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

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

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

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

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

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

Enriching employee experiences

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

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

Reinventing customer engagement

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

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

Reshaping business processes

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

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

Bending the curve on innovation

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

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

Next steps for AI transformation

Business Opportunity of AI

Get the study

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

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

The technological paradigm shift driven by AI solutions is redefining what current and future success looks like for every industry and market across the world. For a region like Latin America, this opens new paths to not only propel its economies but to positively impact each community. Crucially, it also presents powerful tools to address pressing challenges like skills development and sustainability, while being able to promote inclusive growth. The pivotal role cloud and AI solutions can play on Latin America’s development is substantial.

AI Office Hours

Build your generative AI fluency

Get started

Companies and organizations across the region are already showing eagerness to leverage this technology and realize the potential it entails. Countries like Colombia are home to innovative AI projects. While Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has the potential to propel its gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 4.2% through 2030 by strongly adopting AI, according to a study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by the consultancy FrontierView in 2020.¹ Furthermore, the Brazilian market already represents the sixth largest GitHub developer community contributing to generative AI projects globally, demonstrating its appetite for innovation.²

These two markets are setting regional cloud and AI adoption examples on the global stage. Recently, Microsoft’s AI Tour visited both countries to highlight some of the most inspiring and impactful projects and initiatives driven by local organizations, companies, and communities in collaboration with Microsoft.

Project Guacamaya tackles deforestation in Colombia with AI

According to the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project, the Amazon rainforest lost about 3 million hectares to deforestation from 2022 to 2023.³ To address this worrying threat to one of the most diverse and complex ecosystem on the planet, various institutions, including Universidad de Los Andes, Instituto Alexander von Humboldt, Instituto Sinchi, IDEAM, and Microsoft AI for Good Lab, collaborated to create Project Guacamaya, a publicly available AI-powered tool to detect deforestation and biodiversity shifts.

This unique collaboration has brought the public and private sectors, educational institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) together to create a powerful solution using satellite imagery, camera traps, and bioacoustics to track forest coverage and deforestation patterns, allowing conservationists to better understand its impact and improve prevention and mitigation efforts.

Powering world class sustainable and secure cloud and AI infrastructure

Microsoft continues to evaluate and diligently work to address sustainability and resource needs associated with infrastructure growth. An agreement signed with the Amazon Reforestation Fund operated by Brazilian-based startup Mombak will provide a total of up to 1.5 million tons of carbon removal by 2032 from native biodiversity reforestation projects across the Amazon. This project provided the foundation for the World Bank to issue a USD225 million Amazon Reforestation-Linked Outcome Bond.

Another agreement was signed with Brazilian company re.green that aims to deliver approximately 3 million tons of carbon removal credits over a 15-year period, supporting the restoration of over 16,000 hectares of forest across Brazil, including the states of Maranhão and Bahia. Such programs join initiatives such as Microsoft’s 15-year renewable energy contract signed with AES Brasil for a wind generation project through the Cajuína Wind Complex, located in Rio Grande do Norte, and the agreement with BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group (TIG) to provide Microsoft with up to 8 million nature-based carbon removal credits through 2043 to be delivered from TIG’s USD1 billion reforestation and restoration strategy in Latin America, which includes the Cerrado biome in Brazil.¹

Colombia’s financial and insurance sectors lead the way in AI adoption

As one of the oldest banks in Colombia with a history that goes back to 1875, Bancolombia brings together tradition and fierce innovation by becoming the global leader in GitHub Copilot adoption. Empowering a technical team of 4,000 people, including 3,400 software and infrastructure engineers, the bank has achieved a 30% increase in code generation, boosting automated application changes to an average of 18,000 per year, with a rate of 42 productive daily deployments. This is the most recent development in Bancolombia’s continuous digital transformation journey to serve its 15 million customers in the region.

