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.

We’re already seeing how Microsoft Copilot can help turn “I can’t” into “watch me” for people around the world in their everyday lives. But for business leaders, Microsoft Copilot is just the start—there are so many additional ways you can bring this transformative technology into your organization. Understanding your options—and the business scenarios best suited for each—is critical. Read on to learn how you can approach making these decisions for your organization.

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Establish your business objectives

Before you think about how you’ll deploy AI solutions, you have to start with why. Aligning your AI investments with a clear business strategy is imperative, as my colleague Susan Etlinger explores in this blog post.

With specific goals in mind, you can prioritize use cases based on their potential for impact and scope your solution based on data and infrastructure requirements. This will help you make decisions aligned with your business objectives and drive your company forward.

Once you’ve identified your why, there are a few common pathways we’re seeing for how to apply AI to reach those goals—from buying off-the-shelf software as a service (SaaS) solutions to building a custom solution that meets your specific needs. Let’s explore the options.

Use Microsoft Copilot to boost employee productivity

If your priority is employee productivity across your business, Microsoft Copilot should be one of the first solutions you consider. If you’re already using Microsoft Entra for identity management, your employees can sign in using their work or school account and get commercial data protection for free—which means chat data isn’t saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access, and your data isn’t used to train the models.

Copilot helps your people to get the answers and time-saving assistance they need from powerful AI models without putting your company data at risk. But that’s just the start.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is our best Copilot experience for organizations. It gives you priority access to the very latest models—starting with OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo. You get Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams—combined with your universe of data in the Microsoft Graph, including data you bring in from external sources through Microsoft Graph connectors. Copilot for Microsoft 365 has enterprise-grade data protection, which means it inherits your existing Microsoft 365 security, privacy, identity, and compliance policies. It also includes Copilot Studio to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build standalone copilots—more on this in a minute.

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy, and responsible AI, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is designed to be enterprise-ready, helping employees in every part of your business unlock productivity and unleash creativity.

And with Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Finance, we’ve added role-specific workflow automation, guided actions, and content generation to the applications professionals use the most. With built-in integration across business systems—whether Dynamics 365 or a third-party customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), or contact center applications—sellers, service agents, and financial professionals can be more effective and efficient as they work, guided by Copilot. 

When you’re thinking about boosting employee productivity in common business scenarios, an out-of-the-box solution like these can deliver incredible impact. But a solution like this may not be the right fit—so let’s look at the next pathway.

Customize Microsoft Copilot to serve the unique needs of your business

No two organizations are alike, and neither are the apps, data, and workflows that drive your business. Microsoft Copilot can help boost employee productivity in the usual functions of every business, but you may also need solutions customized for your own business processes. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, a low-code tool, you can tailor and extend Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build standalone copilots specific to your needs.

For example, within Copilot for Microsoft 365, you may be looking to add specific plugins to address nuanced topics like legal, finance, or human resources (HR). You may want to create and call new workflows within Copilot or connect Copilot with data that lives outside the Microsoft Graph. These customization capabilities are included with Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Create your own copilots to deliver transformational experiences

Now let’s take this a step further. Instead of building on the foundation of Microsoft Copilot, you may be looking to bring copilot experiences into your own applications with other data sources. The new copilot category is not limited to internal productivity and employee-facing applications, but can extend into external, customer-facing experiences that differentiate your business and drive growth.

With your customized copilot solution, you can bring generative AI to your own unique business processes like supply chain management, manufacturing line operations, or quality control. You can engage customers and users with more personalized experiences and recommendations. The potential for new innovation is limited only by your imagination—and with Microsoft’s range of development tools, you can build generative AI-powered experiences exactly where you want them.

To quickly and securely build your own copilots, you can start in a low-code environment with Copilot Studio, going beyond the extensibility capabilities we already covered. With Azure OpenAI Service behind the scenes, Copilot Studio is a fully managed, hosted SaaS service, with built-in analytics as well as security and governance controls. You also maintain control over dialog management and conversational orchestration, and you can deploy custom copilots built with Copilot Studio to many channels across web, apps, social channels, and Microsoft Teams.

You can also take your custom copilot a step further with a pro-code approach giving developers full control in an end-to-end application development platform—Azure AI Studio.

Azure AI Studio is a generative AI environment for developing intelligent applications from end-to-end, including custom copilots. For skilled development teams that need to benchmark models, mix and match models, fine tune, evaluate, and continuously monitor their solutions, this is the place. Azure AI Studio enables developers to build new AI applications or augment existing apps with AI capabilities. Developers can identify the best models for a custom copilot, create multimodal capabilities beyond text alone, design and evaluate prompts, build extensions with custom AI search, mitigate risk with robust content safety tools, deploy at scale, and continue to monitor applications in production.

Use the right tool—or tools—for the job

Though we’ve outlined a few different options for how you can use AI to help reach your business goals, these pathways are by no means mutually exclusive—you can and should use more than one approach to meet your needs. And with the Microsoft Cloud, you can easily work across approaches, and shift gears as your needs change.

You can start with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and use Copilot Studio to quickly build a workflow that serves a specific business function, then as you uncover more advanced applications for that workflow, Copilot Studio also works with Azure AI Studio and additional Azure services. This connected, end-to-end AI toolchain allows your developers to use the right tool for the job at hand, spanning low-code and pro-code capabilities as their needs change.

And keep in mind that AI safety and responsibility should be top of mind from the very beginning. Make sure you’re considering the principles, corporate standards, tools, and governance that you’ll need to ensure your AI experiences are built on trust. The Responsible AI Standard is a great place to start.

Next steps

I hope you take the time to explore the breadth of Microsoft’s AI innovation, and dig deeper into the various AI approaches I’ve outlined here. Remember—no matter what your business priorities, or where you’re starting from, Microsoft is ready to help empower your AI transformation.

