Microsoft finance team tests Copilot in transformation push

Microsoft quickly deployed the software giant’s AI-powered virtual assistant, Copilot, across its finance department of about 5,000 people, according to Cory Hrncirik, the company’s modern finance leader.

Hrncirik said that finance experts within the company rely on the tool to perform routine tasks faster and deliver data-driven insights.

“Finance has become one of the top users of Copilot at Microsoft,” the executive said. “In the process, we’ve created great use cases and our own library of prompts, as well as videos and demos.”

Microsoft’s finance organization has made Copilot adoption a high priority as part of a broader digital transformation push that Hrncirik spearheaded in his role as the company’s modern finance leader, which he took on in 2018.

The software giant is also competing with other major tech companies to dominate the artificial intelligence market. Microsoft has launched several Copilots, chatbots that have been embedded in the software giant’s portfolio of applications and services since 2023 and help users complete their tasks.

The company last February Introduced Copilot for FinanceA feature found in Microsoft 365 applications such as Excel, Outlook, and Teams, it was introduced with the aim of making financial processes more fluid and seamless. The tool still “It will be in “public preview” mode, a spokesperson said.

Microsoft releases similar role-specific virtual companions sales and customer service professionals.

Best finance use cases

Hrncirik stated that one of the areas where Copilot for Finance is used most at Microsoft is the reconciliation of data in Excel, and noted the following: “We use the compromise tool very often, especially in some teams,” he said.

In an internal case study, accounts receivable reconciliation capabilities helped reduce the time required by Microsoft’s global treasury and financial services team According to results shared with CFO Dive, comparing data across sources saves an average of 20 minutes per account. In another example, a Microsoft financial planning and analytics team was able to reduce the time it spent reconciling data each week from an average of 1-2 hours to 10 minutes.

Microsoft’s finance team is currently testing variance analysis capabilities and has seen promising results so far, according to Hrncirik. Variance analysis refers to a method of comparing projected or planned financial performance with actual results.

Copilot for Finance “helps you get to those insights faster than you could in the past with traditional, manual methods,” Hrncirik said.

On Monday, Microsoft launched a new product called Copilot’s “next wave”These include a new feature called Copilot Pages, which allows multiple users to collaborate on AI-generated content.

“Over the last 18 months, working with Copilot has become a daily habit for people everywhere, helping them complete tasks faster, hold more purposeful meetings, collaborate more effectively, and streamline their work processes,” Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI in the Workplace, said in a blog post announcing the move.

Other case studies cited in the article include how customer service representatives at virtual healthcare provider Teladoc saved up to five hours each week by using Copilot to type answers to frequently asked questions from customers.

The announcement comes after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on an earnings call last month that “too many customers were disappointed with the products they purchased from Microsoft Copilot because they were not getting the accuracy and responsiveness they wanted.”

Salesforce is preparing to launch its own generative AI platform called Agentforce.

Return from Microsoft

Spataro responded to Benioff’s offer in an emailed statement.

“Every customer is at a different point in their journey, but across the board we’re hearing something very different from Copilot for our Microsoft 365 customers,” he said. “In the last quarter alone, we’ve seen over 60% customer growth and daily users have more than doubled — a clear indication of Copilot’s value in the market.”

The quality of the results Copilot produces depends largely on the user’s prompts, Hrncirik says.

“I think there’s definitely a learning curve to become a really advanced user,” he said. “The more context you provide, that gives you the foundation to give the best possible answer.”

Microsoft one Copilot Lab public webpage Along with resources like training videos and sample prompts to help users use the technology.

Meanwhile, Hrncirik said that Microsoft’s finance department developed its own finance command library, and noted:

“I think we’ve created close to 300 (sample) finance prompts, and they’ve been very helpful in helping people learn how to do something more advanced than a (basic) prompt,” he said, adding that the library is private and internal for now.