That’s where the promise of AI transformation comes in.

We at Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, have developed and implemented a diverse portfolio of agentic, AI-driven capabilities that are now embedded directly in our day-to-day IT operations. These agentic systems—AI solutions that can reason across data, recommend actions, and, in some cases, execute workflows with human oversight—turn telemetry and insights into action, making our IT infrastructure and processes more resilient, auditable, and proactive.

“We’ve crossed an important threshold in the evolution of AI for IT. We’re now using the capabilities these technologies provide to transform all our core IT services, making everything we do on that side more efficient and secure.”

Brian Fielder, vice president, Microsoft Digital

While your organization’s IT infrastructure may not match our size or complexity, we believe any company can benefit from the AI-driven innovations that we’ve implemented in recent years.

We focus our AI investments across three core areas:

• Network management and infrastructure
• Tenant and device management
• Employee and engineering productivity

We’re also using AI across our IT systems to increase security, both as a standalone initiative and an integrated priority. This principle is baked into all our compliance, vulnerability response, and governance scenarios.

“We’ve crossed an important threshold in the evolution of AI for IT,” says Brian Fielder, vice president of Microsoft Digital. “We’re now using the capabilities these technologies provide to transform all our core IT services, making everything we do on that side more efficient and secure.”

Enterprise IT maturity

This article is part of series on Enterprise IT maturity in the era of agents. We recommend reading all four of these articles to gain a comprehensive view of how your organization can transform with the help of AI and become a Frontier Firm.

1. Becoming a Frontier Firm: Our IT playbook for the AI era
2. Enterprise AI maturity in five steps: Our guide for IT leaders
3. The agentic future: How we’re becoming an AI-first Frontier Firm at Microsoft
4. AI at scale: How we’re transforming our enterprise IT operations at Microsoft (this story)

Pillar One: AI in network management and infrastructure

We have applied AI throughout our global network and IT infrastructure, enabling us to keep up with the ever-increasing demands for capacity and services while reducing disruptions and incidents.

The different innovations we’ve made that fall under this pillar demonstrate the breadth of the opportunity to reimagine IT services with AI.

Supporting enterprise IT at Microsoft: Our three pillars

Network management with AI

• AIOps
• Network infrastructure Copilot (NiC)
• Vuln.AI
• MyWorkspace AI Assistant

Tenant and device management with AI

• Digital Asset Management Copilot
• Works councils and tenant trust review
• Enterprise vulnerability management
• IntelLicense
• myDevice AI Agent

Employee and engineering productivity with AI

• ADO Copilot
• ADO Work Item Assistant
• Automation Hub/Automation Catalog

The impact of AI technologies on enterprise IT operations at Microsoft can be divided into three main areas: network management, tenant and device management, and employee and engineering productivity.

AIOps: Transforming network management with operational excellence

AIOps, or Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, involves the application of machine learning, big data analytics, and automation to streamline and improve IT operations processes. In Microsoft Digital, we use AIOps to help us to manage our complex global IT infrastructure.

Our AIOps solution leverages sophisticated data insights to detect and remediate network issues before they become impactful. We use our internally developed AIOps tools to turn raw signals and institutional know-how into guided actions that have led to major time and cost savings.

AIOps benefits include:

• Enhanced productivity: AIOps reduces cognitive load by automating routine tasks, allowing teams to focus on more strategic activities.
• Proactive issue resolution: AIOps executes automatic troubleshooting and remediation, minimizing downtime and reducing incident impact.
• Improved decision-making: AIOps leverages advanced analytics and machine learning to provide actionable insights, which enhances our decision-making capabilities.

The impact of our AIOps work is huge: thousands of hours of engineering time saved and a significant reduction in total disruption time for employees across the company’s global workforce.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI Services

NiC: A network engineer’s companion

Our Network Infrastructure Copilot (NiC) serves as an everyday companion for our network engineers and field IT professionals. With NiC, our IT pros can use natural-language queries to gain quick, accurate insights into network health, configuration states, documentation, troubleshooting resources, and live device data—all in one place.

Some of the typical use cases for NiC include:

• Summarizing syslogs for specific devices
• Recommending circuit upgrades
• Checking deployment status
• Listing devices missing required controls (such as AuditD)

In aggregate, NiC streamlines network device lifecycle management and operation, delivering significant time savings while improving the consistency of operational decisions.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure Data Explorer

Vuln.AI: Proactively keeping our systems safe

Leaving just a single connected device unpatched could put our entire enterprise at risk. That’s why we developed Vuln.AI (Vulnerability Management Copilot), our intelligent agentic system that has transformed the way we identify, prioritize, and resolve these vulnerabilities across our enterprise network.

Vuln.AI coordinates two agents that enable our network engineers to gather, analyze, and respond to vulnerabilities proactively using AI insights. The research agent maps the vulnerability to the Microsoft infrastructure, significantly increasing accuracy and reducing manual effort and time involved. It then feeds this information to an interactive AI agent, which becomes a gateway for a security engineer or device owner to interface with the data, ask detailed questions, and gather the required information.

Thanks to Vuln.AI, we’ve been able to accelerate infrastructure compliance, reduce exposure windows, streamline security operations, improve endpoint hygiene, and lower operational risk. Our data show thousands of hours of engineering time saved and meaningful improvement in the accuracy of impacted-device identification.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure Data Explorer

MyWorkspace AI Assistant: Scaling support to meet demand

Engineering disciplines across Microsoft rely on production-like Azure lab environments for testing Windows updates, investigating incidents, and building customer demos. We created the MyWorkspace AI Assistant to enable the rapid creation and management of these lab environments in the face of increasing user demands across our operations. This tool uses AI to help speed tasks such as the development and testing of Windows updates, investigating security incidents, and creating prototypes for customer demos.

Time is a critical component for all lab scenarios, whether it be resolving a customer support issue or testing a Windows Update ahead of a patch release. Our goal is to reduce “Customer Pain Time” (CPT), which measures the amount of time it takes to solve a customer’s problem. Every hour saved in the support process represents a multi-hour reduction in customer pain.

Our most recent data shows that My Workspace AI Assistant reduced tickets submitted to our Tier 1 teams by 50% and saved 500 hours by leveraging support chats, configuration guides, and other artifacts In addition, new user onboarding training tickets were reduced by 90%, and individual support interaction time was reduced from an average of 20 minutes to 30 seconds.

Related products:

Azure OpenAI, Azure Cognitive Search, Azure Bot Framework, Azure Adaptive Cards

Pillar Two: Tenant and device management

One of the most complicated dimensions of managing IT services at Microsoft is our tenant. This refers to the internal instance of all our cloud services, including Teams channels, SharePoint sites, Power BI workspaces, apps, and email accounts, as well as the millions of devices used by our global workforce.

In Microsoft Digital, we’ve developed a number of AI-powered tools and solutions to help us manage this gigantic management challenge.

Digital asset management with AI: Governing the tenant

Microsoft empowers our employees to create assets—apps, groups, sites, Power Platform environments, Power BI workspaces—at self-service speed, and our governance must match that pace. Our Digital Asset Management Copilot is a multi-agent solution that surfaces risk and policy violations, recommends fixes, and enables self-service remediation.

Our employees can access a Copilot-like experience to self-manage their assets and ensure app compliance accountability. The agent surfaces insights and recommendations related to asset compliance like oversharing of sensitive documents, highlights tenant assets that pose a security risk, offers remediation mechanisms, and can execute compliance tasks with end-user or admin validation.

The benefits include a more secure enterprise tenant and an embedded culture of compliance: Simplify compliance responsibilities, making them intuitive and seamless for our employees. Success is gauged through end user NSAT scores from our compliance solutions.

The scope of this tool spans more than 1.5 million digital assets in the tenant. The benefits include a more secure enterprise tenant and an embedded culture of compliance. With the help of the Digital Asset Management Copilot, we aim to reach our overall goal of 90% compliance with policies covering ownership, labeling, oversharing, and periodic attestation across the tenant.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Azure AI Service, Power BI Copilot

Works councils and tenant trust reviews: Optimizing tenant onboarding

In the past, fragmented and manual processes around works councils and tenant trust reviews consultations in the European Economic Area  could result in delays to our product launches by as much as four to six months. Our AI-driven optimization program streamlines the end-to-end process, improving submission quality and routing and providing other efficiency recommendations.

The result of these efforts is significant: We’ve managed to reduce the average works councils and tenant trust review cycle times from 133 days to 40—about a 70% improvement—while strengthening trust and transparency across roughly 17 European Economic Area countries.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI Service, Power BI

Enterprise Vulnerability Management: Reducing risk to our device fleet

Our extensive companywide Windows device fleet is exposed to vulnerabilities for extended periods after remediations (patches) are applied, increasing the risk of security breaches and operational inefficiencies. Relying on manual processes can lead to slow response times.

Enterprise Vulnerability Management (EVM) is a multi-phase strategy that uses AI technology in combination with Microsoft first-party vulnerability management solutions to proactively secure and maintain the fleet. While Vuln.AI helps us keep our enterprise infrastructure safe and secure, EVM does the same for our fleet of Windows devices.

