMACH.ai, is powered by Azure OpenAI, GPT-4 Turbo model, and other Azure infrastructure services.

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Datamatics

Datamatics Copilot for Partner Onboarding is integrated with Microsoft Teams and leverages Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams bot framework, and Azure OpenAI technologies. The application is designed to streamline the onboarding of vendors, business partners, freight forwarders, and employees across different geographies, making what is traditionally a complex and tedious process much more efficient.

Key functionalities include:

• Natural language querying: Users can query the status of onboarding processes and receive updates using conversational language.
• Automation and integration: The Copilot automates the creation of partner records and integrates seamlessly with other business systems for efficient data management.
• Real-time updates and communication: Enables prompt communication with partners about their onboarding status, including rejections, directly from Teams.
• Document management: Maintains and enforces compliance by specifying required documents for each country, ensuring partners submit the correct documents.

MiHCM

MiHCM SmartAssist is an AI-powered HR copilot designed to streamline HR processes. This tool is part of the MiHCM platform and offers a range of functionalities and customizations that simplify various HR tasks.

Key features include:

• Document generation: SmartAssist, built on top of Azure with services, including Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, Azure App Service, and Azure SQL Database, and leveraging Microsoft’s Copilot framework, can quickly generate employee letters with just a few keystrokes. It ensures that these documents are personalized by dynamically incorporating employee data.
• Job description creation: It automatically generates job descriptions that reflect the company’s unique voice and tone, including key performance indicators (KPIs), qualifications, and experience requirements.
• Customization capabilities: Users can easily adjust the content generated by SmartAssist, ensuring the output meets their specific needs.
• Data analysis and reporting: SmartAssist leverages employee data to analyze and calculate statistics, generate reports, and provide information at high speeds, enabling business leaders to make informed decisions quickly. This tool can answer high-level questions, going beyond mere facts and figures to provide valuable insight quickly. Information that would take days to gather can now be analyzed and provided in seconds.

Next steps to adopt AI and deploy copilots

• Check out our digital session at Microsoft Build 2024, that discusses enabling independent software vendors (ISVs) to transform industries in the age of copilots.
• Assess the drivers of AI success so you can realize meaningful business impact with AI.
• Learn how to power your AI transformation with Microsoft.
• Learn more about creating generative AI experiences with Microsoft Cloud across many Microsoft solutions.
• Envision boosted creativity and work productivity with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and learn how to extend it.
• Start using GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot for Sales, now generally available.
• Learn how to build safety and responsibility into your AI journey from the start.
• Learn more about the featured ISVs: TomTom, Modern Requirements, Dynatrace, Intellect Design, Datamatics, and MiHCM.

The post Building AI solutions with partners: Empowering transformation with copilots appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

AI is reshaping our world as the fastest adopted technology in history—a global phenomenon with profound local implications. As we witnessed during the Microsoft AI Tour event in São Paulo, Brazil is quickly emerging as a world-class AI innovation hub, a testament to the country’s collective ambition and optimism in the power of AI to deliver economic results, foster inclusive development, and ultimately benefit markets, organizations, communities, and individuals. In fact, “By massively adopting AI, Brazil can experience productivity gains that will add a few percentage points to its GDP in the near future,” said Tânia Cosentino, General Manager of Microsoft Brazil.

AI technology harbors significant potential for our customers and partners, echoing the transformative impact envisioned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates when he first sought to place a personal computer in every home worldwide. I am proud and excited to continue this vision of driving digital transformation across the globe alongside Microsoft. At the same time, it is crucial to embrace of this innovation through responsible usage.

As Brazil takes the lead during its G20 presidency in 2024, it faces a significant opportunity to spearhead discussions on establishing global AI governance guidelines. This will help maximize AI’s benefits while addressing matters related to privacy, security, and employment, thus supporting equitable and inclusive growth. The report, AI in Brazil: Exploring Opportunities, examines this junction and illustrates Microsoft’s dedication to making AI technology beneficial and sustainable, considering economic, social, and environmental factors. Together with our customers and partners, we are not merely observers but active participants in a technological revolution that fosters global unity, economic mobility, and local transformation.

The creativity and ingenuity of Brazilian organizations in leveraging cutting-edge AI technology for tangible, real-world impact are incredibly inspiring. As showcased by the companies and public entities featured here, AI presents unlimited opportunities across all sectors. These are inspiring examples of how we can reimagine what we can achieve with AI.

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Petrobras enhances productivity and decision-making with ChatPetrobras AI tool

Petrobras, a leading company in the global energy sector, has formed a partnership with Microsoft to create ChatPetrobras, an internal tool powered by AI. Utilizing the GPT model and AI technologies from Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, ChatPetrobras aims to facilitate faster decision-making, provide valuable business insights, and improve internal workflow efficiency for more than 100,000 Petrobras workers, while ensuring compliance with strict information security standards, data protection laws, and Brazilian government regulations.

Azure OpenAI Service powers ChatPetrobras with capabilities in natural language understanding and generation, translation, and code generation. This tool is set to benefit a wide range of business and administrative tasks, including Exploration and Production (E&P), Reservoirs and Wells, Commercialization, Information and Communication Technology, Engineering, Legal, and Human Resources. Its versatility demonstrates the potential of generative AI to revolutionize both technical and corporate segments of the company. In addition, ChatPetrobras incorporates advanced security and protection layers native to Azure OpenAI Service, ensuring all data remains under the company’s internal domain.

In keeping with the company’s commitment to pursuing innovative solutions to industry challenges, “ChatPetrobras represents our latest effort to harness artificial intelligence to enhance the productivity, quality, and efficiency of our processes,” said Carlos Augusto Barreto, Executive Manager of Information and Communications Technology at Petrobras.

