From enhancing customer experience to
accelerating research and development, organizations across
industries share stories of AI successes
CHICAGO, Nov. 19,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Some of the world's largest and
most impactful organizations are at Microsoft Ignite today, sharing
real-world examples of how their investments in the Microsoft
Copilot and AI stack are transforming their businesses and
driving impact. Ignite is Microsoft's annual flagship event
showcasing the latest innovations and product updates to enable
customers, partners and developers to unleash the full potential of
Microsoft's technology.
Organizations across the globe are dedicating considerable
resources to implementing generative AI into their workstreams to
benefit their employees and customers. In the past week alone,
NASA's Earth Science Data Systems Program announced the
creation of its Earth Copilot solution with Microsoft Azure OpenAI
Service. Accenture said it's rolling out Microsoft 365
Copilots and agents to 100,000 employees, with a commitment to
deploy 200,000 more. Hundreds of other customers shared real
examples of how they are embracing Microsoft's AI capabilities to
drive impact and shape today's platform shift to AI.
Internal Microsoft data along with third-party research reflects
the ongoing AI boom.
- More than 85% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft AI.
- Nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft 365
Copilot.
- A global IDC surveyi of enterprise
organizations found that:
- Generative AI usage jumped from 55% in 2023 to 75% in
2024.
- For every $1 a company invests in
generative AI, the return on investment (ROI) is $3.7x.
- IDCii also forecasts worldwide
spending on AI will reach $632
billion by 2028.
While these numbers are impressive, they don't necessarily tell
a story, people do. Here are some of their AI success stories:
ABB Group, a manufacturing and operations automation
provider, is using generative AI to help industrial-sector
customers better manage their carbon footprint. The company turned
to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to build Genix Copilot, a
generative AI solution that integrates with its core Genix
industrial IoT and analytics suite to answer customer questions in
natural language and provides specific, actionable insights. For
example, when a customer asked, "What's the status of carbon
emission across all our plants?" Genix Copilot reported that a
plant was nearing its carbon emissions cap and recommended specific
steps to prevent a breach. ABB says this proactive approach can
help customers see up to 40% cost savings in operations and
maintenance, a 30% boost in production efficiency, and a 25%
improvement in sustainability. The new solution is also helping
ABB's own teams improve the way they work. "With Genix Copilot
as a service, we are expecting at least 20% more momentum in
sales," said Rajesh
Ramachandran, Global Chief Digital Officer for Process
Automation at ABB. "We can close deals faster, it brings a new set
of customers and it increases existing customer sales. We are
(also) seeing an 80% reduction in service calls because they
can be taken care of by Genix Copilot before those calls need to
reach a support agent."
Air India, the nation's flagship carrier, has
significantly enhanced its customer experience by migrating its
workloads to Microsoft Azure. Faced with outdated technology, the
airline sought modernization to improve service for millions of
passengers. By implementing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and the
latest GPT models, Air India developed AI.g, a virtual assistant
capable of handling 30,000 daily queries on topics like bookings
and flight status. This innovation has enabled millions of
automated customer interactions, freeing up contact center staff
for more complex issues. The transition to Azure has not only
improved the customer experience and operational efficiency but
also led to significant financial savings. "We have doubled
our passenger count since early 2022," said Dr.
Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and
Technology Officer, Air India. "But the call volume in our contact
center remains the same — about 9,000 queries daily. That's because
AI.g is handling about 10,000 a day. That saves us several
million dollars a year. And AI.g would not have
been possible without strong collaboration with
Microsoft."
Campari Group, a leader in the spirits industry with
products in nearly 200 countries, embraced Microsoft 365 Copilot to
enable its employees — called Camparistas — to embed Generative AI
capabilities in their daily work. Microsoft 365 Copilot is helping
teams streamline meeting prep and recaps, allowing employees
to focus on discussions instead of manual tasks. Early
adopters report saving 16 to 30 minutes a day; 80% say it
speeds up tasks, 81% report higher productivity, 86% see improved
work quality, 73% spend less mental effort on routine tasks, and
93% feel confident using it. "Copilot is a game changer,"
said Jeremie Mortiz, Global Consumer
Engagement Senior Director at Campari Group. "It can multiply your
strengths and give you that partner to push ideas further and break
out of your daily routine. We're focusing on what matters most —
creativity and decision-making rather than spending time on
time-consuming tasks."
C.H. Robinson, one of
the world's largest logistics platforms, automated its email price
quoting system using Microsoft Azure AI to significantly reduce
response times for over 2,000 daily pricing requests from
shippers. The company's automated AI system now classifies
incoming email, uses generative AI to piece together the details in
it, then replicates the steps a person would take to fulfill the
customer's request. This automation has slashed email
quote times from hours to just 32 seconds, freeing employees for
more valuable tasks. "Incorporating Azure AI in our tech has
helped put us on pace to achieve another 15% increase in
productivity this year," said Mark
Albrecht, Vice President, Data Science, C.H. Robinson. "Big picture, this tech makes it
possible to automate virtually any kind of email transaction and
capture efficiencies in global supply chains that just couldn't be
achieved before building this Azure-based generative AI
solution."