EVM minimizes risk and reduces manual effort by integrating advanced detection, automated remediation, and compliance acceleration, minimizing risk and manual effort. This holistic approach ensures our devices stay secure and compliant with minimal IT intervention, delivering resilient, self-healing endpoints across the enterprise.

AI-driven EVM delivers measurable impact across our security, compliance, and IT efficiency. Our goal is to reach 95% compliance within a week of a major patching event while reducing operational overhead and enhancing enterprise resilience.

Related products:

Windows Autopatch, Intune, Windows Update

IntelLicense: Our AI-driven license optimization and audit readiness

Managing a software estate the size of ours—including 28 disconnected systems, 400,000 software assets, and more than 800 suppliers—requires license intelligence. IntelLicense is a set of advanced, AI-driven solutions we’ve developed to help us revolutionize our software discovery and acquisition processes.

These solutions optimize our software asset management throughout the enterprise software lifecycle, reducing fragmented data, lowering audit risk, and accelerating decision-making. These changes have delivered substantial cost savings and efficiency improvements. One standout example: Our external vendor audits that previously took an average of 154 days are targeted to drop to about 15 minutes, thanks to IntelLicense changes.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, Azure AI Service

myDevice AI: Transforming our IT asset management

Ensuring the security of our physical assets requires a unified and accurate inventory. Fragmented IT asset data leads to inconsistent policies and exposes vulnerabilities, making it difficult for security teams to quickly isolate threats and limit potential impact.

The myDevice AI Agent advances an AI-native approach to IT asset management across our IT tenant. The agent automates our high-volume employee requests, clarifies inventory, and streamlines our procurement. While this is occurring, the agent’s recommendation engine matches devices to our users’ needs to improve satisfaction and security.

Early results from myDevice AI include an approximately 50% reduction in time and costs in asset management (eliminating thousands of hours in manual processes annually), as well as improved security and a more personalized device-procurement experience for employees. In time, we will broaden this impact as agentic workflows expand to include labs, printers, conference rooms, and Internet of Things devices.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI Service

Pillar Three: Our employee and engineering productivity

Building the software and systems needed to power Information Technology at Microsoft is a time-intensive job. Our engineers have been hard at work building AI-powered solutions that make building and maintaining those systems more efficient and streamlined, answering the question, “How can we apply AI to make this more efficient?”

Here are a few of the solutions we’ve found to help cut down the time and effort involved in some of the routine, day-to-day IT procedures that help keep our systems running smoothly.

ADO Copilot: AI with Azure DevOps

ADO Copilot empowers all our developers and product managers by providing instant, AI-driven insights and automation within Azure DevOps (ADO). This AI-driven assistant seamlessly integrates into ADO and acts as a “trusted copilot” with natural-language capabilities that automate workflows; enhance productivity, compliance, and velocity; and amplify decision-making across the planning, building, and deployment phases.

This agentic solution reduces the time we spend searching for information, managing permissions, planning sprints, summarizing KPIs, and resolving engineering friction points. It enables our engineering teams to move from planning to execution faster and with greater quality and consistency.

The early results from our use of this tool show extensive time savings, which projected over a full year would mean 73,000 fewer hours of engineering time required for the same output.  We’ve also seen greater developer satisfaction and faster movement from planning to execution.

Related products:

Azure DevOps, Azure AI Service

ADO Work Item Assistant: Automating our ADO processes

Building consistent, high-quality ADO work items manually can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Our ADO Work Item Assistant is a generative AI-powered tool that streamlines the creation and understanding of Azure DevOps work items, including features, user stories, tasks, bugs, and custom item types.

The benefits of our assistant include:

• Greater efficiency: The potential to cut the amount of time it takes to craft an ADO feature or user story in half (50%).
• Project delivery enhancement: A streamlined approach mitigates errors and inconsistencies.

By leveraging the power of AI within Azure DevOps, we can significantly simplify and accelerate the work-item authoring process for our product management and engineering teams, improving quality and reducing workload.

Related products:

Azure DevOps, Copilot Studio, ES Chat

Automation hub and catalog: Solving task fragmentation

Large enterprises face major productivity challenges stemming from scattered information, fragmented systems, and reliance on numerous disconnected apps. This fragmentation leads to increased meetings, duplicative effort, and significant time spent on lower-level tasks.

Automation Hub/Automation Catalog is our customizable Teams app—built on Power Platform and Power Catalog—that addresses this challenge by applying AI-powered automation solutions that integrate seamlessly with your existing systems. Common automations include a daily consolidated task list, cancelled-meeting alerts, flags for important emails, and nudges on unanswered messages. The app streamlines workflows and jump-starts productivity gains, enabling you to enhance operational efficiency while maximizing your ROI.

Related products:

Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform

The future of AI in IT

As enthusiastic as we are about our progress so far, we’re even more excited about the great potential that AI agents show in terms of lowered costs, time saved, and boosted productivity across our IT operations.

“The advent of AI agents is the next big step in AI-powered innovation. We are actively working towards our vision of deploying, governing, and managing a fleet of agents across our IT organization, pushing Microsoft to the boundaries of the AI Frontier.”

Monika Gupta, partner group engineering manager, Microsoft Digital

We’re anticipating that these solutions will continue to scale up as we further optimize and standardize large language models and agent patterns in our engineering organizations. Multi-agent orchestration will make an impact on governance and vulnerability response, and autonomous actions will become more common in everyday IT workflows. Measurement rigor will continue to sharpen, ensuring that value is tracked and amplified as AI tools and technologies proliferate across the enterprise.

“As exciting as it’s been to see the many practical applications of AI across our IT portfolio the last two years, 2026 is shaping up to be even more exciting,” says Monika Gupta, partner group engineering manager in Microsoft Digital. “The advent of AI agents is the next big step in AI-powered innovation. We are actively working towards our vision of deploying, governing, and managing a fleet of agents across our IT organization, pushing Microsoft to the boundaries of the AI Frontier.”

Key takeaways

Here are some important factors to consider as you contemplate adding AI tools and innovations to your IT operations and workflows:

• Think holistically: Evaluate the major categories of your IT organization where AI can drive transformation—network management, tenant and device governance, and employee productivity.
• Leverage AIOps for resilience: Use AI-driven operational tools to automate troubleshooting, reduce downtime, and improve decision-making across your network infrastructure.
• Embed compliance into workflows: Implement AI-fueled governance solutions that make compliance intuitive and self-service, reducing risk while fostering a culture of accountability.
• Accelerate vulnerability response: Adopt multi-agent AI systems to proactively identify, prioritize, and remediate security vulnerabilities, minimizing exposure windows and operational risk.
• Boost productivity with AI assistants: Deploy AI Copilots and automation hubs to streamline engineering tasks, reduce cognitive load, and eliminate inefficiencies caused by fragmented systems.
• Plan for scale and autonomy: Prepare for the next wave of AI in IT—multi-agent orchestration, autonomous workflows, and rigorous measurement frameworks to amplify value across the enterprise.

Try it out

Learn more and sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Azure AI apps.

Related links

• Learn how we’re enhancing our network reliability with AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot.
• Find out more about our AI-powered leap into vulnerability management at Microsoft.
• Check out our playbook for becoming a Frontier Firm in the AI era.
• Explore our 5-step guide to enterprise AI maturity.
• Discover how we’re transforming the employee experience at Microsoft with AI.
• Read about how we’re using AI to reinvent our network security practices.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post AI at scale: How we’re transforming our enterprise IT operations at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft Digital stories

We didn’t just hope Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales would make a difference for our sales team here at Microsoft—we measured it.

The results were outstanding.

In the first few months after adopting Copilot for Sales, our sellers experienced the following:

• Per-seller revenue went up 9.4 percent
• Opportunity per seller grew by 5 percent
• Individual win rates jumped by 20 percent

These aren’t projections or pilot estimates. They’re real results from real usage across our sales teams.

These numbers reflect more than just efficiency. They show that when AI is embedded in a sales workflow, it doesn’t just save time—it drives outcomes. Our sellers aren’t hunting for data, they’re capitalizing on leads and closing deals.

The impact is clear.

Copilot for Sales is helping Microsoft sellers focus on what matters most: building relationships, understanding customer needs, and winning business.

Understanding the need for AI-driven transformation

For years, our sellers have worked with a patchwork of tools—MSX (our internal sales platform), Dynamics 365, Outlook, Teams, pipeline trackers, and more.

Each serves a purpose, but together they created friction.

“We have great data across our tools. But it’s a ton of information to drill into while you’re going from call–to–call and you really just need to have a quick answer on something. That hasn’t been easy to do in the past.”

Jeremy Dollar, principal technology specialist, Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions

In the past, sellers had to jump between systems to update forecasts, respond to customers, and satisfy internal reporting. The result was a fragmented experience that slowed them down.

Sellers often felt they spent more time updating systems than engaging with customers.

“We have great data across our tools,” says Jeremy Dollar, a principal technology specialist with Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS). “But it’s a ton of information to drill into while you’re trying to work with the customer. You’re going from call–to–call and you really just need to have a quick answer on something to know in the moment what’s going on with that customer. That hasn’t been easy to do in the past.”

Dollar spends most of his time working in the Microsoft sales pipeline, helping Microsoft customers understand how they can benefit from Microsoft products and finding solutions to match their needs.