ChatPetrobras is not just a standalone tool but part of a broader strategy to incorporate AI usage within the company, empowering every employee to leverage data science capabilities. Petrobras envisions a future where all employees can easily access advanced tools and technical skills, driving value creation through AI.

SEDUC-SP aims to enhance efficacy of education with AI copilot

The Government of the State of São Paulo has partnered with Microsoft to integrate AI Copilot into daily classroom activities, in a move that aims to benefit teachers and over 3 million students across São Paulo by streamlining tasks such as assignment corrections, test scoring, and providing student guidance.

The integration of Azure OpenAI Service is designed to serve as a comprehensive record center, offering a range of functionalities from analyzing student texts to suggesting potential grades for assignments. For instance, a student can write a text on a computer, and upon completion, the app provides suggestions for improvement and identifies errors. This immediate feedback mechanism is followed by personalized guidance from the teacher, ensuring a holistic learning experience. According to Secretary of Education of São Paulo, Renato Feder, this approach not only streamlines the educational process but also enriches learning outcomes.

The partnership between the Government of São Paulo and Microsoft, through the deployment of Generative AI, marks a significant step forward in leveraging technology to support education. By automating routine tasks and providing immediate, actionable feedback, this initiative promises to enhance the efficiency of teaching and the quality of learning for millions of students in Brazil.

Comgás: Fueling efficiencies with AI-driven data management

Comgás, the largest natural gas distributor in Brazil, is leveraging AI to enhance data utilization, aiming to improve decision-making and customer service. In partnership with Microsoft, the company embarked on a significant digital transformation journey that sought to not only migrate to the cloud but to also create a sophisticated data environment that could leverage AI for better customer understanding and service.

“We realized the possibility of extracting data more efficiently with the use of AI,” said Thiago Rolemberg, Head of Data and AI at Comgás, “and, thus, better understand our customers for more assertive decision-making.”

AI algorithms, alongside standardized data presentation facilitated by Power BI, have streamlined data extraction processes from a duration of 8 to 15 days to real-time in certain areas. As a result, greater operational efficiency enabled Comgás to better understand and meet customer needs, resulting in a more personalized and efficient service.

Since the implementation, Comgás has processed over 55 TB of information, with the platform encompassing 60% of the company’s representative data. A third of the company’s employees have already utilized the environment, with expectations to increase to 55% by the end of the year. This strategic use of AI has not only facilitated a more dynamic use of data but also positioned Comgás at the forefront of the industry in terms of innovation and customer satisfaction.

Atento streamlines customer communications with customer service copilot

One of the world’s leading Customer Relationship Management and Business Process Outsourcing providers, Atento, has unveiled a new AI-driven solution designed to improve customer service and enhance the company’s service agent productivity. Developed with Azure OpenAI Service, the tool automates the distribution of processes and ensures swift, appropriate responses during negotiations. It oversees system formalization steps and update statuses, integrating smoothly with the communication channels preferred by customers. “The new solution enhances the consumer-brand experience and aligns with the demand for increasingly efficient and personalized service. During a pilot program, we observed a more than 20% increase in customer satisfaction within the first few weeks,” stated Eduardo Aguirre, Chief Information Officer of Atento.

In addition, Power Automate facilitated the integration of legacy systems, reducing manual labor and improving response times. This integration led to a 30% boost in team productivity and nearly a 20% decrease in operational errors.

A key focus during the solution’s development was ensuring data security, privacy, and compliance. Leveraging Azure OpenAI Service, Atento was able to anonymize information and maintain data within its own environment, adhering to strict confidentiality standards.

“The project’s success began with a detailed analysis of the customer and employee relationship cycle,” Aguirre added, highlighting the vital role of Atento’s team of experienced consultants in this endeavor.

Brasilprev unlocks new business with a GPT tool for consultants

Brasilprev’s deployment of its AI tool, Brasilprev GPT, marks a transformative leap in using data to empower over 20,000 consultants and relationship managers. This not only facilitates new business but also enables the delivery of more personalized services to end customers. The private pension firm’s collaboration with Microsoft builds upon data-focused digital transformation, leveraging Azure OpenAI Service and ChatGPT within their data hub to streamline interactions and make platform data more accessible and user-friendly.

This integration, a first in Brazil, features the creation of an API that not only stores queries for further analysis but also enhances the user experience by tailoring responses to user profiles, utilizing Azure’s API Management and Azure Cosmos DB. This integration illustrates how the powerful collaboration between human expertise and technological innovation can boost the company’s performance, contributing to a remarkable 28% conversion rate and surpassing $9.86 billion in business.

“Users have embraced the opportunity to explore, understand, and apply generative AI to access information and boost their productivity. This engagement has a profoundly positive effect on the end customer, who enjoys a more personalized and comprehensive response to their needs,” notes Bruno Venceslau, Superintendent of Data and Digital Business at Brasilprev, “that’s what AI has made possible.”

This innovation has not only driven exceptional business outcomes but also reinforced Brasilprev’s commitment to data governance and the strategic application of AI, setting a new standard for the integration of technology in enhancing business and technical operations.

B3 democratizes access to capital market through AI-powered financial education

B3, the Brazilian stock exchange, has launched the first AI tool dedicated to supporting the public in conscious investment. The free tool, developed by B3 in partnership with Microsoft, is part of B3’s purpose to democratize access to the capital market through financial education.

“The financial market is constantly evolving, and so is the way we communicate with investors. Our mission is to simplify the world of investments and show that B3 is for everyone. The financial education chat joins other initiatives as an open and uninhibited dialogue channel. We want individuals to clear their doubts in a light and interactive way, demystifying the idea that investing is complicated,” explains Felipe Paiva, director of Customer Relations at B3.