The post Build, buy, or both? How to choose the right approach for your AI transformation 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.

Man and woman working in lab
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.

Man working at multiple screens
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.

Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, are collaborating to demonstrate how this acceleration can benefit chemistry and materials science – two scientific fields pivotal to finding energy solutions that the world needs.

Scientists at PNNL are testing a new battery material that was found in a matter of weeks, not years, as part of the collaboration with Microsoft to use to advanced AI and high-performance computing (HPC), a type of cloud-based computing that combines large numbers of computers to solve complex scientific and mathematical tasks.

PNNL materials scientist Shannon Lee mixes raw materials to synthesize a new solid electrolyte, one of the promising candidates predicted using AI and HPC tools in the Azure Quantum Elements service. Photo by Dan DeLong for Microsoft.
As part of this effort, the Microsoft Quantum team used AI to identify around 500,000 stable materials in the space of a few days.

The new battery material came out of a collaboration using Microsoft’s Azure Quantum Elements to winnow 32 million potential inorganic materials to 18 promising candidates that could be used in battery development in just 80 hours. Most importantly, this work breaks ground for a new way of speeding up solutions for urgent sustainability, pharmaceutical and other challenges while giving a glimpse of the advances that will become possible with quantum computing.

“We think there’s an opportunity to do this across a number of scientific fields,” says Brian Abrahamson, the chief digital officer at PNNL. “Recent technology advancements have opened up the opportunity to accelerate scientific discovery.”

PNNL is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory doing research in several areas, including chemistry and materials science, and its objectives include energy security and sustainability. That made it the ideal collaborator with Microsoft to leverage advanced AI models to discover new battery material candidates.

“The development of novel batteries is an incredibly important global challenge,” Abrahamson says. “It has been a labor-intensive process. Synthesizing and testing materials at a human scale is fundamentally limiting.”

Learning through trial and error
The traditional first step of materials synthesis is to read all the published studies of other materials and hypothesize how different approaches might work out. “But one of the main challenges is that people publish their success stories, not their failure stories,” says Vijay Murugesan, materials sciences group lead at PNNL. That means scientists rarely benefit from learning from each other’s failures.

The next traditional scientific step is testing the hypotheses, typically a long, iterative process. “If it’s a failure, we go back to the drawing board again,” Murugesan says. One of his previous projects at PNNL, a vanadium redox flow battery technology, required several years to solve a problem and design a new material.

Vijay Murugesan, material sciences group lead at PNNL, says the Microsoft AI and HPC tools allow scientists to eliminate the time-consuming trial-and-error discovery steps and focus on the best candidates for testing. Photo by Andrea Starr for PNNL.
The traditional method requires looking at how to improve on what has been done in the past. Another approach would be to take all the possibilities and, through elimination, find something new. Designing new materials requires a lot of calculations, and chemistry is likely to be among the first applications of quantum computing. Azure Quantum Elements offers a cloud computing system designed for chemistry and materials science research with an eye toward eventual quantum computing, and is already working on these kinds of models, tools and workflows. These models will be improved for future quantum computers, but they are already proving useful for advancing scientific discovery using traditional computers.

To evaluate its progress in the real world, the Microsoft Quantum team focused on something ubiquitous in our lives – materials for batteries.

Teaching materials science to AI
Microsoft first trained different AI systems to do sophisticated evaluations of all the workable elements and to suggest combinations. The algorithm proposed 32 million candidates – like finding a needle in a haystack. Next, the AI system found all the materials that were stable. Another AI tool filtered out candidate molecules based on their reactivity, and another based on their potential to conduct energy.

The idea isn’t to find every single possible needle in the hypothetical haystack, but to find most of the good ones. Microsoft’s AI technology whittled the 32 million candidates down to about 500,000 mostly new stable materials, then down to 800.

“At every step of the simulation where I had to run a quantum chemistry calculation, instead I’m calling the machine learning model. So I still get the insight and the detailed observations that come from running the simulation, but the simulation can be up to half a million times faster,” says Nathan Baker, Product Leader for Azure Quantum Elements.

AI may be fast, but it isn’t perfectly accurate. The next set of filters used HPC, which provides high accuracy but uses a lot of computing power. That makes it a good tool for a smaller set of candidate materials. The first HPC verification used density functional theory to calculate the energy of each material relative to all the other states it could be in. Then came molecular dynamics simulations that combined AI and HPC to analyze the movements of atoms and molecules inside each material.

This process culled the list to 150 candidates. Finally, Microsoft scientists used HPC to evaluate the practicality of each material – availability, cost and such – to trim the list to 23 – five of which were already known.

Thanks to this AI-HPC combination, discovering the most promising material candidates took just 80 hours.

The HPC portion accounted for 10 percent of the time spent computing – and that was on an already-targeted set of molecules. This intense computing is the bottleneck, even at universities and research institutions that have supercomputers, which not only are not tailored to a specific domain but also are shared, so researchers may have to wait their turn. Microsoft’s cloud-based AI tools relieve this situation.

Broad applications and accessibility
Microsoft scientists used AI to do the vast majority of the winnowing, accounting for about 90 percent of the computational time spent. PNNL materials scientists then vetted the short list down to half a dozen candidate materials. Because Microsoft’s AI tools are trained for chemistry, not just battery systems, they can be used for any kind of materials research, and the cloud is always accessible.

“We think the cloud is a tremendous resource in improving the accessibility to research communities,” Abrahamson says.

Brian Abrahamson, chief digital officer at PNNL. Photo by Andrea Starr for PNNL.
Today, Microsoft supports a chemistry-specific copilot and AI tools that together act like a magnet that pulls possible needles out of the haystack, trimming the number of candidates for further exploration so scientists know where to focus. “The vision we are working toward is generative materials where I can ask for list of new battery compounds with my desired attributes,” Baker says.