Our sellers also have the responsibility of updating sales data and maintaining CRM records.

It isn’t anyone’s favorite task. Whether it’s MSX, Dynamics, Salesforce, or a myriad of other systems, manual data entry feels like a tax on their time. Forecasts lag. Pipelines go stale. And the tools meant to help end up getting in the way.

This complexity creates friction. Sellers have to jump between systems to find customer data, update opportunities, or prepare for meetings. The lack of integration can slow them down and pull focus away from customers.

“It’s the mundane work that nobody likes to do, but we all have to do it. It’s always been a sort of ‘sales tax’ that we all associate with the CRM,” says Bob Lincavicks, a principal technical specialist with Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions.

The challenge isn’t just technical—it’s behavioral. Many sellers rely on personal systems like notebooks or spreadsheets to track contacts and deals. CRM becomes inconsistent, and data quality suffers as a result. Without a unified experience, sellers are left to stitch together their own workflows.

Moving into modern sales management with Copilot for Sales

Enter Copilot for Sales.

Copilot for Sales is our AI-powered assistant built specifically for sellers. It brings CRM data, productivity tools, and generative AI together—right inside the Microsoft 365 apps sellers already use every day, like Outlook, Teams, Word, and Excel.

It’s not just another chatbot. It’s a deeply integrated experience that helps sellers:

• Prepare for meetings with AI-generated summaries, recent email threads, and opportunity insights.
• Draft emails with CRM context and BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) analysis.
• Update CRM records directly from Outlook or Teams—no more switching tabs or searching through systems.
• Create tasks and follow-ups from meeting recaps with just a couple of clicks.
• Collaborate in real time using adaptive cards, deal rooms, and shared spaces in Teams.

Copilot for Sales is designed to proactively surface the information and capabilities that sellers need when they need it, in the flow of their work.

It’s built on the same infrastructure as Microsoft 365 Copilot, meaning it benefits from enterprise-grade security, Microsoft Graph data, and seamless integration across the Microsoft ecosystem. And it works with multiple CRM systems like Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so sellers can stay in the flow of work—regardless of their CRM

The result is less time spent on admin tasks and more time selling.

Keeping sellers in the flow

Copilot for Sales isn’t just a new tool. It’s a new way of working—one that’s built around the seller, not the system.

Copilot for Sales transforms how Microsoft sellers work by delivering high-impact features directly into their daily flow. These aren’t just enhancements—they’re game changers.

Copilot for Sales is there for sellers in the tools they already use—Outlook and Teams. Instead of toggling between systems, they’re seeing customer emails, account insights, opportunity data, and meeting history all in one place.

When a seller opens an email, Copilot surfaces the full conversation thread, shows related opportunities, and highlights recent meetings. During calls, it captures insights and follow-ups. Afterward, it prompts sellers to log notes, create opportunities, and assign tasks—without ever opening the CRM.

This integration saves time and reduces friction. Sellers no longer jump between apps or lose momentum. They work where the action is.

“Copilot for Sales connects all the disparate tools our sellers use. Before, all of that information was spread out and tedious to find. Now it’s readily accessible in the context of where a seller is working, whether in Outlook, Teams, Word, or otherwise.”

Denise Mills, senior business program manager, Microsoft Digital

Our sellers use natural language to interact with CRM data. They can ask questions like “What’s the latest with this opportunity?” or “Summarize my last meeting,” and get instant, contextual answers. This cuts down on prep time and helps sellers stay focused.

They can also summarize long email threads with a single click, capture leads from Outlook, and draft replies using CRM insights. Meeting prep is faster, follow-ups are automated, and CRM updates happen in the background.

One standout feature is the ability to create and edit CRM opportunities directly from Outlook. Sellers no longer need to switch tools or re-enter data—they do it all in the moment, in the app they’re currently using.

“Copilot for Sales connects all the disparate tools our sellers use,” says Denise Mills, a senior business program manager with Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. “Before, all of that information was spread out and tedious to find. Now it’s readily accessible in the context of where a seller is working, whether in Outlook, Teams, Word, or otherwise.”

 Copilot for Sales helps sellers to quickly get ready for an upcoming customer engagement. It captures and summarizes the main points from recent interactions, helping sellers focus on the key points and make the meeting meaningful.

These features don’t just make work easier—they make sellers more effective.

Copilot for Sales: a day in the life

Microsoft sellers are using Copilot for Sales to streamline their day from start to finish—and the impact is showing up in every part of their workflow.

When preparing for meetings, sellers are reviewing summaries of past interactions, opportunity history, and forecast comments—all surfaced automatically in Outlook or Teams. They’re walking into customer conversations with full context, without having to dig through CRM records or email threads.

During meetings, Copilot is capturing action items, identifying sentiment, and tagging key participants. Sellers are staying focused on the conversation instead of scrambling to take notes.

After meetings, they’re turning those insights into tasks and CRM updates with just a few clicks. Follow-up emails are being drafted automatically. Opportunities are being created or updated in real time. Sellers are staying in the flow, and nothing is falling through the cracks.

“I don’t feel like I have to spend 90 percent of my call taking notes,” Lincavicks says. “I can be much more present and involved in the call itself.”

Deploying Copilot for Sales at Microsoft

Our journey began with a pilot. Microsoft launched Copilot for Sales inside our small, medium, and corporate (SMC) sales organization, where sellers were managing high account volumes and needed faster, more efficient ways to stay on top of their work. The pilot wasn’t small—eventually, it included the entire SMC group.

From the start, the focus was on learning. The team ran learning days, hosted academies, and delivered demos to help sellers understand how to use Copilot for Sales in their daily flow. These sessions weren’t just about training—they were about listening. Feedback from SMC sellers helped shape the product and guide future development.

That early momentum laid the foundation for broader adoption. It provided real-world insights, real usage data, and a clear sense of what sellers needed most.

Moving to enterprise scale

After proving success in SMC, we began expanding Copilot for Sales across the enterprise. The early pilot gave the team a head start—an audience that was already engaged, trained, and providing feedback. That momentum made it easier to scale.

The rollout wasn’t just technical—it was strategic. We in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, partnered with Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS), a global organization within Microsoft that brings together customer-facing teams and partner-facing teams to drive customer success and grow the business.

The MCAPS team worked with our IT change management teams to build a global adoption plan. They ran learning days, hosted demos, and worked closely with adoption leads in every region. The goal was to meet sellers where they were and show them how Copilot could fit into their daily workflows.

Creating real change and improvement as Customer Zero

As the first and most active adopters of Copilot for Sales, our internal sales teams are acting as Customer Zero. By putting Copilot into the hands of our sellers first, we can collect honest, in-depth feedback that the Copilot for Sales product team uses to rapidly iterate on new features based on genuine user needs.

Customer Zero means that the organization is not only adopting the technology but also shaping it, stress-testing workflows, and surfacing opportunities for improvement before sharing with the broader market.

“Our sellers are co-creators, actively influencing the future of Copilot for Sales,” Mills says. “The Customer Zero approach ensures that by the time Copilot for Sales reaches external customers, it’s already been refined by some of the most demanding and insightful users in the industry.”

Mills and her team work as a bridge between Microsoft sellers and the Copilot for Sales product team. They drive feedback loops, gathering insights from internal users—primarily sellers—and deliver that feedback directly to the product teams. This includes organizing research sessions, facilitating direct interactions between sellers and product managers, and ensuring feedback reflects global perspectives. Feedback from regions such as Japan, China, and Europe was crucial, especially in contexts involving language challenges or compliance with local regulations.

One of the primary ways Mills and her team capture feedback is through structured, role-specific listening circles. These sessions bring together our sellers, product specialists, and managers to share what’s working, what’s not, and what they need next from Copilot for Sales.

Each session is guided by a whiteboard framework and includes interactive polls, open discussions, and targeted prompts. We’re asking sellers about their workflows, their friction points, and how Copilot fits—or doesn’t fit—into their day. The goal is to surface barriers to adoption, identify unmet needs, and gather ideas for improvement.

Nurturing an active user community

We’re driving Copilot for Sales adoption through hands-on, role-specific enablement. It started with learning days and live demos across SMC and enterprise teams. These sessions are continuing today, helping sellers see how Copilot fits into their daily flow.

In one session, sellers walk through how to use Copilot to prep for a meeting, capture notes, and update CRM—all without leaving Outlook. In another, they practice using natural language prompts to summarize email threads or generate follow-up tasks. These aren’t just demos—they’re working sessions that show real value.

Champions are playing a key role. Microsoft is identifying early adopters who are enthusiastic about Copilot and equipping them with deep-dive resources. These champions are hosting office hours, answering questions, and sharing tips with their teams.

This grassroots approach is building momentum. Sellers aren’t just learning Copilot for Sales—they’re teaching it, sharing it, and embedding it into how they work.

Creating seller-focused benefits

The result is that Microsoft sellers are going beyond using Copilot for Sales—they’re relying on it.

“The CRM used to feel like a tax. Now it delivers value,” Lincavicks says. ”Copilot for Sales has made CRM data feel alive. For the first time, I feel like there’s the ability for my data to meet me wherever I want to do my work.”

It’s a recurring sentiment across our sellers and it’s a signal that the relationship between sellers and their tools is changing.