Based on information from a database curated by experts from the Brazilian stock exchange, the platform’s questions and responses have undergone significant testing. The tool is constantly evolving as the database continues to expand, resulting in more refined answers for investors.

In addition to verifying information, another advantage of this search format is that it minimizes ‘shyness’ when asking questions, which can often inhibit novice investors from asking basic questions. “The answers generated by the chat can serve as a starting point to better understand the concepts of the financial market and encourage investors to deepen their knowledge in other channels”, reinforces Paiva.

“Artificial intelligence can be a great ally in the search for quality information, analyzing huge volumes of data quickly and objectively. This simple and summarized answer format serves as a gateway for those interested in the world of investments, adapting in a light and interactive way to the needs of the user,” says Rodrigo Nardoni, Vice President of Technology at B3.

AI for everyone in Brazil

Brazil has shifted into high gear in terms of AI innovation, propelling not only Latin America but also having an impact on international markets. Microsoft is committed to empowering key Brazilian organizations like Petrobras, SECUC-SP, Comgás, Atento, Brasilprev, and B3, supporting their ongoing digital transformation journeys and unlocking potential across various sectors. This level of engagement is positioning Brazil as a potential leader on AI innovation, capable of setting benchmarks for the region and beyond by influencing global AI strategies and practices.

We work at the forefront of AI evolution, ensuring our advancements align with the needs of customers, partners, and society. Our commitment is to harness AI’s potential to empower every individual, including upskilling employees, guiding students, and supporting vulnerable communities. This approach ensures that technology serves as a catalyst for equitable and inclusive progress worldwide.

Take the next step in your AI journey by exploring Microsoft AI solutions, diving into The AI Strategy Roadmap, and skilling up with Microsoft Learn’s AI learning hub to ensure you’re ready to leverage Microsoft AI to its fullest potential.

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As technology advances rapidly, AI emerges as a source of innovation, promising to redefine what’s possible in our world. This sense of wonder and anticipation was palpable during our recent stop in Sydney for the Microsoft AI Tour. The vibrant enthusiasm for AI was displayed by businesses and governments in Australia and New Zealand showcasing the region’s commitment to leveraging AI to transform services, enhance efficiency, and solve complex challenges with unprecedented agility.

Microsoft’s recent investment of AUD $5 billion in Australia’s digital infrastructure is a testament to our belief in AI’s potential to empower every individual and organization to achieve more. This significant investment not only reflects our confidence in AI’s transformative power but also highlights the pivotal role Australia and New Zealand are poised to play in global AI innovation. It is against this backdrop of optimism and groundbreaking investment that we delve into success stories that demonstrate the tangible benefits AI is already bringing to the Australia and New Zealand region.

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Telstra: Revolutionizing customer service through AI

Facing the challenge of improving customer service efficiency and reducing the need for repeated information, Telstra turned to Microsoft Cloud and Azure OpenAI Service to develop their generative AI solutions, “One Sentence Summary” and “Ask Telstra.” These tools, by summarizing customer histories and providing quick access to internal knowledge, have drastically improved the efficiency and personalization of customer service, setting a new standard in telecommunications.

The successful pilot programs underscored the solutions’ impact, demonstrating marked improvements in operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, prompting Telstra to expand these AI tools across its network. This strategic move underscores Telstra’s commitment to innovatively enhancing service delivery through responsible AI use, in collaboration with Microsoft and Accenture.

South Australia’s Department for Education: Empowering education with AI

Confronted with the advent of generative AI services like ChatGPT, the South Australia Department for Education harnessed AI to create EdChat, a pioneering chatbot designed to enrich teaching and learning. This innovative tool, developed in collaboration with Microsoft and IT partner, Insight Enterprises, has equipped students and teachers with a dynamic resource for exploring AI safely, fostering essential future skills.

The outcome of the eight-week EdChat trial revealed a significant shift in how students engage with information and learning, promoting a culture of inquiry and critical thinking, while ensuring a secure and ethical AI learning environment. EdChat serves as a secure environment where students can ask questions without fear of judgment, granting them increased agency over their own educational paths.

This initiative not only highlights the department’s proactive approach to educational challenges but also sets a precedent for integrating AI in education, empowering the next generation with the knowledge and skills for a future where AI plays a central role.

“EdChat is a truly inspiring example of how the education sector can embrace generative AI to deliver value to its most important stakeholders – students,” says Veli Mati-Vanamo, CTO (APAC) of Insight Enterprises.

CommBank: Enhancing financial services with AI

As an early adopter of AI in the banking sector, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank) has embraced a variety of innovative AI use cases to redefine customer service and enhance operational efficiency. The bank ran a successful trial of GitHub Copilot with the goal of accelerating the coding processes, and it has deployed generative AI for personalized customer notifications, a Q&A tool to expedite staff response times, and AI-driven analysis to streamline loan processing.

Informed by these successes, Commbank recently announced an exciting expansion of their partnership with Microsoft. This collaboration will focus on generative AI to develop tools like the CommBank copilot to resolve customer queries faster and help customers better understand their money.

“Through our ongoing partnership,…we also see this as an opportunity to work together with leading global technology teams to ensure CBA’s safety and security is constantly upgraded and improved, to keep pace with the evolving threat landscape,” said Gavin Munroe, CommBank’s Group Executive, Technology and Group Chief Information Officer.

The partnership also emphasizes the development of AI-driven solutions to support CommBank staff and customers, with Microsoft engineers already collaborating on projects to elevate customer service and security.

This strategic and planned adoption of AI technologies is solidifying CommBank’s position as a leader in responsible and ethical AI use, demonstrating a forward-thinking approach to leveraging AI for comprehensive business and community betterment.

