Digital transformation is no longer just a buzzword – it’s a survival imperative in the business world. As industries around the world struggle to keep up with unprecedented technological advancements and shifting consumer expectations, McKinsey & Company likens digital transformation to a complete “rewiring” of an organisation.
This isn’t a one-off initiative but a relentless, ongoing journey that reshapes how businesses create value. In fact, as McKinsey highlights, most executives embarking on this path are likely to be navigating its challenges and opportunities for the rest of their careers.
“Embracing digital transformation is indeed a journey, and for many organisations, it’s still a work in progress,” says Satish Thomas, corporate vice president of Microsoft Industry Clouds. “The first stage was moving business processes to the cloud, so organisations could get out of the business of managing hardware. The second stage is focused on helping people work on high-value activities, streamline and transform business processes to provide better customer experiences.”
Generative artificial intelligence tools, powered by Microsoft Cloud, are delivering this second stage of digital transformation in four ways.
“First, generative AI is helping to enhance productivity, giving people the superpower to achieve so much more,” explains Thomas. “Microsoft Copilot can automate routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on more strategic activities. Our Copilot for Store Operations is an example of a template which helps frontline workers be more productive by giving them key operating and employee information through a text- and voice-based conversational interface.”
Generative AI is also helping to improve decision-making. For example, American stock exchange marketplace provider Nasdaq is migrating its meeting management solution, Nasdaq Boardvantage, to Azure to leverage Azure OpenAI Service. This will enable it to introduce new AI capabilities to help governance professionals automate routine tasks so that board members can make decisions quickly using accurate insights.
“AI-driven insights can help organisations make more informed decisions,” says Thomas. “Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, for example, uses AI to help organisations across several industries understand their carbon footprint and how they can make intelligent decisions to reduce their emissions.”
AI-driven generative models are also accelerating innovation. “By leveraging AI, organisations can more quickly develop and test new ideas and solutions,” says Thomas. “Siemens is collaborating with us to develop the Siemens Industrial Copilot, an AI-powered assistant that allows users to rapidly generate, optimise and debug complex automation code, and significantly shorten simulation times.”
The jointly developed solution aims to improve human-machine collaboration in manufacturing.
Finally, generative AI is driving better customer experiences. “AI is helping personalise interactions and providing faster, more accurate responses to customer enquiries,” says Thomas. “Earlier this year, we introduced a copilot for personalised shopping that retailers can use to help their customers quickly find the right product through conversational Q&A.”
Microsoft’s collaboration with car manufacturer Audi is a prime example of using generative AI to enhance customer service. The company has integrated ChatGPT with Azure OpenAI Service to improve its in-car control capabilities in current and future models. From July 2024, drivers of nearly two million Audi models that have been produced since 2021 and equipped with the third-generation modular infotainment system will be able to interact with their car using natural language for a safer and more intelligent driving experience.
Partnering for progress
Microsoft is enhancing its solutions to empower organisations by refining its solutions with partners to meet the unique business demands, enhance productivity and create seamless customer experiences in every industry.
“This is a rapidly evolving space, and you can see ongoing advancements in AI-powered applications, enhanced customisation options, and a focus on small language models that further refine the results delivered by generative AI systems,” says Thomas. “As we work with our customers and gain deeper insight into their specific needs, we are continuously refining our solutions and introducing new capabilities they can leverage in a low-code/no-code way, without requiring extensive development or expertise.
“Recently, we launched industry prompts in Copilot Lab and industry templates in Microsoft Copilot Studio. These platforms are designed to meet the unique demands of various businesses, enhancing productivity and fostering creativity by providing not only tools but also a seamless experience that aligns with our customers’ operational workflows. Additionally, we are integrating multi-modal content, real-time intelligence and data analytics to drive even greater value for our customers.”
According to Thomas, Microsoft relies on its partner ecosystem to help bring industry expertise for customers.
“Partners play a crucial role in extending offerings from Microsoft to customers with their domain expertise,” he says. “We have collaborated with our partners to equip them with the right technologies, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and a full suite of development tools they can use to build and extend their applications. For every industry, we engage leading partners and rely on them to cover the last mile for our customers. They are the experts in their domain and bring the innovation needed for our customers.”