The hands-on stage is where the project stands now. The material has been successfully synthesized and turned into prototype batteries that are functional and will undergo multiple tests in the lab. Making the material at this point, before it’s commercialized, is artisanal. One of the first steps is to take solid precursors of the materials and to grind them by hand with a mortar and pestle, explains Shannon Lee, a PNNL materials scientist. She then uses a hydraulic press to compact the material into a dime-shaped pellet. It goes into a vacuum tube and is heated to 450 to 650 degrees Celsius (842 to 1202 degrees Fahrenheit), transferred to a box to keep it away from oxygen or water, and then ground into a powder for analysis.

For this material, the 10-or-more-hour process is “relatively quick,” Lee says. “Sometimes it takes a week or two weeks to make a single material.”

Then hundreds of working batteries must be tested, over thousands of different charging cycles and other conditions, and later different battery shapes and sizes to realize commercial use. Murugesan dreams of the development of a digital twin for chemistry or materials, “so you don’t need to go to a lab and put this material together and make a battery and test it. You can say, ‘this is my anode and this is my cathode and that’s the electrolyte and this is how much voltage I’m going to apply,’ and then it can predict how everything will work together. Even details like, after 10,000 cycles and five years of usage, the material performance will be like this.”

Microsoft is already working on digital tools to speed up the other parts of the scientific process.

The lengthy traditional process is illustrated by lithium-ion batteries. Lithium got attention as a battery component in the early 1900s, but rechargeable lithium-ion batteries didn’t hit the market until the 1990s.

Today, lithium-ion batteries increasingly run our world, from phones to medical devices to electric vehicles to satellites. Lithium demand is expected to rise five to ten times by 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Lithium is already relatively scarce, and thus expensive. Mining it is environmentally and geopolitically problematic. Traditional lithium-ion batteries also pose safety issues, with the potential to catch fire or explode.

Many researchers are looking for alternatives, both for lithium and for the materials used as electrolytes. Solid-state electrolytes show promise for their stability and safety.

Surprising results
The newly discovered material PNNL scientists are currently testing uses both lithium and sodium, as well as some other elements, thus reducing the lithium content considerably – possibly by as much as 70 percent. It is still early in the process – the exact chemistry is subject to optimization and might not work out when tested at larger scale, Abrahamson cautions. He points out that the story here is not about this particular battery material, but rather the speed at which a material was identified. The scientists say the exercise itself is immensely valuable, and it has revealed some surprises.

The AI-derived material is a solid-state electrolyte. Ions shuttle back and forth through the electrolyte, between the cathode and the anode, ideally with minimal resistance.

Test tubes contain samples of the new material, which looks like fine white salt.
Samples of the new solid electrolyte discovered by Microsoft AI and HPC tools. Solid-state electrolytes are safer than liquid ones. Photo by Dan DeLong for Microsoft.
It was thought that sodium ions and lithium ions couldn’t be used together in a solid-state electrolyte system because they are similarly charged but have different sizes. It was assumed that the structural framework of a solid-state electrolyte material couldn’t support the movement of two different ions. But after testing, Murugesan says, “we found that the sodium and lithium ions seem to help each other.”

The new material has a bonus, Baker says, because its molecular structure naturally has built-in channels that help both ions move through the electrolyte.

Work on the new material is in early stages but “irrespective of whether it’s a viable battery in the long run, the speed at which we found a workable battery chemistry is pretty compelling,” Abrahamson says.

Additional discoveries are still possible. Murugesan and his team have yet to make and test most of the other new material candidates that the Microsoft models suggested. The collaboration continues, with PNNL computational chemists learning to use the new tools, including a copilot trained on chemistry and other scientific publications.

“With Microsoft and PNNL, this is an enduring collaboration to accelerate scientific discovery, bringing the power of these computational paradigm shifts to bear, with the chemistry and material science that are a hallmark strength of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,” Abrahamson says.

“We’re sitting on the precipice of this maturation of the artificial intelligence models, the computational power needed to train and make them useful, and the ability to train them on specific scientific domains with specific intelligence,” he adds. “That, we believe, is going to usher in a new era of acceleration. That is exciting, because these problems matter to the world.”

Related links:

Read Unlocking a new era for scientific discovery with AI: How Microsoft’s AI screened over 32 million candidates to find a better battery
Read Azure Quantum Elements aims to compress 250 years of chemistry into the next 25
Learn more about Azure Quantum Elements
Read: PNNL-Microsoft Collaboration: Accelerating Scientific Discovery
Read the PNNL press release: Energy Storage, Materials Discovery Kick-Off Three-Year Collaboration with Microsoft
Top image: Dan Thien Nguyen, a PNNL materials scientist, assembles a coin cell with the synthesized solid electrolyte. With AI tools guiding researchers, synthesis and testing can be focused in the right direction toward better materials for particular applications. Photo by Dan DeLong for Microsoft.

The post Discoveries in weeks, not years: How AI and high-performance computing are speeding up scientific discovery 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

Watch the videos

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

Start the course

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.

The post How to get started with AI for industry and business leaders appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Organizations like 3M, Prada Group and Campari have been testing copilot features in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform firsthand, while General Motors, Visa, KPMG, AGL, Data #3, Bupa, NAB, Powerlink Queensland, Rest Super and Suncorp are now part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. Our collaboration with IBM is helping clients accelerate the deployment of generative AI with its new Azure OpenAI Service offering, and we are enabling thousands of organizations like PepsiCo, Vodafone and Voya Financial with Azure cloud services through our expanded partnership with Oracle. To empower employees across 34 countries, Grupo Bimbo developed a solution with an integrated copilot in two weeks to help prevent non-compliance and save time when asking questions about company policies. All of Microsoft’s AI-powered copilots are backed by our Copilot Copyright Commitments to extend IP and legal protection to enterprise customers who use these services, building upon our AI Customer Commitments.