Australian Government: Innovating public service with AI

In a pioneering initiative, the Australian Government is harnessing generative AI through a strategic partnership with Microsoft to revolutionize public service. Through the current pilot, 7,000 government staff members are receiving AI literacy and skills training of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 based on a six-month trial aimed to significantly enhance productivity and the delivery of services to the public.

“By strengthening our partnership with Microsoft, we are charting a course for the future of public service – one where generative AI is used responsibly to enhance the work of the APS in delivering for Australians without compromising on safety,” said Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese when he announced the trial in November 2023.

The initiative positions Australia at the forefront of global leaders in integrating AI within government operations, reflecting a deep commitment to innovation and responsible AI use, paving the way for a robust digital future.

LawVu: Transforming legal workflows with AI

Embedded deeply within LawVu’s operational fabric, AI is transforming legal workflows and decision-making processes. As a pioneer in Microsoft’s AI First Movers program, LawVu leverages Azure OpenAI Service to power its AI Assist feature, significantly streamlining contract reviews with rapid access to essential details, thereby bypassing exhaustive document examinations.

While LawVu’s focus is on streamlining internal processes for in-house legal teams, “Now, with the power of AI embedded in that workflow, we are taking a crucial next step in transforming what in-house legal teams can do and how efficiently they can do it,” said Sam Kidd, CEO and Co-founder of LawVu.

The use of AI extends beyond customer-facing features to internal operations, where LawVu harnesses ChatGPT for swift resolution of employee policy queries and GitHub Copilot to accelerate software development, embodying AI as a core component of its innovation strategy. This holistic adoption of AI not only alleviates administrative loads but also marks a profound shift towards efficiency and enhanced productivity, symbolizing a leap forward in legal technology evolution.

Qscan Group: Advancing medical diagnostics with AI

In the face of a global radiologist shortage and heightened demand for diagnostic imaging, one of Australia’s leading medical diagnostic imaging providers, Qscan Group, turned to AI to optimize the productivity of its radiologists. Utilizing Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, including Nuance’s PowerScribe One, Qscan Group radiologists improved their productivity by more than 5%.

“We’ve seen some significant improvements in our cybersecurity posture and our overall technology performance by leveraging the Microsoft ecosystem,” says Simon Button, Chief Technology Officer at Qscan Group. “It ensures that we have a high performing, yet safe and secure organization.”

Qscan is already exploring ways that generative AI and the latest AI advances can improve patient and employee experience from improving the quality of radiology reports to automating call centers, setting new benchmarks for excellence in healthcare technology.

Stuff Group: Strengthening te reo Māori language with AI translation

In their ongoing effort to support the revitalization of te reo Māori, New Zealand’s Stuff Group Te Puna has launched an exciting pilot program that leverages AI to translate news articles, videos, and audio content at scale.

“Bilingual articles aren’t new at Stuff, we’ve been producing them for years,” said Stuff’s Pou Tiaki Matua Carmen Parahi (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Hine, Rongowhakaata). “But this is the first time we will be using AI to translate even more articles at scale, which will be quality-checked by a human translator and our editorial team before being published.”

Using technology from Microsoft and Straker Translations, the AI tool will not only multiply the number of articles published each week in te reo Māori but greatly increase its ability to translate live or breaking news.

Contrasted with his own experience as a young Māori in the 1970s and 1980s, Grant Straker (Ngāti Raukawa), Founder and Chief Executive of Straker Translations proudly noted, “Today’s generation of Māori and everyone that comes after will be able to engage with regular news content in their own language.”

Microsoft and ASD: Elevating cyber resilience with Sentinel-CTIS integration

The cybercrime threat landscape is escalating, with bad actors exploring the use of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI to research and plan cyber-attacks. As part of the Microsoft-Australian Signals Directorate Cyber Shield, Microsoft Australia and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing program (CTIS) have partnered together to advance cyber resilience and ensure a safer future for Australians.

The collaboration will enable public-private exchange of threat intelligence to boost ASD’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing program (CTIS) and a world-first integration with Microsoft Sentinel technology. Microsoft Sentinel customers will be offered a free download capability to integrate into the CTIS program more easily and benefit from Microsoft’s global threat analysis of more than 78 trillion signals every day to support the fight against the evolving cybersecurity threats.

“Cyber security is a team sport, and the collective efforts of both the public and private sectors are vital to defend our nation,” said Rachel Noble PSM, Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate. “By fostering such partnerships, we can more quickly identify threats, combat threat actors and make a lasting impact on Australia’s state of security.”

By actively disrupting cybercrime, including dismantling phishing domains and targeting ransomware groups like Black Basta, the collaborative use of AI between government, industry, and international partners has proven effective in bolstering Australia’s cyber defense.

AI for everyone in Australia and New Zealand

These compelling stories from Australia and New Zealand illuminate the transformative potential of AI across sectors, serving as a source of inspiration for business leaders to explore how AI can revolutionize their operations.

Microsoft’s dedication to empowering organizations with AI technology and ethical guidance underpins a future where innovation leads to sustainable growth and enhanced human experience. As we continue this series, stay tuned for further insights and stories that celebrate the transformative journey of AI across industries and regions.

Take the next step in your AI journey by exploring Microsoft AI solutions, diving into The AI Strategy Roadmap, and getting skilled up with Microsoft Learn’s AI learning hub to ensure you’re ready to leverage Microsoft AI to its fullest potential.

The post A wave of AI innovation is overtaking Australia and New Zealand appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

We’ve also learned just how hard it can be for great companies to get noticed. The competitive field is widening as companies race to capitalize on the initial disruption this new era of AI has brought. Investors and prospective customers have seemingly endless choices. At M12, we’ve seen four themes emerge as the winning principles of companies that succeed in getting noticed, building resilience, and achieving success: data, dividends, distribution, and delight.