For its part, insurance company SURA is employing AI solutions for genomic sequencing processing and clinical and genetic data analysis as part of the work carried out by its Omics Sciences Center. The Center, which aims to transform the treatment of genetic diseases affecting millions of people in the region, led the National Association of Colombian Business Persons (ANDI) to recognize SURA as the most innovative insurer in the country.⁴ The AI-powered platform has had a significant impact on improving diagnostics, personalized treatment, and scientific research by generating more than 11,500 reports related to hereditary cancer panels and exomes.

ConectAI empowers Brazilians to reap the benefits of AI

In collaboration with 26 organizations in Brazil, including non-profits, educational institutions and governments, Microsoft launched ConectAI (formerly Conecta+), a program designed to provide AI skills training to 5 million people in the country. This ambitious initiative includes collaborations with the National Service for Industrial Training in São Paulo (SENAI), the Ministry of Labor and Employment through the “School of Workers 4.0” program, the non-profit Nova Escola providing training for educators, UNICEF to bring AI skills to people between 18 and 25 years old, and the National School for Public Administration (ENAP) to foster technological innovation in the public sector, among others.

The program represents the next stage in Microsoft’s continued push to enable greater innovation and increased competitiveness for the Brazilian market. Since 2021, Microsoft has fostered digital literacy in the country by engaging with 12.7 million people through the Mais Brasil program, a commitment exemplified by the recently announced investment of BRL14.7 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure over three years, the largest single investment in the company’s 35 year history in the country. 

The stage is set for Latin America’s new phase of development through AI

The amount of talent, creativity, and ambition in Latin America has made the region a hub for innovation in recent years, one now further empowered by recent developments in AI. The projects seen during Microsoft’s AI Tour editions in Colombia and Brazil are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential and competitiveness AI and cloud technologies are unlocking across crucial industries and sectors in each country. I am convinced the coming years will bring exciting new paths for success as these tools continue to deliver unprecedented solutions to both business and social challenges when combined with the exceptional ingenuity of Latin American markets.

Find the resources to support your AI journey

• Explore Microsoft’s AI solutions
• Download the AI readiness worksheet

• Continue your AI learning journey
• Read An Introduction to Generative AI and Safety

¹Microsoft announces 14.7 billion Reais investment over three years in Cloud and AI infrastructure and provide AI training at scale to upskill 5 million people in Brazil, Microsoft News Center Brasil.

²Octoverse: The state of open source and rise of AI in 2023, The GitHub Blog.

³Proyecto Guacamaya usa modelos IA contra la deforestación, Microsoft Source.

⁴Seguros SURA, a subsidiary of Suramericana, is the most innovative insurer in Colombia according to the most recent ANDI ranking.

The post Colombia and Brazil embrace the potential of cloud and AI solutions to drive growth and tackle social challenges appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Armed conflict, economic uncertainty, climate change, and countless other pressures contribute to global headwinds gusting against progress. Thousands of nonprofits and other social impact organizations are bringing the skills, passion, and boots-on-the-ground effort to meet these challenges directly. Their dedication improves the lives of people across the world. 

Mission-driven organizations face difficulties of their own, though. Changes in demographics, global economies, and geopolitics lead to rising demand for their services. Nonprofits have always operated with limited resources, but today’s economic climate makes fundraising even tougher. Increasingly sophisticated threats to democracy and cybersecurity make their work more needed and more difficult at the same time. 

Microsoft for Nonprofits

Empower your nonprofit with AI

Get started

This is where AI can help—to enable nonprofits and other social impact organizations to do more good with less. AI, through Microsoft’s purpose-driven technology, can unlock the capacity of these vital organizations worldwide. As the sector increasingly adopts AI, we see more examples of its potential to accelerate societal impact.  

We are supporting nonprofits through technology, and particularly by leveraging Azure AI, to deepen their impact in three significant ways. AI is helping them protect and expand critical services, meet the needs of shifting demographics in the Global South, and partner across sectors to drive humanitarian progress. 

1. Securing and expanding critical services 

With roughly 8 billion people sharing the earth’s limited resources, and with too many people living on not enough, it’s important to steward critical supplies and services. From healthcare to clean water, these resources are foundational to well-being and the pursuit of fundamental rights. 