Helping healthcare professionals and providers focus on patient care and support through secure data automation and training

By securely centralizing its data in an AI-powered intelligent data platform on Azure, Mercy is able to use generative AI to help patients schedule appointments more efficiently and better understand their lab results. Mayo Clinic is deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to ease the burden of administrative demands on healthcare providers so they can focus on patient care, while Duke Health is partnering with Microsoft to responsibly and ethically harness the potential of generative AI and the Microsoft Cloud to redefine the healthcare landscape. To speed up care and improve patient experiences, MultiCare has automated its medication reconciliation process and increased efficiency by 175% with help from Microsoft and partner 3Cloud. By consolidating data such as lab results, medications and plan coverage in the cloud, Blue Shield of California is making services more accessible to members while reducing the cost of care. With help from Healthanea, France-based insurance company AXA is connecting hospitals, pharmaceuticals, health tech solutions and insurers to provide patients with reliable and accurate health information while protecting sensitive health data through the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Paige and Microsoft are collaborating to transform patient care by building the world’s largest image-based AI to detect cancer with higher accuracy. To ensure patient confidentiality and automate threat reporting, Hamad Medical Corporation is working with Mannai to proactively detect and respond to cyber threats while providing real-time visibility to its executives. Sanofi is improving training and collaboration for employees in different locations with HoloLens 2 — saving two weeks of training time for its production line operators and meeting increased demand for pharmaceuticals.

Empowering government workers, non-profit volunteers, students and teachers to expand social impact and save costs with data and AI

Working with AltaML, the Government of Alberta has built an AI-powered tool to help firefighting duty officers become more confident in predicting and sustainably managing the risk of wildfires, creating the potential to save up to $3 million in annual operating costs. In the U.K., Aberdeen City Council is making it easier for workers to access social care data within minutes to provide faster and more accurate service to vulnerable citizens while saving more than $2 million annually on manual data collection. To help ensure seamless service to citizens and prevent cyberattacks to critical infrastructure like traffic light systems and utilities, the City of Brampton is helping its IT team improve its cybersecurity maturity and reduce attack alerts by 70% with help from partner Difenda. To quickly scale the creation of thousands of audiobooks and reduce volunteer labor, nonprofit Project Gutenberg is making its e-books more accessible to people with visual impairments by using text-to-speech capabilities in Azure AI and Microsoft Fabric. German-based Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald is using AI to help research students pre-classify wildlife images in two days instead of 30 — saving 95% on the cost of wildlife monitoring and distance measurement. Working with teachers to offer more individualized support to students, New York City Public Schools has developed a secure, custom AI-powered teaching assistant on Azure OpenAI to answer questions and give real-time feedback.

Providing financial services employees and customers with AI capabilities for more meaningful and personalized interactions

Ally Financial launched a proprietary platform as its foundation for generative AI innovation across the company, including live summarization of customer service calls so employees can spend more time focusing on customer interactions. With Azure OpenAI, Swiss investment firm Vontobel is boosting employee productivity in programming and data analysis, while automatic payments company Sem Parar is responding intelligently and contextually to customer inquiries to help them resolve their questions more quickly. Emirates NBD is empowering more than a thousand developers with its coding assistant leveraging the capabilities of GitHub Copilot X, while automating repetitive tasks and content generation for employees using Microsoft 365 Copilot. MetLife is helping pet parents access health records and connect with veterinary technicians more easily through its app built with AI-powered search and machine learning capabilities. With a focus on making financial services more accessible in Qatar, CWallet has saved $1 million by building its secure and compliant fintech platform on Azure to meet data regulations in the Middle East, and now plans to explore AI capabilities to simplify customer transactions.

Equipping manufacturing workers with AI-driven data and insights to improve customer support and streamline complex operations

Using Azure OpenAI, electrical equipment manufacturer ABB is integrating generative AI into its platform and applications to provide industry executives, specialists and engineers with real-time insights for better decision making and increased productivity. To reduce waiting time for customers, Dubai-based BMW Group importer AGMC is building an AI solution to more quickly locate and transport vehicles from its largest service center. By creating a scalable AI platform in Azure, Swedish steel manufacturer Epiroc is helping automate complex processes for its global employees to ensure consistent quality of its products, increase efficiency and reduce waste. Printer and imaging company Lexmark has improved its technician support efficiency by 20% with AI-driven predictive modelling, contributing to a 20% increase in customer satisfaction ratings. Xiaomi has developed an AI service bot with Power Virtual Agents to handle customer questions more efficiently and is better using Azure Translator to quickly generate product manuals in multiple languages. Indian textile company Arvind is leveraging the integrated AI capabilities of Power Apps to reduce sampling errors by 90%, production errors by 70% and order turnaround time by 30%.

Enhancing employee productivity and providing customers with AI-enhanced solutions across professional services 

Lumen Technologies is empowering employees across organizations with Microsoft 365 Copilot, making it easier for customer service teams to access repair manuals and helping sales teams summarize actionable steps from customer communications. In France, consulting firm Arthur D. Little is unifying its complex, unsorted data while maintaining data confidentiality and maximizing human capital — helping its consultants prepare for client meetings faster and curate presentation content in 50% less time. Jacobs Solutions is making it easier for staff to access and share high-quality data by integrating Microsoft Fabric with its end-to-end platform for seamless data management and advanced AI capabilities. INSPIRE Environmental is reducing costs and client turnaround time for image analysis of complex ocean data using Azure AI and machine learning. By leveraging Azure OpenAI, Orca Security is speeding up response times to customers and increasing data security while meeting regulatory compliance, Amadeus is working with Microsoft and Accenture to assist corporate travelers with trip logistics through its interactive assistant — as well as building a plug-in for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and professional services firm Atera is helping IT technicians focus on high value work while improving efficiency by 10x with its AI-powered platform.