I originally introduced these “four Ds” in an M12 blog post in June 2023, and they continue to hold up. That post was written specifically for a startup audience—but read on and you’ll see that the principles apply to any organization looking to make the most of this golden age of AI.

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Data: The most relevant, unique, and accurate data is what gives you the edge

For generative AI, data quality and breadth are still crucial for training capable models, but output can excel based on subjective merits that go beyond a spec-like “ground truth” as in object identification. Establishing and maintaining your customers’ trust is what unlocks access to unique, relevant, and accurate data—essentially, the data your competitors can’t access—and gives you the opportunity to build a moat around it. Gaining enough trust and confidence to establish exclusive access to proprietary datasets will allow you to fine-tune your solutions in a way that no one else can.

Typeface, one of our generative AI partner companies, created a platform that ingests brand collateral, official press releases, and audience performance metadata from customers’ data platforms to instantly create new variations of social media posts, product listings, or whole advertising campaigns. Because this content is grounded in both ingested and approved data, it is customized as brand owners would have intended and provides a high-quality service that saves customers time and money.

Dividends: Deliver a clear, instant, and positive ROI

Organizations should assume that their competitors are embracing the latest models or developer tooling the same way they are—so achieving a faster, stronger, clearer return on investment (ROI) from generative AI outputs is the thing that will keep your customers attached and increasing usage on your platform.

The plausible benefits of incorporating generative AI into productivity software extend to so many tasks and industries that it’s really become impossible to keep track of them. However, when considering the companies that have grown their revenue the fastest—which is by far the most important metric that investors consider—the one thing they have in common is the ability to make the generative AI output the work product itself. In other words: when the AI output is the thing that makes money and saves time, the company experiences immediate benefits, financial and otherwise. This incentivizes more use of AI, creating a virtuous cycle that continually increases capital velocity, leading to potentially exponential gains. We have seen this happen in code generation, marketing content automation, and enterprise workflows with structured documents like contracts, and more examples are appearing every day.

Take a look at how Evisort, another M12 portfolio company, brought Keller Williams an AI-powered contract management solution that achieved immediate results for their bottom and top lines. The AI agent specializes in one task, and does that task faster, more efficiently, and with predicable results: this laser focus on a single core business lever led to quick and positive ROI for the world’s largest realty company.

Distribution: Establish stable channels early

There are now more than 10,000 startups in the AI market competing to be seen and heard, and it takes more than just having a strong product vision and leveraging the technology stack to achieve a competitive advantage. Early movers in the market were able to capture paying customers with minimal customer acquisition costs (CAC), but we’re now past that stage—so success hinges on serving the user base through more than just cost advantages. Startups need strong and stable distribution channels to cut through the noise and ensure they can reach customers in the first place.

Corporate venture firms like M12 do more than just invest: they provide tools, services, expertise, and established, trusted distribution channels. It’s the ultimate resource for startups and offers them a tremendous head start.

All the companies in the M12 portfolio work with us in unique ways to take advantage of everything we have to offer. For example, Web3 startup Space and Time joined M12 in 2022 and Stephen Hilton, their Head of Solutions, sees Microsoft as a “world-class partner, providing Space and Time with enhanced development support and go-to-market acceleration.” Investments and collaborations like this go a long way toward helping startups cut through the noise of a crowded market and establish stable distribution channels early.

Delight: Create stickiness with captivating user experiences

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: creating consistently delightful user experiences is key to creating the love that keeps them coming back for more. It’s common knowledge, but solution designs can still end up being misaligned with a user’s needs if they are driven by the wrong objectives (for example, marketing).

There are countless opportunities for generative AI solutions to make new inroads with customers by helping them get to information they really want, faster than ever—and the solutions that will stick will use natural language interfaces for greater cognitive accessibility, ease, and friendliness to bring joy to the experience.

Inworld combines all the features of interactivity into a powerful character engine that allows for incredible depth and policy control for operators of applications, games, and other experiences to imbue their user experiences with as close to a human touch as we’ve seen. With a team comprised of veterans from API.AI, Google, and DeepMind, they’re captivating and delighting their customers and are definitely one of the startups to watch in this area.

Our portfolio companies are continuing to win—and we hope to see your company win, too

Since I wrote my original post over six months ago, Typeface has enjoyed continued success and recently announced its multimodal AI content hub for the enterprise. InWorld now has the leading platform for “intelligent” AI non-player characters (NPCs) for games and other entertainment; the XBox platform partnered with them to develop a standard set of tools and capabilities for conversational AI.

Whatever you’re working on today, whether you’re creating new AI-powered solutions or considering how AI will transform your business, I hope you’ll find the “four Ds” to be helpful. If you want to dig deeper into these principles as they pertain to startups, you can read my original post on the M12 blog. And if you’re interested in learning more about how Microsoft can help you innovate with AI, check out Microsoft AI for the latest news and information.  

Michael Stewart is a Managing Partner at M12. Read Michael’s bio and learn more about M12.

The post Competitive strategies in AI: Insights from an M12 managing partner appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Microsoft is introducing a solution to help finance teams reclaim time and stay on top of the critical decisions that can impact business performance. Microsoft Copilot for Finance is a new Copilot experience for Microsoft 365 that unlocks AI-assisted competencies for financial professionals, right from within productivity applications they use every day. Now available in public preview, Copilot for Finance connects to the organization’s financial systems, including Dynamics 365 and SAP, to provide role-specific workflow automation, guided actions, and recommendations in Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications—helping to save time and focus on what truly matters: navigating the company to success.  

