Source: Microsoft
Headline: AI is already changing work—Microsoft included
The Path Forward
Learnings from our AI transformation to date.
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Play offense and defense to get AI’s full value
AI helps boost employee productivity and drive cost efficiencies, but you shouldn’t stop there. A winning AI strategy requires playing both offense and defense—leveraging it to grow revenue and cut costs. Organizations that find ways to apply AI to supercharge their key differentiation will gain a real competitive advantage. Microsoft’s sales team used Copilot to unlock revenue while legal focused on reducing spend related to regulatory work. As AI gets increasingly integrated into every aspect of work, look for opportunities to apply it across every team, function, and process. -
Start with your biggest pain point, then apply AI
We know from both our own experience and from working with customers that it can be hard to know where to start with AI. Ask yourself: what are one or two processes that—if you could make them faster, cheaper, or better—would be transformational to the business? Our marketing team focused on content creation, for instance, while customer service concentrated on case resolution. For every process, partnership with IT was critical to success. -
Ground AI in your organizational data
When AI is grounded in your company’s data and knowledge—like Copilot—you can steer it toward your goals and needs. And of course, security, data governance, and responsible AI are a must. As agentic capabilities grow, secure data-grounding becomes even more essential to gaining a competitive edge—enabling agents to manage data and actions across disparate systems. They will help marketing teams predict customer needs and opportunities, say, or human resources improve employee engagement, or customer service automate aspects of its support process. -
Future-proof your organization by giving every employee an AI assistant
AI transformation is moving fast for all of us—and agentic capabilities will only accelerate the pace of change. AI assistants like Copilot will help employees manage a constellation of agents that perform tasks ranging from simple prompt-and-response queries to fully autonomous actions. The first step toward empowering people for this new way of working is to give every employee an AI assistant. As always, you can’t get there with technology alone. Every leader must build an AI-forward culture that empowers people to scale their impact and focus on the important work that only humans can do.
1 Internal CSS experiment conducted by Microsoft; 600 participants using Copilot Q&A function, Azure Core team; Nov. – Dec. 2023. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
2 Internal Microsoft sales team data based on 687 sellers of Microsoft 365 Copilot from Jan. – June 2024, as compared with sellers with low usage of Copilot. Regular usage of Copilot means sellers who use Copilot daily at least 50% of the time during the testing period.
3 Internal Microsoft marketing team data. June – Sept. 2024. Conversion means initiating the free account sign up process on Azure.com.
4 Internal HR experiment conducted by Microsoft, 33 participants, Oct. 2024. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
5 Internal Microsoft Finance data, Oct. 2023 – Aug. 2024.
6 Projected numbers based on internal Microsoft legal team study. 56 participants. May 2024. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
7 Internal Microsoft IT experiment. 46 employee participants. Sept. 16-27, 2024. Success rate means: use of self-help resources through to resolution without contacting an agent. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
8 Internal Microsoft IT experiment. 46 employee participants. Sept. 16-27, 2024. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
9 Internal Microsoft sales team data based on 687 sellers of Microsoft 365 Copilot from Jan. – June 2024, as compared with sellers with low usage of Copilot. High usage of Copilot means sellers who use Copilot daily at least 50% of the time during the testing period.
10 Internal Microsoft sales team data based on 24,000 sellers. Oct. 2023 – June 2024. As compared with sellers with low usage of Copilot. Regular usage of Copilot means sellers who use Copilot daily at least 50% of the time during the testing period.
11 Internal Microsoft legal team study. 56 participants. May 2024. [These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval].
12 Projected numbers based on internal Microsoft experiment of 56 participants from May 2024. Increased capacity means increasing the capacity for our legal professionals to meet the exponentially growing regulatory and compliance demands without a corresponding increase in resources (e.g., people and budget resources staying similar/flat).
13 Internal Microsoft marketing data based on use of Azure AI from a team that manages 35 commercial Microsoft web properties. Sept. 2024. Digital content creation process means brief creation, copywriting, web page creation, and sign-off.
14 Internal Microsoft marketing team data. June – Sept. 2024. Conversion means initiating the free account sign up process on Azure.com.
15 Internal CSS experiment conducted by Microsoft; 600 participants using Copilot Q&A function, Azure Core team; Nov. – Dec. 2023. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
16 Office of Chief Economist, Wave 2.5 Study results of internal use of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service among Microsoft commercial business support engineers. Outcomes reflect results from 9,900 agents from a specific five-month period (April-September 2023). Findings were evaluated at the business unit level, not across the entire CSS organization
17 Internal HR study conducted by Microsoft, 33 participants, Sept – Oct 2024. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
18 Internal Microsoft Finance data, Oct. 2023 – Aug. 2024.
19 Internal Microsoft IT experiment. 46 employee participants. Sept. 16-27, 2024. Success rate means: use of self-help resources through to resolution without contacting an agent. These results are statistically significant at the 95th percent confidence interval.
20 This is a projected number based on user testing of DACA Copilot and the 12-year long-standing DACA clinic metrics.