Today’s AI advancements have also generated new opportunities for digital natives to build upon their cloud-first strategies and shape the future of industry. To combat and identify cyber financial crime behaviors, SymphonyAI developed an AI assistant to help investigators securely and automatically collect, collate and summarize financial and third-party information. By applying AI capabilities across thousands of interactions each day, CallMiner is unlocking insights that empower organizations with a better understanding of the customer journey. Striving to be a leader in empathetic personal intelligence, Inflection AI is developing an AI chatbot that helps people accelerate development while reducing downtime. Building upon its cloud-based solution on Azure, Elastic is giving customers more focused answers to search queries by combining internal company knowledge with context from actual documents. With Azure OpenAI and Azure Cognitive Services, DeepBrain AI is cutting down chatbot development time and reducing manual processes while increasing language understanding and translation capabilities; while Commerce.AI has already started driving up to 50% increases in productivity for clients with its consumer sentiment analytics solutions.

We have a collective opportunity to put generative AI to work to help solve the biggest challenges facing organizations, industries and society today. Microsoft is helping customers and partners prioritize work and pragmatically innovate with generative AI to meet their most pressing business needs. From our unwavering commitment to building products responsibly and securely to how we engage with our customers and partners, I am proud of the trust we have forged along the way. Whether you are leveraging our copilot capabilities across the Microsoft Cloud, working with our partners to apply industry-specific cloud and AI solutions or seeking to co-innovate and co-develop to build custom solutions, I look forward to working alongside you to accelerate your AI transformation.

The post Innovating with responsibility: How customers and partners are bridging data, AI and trust with the Microsoft Cloud appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

In this post, we take a closer look at how some of our partners are using Microsoft AI services to help customers modernize operations and improve data management across industries. Monetizing AI services is creating new levels of economic opportunity for Microsoft partners in this Era of AI. More than 85 percent of Fortune 100 companies across industries currently use Microsoft Azure AI, and services partners using Microsoft AI and cloud technologies benefit from the breadth and scale of our enterprise-class portfolio. It’s inspiring to see the sheer range of applications where partners are using AI to deliver better customer outcomes—from addressing issues with supply chain visibility and automating processes to improving customer experiences.

Managing data and finding efficiencies with AI
Celebal Technologies, a 2023 Microsoft AI Partner of the Year Award winner has built generative AI-based solution spanning several industries. They have created specific solutions to automate loan processing, manage pharmacy inventory, and enable supply chain visibility.

The company has also created an AI-powered tutor to enhance the learning experience of 400,000 students and educators. Celebal’s solution can handle 100,000 students using it simultaneously and has increased student satisfaction by 80 percent, reduced dropout rates by half, and improved test scores by 30 percent. To achieve this result, Celebal built the solution using Azure OpenAI and Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure AI Bot Service.

Celebal also has made groundbreaking advancements in its use of GPT, Microsoft OpenAI, and natural language processing. In addition to employing Microsoft Cloud offerings such as Office 365, PowerBI, PowerApps, Dynamics 365, and Azure, the company is using Microsoft Azure’s Machine Learning service to fine-tune and deploy GPT models for various domains and languages.

You can read more about how Microsoft offerings related to AI are helping other enterprises in our AI Transformation Partner Playbook.

Digitizing and automating tedious processes through AI
2023 Microsoft U.S. Partner of the Year for AI, Neudesic has also applied Microsoft Azure AI to its Document Intelligence Platform, which is accelerating work and productivity and creating more personalized experiences for customer management workflows.

Animal Supply Co. was one such client that spent unnecessary time and money with a tedious manual invoicing process that required staff to look up invoices and individually compare them against purchase orders and receipts. Neudesic’s Document Intelligence Platform created productivity and efficiency gains by removing manual document processing from the staff’s workflows and improving vendor relationships. This resulted in $500,000 of annual cost savings and a return on investment within the first year. For another massive record digitization project, Neudesic deployed its platform to automate document scanning, saving an estimated $3 million in labor costs and increasing the customer’s document processing ability to more than a million per year.

Neudesic uses Azure Cognitive Services to automatically extract information from contracts, forms, financial documents, recordings, and images. It also offers an Azure Data and AI Platform Accelerator, which can maximize the value of data with pre-built automation scripts for deploying an Azure data and AI platform, integrating data sources, building data models, and launching collaboration notebooks.

You can read more about how these tools are transforming other work processes with help from AI.

Unlocking data and transforming old systems
Another services partners, Wipro, has helped clients adapt to digital technology and improve their business results. It has been working with customers across multiple industries to drive actionable insights with analytics and AI solutions.

The company’s solutions include using machine learning and reporting to help a medical device manufacturer unlock the value of organizational data for customers and employees. Data and machine learning algorithms are being leveraged to proactively service and maintain manufacturing equipment, ensure the availability of technical service staff, and gather ideas on potential product improvements by leveraging inputs from customer feedback requests and complaints.

A business cafeteria retailer that wanted to optimize prices across its different locations worked with Wipro to create a pricing recommendation engine that uses machine learning. In Australia, a water utility engaged Wipro to transform its legacy systems to comply with regulatory requirements, improve customer service, and become more nimble.