Leveraging innovation to accelerate fiscal stewardship 

Finance teams play a critical role in innovating processes to improve efficiency across the organization. As teams look to evolve and improve how time is spent to support more strategic work, it’s evident there are elements of operational tasks that are more mundane, repetitive, and manually intensive.  Instead of spending the majority of their day on analysis or cross-team collaboration, 62% of finance professionals are stuck in the drudgery of data entry and review cycles.² While some of these tasks are critical and can’t be automated—like compliance and tax reporting—we also hear from majority of finance leaders that they lack the automation tools and technology they need to transform these processes and free up time.¹

With the pace of business accelerating every day, becoming a disruptor requires investing in technology that will drive innovation and support the bottom line. In the next three to five years, 68% of CFOs anticipate revenue growth from generative AI (GenAI).³ By implementing next-generation AI to deliver insight and automate costly and time-intensive operational tasks, teams can reinvest that time to accelerate their impact as financial stewards and strategists. 

Microsoft Copilot for Finance: Accomplish more with less

Copilot for Finance provides AI-powered assistance while working in Microsoft 365 applications, making financial processes more streamlined and automated. Copilot for Finance can streamline audits by pulling and reconciling data with a simple prompt, simplify collections by automating communication and payment plans, and accelerate financial reporting by detecting variances with ease. The potential time and cost savings are substantial, transforming not just how financial professionals work, but how they drive impact within the organization. 

Users can interact with Copilot for Finance in multiple ways. It both suggests actions in the flow of work, and enables users to ask questions by typing a prompt in natural language. For example, a user can prompt Copilot to “help me understand forecast to actuals variance data.” In moments, Copilot for Finance will generate insights and pull data directly from across the ERP and financial systems, suggesting actions to take and providing a head start by generating contextualized text and attaching relevant files. Like other copilot experiences, users can easily check source data to ensure transparency before using Copilot to take any actions.  

Copilot for Finance connects to existing financial systems, including Dynamics 365 and SAP, as well as thousands more with Microsoft Copilot Studio. With the ability to both pull insight from and update actions back to existing sources, Copilot for Finance empowers users to stay in the flow of work and complete tasks more efficiently. 

Built for finance professionals

Copilot for Finance is well versed in the critical and often time-consuming tasks and processes across a finance professional’s workday, providing a simple way to ask questions about data, surface insights, and automate processes—helping to reduce the time spent on repetitive actions. While today’s modern finance team is responsible for a litany of tasks, let’s explore three scenarios that Copilot for Finance supports at public preview.  

Audits of a company’s financial statements are critical to ensuring accuracy and mitigating risk. Traditionally, accounts receivable managers were required to pull account data manually from ERP records, reconcile it in Excel, and look for inaccuracies manually. With Copilot for Finance, these critical steps are done with a single prompt, allowing AR managers to act on inconsistencies and any delinquencies found with Copilot suggested copy and relevant invoices.   

“Finance organizations need to be utilizing generative AI to help blend structured and unstructured datasets. Copilot for Finance is a solution that aggressively targets this challenge. Microsoft continues to push the boundary of business applications by providing AI-driven solutions for common business problems. Copilot for Finance is another powerful example of this effort. Copilot for Finance has potential to help finance professionals at organizations of all sizes accelerate impact and possibly even reduce financial operation costs.”

—Kevin Permenter, IDC research director, financial applications

The collections process is another critical responsibility as it affects company cash flow, profitability, and customer relationships. Collection coordinators spend their time reviewing outstanding accounts and attempting to reconcile them in a timely manner. This often means phone calls, emails, and negotiating payment plans. With Copilot for Finance, collection coordinators can focus their time on more meaningful client-facing interactions by leaving the busy work to Copilot. Copilot for Finance supports the collections process end-to-end by suggesting priority accounts, summarizing conversations to record back to ERP, and providing customized payment plans for customers.    

Copilot for Finance can also help financial analysts to reduce the risk of reporting errors and missing unidentified variances. Rather than manually reviewing large financial data sets for unusual patterns, users can prompt Copilot to detect outliers and highlight variances for investigation. Copilot for Finance streamlines variance identification with reusable natural language instructions in the enterprise context. A financial analyst can direct Copilot to identify answers for variances, and Copilot will gather supporting data autonomously.  

Copilot will suggest financial context contacts and will provide auto summaries for streamlined tracking of action items and follow ups. Copilot for Finance can generate fine-tuned financial commentary, PowerPoint presentations, and emails to report to key stakeholders. 

Our journey with Microsoft Finance  

Microsoft employs thousands across its finance team to manage and drive countless processes and systems as well as identify opportunities for company growth and strategy. Who better to pilot the latest innovation in finance? For the first phase, we worked closely with a Treasury team focused on accounts receivable as well as a team in financial planning and analysis—who need to reconcile data as a part of their workflow before conducting further analysis. After trialing the data reconciliation capabilities in Copilot for Finance, the initial value and potential for scale for these teams was clear.

“Financial analysts today spend, on average, one to two hours reconciling data per week. With Copilot for Finance, that is down to 10 minutes. Functionality like data reconciliation will be a huge time saver for an organization as complex as Microsoft.”

—Sarper Baysal, Microsoft Commercial Revenue Planning Lead

“The accounts receivable reconciliation capabilities help us to eliminate the time it takes to compare data across sources, saving an average 20 minutes per account. Based on pilot usage, this translates to an average of 22% cost savings in average handling time.”

—Gladys Jin, Senior Director Microsoft Finance Global Treasury and Financial Services

Microsoft Copilot for Finance availability 

Ready to take the next step? Microsoft Copilot for Finance is available for public preview today. Explore the public preview demo and stay tuned for additional announcements by following us on social.

Explore more Copilot offerings for business functions across your organization

Copilot for Finance joins other Copilot offerings designed for business functions, including Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service, both now generally available.  

For research insights on the future of work and generative AI, subscribe to WorkLab.

