Microsoft Copilot for Finance opened a public preview, as the latest expansion of Microsoft 365's "Intelligent Co pilot" for business functions, it will bring revolutionary changes to the way enterprise finance teams handle daily work. Similar to the previously announced commercial versions of Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service, Copilot for Finance provides automated business processes driven by artificial intelligence and oriented towards job responsibilities, recommendations, and operational guidelines in workflows.
The finance department plays a crucial role in corporate strategic decision-making and can even influence the company's future development direction. Nowadays, over 80% of financial leaders and teams also shoulder the important task of strategic decision-making in addition to daily financial operations. However, 62% of financial personnel stated that they are trapped in complex data input and review processes every day and find it difficult to extricate themselves. Copilot for Finance can help finance departments save valuable time and play a strategic role in providing consulting advice and business insights by streamlining financial work, automating business processes, and providing workflow insights.
Copilot for Finance has built-in Copilot for Microsoft 365. Based on Excel, Outlook, and other commonly used productivity applications, it has particularly enhanced features related to workflow and data specific insights to meet the needs of financial personnel. Copilot for Finance can build data cognition based on existing financial data sources, supporting various traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, and Microsoft Graph.
Starting today, the Copilot for Finance, which is open for public preview, has key features for enhancing financial operations, including:
Assist financial analysts in quickly completing variance analysis of the dataset using natural language prompts in Excel, identifying anomalies, risks, or mismatched values. This type of analysis can provide business leaders with clear decision-making insights, timely identify parts that match, exceed or fail to meet the original financial results, and identify the reasons.
Simplify the reconciliation process in Excel with automated data structure comparison and problem-solving guidelines to guide specific operations, helping to ensure the reliability and accuracy of financial records.
Generate a complete summary of customer account details in Outlook, such as balance sheets and invoice lists, to accelerate the process of collecting relevant information.
Assist clients in converting raw data from Excel into visual charts and reports suitable for public presentations, and share them through Outlook and Teams.
Customers leverage Microsoft Copilot to transform business operations
Copilot's functional expansion towards business functions can help employees from different functions cope with common challenges, that is, utilizing relevant data and workflows unique to job responsibilities to achieve insights and impact. Microsoft's latest Work Trend Index (WTI) report also shows that people are being overwhelmed by data, spending about a quarter of their daily time searching for information, and only about 50% of the information they consume is considered necessary for their work. In addition, a recent survey found that positions such as sales, finance, and supply chain have specific needs for data.
Copilot helps break down information and application silos, while actively seeking insights, advice, and guidance from various data sources, all based on Microsoft's responsible artificial intelligence principles. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, enterprises can further customize Copilots for business processes in Copilot for Microsoft 365 and its functional extensions for job responsibilities.
Sales personnel from over 30000 corporate institutions have received support from Copilot for Sales. Hundreds of companies, including Dentsu, Lumen Technologies, Northern Trust, Schneider Electric, and Visa, are using Copilot to enhance employee capabilities in their sales, service, and finance departments.
The following are some customer statements:
Carolyn Isaacs, Global Financial Services Director of Dentsu, said, "Artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses operate and grow. At Dentsu, we have been seeking to empower all employees with generative AI through a framework based on ethical and responsible principles of artificial intelligence.". Based on the existing cases of using Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Copilot for Sales to enhance employee capabilities, we are pleased to participate in the preview phase of Microsoft Copilot for Finance. Copilot for Finance has great potential in accelerating the influence of financial professionals by optimizing daily processes. It is foreseeable that the improvement in efficiency will unleash the capabilities of financial personnel, thereby better focusing on the overall performance improvement of the enterprise
Shaelyn Otikor, Global Digital Workplace Strategy Director of Asset Services at Northern Trust, said, "Northern Trust's digital workplace transformation is based on 'empowering employees with technology and improving and optimizing customer service.'". Deploying Microsoft Copilot for Service has become a milestone in this transformation process, and we are very excited about the potential of this artificial intelligence solution. It will help us modernize our customer relationship organization, simplify employee processes, and improve customer experience
Visa Chief Information Officer Don Hobson said, "Building on the extensive application of artificial intelligence over the past 30 years, Visa is promoting generative AI throughout the company to empower employees and develop new solutions to provide services and protection for our cardholders, merchants, and a wider ecosystem.". We have witnessed employees' use of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and are pleased to continue providing them with new ways to apply technology, thereby transforming our work and customer service approach
Microsoft is also an AI driven enterprise. We utilize Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service to improve the workflow of sales and customer service personnel, revolutionizing the customer experience:
Microsoft Copilot for Sales uses AI assisted insights and recommendations to help salespeople reach deals faster. We conducted a study on Microsoft sales personnel who use Copilot for Sales at least once a week and found that their efficiency has improved, with an average weekly savings of 90 minutes; Another 67% of salespeople stated that this allows them more time to interact with customers.
Judson Althoff, Global Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Microsoft, said, "We have witnessed firsthand that an AI driven sales organization can be more successful. Copilot for Sales not only helps global sales teams simplify tasks and save time, but also provides personalized and customized AI assisted insights and recommendations for different customers, strengthening customer relationships."
Microsoft Copilot for Service is utilizing artificial intelligence to bring modernization to customer service centers, enhance service experience, and improve the efficiency of seat staff. As one of the world's largest customer service departments, Microsoft's customer service department has reduced the average case processing time (time spent resolving customer cases through chat) for two different customer support business areas by 12% after using similar features in Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The benefits and usage cases brought by the department's self deployment of Copilot will continue to have an impact on the functional updates of Copilot for Service.
Mala Anand, Global Vice President of Microsoft's Customer Experience and Success Division, said, "Generative AI has brought tremendous change to Microsoft's customer service centers. Sitting staff no longer need to spend a lot of time searching for information, but can focus more on helping customers solve complex problems. New employees can also benefit from it, and their confidence and ability to work have been improved.". This not only shortens the onboarding time, but also improves job satisfaction
Microsoft Copilot for Finance simplifies financial processes and provides insights to make wiser decisions. Microsoft's globally leading finance department has always prioritized the use of artificial intelligence and automation tools to achieve modern operations, reduce financial risks, and support the company's priorities through strategic insights. The team also assisted in developing the product features and development roadmap for Copilot for Finance.
"Like other departments, Microsoft's finance department is also looking for technologies that can improve work efficiency and influence. I am also happy to document my experience as a 'zero customer' of Microsoft Copilot for Finance," said Cory Hrncirik, Microsoft's modern finance director