To help these and other clients adopt updated digital technology, Wipro is using Microsoft AI, Azure, and the Microsoft portfolio of data and analytics products, including SQL Server and Power BI. The company’s flagship solutions—Wipro HOLMES, an analytics and AI automation platform, and the Data Discovery Platform—also are built on the Azure platform.

Automating auditing services with AI
Microsoft partner EY is a global leader in digital transformation and intelligent automation, powered by Microsoft AI. They have applied AI technology to enhance and automate their tax and auditing services, making them more efficient and reliable. EY has used Microsoft’s AI tools to automate more than 250 processes worldwide, saving an estimated 2 million hours of human work every year while increasing quality and accuracy.

EY follows three core principles when implementing any automation technology: free up resources, improve decision making, and complement human capabilities rather than replace them. EY has helped various clients across public and private sectors to leverage AI solutions for their business needs, such as developing a national AI strategy for the Government of Malta or leveraging an EY Smart Retail Solution to improve inventory management for a dairy products company.

Enabling partners to create modernized solutions
With Microsoft AI technology, partners are innovating solutions that streamline workflows and processes, improve productivity and efficiency, and build new revenue streams. This is enabling new opportunities for customers looking to address challenges across industries.

Partners with deep knowledge about building and deploying solutions using Microsoft Azure AI are invited to explore the benefits of earning the Build and Modernize AI Apps with Microsoft Azure specialization. Microsoft announced also a three times investment to increase the scale and availability of Azure Migrate and Modernize, along with the launch of Azure Innovate. Discover how Azure Innovate is designed to help at each stage of building AI solutions, from planning to deployment.

Additionally, find out how joining the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program gives our partners advantages as they build AI-powered services. Get a head start on going to market with the Era of AI campaign. This collection of ready-to-go assets and marketing campaign in a box are designed to help you drive demand and communicate customer value.

The post How Microsoft and service partners use AI to enable customer transformation appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Today, many organizations feel their workers are not empowered or digitally well-equipped. Manufacturers struggle with high turnover and the challenge of training and upskilling new workers. Downtime and worker productivity remain nearly universal issues.

To help address these issues, Microsoft is investing in frontline worker enablement across a broad range of technologies. This includes new solutions to help frontline workers deliver exceptional service with next-generation AI, as well as on our ongoing investment in mixed reality hardware and solutions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides cultivates collaborative environments where people put knowledge into action. Here are three ways mixed reality is addressing frontline worker training, support, and knowledge transfer across industries:

1. Resolve issues quickly with remote support and collaboration

Unplanned downtime is costly. The average manufacturer confronts over 800 hours of equipment downtime a year, or 15 hours per week. Industrial manufacturers consequently spend almost USD50 billion on downtime every year.¹ In these high-pressure situations, communication across functions can either speed resolution or create blockers to forward progress.

Historically, manufacturing environments fostered knowledge silos with valuable insights confined to individuals, groups, or departments. Mixed reality shifts this dynamic. Workers can share real-time, situational video of their environment, allowing others to experience it firsthand—regardless of location. Expert guidance, troubleshooting, or step-by-step instructions are immediate. This eliminates the need to travel, while minimizing downtime and production disruptions.

Gone are the days where access to experts, communication barriers, or information silos dictate how knowledge is shared or when assets are repaired. Working on assembly or service lines requires specialized skills and expertise. Access to individuals with the relevant, hands-on experience, however, is not always possible. With Dynamics 365 Guides, when specialized skills are required, experts are a Microsoft Teams call away. 

Together, Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist with Teams connect workers beyond their physical limits. A communication hub, Teams enables collaboration across the workforce. Its integration with Dynamics 365 Guides allows workers to extend this to the physical world on any device.

2. Accelerate training with information in context

Frontline workers are the backbone of industry operations. These roles demand technical savvy, quick decision-making, and resiliency. Traditional in-place training and onboarding processes are often ineffective or add to the cognitive burden of overwhelmed frontline workers.

Hands-on training with physical assets is expensive, time-consuming, and at times dangerous. Inconsistent quality or impersonal training is often the result. However, holographic environments can mitigate these on-ramping risks. Embracing mixed reality accelerates learning by introducing relevant, task-specific knowledge in new immersive and data rich environments.

Using 3D models and digital twins, frontline workers receive a better understanding of the machines and processes at hand. Related materials are retrieved or amended instantly, nurturing knowledge exchange, which is further enhanced by AI. Mixed reality is the eyes and ears of AI. Delving into operation nuances for personalized, in-depth learning becomes easier. When integrated, mixed reality and AI accelerate worker training, shortening steps and supplying users with the working knowledge they need for the task at hand.

With Dynamics 365 Guides frontline and service workers can start accelerating their role-based knowledge today. Workers receive purpose-built, interactive guidance on complex machinery, assembly protocols, or maintenance steps when and where they need it.

3. Ensure transfer of information, insights, and skills

As employees near retirement, their wealth of expertise needs to be captured and shared. These experts understand the assets and processes that keep production moving. Retaining and transferring that knowledge is vital. There’s just one problem: Manufacturing is experiencing a talent exodus. Globalization, unemployment, and a rapidly aging workforce together are compounding operational challenges. Organizations are rightfully concerned. One-third of manufacturing executives claim retaining and replacing high-performing employees as a strategic priority in 2023.² Mixed reality is poised to help solve this by capturing information for informed decision-making and greater productivity.

Mixed reality facilitates knowledge retention and transfer across an organization through the creation of immersive experiences and simulations, regardless of location or device. The versatility of mixed reality makes up-skilling faster and more accessible. Dynamics 365 Guides offers industrial workers the opportunity to document unique situational processes and procedures not included in asset operating manuals. Step-by-step instructions, annotations, and “on the ground” insights are placed in context and immediately accessible throughout the day.