AI is enabling social impact organizations to reliably and securely scale these essential services. For example, while the Kenyan Red Cross offers mental health support in person and through its 24-hour phone line, this vital care remains out of reach for many people. The Kenyan Red Cross worked with psychologists and counselors, AI experts, people with lived experience of mental health conditions, and others to create an Azure AI-powered chatbot to expand its free mental health outreach.

The chatbot, which is in its beta release and is embedded in the organization’s website, prompts conversations about mental wellbeing, recommends helpful practices, and offers to connect users to human counselors and in-person resources such as humanitarian organizations or clinics. Kelvin Njenga, Digital Transformation Officer at Kenya Red Cross, adds, “In Kenya, there is a lot of stigma around getting mental health support. Leveraging AI in the chatbot provides that support, confidentially.”

This use of AI does not attempt to replace human connection. Rather, it complements person-to-person support and broadens the Kenyan Red Cross’s capacity to reach even more people with the mental health care they deserve. About one billion people worldwide live with a medical condition, and technology-enabled solutions like this chatbot can help overcome barriers to crucial services.¹ 

2. Delivering benefits for the most vulnerable and hard to reach people 

AI is enabling organizations to reach more people in some of the most remote areas of the world. Through better use of data and insights, AI solutions can lead to more informed decision-making and more efficient development programs that can change lives.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations and an International Financial Institution that invests in the world’s poorest people, has built an internal analytics platform with Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Azure—including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning—and other data and AI solutions to turn its information into insights and then action. 

IFAD developed the platform in compliance with the United Nations Principles on the Ethical Use of AI. The solution combines data, dashboards, and visualizations from diverse sources across IFAD, enabling staff around the world to connect and contribute to this wealth of information. IFAD anticipates the AI-enabled platform will help them develop and implement ever-more impactful interventions which benefit small-scale food producers and other rural people.

AI and machine learning can combine and analyze vast amounts of information at a pace and scale impossible for humans to achieve on their own. Empowered by the most complete information possible, leaders of social impact organizations can move the needle farther on the world’s most pressing challenges.

3. Partnering to empower the social impact ecosystem 

The problems our planet faces are too vast and complex for any one organization to solve. We must all work together to innovate solutions that make life better for everyone. By utilizing the expertise and lived experience of a diversity of stakeholders, AI solutions can make more of a difference than any single organization or agency could do alone. 

That is precisely the approach that one coalition is taking to tackle malnutrition in Kenya. A cross-sector collaboration between Amref Health Africa, the Kenyan Ministry of Health, the University of Southern California, and Microsoft is developing a model in Azure to predict and prevent malnutrition. 

The model combines a decade’s worth of detailed healthcare information, collected by the Kenyan Ministry of Health, with other inputs, such as satellite imagery and weather data. Machine learning-powered modeling will help Amref, Kenyan health agencies, and partner humanitarian organizations better understand current nutrition within communities and anticipate future problems. This forecasting will enable them to mobilize health workers and deploy resources to halt malnutrition, explains Dr. Shiphrah Kuria, Amref Regional Manager for Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health.

“This technology puts us ahead because with better planning and better prevention, we are getting closer to our goals of ending malnutrition.”

Dr. Shiphrah Kuria, Amref Regional Manager for Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health

We at Microsoft are not only providing the technology that enables nonprofits to build and utilize these Azure AI-based solutions. We are also investing deeply in the infrastructure and resources needed to run AI at an unprecedented scale. That way, we help bring the power of AI to social impact organizations everywhere—and transform the world for the better.   

Explore AI solutions for nonprofits

Learn more about how Microsoft is supporting nonprofits, see how other organizations are using AI to drive impact, and get more information about how you can safely and securely deploy AI to support your business needs.  

¹World Health Organization Fact Sheet, 2022.

The post 3 ways social impact organizations can leverage AI to transform outcomes at scale appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Coworkers reviewing photographs
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.

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.