¹ Microsoft Future of Finance Trends Report, 2023
² Metric of the Month: Time Allocation in Finance, CFO, Perry D. Wiggins. December 7, 2020.
³ Accelerating the GenAI Journey with Use Cases in the Functional and Application Areas, IDC, Mickey North Rizza. February 2024.

The post Introducing Microsoft Copilot for Finance: Transform finance with next-generation AI in Microsoft 365 appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

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Dentsu drives creativity and growth for brands, supported by Microsoft Copilot.
Enriching employee experiences and shaping the future of work with copilot technology

Bayer employees are collaborating better on worldwide research projects and saving time on daily tasks with Copilot for Microsoft 365, while Finnish company Elisa is helping knowledge workers across finance, sales and customer service streamline routine tasks. Banreservas is driving employee productivity and enhancing decision-making, and Hong Kong’s largest transportation companies — Cathay and MTR — are streamlining workflows, improving communications, and reducing time-consuming administrative tasks. Across professional services, KPMG has seen a 50% jump in employee productivity, Dentsu is saving hundreds of employees up to 30 minutes per day on creative visualization processes, and EY is making it easier to generate reports and access insights in near real-time with Copilot for Microsoft 365. In Malaysia, financial services organization PNB is saving employees time searching through documents and emails and AmBank employees are enhancing the quality and impact of their work. At Hargreaves Lansdown, financial advisers are using Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Teams to drive productivity and make meetings more inclusive. Avanade is helping sellers save time updating contact records and summarizing email threads with Copilot for Dynamics 365, while HSO Group, Vixxo, and 9altitudes are streamlining work for field and service teams.

Employee and customer in store
Organizations are creating their own Generative AI assistants to help employees improve customer service.
Reinventing customer engagement with generative AI to deliver greater value and increased satisfaction

MECOMS is making it possible for utility customers to ask questions and get suggestions about how to reduce power consumption using Microsoft Fabric and copilot on their Power Pages portal. Schneider Electric has built a Resource Advisor copilot to equip customers with enhanced data analysis, visualization, decision support and performance optimization. California State University San Marcos is finding ways to better understand and personalize the student journey while driving engagement with parents and alumni using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Copilot for Dynamics 365. With Azure OpenAI Service, Adecco Group is bolstering its services and solutions to enable worker preparedness as generative AI reshapes the workforce, UiPath has already helped one of its insurance customers save over 90,000 hours through more efficient operations, and Providence has developed a solution for clinicians to respond to patient messages up to 35% faster. Organizations are building generative AI assistants to help employees save time, improve customer service and focus on more complex work, including Domino’s, LAQO and OCBC. Within a few weeks of introducing its copilot to personalize customer service, Atento has increased customer satisfaction by 30% while reducing operational errors by nearly 20%, and Turkey-based Setur is personalizing travel planning with a chatbot to customize responses in multiple languages for its 60,000 daily users. In the fashion industry, Coats Digital launched an AI assistant in six weeks to make customer onboarding easier. Greece-based ERGO Insurance partnered with EBO to provide 24/7 personalized assistance with its virtual agent, and H&R Block introduced AI Tax Assist to help individuals and small business owners file and manage their taxes confidently while saving costs.

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Novo Nordisk is building out GitHub Copilot integration to decrease repetitive research and engineering tasks.
Reshaping business processes to uncover efficiencies, improve developer creativity and spur AI innovation

Siemens built its own industrial copilot to simplify virtual collaboration of design engineers and front-line workers, accelerate simulation times and reduce tasks from weeks to minutes. With help from Neudesic, Hanover Research designed a custom AI-powered research tool to streamline workflows and identify insights up to 10 times faster. With Microsoft Fabric, organizations like the London Stock Exchange Group and Milliman are reshaping how teams create more value from data insights, while Zeiss is streamlining analytics workflows to help teams make more customer-centric decisions. Volvo Group has saved more than 10,000 manual hours by launching a custom solution built with Azure AI to simplify document processing. By integrating GitHub Copilot, Carlsberg has significantly enhanced productivity across its development team; and Hover, SPH Media, Doctolib and CloudZero have improved their workflows within an agile and secure environment. Mastery Logistics Systems and Novo Nordisk are using GitHub Copilot to automate repetitive coding tasks for developers, while Intertech is pairing it with Azure OpenAI Service to enhance coding accuracy and reduce daily emails by 50%. Swiss AI-driven company Unique AG is helping financial industry clients reduce administrative work, speed up existing processes and improve IT support; and PwC is simplifying its audit process and increasing transparency for clients with Azure OpenAI Service. By leveraging Power Platform, including AI and Copilot features, Epiq has automated employee processes, saving over $500,000 in annual costs and 2,000 hours of work each month, PG&E is addressing up to 40% of help desk demands to save more than $1 million annually, and Nsure is building automations that reduce manual processing times by over 60% and costs by 50%. With security top of mind, WTW is using Microsoft Copilot for Security to accelerate its threat-hunting capabilities by making it possible for cyber teams to ask questions in natural language, while LTIMindtree is planning on using it to reduce training time and strengthen security analyst expertise.