We’ve reached a turning point. When we first introduced Copilot for Sales, we were optimistic. We had a vision of what AI could do for sellers, but we didn’t yet have the proof. Now we do.

This isn’t just a story about new features. It’s about measurable impact. Sellers are seeing real gains in productivity, pipeline, and win rates. And they’re doing it without having to change how they work.

While Copilot for Sales certainly provides convenience to sellers, the biggest benefit is confidence.

“Copilot for Sales is incredibly helpful for getting ready for any type of customer engagement,” Dollar says. “It’s incredibly valuable to have that information proactively brought to your attention. It’s not about saving time at the end of the day, it’s about being able to be better and do more with the time that I have.”

The feedback is clear; Copilot for Sales isn’t just helping sellers work faster, it’s helping them work smarter, with more focus, more clarity, and more impact.

“It’s not just about making sellers more impactful—it’s about simplifying their world. They can create opportunities, update contacts, and capture meeting insights—all without leaving their flow of work. Simplification and ease of use drive impact.”

Kevin Wooldridge, senior director of business programs, Microsoft Digital

That’s a big deal. Especially in a company like Microsoft, where the sales ecosystem is notoriously complex. If we can simplify the experience here, we can do it anywhere.

This moment matters because we’ve moved from promise to performance. From pilots to platform. From hoping AI would help to knowing it does.

“It’s not just about making sellers more impactful—it’s about simplifying their world,” says Kevin Wooldridge, a senior director of business programs within Microsoft Digital. “They can create opportunities, update contacts, and capture meeting insights—all without leaving their flow of work. Simplification and ease of use drive impact.”

Looking forward

We’ve moved from promise to proof with Copilot for Sales. Now we’re building what’s next.

We believe the future of Copilot for Sales is agentic. We’re evolving from a conversational assistant to a proactive partner that can act on behalf of the seller. The approach is less “tell me what to do” and more “I’ve already done it.”

We’re piloting Lead Intelligence Agents that research prospects, draft outreach, and follow up automatically. Opportunity Intelligence Agents summarize recent interactions, flag risks, and suggest next steps. And Meeting Prep Agents surface possible objections, key stakeholders, and action items before a seller even joins the call.

We’re also integrating Copilot more fully into the tools sellers already use. In Outlook, sellers can now update CRM records directly from email banners, share CRM data with a simple @mention, and generate follow-ups with context-aware prompts. In Teams, meeting recaps now trigger opportunity creation and task assignments—even less jumping between systems.

The next generation of sellers won’t just use AI—they’ll rely on it. And they’ll outperform those who don’t. Sellers using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales are already closing more deals, faster. They’re saving time, staying in the flow, and focusing on what matters.

Key takeaways

If you’re looking to successfully adopt Copilot for Sales, here are some practical actions you can take to maximize its advantages:

• Integrate Copilot for Sales into your sellers’ daily workflow. Encourage your team to start using Copilot for Sales within Outlook and Teams to seamlessly manage CRM updates, generate follow-ups, and complete tasks without leaving your core platforms.
• Leverage productivity-boosting features. Utilize the automation and smart suggestion features of Copilot for Sales to streamline sales activities, reduce manual effort, and dedicate more time to building strong connections with customers.
• Hold enablement sessions. Participate in live demos and training events and explore role-specific resources to quickly develop expertise and unlock the full value of Copilot for your team.
• Prepare for future capabilities. Stay updated on new innovations like Lead Intelligence Agents and Meeting Prep Agents so you can adopt emerging features that will further enhance your sales strategy.

Try it out

Take a guided tour of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.

Related links

• Find out how we are measuring the business impact of Copilot on sales at Microsoft.
• Learn how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.
• Check out these seven things we Learned deploying Microsoft Copilot for Sales at Microsoft.
• Find out how we’re using AI-powered Copilot for Sales at Microsoft.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Closing the deal with Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

It’s a common sentiment for large enterprises to say, “we need to customize our software,” and we’re no different internally here at Microsoft. Out-of-the-box (OOB) software often struggles to meet the unique and complex needs of enterprises like ours, requiring extensive customization to align with organizational processes.

At Microsoft Digital, the company’s internal IT organization, we’re familiar with customizing software to fit the needs of our employees and our business partners like HR. For years, we’ve customized third-party software, integrated custom-built features, engineered our own tools, and even customized Microsoft software and services to meet our needs.

AskHR has been a perfect example of this. AskHR is our internal employee engagement platform used by Microsoft HR to manage interactions with our employees. It handles more than 600,000 inquiries per year. Initially, it relied heavily on email, but over the last decade it has evolved to use Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the Microsoft Power Platform.

However, like many of our internal solutions, AskHR has undergone a lot of customization over the years. While these tailored features improve overall capabilities, they’ve also led to technical debt and deprecated functionalities. Approximately 80 percent of AskHR’s functionality is customized with only 20 percent coming from the OOB capabilities of the product.

“Dynamics 365 Customer Service now has the features we’ve built customizations for in the past, plus the AI-powered capabilities are providing huge benefits. By moving to a standardized version of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, we’re improving and modernizing what AskHR can do for Microsoft HR Advisors and moving away from a customized solution.”

Sam Gullane, senior technology solution manager, Microsoft Human Resources

As Dynamics 365 Customer Service has evolved and improved, AskHR fell behind. The accumulated technical debt of heavy customization made it more difficult to adopt new Dynamics 365 Customer Service features, including AI-powered capabilities like Automatic Case Creation, Unified Routing, Knowledge Creation and Management, and Omnichannel Support.

Transforming to match the pace of modern software development

A lot has changed in software development since AskHR was created. Cloud-based services and rapid, iterative development cycles have created an unprecedented pace of feature development and release.

Software customization in this new wave of modern products is no longer a necessity for large enterprises, and the AskHR team at Microsoft Digital is going back to Dynamics 365 Customer Service’s out-of-the-box roots.

“Dynamics 365 Customer Service now has the features we’ve built customizations for in the past, plus the AI-powered capabilities are providing huge benefits,” says Sam Gullane, a senior technology solution manager in Microsoft HR. “By moving to a standardized version of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, we’re improving and modernizing what AskHR can do for Microsoft HR Advisors and moving away from a customized solution.”

Gullane and her team are responsible for modernizing AskHR—migrating the customizations of the platform to built-in features, while also building a new version that takes advantage of the latest advancements in Dynamics 365 Customer Service to enable AI-powered support for Microsoft HR advisors.

“The time we spend transitioning away from customized features will be recaptured in reduced testing and customization throughout the lifetime of the modern version of Ask HR. Our HR advisors will get a modern, efficient, AI-powered AskHR that is always up to date with new features.”

Gayatri Garapati, principal software engineer manager, Microsoft Digital

The vision for the next iteration of AskHR is a modern, scalable, and user-friendly platform that supports the evolving needs of Microsoft HR Advisors and enhances their productivity and satisfaction. The main goals of this project are to:

• Reduce customization and align with the OOB functionalities of Dynamics 365 Customer Service wherever possible. We’re removing unused custom fields, deleting or inactivating unused metadata, and removing deprecated features along with their dependencies.
• Implement generative AI wherever possible. Implementing AI features helps us enhance efficiency, accuracy, and user satisfaction. By integrating Dynamics 365 and Copilot, we are transforming how HR support is delivered by streamlining case handling, automating routine tasks, and providing advanced routing mechanisms
• Ship new features more quickly. To ensure seamless Dynamics 365 Customer Service upgrades, the modernization team is implementing robust testing protocols and providing intensive hyper care support through the upgrade process.

The AskHR development team recognizes that replacing customized capabilities with OOB features is not a simple swap and go.

“Re-architecting is a challenging task, but our modernization efforts mean that we won’t need to invest in further customization,” says Gayatri Garapati, a principal software engineer manager in Microsoft Digital. “The time we spend transitioning away from customized features will be recaptured in reduced testing and customization throughout the lifetime of the modern version of Ask HR. Our HR advisors will get a modern, efficient, AI-powered AskHR that is always up to date with new features.”

The team is busy refactoring code and integrating new features, but they’re also demonstrating the effectiveness of those features with proof-of-concept (POC) engagements that confirm feature completeness and usability in complex use cases. These POCs test capabilities in the new version of AskHR and ensure that the features meet the needs of Microsoft HR Advisors.

“Dynamics 365 Customer Service can identify the caller’s intent, ask clarifying questions, and provide accurate information. Features like automated case creation and closure are enhancing efficiency and making things easier for support employees.”

Natasha Fattedad, principal product manager, Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Supercharging the HR Advisor experience with Copilot and AI

AI features are at the center of the new experience in AskHR.

Natasha Fattedad, principal product manager on the Dynamics 365 Customer Service product team, understands the value of AI-assisted decision making and content retrieval in the support process.

“Dynamics 365 Customer Service can identify the caller’s intent, ask clarifying questions, and provide accurate information,” Fattedad says. “Features like automated case creation and closure are enhancing efficiency and making things easier for support employees.”

AI-powered knowledge management tools to pull information from the Microsoft 365 tenant and 3^rd party sources ensure comprehensive support. These advancements rapidly accelerate the AskHR team’s efforts to modernize and streamline their customer service operations.