With Dynamics 365 Guides embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile, mixed reality is democratized for every worker. Organizations now have asset, maintenance, and service information at their fingertips. This combination in one app improves worker accuracy, productivity, and efficiency—while offering powerful guidance on the device at hand.

Realize your future manufacturing potential

Mixed reality is a key part of an emerging technology category known as the industrial metaverse. Its foundational cross-platform technologies—including AI, cloud to edge, digital twins, machine learning, and mixed reality—are shifting our relationship with data from stationary to dynamic experiences.

Mixed reality is an essential glue that visualizes the diverse elements of the industrial metaverse. Seamlessly integrating the physical and digital, mixed reality creates immersive experiences that transcend traditional industrial operations. Guides overlays information atop real-world assets and scenarios, making knowledge available in context where it is needed most.

Prepare your workforce for their smart manufacturing future with mixed reality. Learn how Dynamics 365 Guides can help realize tangible business outcomes.  

¹Manufacturing Without Unplanned Downtime Could Become A Reality Sooner Than You Think, Forbes.

²2023 manufacturing industry outlook, Deloitte.

The post 3 ways mixed reality empowers frontline workers appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Retail is one of the most agile and innovative industries. With ever-evolving consumer demands and shifting supply chains, successful retailers are characteristically adaptable and resilient. Microsoft Cloud for Retail helps retailers accelerate innovation with industry-specific solutions that enable them to maximize the value of their data. Our primary focus of this wave is offering solutions for retailers to provide engaging shopping experiences while empowering store associates to be more productive and customer-focused. In this release, Microsoft Cloud for Retail continues to invest in both Smart Store Analytics and Store Operations with customer-requested features and additional AI and machine learning-based capabilities.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail’s Smart Store Analytics solution provides insights on store performance using anonymized data of store transactions and shoppers’ in-store journeys. Store managers see KPIs, data visualizations, and data science models that help them monitor store performance and make data-driven decisions for optimizing store performance. Working with AiFi, the largest provider of autonomous shopping solutions, we have enabled an end-to-end autonomous store solution. AiFi’s camera-only technology, running on Microsoft Azure, captures anonymized data throughout the shopper’s journey in real-time. Computer vision tracks shopper actions and enables frictionless checkout. In addition to enabling frictionless checkout, this solution helps retailers further improve customer experiences by understanding:

• How customers interact with the products on the shelves.
• How shoppers react to promotions and communications.
• What they choose to take off the shelf and purchase.

With this release, we are adding additional AI and machine learning based insights around product recommendations and foot traffic analysis, to add to existing models and visualizations that are helping store operators optimize store layout, product catalog, and shelf placement for peak performance.

With Store Operations Assist, store associates can be more productive and engage more meaningfully with customers. The application provides employees with the ability to conduct typical business processes such as inventory counts, stock audits, store walks, shift change checks, incident reporting, and safety audits. Associates can also view and use customer insights to schedule follow-up consultations. Store managers can digitally review and provide feedback, support associates, and see their store’s performance. With this release, we are enabling additional features like tablet support, branching logic for survey responses, and enhanced integration with Microsoft Teams front line worker apps.

Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (preview)

Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (preview) helps enable a more sustainable future and a more productive agriculture industry by empowering organizations to drive innovation through insights, reduce their environmental impact, optimize agriculture operations, and build trust rooted in transparency. With access to data and insights from the farm, organizations can drive harvest and production efficiency, reduce food waste, create nutrient-dense and high-quality products, automate and improve environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and Scope 3 emissions reporting, and provide transparency to stakeholders.

Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (preview) extends the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform with industry-specific data connectors and capabilities to connect farm data from disparate sources, enabling organizations to leverage high-quality datasets and accelerate the development of digital agriculture solutions. Instead of devoting resources to managing unstructured data, customers and partners can focus on product innovation with the ability to reason over readily available and abundant data. Furthermore, organizations can use in-house, third-party, or Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform services to speed the path to analytics and business intelligence solutions. With a connected ecosystem of partners building solutions on top of Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (preview), this is another step towards a connected and collaborative agriculture industry.

With the current wave, we are delivering one-step geospatial and temporal indexing capabilities enabling customers and partners to easily integrate non-harmonized farm machinery activity data from different sources. In addition, the Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (preview) now includes integration of Climate Field View™ by Bayer. Partners like Bayer have used Azure Data Manager for Agriculture to shift from a self-managed data estate to a managed model with Microsoft. The Climate Field View platform harnesses data from Azure Data Manager for Agriculture’s satellite and weather pipelines to enable insights on potential yield-limiting factors in growers’ fields. Our strategic partnership, leverages Bayer’s industry knowledge-as well as data connectors, models, transformations, and workflows-to inform how we strengthen Azure Data Manager for Agriculture and empower organizations to address the challenges in agriculture today. Furthermore, we are improving time to value by enhancing the Azure portal experience for developers and system administrators.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare

With this release, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare continues the development of features that enable patient-centric operating models to ease the burden on providers and help facilitate proactive healthcare. Our healthcare customers and partners are a key part of our development of solutions for providers and payors. We have landed and continued to iterate on several impactful capabilities in this wave: Patient journeys, care management, and virtual health data tables.

Optimizing each touchpoint in a patient’s experience can help providers improve patient satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, while payors can address efficiencies and the return on investment of their health plans. Patient journeys in Patient Outreach enable health organizations to orchestrate trigger-based workflows across patient touchpoints to automate repetitive tasks and allow patients to get personalized care faster.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare has also developed solutions and data integration capabilities for health organizations to make it easier for them to provide care anywhere. Our aim is to make it easier for caregivers to access and track patients’ vitals and to gain early insights into patient conditions. Device data support for care management (preview) uses the MedTech service in Azure Health Data Services to normalize data from diverse medical devices and convert it into the fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR) format in a secure way. 