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VinBrain is harnessing Microsoft’s cutting-edge AI technologies to transform healthcare in Vietnam.
Bending the curve on innovation across industries with differentiated AI offerings

To make disaster response more efficient, nonprofit Team Rubicon is quickly identifying and engaging the right volunteers in the right locations with the help of Copilot for Dynamics 365. Netherlands-based TomTom is bringing the benefits of generative AI to the global automotive industry by developing an advanced AI-powered voice assistant to help drivers with tasks like navigation and temperature control. In Vietnam, VinBrain has developed one of the country’s first comprehensive AI-powered copilots to support medical professionals with enhanced screening and detection processes and encourage more meaningful doctor-patient interactions. Rockwell Automation is delivering industry-first capabilities with Azure OpenAI Service to accelerate time-to-market for customers building industrial automation systems. With a vision to democratize AI and reach millions of users, Perplexity.AI has brought its conversational answer engine to market in six months using Azure AI Studio. India’s biggest online fashion retailer, Myntra, is solving the open-ended search problem facing the industry by using generative AI to help shoppers figure out what they should wear based on occasion. In Japan, Aisin Corp has developed a generative AI app to empower people who are deaf or hard of hearing with tasks like navigation, communication and translation; and Canada-based startup Natural Reader is making education more accessible on-the-go for students with learning differences by improving AI voice quality with Azure AI. To solve one of the most complex engineering challenges — the design process for semiconductors — Synopsys is bringing in the power of generative AI to help engineering teams accelerate time-to-market.

As organizations continue to embrace AI Transformation, it is critical they develop clarity on how best to apply AI to meet their most pressing business needs. Microsoft is committed to helping our customers and partners accelerate pragmatic AI innovation and I am excited by the opportunities before us to enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes and bend the curve on innovation. As a technology partner of choice — from our differentiated copilot capabilities to our unparalleled partner ecosystem and unique co-innovation efforts with customers — we remain in service to your successful outcomes. We are also dedicated to preserving the trust we have built through our partnership approach, responsible AI solutions and commitments to protecting your data, privacy and IP. We believe this era of AI innovation allows us to live truer to our mission than ever before, and I look forward to continuing on this journey with you to help you achieve more.

The post Embracing AI Transformation: How customers and partners are driving pragmatic innovation to achieve business outcomes with the Microsoft Cloud appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

It’s important to understand the potential of AI and learn how to make informed decisions about AI adoption and implementation. The benefits of AI in business are more compelling every day. A recent global study by IDC confirms that businesses are eager to adopt AI technology, with 71% of respondents currently using AI tools in their organizations.¹

Even with this momentum, business leaders face challenges when it comes to implementation. Where should you start your organization’s AI transformation?

Transform your business with AI

Learn about AI business strategy and AI for industries

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Learn from Microsoft leaders how to transform your organization with AI

We’ve brought together our AI and industry leaders at Microsoft to share how they think about AI transformation in our video series, Transform Your Business with AI. More importantly, they provide success stories and guidance on how others can align AI technology with their business goals.

To start learning about how AI can transform your business, I recommend you begin by thinking about where your business is today and where it is you want to go. Jessica Hawk, Corporate Vice President, Data, AI, and Digital Applications Product Marketing at Microsoft, will walk you through the key drivers of AI success. She will also provide guidance as you examine what characteristics foster an AI-ready culture.

Whether you lead a healthcare organization or a retail business, the next two topics are top of mind.

1. Responsible AI: Natasha Crampton, Chief Responsible AI Officer, shares principles and procedures followed at Microsoft and how leaders can develop their own AI strategy.
2. Sustainability: Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer, shares the Microsoft approach to sustainability in the era of AI.

Explore how Microsoft and customers are implementing AI within retail, manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare with our industry-focused videos.

• Retail: Learn how AI is impacting the retail industry with Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President of Global Retail, Consumer Goods, and Gaming Industries at Microsoft.
• Manufacturing: Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President of Global Industry Marketing at Microsoft, shares how AI will change the manufacturing industry and how you can partner with Microsoft to prepare your business.
• Financial Services: Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft, takes you through some of the biggest obstacles facing the financial services industry and shows how AI can help you drive differentiated outcomes for your business.
• Healthcare: Rob Dahdah, Corporate Vice President of Industry and Partner Sales for the Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft, dives into how AI can make a significant impact on the world of healthcare, from more personalized healthcare to more efficient drug development.

Discover the knowledge and resources to adopt AI in your organization

To complement this video series, we’ve released a full training course on our free learning platform, Microsoft Learn.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this course:

1. What is AI and how is it used in business?

You’ll learn the difference between generative AI, machine learning, and deep learning. Plus, you’ll understand how AI works through examples specific to sales, supply chain, human resources, finance, marketing, commerce, customer service, and project management.

2. How can I be sure AI is adding value to my business?

AI technologies can drive substantial value to organizations. Defining an AI strategy specific to your business is so critical. We’ll walk through how to define your strategy, and we’ll examine what characteristics foster an AI-ready culture.

3. How do I know if my business is using AI responsibly?

At Microsoft, we believe that as organizations and society take steps toward responsible AI, we need to continually evolve to reflect new innovations and lessons from both our mistakes and accomplishments. You’ll learn the six guiding principles to develop and use AI responsibly so you can move confidently in your AI transformation.

4. What steps do I take to implement AI in my organization?

Starting with your AI strategy, this module in the training covers assigning responsibilities and empowering workers and subject matter experts to use AI themselves. You’ll also learn to evaluate and prioritize AI investments and establish AI-related roles and responsibilities.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a solid understanding about the practicalities of AI, how you can use it in your business, and how to evaluate it against the principles of responsibility.

Microsoft Learn

Find the knowledge and resources to adopt AI in your organization

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Continue learning about AI at Microsoft

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. The rapid rise of advancements in AI and cloud computing make access to technical skills an even more vital part of that mission. Developing proficiency in Microsoft AI technologies empowers you to innovate and accomplish far more than you previously thought possible.  

Today, it’s more important than ever to empower your team to gain the right skills, prove their expertise, and showcase their abilities so you can accelerate implementing AI at scale.

Learn more about generative AI in this training from Microsoft Learn.

¹IDC Infographic, sponsored by Microsoft, The Business Opportunity of AI, IDC #US51315823, November 2023.

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