Here are some of the key AI features in the Dynamics 365 Customer Service toolkit that we’re using in AskHR:

• Case Summary gives HR Advisors a quick overview of everything that has happened in a case. Instead of reading through long notes or message threads, the HR Advisor sees a short summary that highlights the most important actions, updates, and outcomes. This helps them understand the situation right away even if they weren’t involved from the beginning. In the AskHR process, this feature is especially useful when cases are passed between team members or when there are a lot of requests coming in at once. It saves time and helps ensure nothing important is missed. For example, if an employee has contacted HR several times about a leave of absence, the HR Advisor can quickly see what’s already been discussed and what still needs to be done.

• Email Drafting helps HR Advisors write emails faster and more accurately. It uses Copilot to pull in relevant information from the knowledge base and the case history, so the HR Advisor doesn’t have to search for it manually. The system can suggest content, recommend templates, and even help with formatting, all within the email editor. In the AskHR process, this feature is especially useful when responding to common employee questions—like those about leave policies, benefits, or onboarding. Instead of starting from scratch, the HR Advisor can use the suggested draft as a starting point and make quick edits before sending. This not only saves time but also helps ensure that the information shared is accurate and consistent across the team.

• Customer Knowledge Management Agent helps HR advisors create new knowledge articles based on real case data. When a case is resolved, the system uses AI to look at the notes and resolution details and then suggests a draft article that could be added to the knowledge base. This makes it easier to capture useful information from everyday support work and turn it into helpful content for future use. Instead of relying on a separate team to write articles, HR advisors can contribute directly through their daily work. This shortens the time it takes to publish new content and ensures that the information is accurate and based on real employee needs.

• Ask a Question lets HR advisors type in questions using natural language to quickly find answers. Instead of searching through multiple systems or documents, they can simply ask a question—just like they would ask a colleague—and the system will pull the most relevant information from the knowledge base or case data. The feature also supports follow-up questions, so if the first answer isn’t quite right, the HR Advisor can ask for more details or clarification, reducing the time spent switching between systems and digging through documentation. We’re also planning to integrate additional AI capabilities from Dynamics 365 Customer Service into future iterations of AskHR:

• Intent Assist uses AI to understand what an employee is asking for even when the question isn’t perfectly clear—like whether the employee is asking about vacation time, a leave of absence, or how to update their benefits. Once the system identifies the intent, it can suggest follow-up questions to help the HR advisor get more details and provide the right answer. Intent Assist also helps with routing. If the system recognizes that a request is about a specific topic—like payroll or time off—it can send the case directly to the right team or person. This reduces wait times and ensures that employees are connected with someone who can help them right away.

• Case Management Agent uses AI to handle routine case-related tasks. When an employee submits a request, the system can automatically create a case without the HR Advisor needing to do anything manually. It fills in the basic details, assigns the case to the right queue, and sends an acknowledgment to the employee. After the issue is resolved, the system can also close the case automatically. For example, if the employee confirms that their question has been answered or if there’s no response after a few follow-up messages, the system can suggest closing the case. This helps keep the case queue clean and ensures that HR Advisors can focus on active issues.

• AI Suggestions uses AI to collect and present information about similar cases that were previously resolved successfully to help HR advisors find the right solutions to new cases quickly. When a case is opened, the system can suggest relevant articles or documents based on the topic and content of the case. These suggestions are powered by AI, which looks at the case details and matches them with similar past cases or helpful resources. This helps HR advisors respond more confidently with up-to-date information, increase productivity, and provide better and faster service to employees. The system also learns over time. As more cases are handled and more articles are used, the AI gets better at recommending the right content. This helps reduce repeat questions and improves the overall quality of support. It also supports self-service by making it easier to surface helpful content directly to employees.

• Unified Routing ensures each employee request is sent to the right HR advisor as quickly as possible. It uses AI to look at the details of the request—like the topic, urgency, and the employee’s location—and then matches it with an advisor who has the right skills and availability. This helps reduce wait times and improves the chances that the employee gets the right answer on the first try. Unified Routing is especially useful for managing high volumes of requests across different HR service areas. For example, if someone asks about parental leave, the system can automatically route that case to an advisor who specializes in benefits. If the request is urgent or sensitive, it can prioritize it and send it to someone who’s available right away. This avoids delays and makes the support process more personal and responsive.

“With Dynamics 365 Customer Service, AI capabilities such as intent recognition and case automation are transforming how we support employees,” Fattedad says. “AI enhances efficiency and makes things easier for support staff and users throughout the support lifecycle.”

Unifying the support experience with omnichannel and Dynamics 365 Contact Center

The game-changing AI capabilities in AskHR go beyond individual features in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center is a Copilot-first, cloud-based tool that uses AI to make working with employees easier and faster. We’re using it to connect employees to HR advisors through different channels, like email, chat, and voice. Contact Center simplifies and enhances employee interaction with features like AI-powered summaries, interactive voice systems, and live translations. It improves how HR advisors communicate with employees, including empowering employees to solve problems on their own, saving time and cutting costs.

Embedded AI-driven insights and analytics provide valuable tools to improve customer satisfaction and refine support strategies. Collaboration with HR advisors is facilitated through Microsoft Teams while performance and productivity can be monitored through detailed reports and dashboards, offering visibility into operational metrics.

“We’re using Dynamics 365 Contact Center to provide an omnichannel experience and transform the way we handle customer interactions,” Gullane says. “By integrating multiple communication channels into a single platform, we ensure a seamless and consistent experience for both customers and HR Advisors, regardless of the channel used.”

This integration allows HR Advisors to view all interactions in one place. By consolidating all customer interactions and relevant information into a single view, Contact Center enables agents to provide more informed and efficient support. These capabilities are a win-win for the HR advisor and the employee.

“Employees are looking for a more seamless experience across different channels,” Fattedad says. “We want to meet their expectations and provide an experience that allows them to connect and communicate in the best way for them.”

It’s about building for the future with agentic AI.

“The modernization of AskHR is about future-proofing our capabilities,” Gullane says. “This is a work in progress for us, and our main goal is to continue to use OOB features, reducing the need for custom code and solutions.”

Gullane expects Copilot-based, autonomous agents to be a big factor in upcoming capabilities.

“Making AskHR more autonomous benefits everyone,” she says. “These agents are trained to autonomously learn to address new and emerging issues via self-service, improve the quality of issue resolution across channels, and help drive time and cost savings.”

For example, the Customer Intent Agent enables continuous improvement of self-service capabilities by discovering new intents from past and current customer conversations across all channels, mapping issues and corresponding resolutions maintained by the agent in a library.

“The future of AskHR will be built on continuous improvement and using AI to automate and optimize support processes. Ensuring a better support experience for our Advisors and Microsoft employees is the vision and we’re excited to get there.”

Sam Gullane, senior technology solution manager, Microsoft Human Resources

The Customer Knowledge Management Agent helps ensure knowledge articles are kept perpetually up to date by analyzing case notes, transcripts, summaries, and other artifacts from human-assisted cases to uncover insights.

As the AskHR team continues to integrate OOB features of Dynamics 365 Customer Service such as these AI agents into the platform, Gullane shares her enthusiasm for the future of Ask HR and its potential.

“The future of AskHR will be built on continuous improvement and using AI to automate and optimize support processes,” she says. “Ensuring a better support experience for our Advisors and Microsoft employees is the vision and we’re excited to get there.”

Key takeaways

Here are five actionable insights to help you build a modern support experience for employees:

• Empower HR advisors with AI-driven tools. Use AI features like unified routing to connect employee requests with the right advisor quickly and efficiently.
• Create a seamless omnichannel communication platform. Integrate tools like Dynamics 365 Contact Center to provide consistent support across email, chat, and voice channels.
• Use AI for self-service solutions. Implement autonomous agents to allow employees to resolve common issues themselves, saving time and resources.
• Keep knowledge management current. Use tools like the Customer Knowledge Management Agent to ensure help articles and resources are continuously updated and relevant.
• Focus on continuous improvement. Regularly evaluate and optimize support strategies using analytics and feedback to meet evolving employee needs.

Try it out

Sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Related links

• Learn more about autonomous service agents in Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• Discover how we’re using the power of AI to revolutionize our internal employee help, including HR support.
• Welcome to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Supercharging our support experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and AI appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Since we launched the tool internally here at Microsoft, we’ve learned a few best practices for deploying it easily and making full use of its features. This post shares some of our learnings so you can take advantage of our experience when you activate Copilot for Sales at your organization.

[See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. Get insights from our Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers on the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. Explore getting the most out of generative AI at Microsoft with good governance.]

Taking the tedium out of sales tasks

Copilot for Sales maximizes productivity with an AI assistant specifically designed for sellers. Like our other AI-powered tools, it increases productivity and efficiency by providing intelligent digital assistance within Microsoft Teams and Outlook.

The added value of Copilot for Sales is working with Dynamics 365 or Salesforce to access, use, and input customer relationship management (CRM) data. As a result, it eliminates distracting tasks that eat away at their time and get in the way of what they do best—building relationships and solving problems.

“Everything we’ve done in terms of our Dynamics 365 sales platform aims to give time back to sellers so they can invest it into customers,” says Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. “With AI and copilots, our technology is doing even more to help us reach that goal.”