Dentsu, an integrated marketing solutions agency, is
relying on Microsoft Azure AI to better serve its clients. Faced
with the growing complexity of media metrics, Dentsu used Azure AI
Studio, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure OpenAI Service to develop
a copilot to help employees interpret results via conversational
chat and reduce analysis time by 80%. This not only improves
model accuracy but also promises millions in savings by
enhancing clients' return on advertising spend. "We can
complete media plans faster and with more confidence to help
clients optimize their media spend and exceed their goals for
customer response," said Becca
Kline, Senior Director of Analytics, Dentsu. "Before, our
client-facing media planners might have to wait weeks. Once we roll
this out, it will take minutes. It's a huge
time-saver."
Eaton, an intelligent power management company, is
leveraging to Microsoft 365 Copilot to help streamline and automate
operations, improve data access, centralize knowledge, and empower
teams to focus on higher-value tasks. One immediate challenge
addressed through Copilot focused on the manual, time-consuming
documentation process in Eaton's Finance operations. Copilot helped
Eaton document over 9,000 standard operating procedures (SOPs),
resulting in an 83% time savings for each SOP.
"We're working to get information out of people's heads, to get
the expertise of the organization into technology where it's
accessible," said Katrina
Redmond, CIO, Eaton Corp.
Lenovo is a global technology company with a broad
portfolio that includes devices, infrastructure, IT services and
complex solutions. Its Premier Support services team is using
Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, both
with Copilot, to deliver an AI-powered chat service to streamline
support operations and keep pace with growing demand. Thanks to
real-time, high-quality suggestions from Copilot, service reps
spend less time gathering and reviewing information and more time
resolving the issue. "As a result, average handling time has
fallen by 20% and agent productivity is up 15%," said
Chen Lu, Director, Services IT
Delivery, Lenovo. "And with higher satisfaction ratings, we know
that customers are happier too."
Mars Veterinary Health provides preventive, general,
specialty and emergency veterinary care for millions of pets each
year. To address the challenges of a global shortage of veterinary
radiologists, Mars used a Mistral Large Language Model from the
Azure AI Studio model catalog to build RapidRead, a new diagnostic
tool to review X-ray images and provide a diagnosis for a human
radiologist to review. RapidRead's capabilities have
potentially saved hundreds of pets in life-threatening
situations. "Clinics are now getting results in mere minutes
versus hours or days," said Jerry
Martin, Vice President, Research & Development at Mars
Science & Diagnostics. "The significance of that can't be
understated. We are saving more lives and pets are home with their
families much, much faster. For Mars, that is the best metric by
which we can measure our success."
Medigold Health, an occupational health provider
based in the U.K., has transformed its operations with Microsoft
Azure. Specializing in workplace health risk reduction and employee
well-being, Medigold supports over 3,500 businesses with a team of
over 1,000 employees, including 450 clinicians and technicians. The
company turned to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos
DB and Azure SQL Database to automate manual aspects of traditional
client health assessments like extensive notetaking, dictation and
report generation. This has significantly reduced the
administrative burdens on clinicians, leading to a 58% rise in
clinician retention and job satisfaction. "The tools allow
reports to be generated from the clinician's consultation notes
in approximately 15 seconds," said Alex
Goldsmith, Chief Executive Officer, Medigold Health. "They
must then simply review, edit and sign off the report, saving them
a lot of time over the course of a day. The time saved helps
them optimize clinician-patient time, and they no longer have to
work over their hours to get reports written. One clinician
told me that since we started using AI, they've been able to see
their family more — that means everything."
Ontada, part of McKesson Corp., is an oncology technology
and insights business dedicated to transforming the fight against
cancer. The company turned to Microsoft Azure AI, including Azure
OpenAI Service, to process more than 150 million unstructured
oncology document components including clinician notes,
prescriptions and testing. This helps researchers extract
potentially valuable information that was previously unanalyzed or
unused to accelerate research and development and ultimately help
bring new treatments to patients. "We were collecting the right
data, but it's impossible for a human to make the correlations
needed to gather meaningful insights," said Amy O'Sullivan, Chief Research Officer,
Ontada."Utilizing Azure OpenAI Service, we are now processing
over 150 million unstructured data documents in half the time it
previously took."
Toyota Motor Corporation, a nearly 100-year-old car
manufacturer, is tapping the power of generative AI to accelerate
innovation and ensure expert knowledge is retained as senior
engineers retire. The company used Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service,
Azure Functions and Cosmos DB to build a system of generative AI
agents to store and share internal expertise with the goal of
developing new vehicle models faster. For example, an engineer
might ask the system how to make a car run faster. An engine agent
might give an answer related to engine output while a regulatory
agent provides an answer on limits to emissions, which the system
then consolidates into a single reply. Toyota says its
powertrain engineering team uses the new solution hundreds of times
a month. "These experts are relatively senior," said
Kenji Onishi, automotive engineer,
Toyota. "When they retire, their knowledge will be gone. The
mission here is to prevent it from happening. So we'd like to
transfer this knowledge to the next generation."
To learn more about how leading companies around the world are
embracing Microsoft AI capabilities to reinvent customer
engagement, enrich employee experiences, reshape business
processes, and bend the curve on innovation, visit the Microsoft
AI in Action page.
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools
powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the
evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is
committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly,
with a mission to empower every person and every organization on
the planet to achieve more.
i IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024
Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024
ii IDC Press Release, Worldwide Spending on
Artificial Intelligence Forecast to Reach $632 Billion in 2028, According to a New IDC
Spending Guide, August 2024
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.