For example, Microsoft is working with the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) to help financial services customers discover and analyse data quickly with Microsoft Fabric.
“We are also developing an app with LSEG called Meeting Prep for Financial Services that uses large language models and generative AI to make meeting preparation summaries by combining insights from LSEG’s financial data with news, documents, emails, chats and other relevant content from Microsoft Graph in Microsoft 365,” says Thomas.
Additionally, Microsoft is collaborating with Teladoc Health and Epic to improve patient care across the healthcare industry. “Teladoc Health is offering a care management solution by leveraging the Azure data platform and building a copilot on Teams with Azure OpenAI Service,” says Thomas. “It is using Azure OpenAI to personalise its weekly newsletters for patients, basing this personalisation on acuity and activity, to improve member health outcomes via increased newsletter engagement. Meanwhile, our continual work with Epic aims to develop and integrate generative AI into healthcare operations. DAX Copilot and Azure OpenAI integrations address challenges for clinicians including drafting message responses automatically, enabling natural language queries and interactive data analysis, and producing clinical summarisation.”
The London Stock Exchange Group is using Microsoft Fabric to help financial services customers analyse data quickly (image: istock/vichie81)
Getting ahead
Microsoft Cloud is also helping leaders to identify opportunities to proactively meet business imperatives.
“There are two specific areas where leaders can benefit from AI,” says Thomas. “First, given the urgency of the planetary crisis, society needs to push harder on the AI accelerator while establishing guardrails that steer the world safely, securely and equitably toward net-zero emissions, climate resilience and a nature-positive future. Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft, recently shared some thoughts on this topic, highlighting how AI can enable people to discern patterns, predict outcomes and optimise performance in systems that are too complex for traditional analytic methods. He also showed how it can accelerate the discovery and development of sustainability solutions such as low-carbon materials, renewable energy production and storage and climate-resilient crops.”
While AI’s potential to address the planetary crisis is immense, its implementation must be balanced with a commitment to ethical practices. This brings us to the second crucial area where leaders can benefit from AI: ensuring its responsible use.
“The second area is responsible AI,” says Thomas. “AI systems are built to provide a helpful, safe and trustworthy experience for everyone. Responsible use of AI aims to keep people and their goals at the centre of the design process and considers the benefits and potential harms that AI systems can have on society. We have adopted a thoughtful, cross-disciplinary approach with six key principles (fairness, reliability, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability) to our AI work and share this approach with our customers and partners. As we implement and learn from this, we share best practices so that any organisation considering building or using AI can do so in an ethical and responsible manner.”
Partner perspectives
We asked selected Microsoft partners how they are using Microsoft technology to help businesses connect with their customers, streamline operations and gain insights from legacy data and connect with their customers.
“Anywhere365 integrates advanced contact centre features directly into Teams. This allows users to handle conversations without switching tools and provides valuable customer relationship management information to agents, further enhancing customer engagement and loyalty,” said Tom van Leijsen, product owner at Anywhere365.
“NICE CXone is a contact-centre-as-a-service platform deployed on Azure that integrates with Teams and Dynamics 365. It allows organisations of all sizes to leverage robust customer experience capabilities with Microsoft’s extensive and proven applications portfolio,” said Brian Mistretta, director of product marketing for customer experience at NICE.
“Features like Copilot rely on flawless audio for accurate transcriptions and summaries of interactions. The Shure MicroflexEcosysem provides premium audio for Teams, enhancing customer loyalty by streamlining operations and improving collaboration,” said Jonathan Boaz, director of alliance partner sales at Shure.
“At Tiger Technology, we enable local file data to be processed by Azure Blob Storage’s cloud-based AI while allowing these analytical results to be seamlessly consumed by local file applications. By doing so, we help businesses scale and streamline their operations, and benefit from analytics tools to create more personalised experiences and connect with customers more effectively,” said Petko Marinski, vice president of sales at Tiger Technology.
“Tollring’s portfolio of Analytics 365 Call Analytics, Collaboration Analytics and Call Recording with AI analytics deliver rich insights into Teams and Teams Phone deployments. Leveraging data analytics to anticipate needs and proactively address issues ensure a seamless and satisfying customer experience,” said Hilary Oliver, chief customer officer at Tollring.
Discover more content from these partners and others in the Autumn 2024 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.