The sweet spot exists at the intersection of AI-enabled intelligence and CRM integration into the spaces where salespeople operate every day. Within Microsoft Teams, Copilot for Sales delivers real-time call insights, AI-generated meeting summaries, post-call analyses and action items, and more. In Microsoft Outlook, its abilities include crafting contextual email responses, summarizing lengthy threads, and creating Teams Collaboration Spaces associated with accounts and opportunities.

Across both workspaces, Copilot for Sales makes it easier to create, update, or view CRM contacts, opportunities, and other data associated with sales accounts. That mitigates the need for sellers to migrate to a different tool as they conduct the essential business of using or updating their CRM.

“For sellers trying to do their jobs, it’s all about that flow of information within the flow of action,” says Kerry Barrass, director of business programs within Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions. “While the conversation is fresh, the tool distills information down into consumable chunks and actionable items.”

Those features come in handy because sales are complex and require strong coordination across large teams. One of our typical sales accounts involves anywhere from 20 to 50 individual employees, each with a vital role to play. As a result, it’s extremely difficult to get everyone on a call or piece together the narrative underlying email threads.

“When I get copied into an email thread, I used to need a knowledge transfer meeting to get up to speed,” says Emilio Reyes Le Blanc, a technology specialist in Microsoft Sales. “This technology means I can just open an email thread, have Copilot generate a summary, and contextualize my existing relationships from the integrated pane within Outlook.”

Taken together, these features deliver greater contextual understanding, more efficient workflows, and higher data fidelity within our CRM systems.

Our top seven tips for adopting and using Copilot for Sales

Our deployment experience and  of Copilot for Sales have provided some helpful insights. These seven tips should help with your adoption and everyday work with this AI-powered tool.

Seven tips for deploying and using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales

01

Ride the wave of excitement

02

Align enablement with your employees’ needs

03

Leverage leadership at every level

04

Ensure our underlying data policies are secure

05

Start simple and work up from there

06

Prioritize CRM data resilience

07

Practice effective prompting

Deploying and using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales internally at Microsoft has taught us important lessons that we hope will help you deploy it at your company.

Ride the wave of excitement

Sellers have an eye for value, and when they saw what Copilot for Sales could do, it generated a lot of excitement. The tool’s intuitive features mean that, from a user perspective, it isn’t a complicated solution. As a result, we’ve experienced a substantial organic boost to adoption.

“One day, a magic button popped up in my Outlook and I got a prompt to try Sales Copilot, so I taught myself to use it,” Reyes Le Blanc says. “One of the beautiful things about this tool is that its time to value is extraordinary.”

When you’re deploying Copilot for Sales to your own sellers, focus on visibility first. When the excitement takes hold, it will boost adoption among your self-motivated salespeople. Encourage that uptake to score some early champions.

Align enablement with your employees’ needs

Not everyone is a self-driven early adopter—and that’s perfectly alright! Effective change management starts with understanding your audience and the complexities of your sales environment.

We recommend building hero scenarios for each user persona by taking a granular look at their challenges, sales processes, and day-to-day work. Dig into their role descriptions and documentation and ask what they’re trying to accomplish. From there, you can piece together your enablement materials based on what provides value.

Using video For video enablement content, we’ve discovered that the ideal length is 30 seconds to one minute.

Consider different learning formats and modalities as well.

“You want to make readiness consumable and provide options,” Jones says. “Some people want to show up to a demo session, and some people want to watch a video on their own time, so it’s important to offer a variety of pathways to adoption.”

Multimodality that includes courses, demos, written documentation, and more will help your readiness efforts reach the most people with the most impact.

Engage leadership at every level

It’s always important to engage your leaders. That includes both organizational leadership and product champions.

“Advocates and champions are always important, not just for leading from the front,” Barrass says. “You also get more candid feedback by empowering these people to be part of pilot groups.”

Naturally, enthusiastic executive sponsorship is essential, especially with new technology. Not only do leaders provide direction and encouragement for their organizations, but they can also choose to give people space to allocate time and prioritize learning. Cultivate those sponsorships early and actively.

The same goes for employee champions. By running internal pilots targeting key user scenarios, you’ll ensure you receive early feedback to guide product development and a core of users who can help lead adoption across your organization.

Ensure your underlying data policies are secure

Your organization might be cautious about how AI tools interact with their data repositories, so deploying Copilot for Sales is a good opportunity to review your data-loss prevention setup. By ensuring your policies are up to date, you can prevent accidental data loss or exposure.

“Copilot for Sales sits on top of our existing data repositories, so it engages with that data in the same way as any other connected tool,” Jones says. “It’s less about the solution and more about having a robust infrastructure of administrative policies and technologies safeguarding your organization.”

It will be essential to initiate reviews within several key disciplines. Those include HR, legal, security, and the IT team responsible for maintaining and protecting your data estate. Within your sales teams themselves, administrators may have concerns about access. If that’s the case, encourage them to conduct a thorough security and role review.

Guide those conversations using Copilot for Sales’ extensive product documentation.

Start simple and work up from there

For sellers themselves, building trust in a new technology takes time. People might need to work up the confidence to try more intensive or involved features, especially if they’re reticent about AI technology.

“Just start with two or three features that are really going to appeal to people,” Jones says. “Encourage sellers to ask what works best for their role.”

We suggest salespeople start small with meeting and email summarization capabilities. They might not be ready to trust email drafting tools just yet, but when they see how the intelligence works through summarization, they’ll understand how Copilot for Sales engages with information.

After sellers have built up their understanding and confidence around how this tool engages with data, they can experiment with different features that apply to their work.

Prioritize CRM data resilience

Anyone in sales operations will tell you that high data fidelity in your CRM is crucial. Leadership needs to know their institutional data is resilient. Accuracy and completeness ensure up-to-date contact data along with a comprehensive view of relationships across internal and external teams.

All this information helps sales managers make effective decisions, generate accurate forecasts, and properly understand attrition. In other words, the business value of CRM data management is enormous. It’s also prone to disarray because it formerly required salespeople to switch over to the CRM and input information. Copilot for Sales changes all that.

“Historically, the way for this to work is you would write the email, then go to a different window, find the account record, go to the contacts list, create a new one, put in all of the contact’s information, and save it,” Reyes Le Blanc says. “But here, I can do all that in one fell swoop.”

If you’re a seller, get used to creating and updating CRM contacts from within Microsoft Teams and Outlook using Copilot for Sales. This feature eliminates the need to re-enter information directly into the CRM and builds healthy habits around data fidelity.

That flow of information works the other way as well. Be sure to use the contact card feature to view summaries of customer information from within Microsoft Outlook and Teams. That ensures you’re working with the most up-to-date data directly from your CRM.

Practice effective prompting

Prompt creation will become increasingly important as AI tools mature, so it’s worth honing those skills using Copilot for Sales’ email drafting feature. A simple rule to remember is that the more you put in, the more you get out.

“If you have specifics off the bat, like you know you want to schedule a meeting or there are a few key points to express, include those in your prompt,” Jones says. “Be succinct and save your own time, because that’s what the technology is for.”

Prompting is just like any other practice. The more you work at it, the easier it becomes.

The expanding possibilities of AI assistance

Microsoft salespeople have already seen amazing success, and we’re just getting started. Within our sales organization, 12.5K out of 35K sales roles are Copilot for Sales monthly active users—more than a third of the workforce. For a technology in its first year, that’s remarkable progress.

Reyes Le Blanc estimates that he’s saving two hours each month creating contacts in Dynamics 365 and five hours a month reviewing emails. With over 6 million seller emails sent in our first quarter of this fiscal year, the potential for email time savings alone is enormous.

He also finds his meeting notes much more accurate now that Copilot for Sales has his back, especially when it comes to long lists of technologies or technical requirements. It’s the ideal tool for gathering details via the meeting review feature and performing keyword or conversational analyses.

“This is a way to do more with less,” Reyes Le Blanc says. “As a seller, I can’t imagine working without artificial intelligence.”

Considering our average salesperson participates in 17 meetings per week, those efficiencies really add up. As new features and integrations come into play, Copilot for Sales’ horizons will only widen.

Start using AI to streamline your selling experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.

• See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.
• Get insights from our Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers on the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.
• Explore getting the most out of generative AI at Microsoft with good governance.
• Discover how we’re using Microsoft 365 to bolster our teamwork.
• Learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales on Microsoft Learn.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.
• Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Seven things we learned deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

[Learn about our strategy for deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales internally at Microsoft and the progress we’ve made against our vision. Check out our full content suite on how we use Microsoft Viva internally at Microsoft. See how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva.Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero.] 

Unleashing the potential of Copilot for Sales

Lori: It’s been six months since you’ve deployed Copilot for Sales, what results are you seeing? What key considerations did you have when rolling out a generative AI tool like Copilot for Sales on a global scale?

Nathalie: Copilot for Sales is deployed across Microsoft. Being customer zero has been invaluable in this process. It has allowed us to confirm the product, learn important insights, and make improvements along the way. We’ve been focused on turning on Copilot features to enhance the seller experience, and the feedback we’ve received from our own teams has been instrumental in refining and perfecting the deployment. I’m so excited to partner with our teams to see the first commercial solution at Microsoft to combine Copilot and Copilot for Sales.