Additionally, we are improving the time to value with updates to Virtual Health Data Tables (general availability) to include support for the create, update, and delete FHIR operations. Utilizing this functionality, customers can perform updates to FHIR resource data on the remote FHIR service directly from within Microsoft Power Platform. This enables health customers to leverage the Microsoft no-code and low-code Power Platform to build health applications, simplifying the complexities of the FHIR standard. Learn more about our current and upcoming Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare release.

We have also expanded collaboration with Cognizant to integrate Cognizant’s TriZetto healthcare products. With this integration, we aim to improve efficiency and help customers achieve significantly shorter time-to-value with enhanced patient and member engagement, improved data interoperability, and improved insights. Together we will also develop and run Cognizant’s current and future healthcare software as a service (SaaS) solution on Microsoft Azure, migrate new and existing clients from on-premises environments to streamlined functions managed on the Microsoft Cloud, and support future technologies designed to deliver new insights for payers, providers, and consumers

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability continues to empower organizations in their sustainability efforts across our solutions which streamline data ingestion, integration, calculations, reporting, and more. Our offering also includes Environmental Credit Service (preview), bringing efficiency, trust, and transparency to voluntary ecological markets. We continue to extend our data story with the availability of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (preview) which allows organizations to get emissions data for extensibility and customization for solutions and reporting.

This also extends our Scope 3 category calculations for the GHG Protocol, including providing reporting on the following Scope 3 categories:

• Scope 3 category 3: Fuel and energy-related activities not included in Scope 1 or Scope 2.
• Scope 3 category 12 (included in a previous release): End-of-life treatment of sold products.

Additionally, our joint solution with Ecolab, a global sustainability leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention, combines the power of the ECOLAB3D™ digital platform with Microsoft Sustainability Manager. With this solution, organizations are able to monitor and manage water data so they can gain greater visibility into how they are tracking against water and sustainability goals.

Another highlight is our expanded set of emission factors which now includes the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra emission factors are used by the United Kingdom and other international organizations for reporting greenhouse gas emissions, which help organizations to maintain compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.

Lastly, data capture (preview) helps organizations train and use optical character recognition (OCR) models for processing and ingesting Scope 2 purchased energy invoices to differentiate between energy providers. Data capture uses Microsoft Power Platform’s AI Builder and document intelligence solutions. With this, organizations can now create a seamless workstream to ingest data from within Microsoft Sustainability Manager to use in calculations and reporting.

We are committed to helping our customers meet the needs of new ESG demands and markets and are actively working to extend reporting and sustainability solutions to do so. More updates are coming soon about expanded data management capabilities.

Azure Data Manager for Energy

Azure Data Manager for Energy is a secure, reliable, hyperscale, fully managed cloud-based data platform solution that supports a wide variety of energy solutions compatible with OSDU™ Date Platform. This solution addresses the challenge of data—moving from disparate systems and disconnected applications to a holistic approach. Azure Data Manager for Energy is designed to help organizations get more value from their data by scaling ingestion and data enrichment, providing easy interoperability, and unlocking self-serve data analytics capabilities. The open Microsoft platform enables developers, data managers, and geoscientists alike to innovate the next generation of digital solutions for the energy industry.

Since its preview, the team has addressed multiple customer feedback items that can be seen on the release notes page. Customers can look forward to another heavily requested feature that will allow for scenarios including testing, training, and evaluation of Azure Data Manager for Energy or specific OSDU™ Data Platform features. This will be released as a separate “Developer” Tier in the coming weeks.

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services continues to invest in delivering capabilities to manage financial services data at scale and make it easier for financial services institutions to improve customer experience, coordinate engagement, and drive operational efficiency. This wave focuses on strengthening offerings in banking, cross-vertical experiences, and financial services data models. We are prioritizing providing customers and partners with more flexibility in meeting their specific needs through componentization. The components offer individual deployment and configuration capabilities for customer onboarding, document processing, and in how customer financial information is represented. We will enable flexible adaptation of the UI to different scenarios, offer a wealth of tools for document processing and management using AI, and provide various endpoints for partner enablement in the process. We plan to improve the retail banking loan onboarding solution with the new document intelligence feature and offer additional flexibility enhancements as requested by our customers and partners.

In partnership with Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, KX has released kdb Insights—a robust, integrated data management and time series streaming analytics solution for optimal real-time decisioning. Leverage the capabilities of kdb Insights running on a virtual machine to build and deploy highly performant, data-intensive applications. Kdb Insights allows developers to build real-time analytics with connectivity, tool, and infrastructure ease.

Global partner ecosystem

Our unique value proposition is our global ecosystem of partners. These partners create tailored solutions for organizations by developing connectors and continuing to build on top of our industry cloud offerings. Independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, and advisory partners from every industry can extend the capabilities of our Microsoft Cloud for industries to meet the unique needs of customers across the globe. Trusted advisers like Accenture, Avanade, Capgemini, EY, KPMG, and PwC are helping organizations everywhere plan, design, and implement strategies and robust solutions to enable transformation across several industries including Healthcare, Sustainability, and Financial Services. Find a complete list of partners who are developing joint solutions built on our platform that deliver differentiated customer experiences, empower employees, and manage enterprise risk on AppSource and Azure Marketplace.

Learn more

Microsoft Industry Cloud continues to expand our offerings in the industry space. We continue to invest in clouds such as Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.

Follow us on Industry Cloud blogs for industry-specific news and read more about what’s upcoming on our documentation pages.

MEDICAL DEVICE DISCLAIMER. Microsoft product(s) and service(s) (1) are not designed, intended or made available as a medical device(s), and (2) are not designed or intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgment and should not be used to replace or as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgment.

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