Since the launch of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot in March, we have seen incredible adoption with nearly 4,000 users taking advantage of its capabilities. The impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. It’s encouraging to see the positive response from our users and the value they are experiencing. In fact, during a recent customer conversation, the Senior VP of Sales expressed their enthusiasm to partner with us as early adopters, emphasizing their willingness to invest in any technology that enhances the productivity of their sellers. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Copilot and its ability to drive tangible benefits in the workplace.

Nathalie: It’s been quite the journey since we launched Copilot for Sales to our Microsoft sellers. What were the main goals your team hoped to achieve with this product?

Lori: We’ve been focused on seller productivity gains through taking advantage of conversation intelligence, enabling Copilot features, and ultimately improving customer connection, job satisfaction, and revenue for our sellers. Microsoft being customer zero has provided us with a unique advantage. It has allowed us to test these features within our own organization, gather valuable feedback, and fine-tune the experiences before rolling them out to more customers.

In the new update, we are adding some exciting capabilities to Copilot for Sales that have been influenced by your team’s customer zero work. Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.

Nathalie: Speaking of Copilot, how does your organization ensure that the implementation of Copilot features align with Microsoft’s ethical and responsible AI principles?

Lori: Supporting ethical and responsible AI practices is of paramount importance to us and our customers. As we use generative AI, we are committed to helping our customers be transparent, fair, and accountable to their employees and their customers.

As you know, one of the ways we do this here is with our works councils, where a few of our colleagues volunteer to help us protect the privacy of all our employees when we deploy new technology like Copilot for Sales. More importantly, they make sure we follow privacy laws in each of the countries and regions where we operate. We roll the feedback that we get from them directly into our products, which helps our customers protect their own employees. It’s this kind of thinking—and these kinds of checks and balances—that helps us be ethical in how we use AI in Copilot for Sales.

Lori: We were so excited to be the first Microsoft product to bring Copilot to our users; the feedback we have received from sellers has been incredibly positive! How have our newest Copilot in Copilot for Sales features influenced your thinking about supporting the employee experience?

Nathalie: It helped a lot! Seeing a tangible implementation of Copilot with real value opened our eyes to what was possible and is influencing ways that we’ll incorporate generative AI into our own employee experience. Kudos to you and your team for dreaming big and acting fast to bring that experience to the market!

Lori: Thank you. So, tell me more about this employee experience and how deploying Copilot for Sales Copilot in Microsoft has given your team insights and learnings that shaped your approach to using AI?

Nathalie: The success of Copilot for Sales really inspired my team to think more deeply about how we could further use AI in our employee experience at Microsoft. Just like Copilot for Sales provides conversation summaries and next actions for sales opportunities, we’re thinking through scenarios that will enable us to transform the way employees interact with our different services—like support and HR—to make them more personalized and efficient.

Broadly, our efforts fall into three categories—AI for IT, AI for the hybrid workplace, and AI for the employee experience. AI for IT includes investments to help us proactively detect and remediate issues in our employee services and IT infrastructure. AI for the hybrid workplace includes investments to help us perfect space planning and to enhance the experience when employees come into the office. Finally, AI for the employee experience is all about transforming the ways that Microsoft employees interact with our services and support. Across each of these investment areas, Copilot for Sales provided us with a great benchmark for how AI can really propel employee productivity.

Works councils and deployment

Lori: Nathalie, as the leader responsible for deploying Copilot for Sales across Microsoft, I understand that your team has been actively engaging with works councils. Can you provide insights into the impact of working with works councils during the deployment process?

Nathalie: Absolutely, Lori. Works councils play a critical role in standing for the interests of employees within our organization, particularly in European countries where they are prevalent, and they make sure that whatever we deploy internally within the company protects the privacy of the employees who live in that region. Engaging with works councils ensures that we consider the perspectives and concerns of the workforce during the deployment of Copilot for Sales. Their input is valuable in addressing compliance, privacy, and employee relations matters, making our deployment process more robust and aligned with local regulations.

Lori: What have you found to be some of the challenges in managing a global-scale deployment of Copilot for Sales?

Nathalie:Deploying any new technology globally has challenges, but the speed and efficiency with which we were able to roll out this transformative product was truly remarkable. We are working on a brand-new solution that is revolutionizing the way generative AI changes the workplace, and being customer zero has given us some unique advantages. We’ve had to navigate compliance and obtain necessary approvals for deploying AI features on a global scale. Our active engagement process, which includes working closely with works councils, has been instrumental in streamlining the deployment process and ensuring that our global teams can receive help from Copilot for Sales. Despite the challenges, the feedback from sellers has been incredibly positive, especially with the AI-generated email content enhancements we’re introducing. The best part is how easy and painless it is to enable Copilot for Sales, allowing our teams to quickly harness its productivity-boosting capabilities and experience a seamless transition to a more efficient way of working.

Lori: It seems like building an effective approval process is crucial. How replicable has Microsoft made this process for other companies?

Nathalie: At Microsoft, we have developed a globally recognizable, efficient process for enabling Copilot scenarios. By supporting open dialogue, we can gather feedback, address emerging concerns, and align our deployment approach with evolving regulations. We recently set up a framework with European works councils to supply valuable insights into employee needs and expectations, enabling Microsoft to tailor the product and deployment process accordingly. We encourage all companies to get connected with their respective works counsels to achieve a balance between rapid implementation and compliance, ensuring that their employees are protected, and the organization meets regulatory requirements.

Lori: It’s truly exciting to see the transformative power of Copilot for Sales in action and see the positive impact it’s having on our organization!

To learn more about our internal deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, read our “See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales” blog post.  You can also read more about our internal deployment of Microsoft Viva at Microsoft by visiting our “Viva la vida! Work life is better at Microsoft with Viva” content suite. Learn more about other applications and capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot for Sales using the links below:

• Learn more about tips Microsoft has for working with works councils.
• Take a look at Dynamics 365 Sales and Copilot for Sales release wave documentation on Microsoft Learn.
• Watch the Copilot in Copilot for Sales demo.
• Stay up-to-date on Copilot for Sales features and updates on the Copilot for Sales Blog.

If you’re not yet a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.

We’re always looking for feedback and would like to hear from you. Please head to the Dynamics 365 Community to start a discussion, ask questions, and tell us what you think!

Click here to try or learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. 

• Find out how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.
• Check out these seven things we learned deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales at Microsoft.
• Read the Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment and adoption guide we put together based on our internal experience here at Microsoft.
• Take a look at our Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment and adoption guide for executives.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.
• Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post The power of AI in Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

If you’re on a sales team, you know that there are all kinds of distracting tasks that eat away at your time and get in the way of what you do best—building relationships with and solving problems for customers.

There’s no doubt that modern salespeople need to rely on too many tools and services to get their jobs done. We in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, see firsthand the stress this puts on our sales teams.

“We wanted to alleviate as much of that pain as we could,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president of Employee Experience. “We realized that the AI and automation that comes baked into Copilot for Sales could make the lives of our sellers much better.”

Microsoft is Customer Zero for our own products, which means we typically try them first, put them through their paces, and send our feedback to the product group. Usage has steadily increased since we adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales internally.

“We’ve had a great Customer Zero experience with Copilot for Sales,” D’Hers says. “We’ve been very pleased with how much it has simplified the lives of our sellers and enabled them to focus more on selling.”

Unlocking human potential with AI and automation

It’s hard to overstate how complicated selling is—there seems to be no end to the countless small tasks that sellers need to accomplish to keep their day-to-day moving. From managing communications to pulling in relevant stakeholders to inputting information into customer relationship management (CRM) software, sales professionals are constantly allocating and reallocating their attention across different apps and work modes.

During internal simplification research at Microsoft, we discovered that our sellers were using as many as 40 tools per day. Flipping back and forth between those different workspaces results in a lot of wasted time.

“Sixty-eight percent of sellers’ time gets spent on critical but tedious sales tasks,” says Cory Newton-Smith, head of product management for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. “If we can identify what they’re doing in this non-selling space and recover time from that, they can spend more of their day where humans excel.”

We wanted to design a way for salespeople to keep essential tasks within the flow of work, then introduce powerful features to speed up their efforts. It’s especially important to minimize the time they spend in CRM programs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. Although those solutions are essential to modern sales and contain many powerful features, they add steps into a seller’s workflow.

“You have the CRM space and then you have the productivity space,” says Smita Shrivastava, product strategy and growth lead for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. “Sellers mostly work in Microsoft Outlook and Teams, so juggling apps to work within the CRM is a constant drain on productivity.”

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales maximizes sales teams’ productivity with AI-assisted content creation and meeting summaries across Microsoft 365 apps. It seamlessly connects data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce CRMs from the apps where salespeople get their work done—within Microsoft Outlook and Teams.

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales saves sellers time through three main functionalities:

• Automating and simplifying tasks with AI-generated emails, meeting summaries, data collection, and data entry
• Getting actionable insights in the flow of work by bringing together data from Microsoft 365 apps and CRM systems
• Maintaining momentum with AI-powered analytics that provide recommendations and reminders

“It’s really all about seller productivity,” says Peter Macy, technical specialist within our SaaS organization and pilot program participant for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. “It helps maintain that focus and streamlines your work so you don’t have to jump back and forth and lose attention.”

Deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales

To deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales thoughtfully internally here at Microsoft, we engaged our team of change management professionals, product specialists, and internal early adopters to make sure the tool landed just right. Fortunately, we’ve built out a robust deployment and adoption framework that we’ve iterated over several large-scale product rollouts.

“We have a repeatable process for landing changes,” says Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager in Microsoft Digital. “We can take advantage of a framework that’s already in place, including local adoption teams in each subsidiary and well-structured pilot programs.”

Deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales

We built a five-step plan to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to around 60,000 employees worldwide.

01

Build a change management plan

02

Provide landing toolkit

03

Launch and deploy to users

04

Listen and learn

05

Reinforce new behaviors

We’ve developed a tried and tested method for deployment that was instrumental in our Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales deployment.

Through conversations with salespeople across Microsoft, our change management team focused on identifying how the tool would interact with different roles, then built communications around value propositions for each of those use cases. That helped produce readiness toolkits that demonstrated Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales’ value.

From there, it was time to begin a phased deployment—starting with a pilot. Generative AI drove a lot of uptake thanks to its popularity in the public imagination.

“The second I put out a post asking who wanted to be involved in a pilot, I had virtual hands up all over the world,” Jones says.

Real-world usage by our early adopters in the pilot helped guide our wider deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. One thing we determined was that as a companion app designed to function intuitively, the training burden for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales was much lower than for standalone programs. As a result, change managers simply dropped into existing monthly team trainings and town halls to get the message out.

The value of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales was immediately apparent. That helped drive adoption across Microsoft.

“The moment sellers launch Copilot for Sales, they see CRM data infused into emails and Teams conversations,” Shrivastava says. “They can see the power of Copilot for Sales very quickly.”

Clearly, Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales has struck a chord with our sellers. Since general availability in October 2022, we deployed it to nearly all of the company.

We have since moved on to listening and gathering customer feedback. That feedback helps inform both our future deployment efforts and the month-over-month rollouts for new Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales features. In the meantime, sellers are saving time every day.

Putting time back in salespeople’s days

For sellers like Macy, the most substantial benefit of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales is the newfound efficiency that comes from automation. It’s the result of powerful features like the sales pane in Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft 365 Copilot responses, and automated data connections that pull information out of CRMs and prompt you to input new contacts and opportunities.

Research has shown that sellers spend upwards of 60 percent of their time managing their inbox. Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales helps lighten some of this burden through AI-generated email summaries and responses. According to Macy, this tool can help sellers recapture 20% to 30% of their time.

But it’s more than just time savings. Those Copilot features help sellers reclaim cognitive space that’s better spent on building relationships.

“What I find is that it frees you up to be present in the conversation,” Macy says. “There’s no more going silent or pausing to take hurried notes in the midst of a chat because the technology captures that value for you.”

And perhaps most powerfully, there’s no more broken focus or juggling apps from jumping between Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and CRM systems. Contact and opportunity management happen within the flow of work, where sellers spend their time.

As Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales continues to evolve, our product team has its eye on features that extend its value even further across the Microsoft 365 productivity suite. Those features include intelligent contract authoring in Microsoft Word and automated collaboration space creation with partner channels in Microsoft Teams.

“Our productivity suite is so powerful, but up until now it’s remained relatively generic to suit many different tasks,” Newton-Smith says. “Our new concept is that apps like Copilot for Sales can show up and make these tools more powerful because they’re more contextually relevant to specific jobs.”

For our sellers, the bottom line is that Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales is saving time and cognitive effort to help them be their fullest selves at work.

“The tool isn’t there to do your job,” Macy says. “It’s there to learn how to work alongside you and accelerate your productivity.”

Here are some tips for getting started with Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales at your company.

• Leverage the easiest-to-use features first: email summary and conversation intelligence.
• Start with adding new contacts from Outlook to gain easy wins as you familiarize your team with the app.
• Use Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales as an introduction to generative AI and intelligent co-pilots.
• Get your CRM admins, senior decision makers, and core IT onboard by demonstrating the most useful features.
• Pilot with your all-stars to gain insights and build groundswell for your deployment.
• Connect with your users to see where they’re finding value, then promote those features.
• Sellers like to hear from their peers. Be sure to leverage the champions that develop out of your pilots.

Click here to try or learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales.

• Discover the results we’ve realized from deploying Copilot for Sales internally at Microsoft.
• Read our four-chapter deployment guide for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero in the age of AI.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

It’s been a privilege to help drive our real estate transformation at Microsoft.

As an IT leader at the company, I appreciate the powerful transformation acceleration that comes from partnering closely with the internal business partner that you support. I work in Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms Microsoft, and I partner with the Microsoft Real Estate team who manages our buildings and facilities.

My team works hand in hand with the Real Estate team to develop, deliver, and roll out technology solutions to improve the experience our employees have across the globe with our 600-plus buildings and their amenities. We also build solutions that enable our Real Estate team to run their portfolio more efficiently. Our partnership has been pivotal in moving from simply building IT solutions to digitally transforming real estate at Microsoft.

Typically, technology is added to a building many years or even decades after building construction. For example, software for booking a conference room or reserving a campus shuttle is developed independently from the office building being built, bought, or leased. This model works OK. However, to truly transform, technology needs to be integrated into the building, which requires a tight real estate and IT partnership.
For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epzy9iogcU8.

Microsoft’s journey

Our journey started about seven years ago when we kicked off a classic “add-on” model for new technology that our Real Estate team could use to transform their operations. We successfully developed three add-on technologies:

• A corporate real estate Microsoft Azure Data Warehouse to improve real estate and financial decision-making
• A lobby portal for fast and easy visitor check-in
• A one-stop application for employee shuttle and bus reservations

These projects solved immediate pain points and started our team’s partnership.

As our partnership matured and trust deepened, we moved to the next level of more transformative technology. For example, we built a Microsoft Dynamics 365 tool to manage all aspects of global facilities management. Another project applied machine learning to optimize our building footprints based on occupancy data. Finally, we built a dining order-ahead capability for our cafeterias at our headquarters campuses in Washington state.

In order to take our technology to the next level, we started to integrate technology into buildings through the use of IoT sensors and Microsoft Azure Digital Twins. Microsoft’s newest buildings—rolling out at our headquarters campus and at locations all around the world—will have more than 4,000 IoT sensors incorporated into each building! These sensors enable digital transformation of employee experiences and building management, including sensors to detect cafeteria crowdedness, wayfinding beacons to help employees navigate our campuses, and enhanced parking solutions to solve the age-old “find a parking spot” problem.

Through Microsoft Azure Digital Twins, we have created a digital replica of our physical building infrastructure. This allows Microsoft’s Real Estate team to better run the campus and create amazing experiences.

To achieve digital transformation, we need complete building and technology integration, including the building’s infrastructure such as segmented networks. This transformation is easier to accomplish with a greenfield site; however, our long-term goal is to transform our existing sites as well.

How to build a real estate and IT partnership

We have found the following to be critical to building our partnership:

• Understanding each other’s worlds. One of the hardest challenges we faced was figuring out how to overlay technology onto a construction schedule. We discovered the hard way that construction doesn’t wait, and once a building’s walls and ceilings are installed, our technological choices are severely more limited. Now, when we approach a new site, our teams work together to understand each other’s schedules and lead times. We also work with each new site to understand their priorities. For some sites, Microsoft is the owner; for other sites, we’re an occupant. The setup, usage, and occupants of each site determine priorities and the balance of employee-facing versus facility-management technologies. We’ve gotten better at doing a site-by-site assessment instead of assuming “one size fits all.”
• Have shared goals. Our joint Real Estate and IT teams share goals in several ways. We have joint “north star” visions for our employee experiences that have guided nearly every prioritization decision that we made. Furthermore, we rallied around a set of priority new construction buildings around the globe. These shared priorities help our teams be laser-focused, which is much easier said than done in an innovation space where there are many new technologies and inventions that we “could” incorporate.
• Squads for each vertical. Our project is vast, encompassing transportation, dining, productivity, access, and facility operations. Within these verticals, we have what we call “squads,” which include our engineering leads, user experience leads, and the Real Estate team lead. These squad leads focus on goals, blockers, and prioritization. This setup of joint ownership at all levels enables every part of our large team to run fast.

All these partnership aspects helped tremendously when our north star goals were pressure-tested by the COVID-19 epidemic. We needed to be nimble in our plans so that we could help ensure a safe return to the office when sites become ready. If we hadn’t already had the partnership and trust in place, our real estate technology COVID response would have been slower and lower-tech. Post-pandemic, our partnership is helping us determine what the future of flexible work will mean for real estate technology.

I’m very proud to be part of the Real Estate and IT partnership that is digitally transforming Microsoft’s physical buildings.

• Discover how we’re making our transportation services seamless and more efficient using the power of data and AI.
• Read about how we’re delivering smart building experiences using CI/CD for Azure Digital Twins.
• Check out our guide to empowering employee flexibility using Microsoft Places.
• Learn how AI is shaping the future of work at Microsoft.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Accelerating Microsoft’s global real estate transformation with Microsoft Digital appeared first on Inside Track Blog.