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Over the past six months, I have witnessed the staggering speed and scale of generative AI technology adoption, and how it has opened doors for organizations to imagine new ways to solve business, societal, and sustainability challenges. For many with modernized data estates fortified with the Microsoft Cloud, advanced AI technology is already unlocking innovation and delivering greater business value. At our annual partner conference Microsoft Inspire, I had the chance to speak with our partner community about the critical role they play in helping customers accelerate their AI transformation. As leaders across industries seek to keep pace with today’s advancements, they turn to Microsoft — and our partner ecosystem — to co-innovate on our trusted platform and make their AI strategy a reality. This is further reinforced by launching the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, designed to support every partner as they deliver customer value across our cloud and AI offerings. Together with our partners, we are dedicated to bringing comprehensive industry expertise, scale and copilot capabilities to organizations seeking to transform every role and business function within their industry. From Canadian Tire delivering more seamless and personalized shopper experiences to AT&T easing employee tasks while reducing IT costs, AI transformation is happening now.
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Judson Althoff, Microsoft executive vice president and chief commercial officer, highlighting the critical role partners play in helping organizations accelerate AI transformation at Microsoft Inspire.
Microsoft’s partners are accelerating their AI transformation to fuel business growth and profitability, while scaling go-to-market strategies. KPMG is developing cloud and generative AI tools to enhance client engagements and employees’ experiences — unlocking the potential for $12 billion in incremental growth. PwC is expanding its AI capabilities with Azure OpenAI Service to help customers save time and costs, while increasing revenue. PwC and EY are also launch partners supporting Microsoft’s AI Customer Commitments aimed at helping our mutual customers implement AI systems responsibly. Fujitsu is expanding its sustainability business with industry solutions that help manufacturers better visualize environmental risks; retailers develop solutions that enable more efficient consumer experiences; and healthcare organizations improve the quality of medical care while prioritizing security of patient data. Snowflake is making it easier for customers to build intelligent solutions and better manage, understand, and govern their data. Splunk is building its cloud solutions on Azure to give customers more flexibility in deploying AI-powered security solutions to keep mission-critical systems secure and reliable. In Korea, LG CNS is developing generative AI services and solutions to help customers quickly adopt new AI-based businesses.
EFG Hermes trades faster after revamping its Direct Market Access platform on Microsoft Azure.
Investing in data, cloud and AI to elevate customer and employee experiences across financial services
Moody’s is growing its suite of generative AI capabilities and cloud-based applications to enhance employee productivity and collaboration. In Australia, Westpac is empowering its employees to become citizen developers, already building nearly 1,000 apps in 18 months. With over 195,000 interactions per month, Virgin Money is making it easier for customers to self-serve with a chatbot using Power Virtual Agents. Brazil-based PicPay has integrated Azure OpenAI into its service channels to resolve questions with information from its customer experience team. Without sacrificing data privacy and security, Belgium-based Swift is improving the rate of fraud detection by training models with machine learning. By migrating to Azure, Manulife reduced infrastructure costs by 50%, EFG Hermes is processing trade executions 45% faster, ABN AMRO sped up its monthly reporting process by three times, and MTB Bank is ensuring business continuity for Ukrainians while strengthening customer trust and reliability. With help from partners Crayon and Paramount, arab national bank is spending 90% less time onboarding technology and eliminating cybersecurity gaps with AI-powered security solutions.
Arthur Health reduces patient wait times in a pilot program with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
Transforming the future of patient care through secure and data-driven AI, machine learning and automation solutions
Epic is embedding the Nuance DAX Express solution in its Electronic Health Record system, using conversational, ambient and generative AI to automatically and securely create clinical notes from patient visits in seconds, significantly reducing physicians’ administrative workloads. With help from partner Quisitive, Arthur Health is leveraging the communication and automation capabilities of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform to build a clinical integration platform that reduces patient wait times by 80% in a pilot. MDLIVE for Cigna is developing more accurate forecasts of patient demand to cut wait times by 50% with machine learning. By training large language models, Truveta is aggregating data to better understand patient health journeys and help researchers gain insights into medical conditions, drugs and devices. In Italy, San Rafaelle University and Research Hospital is developing an AI-powered platform for data analysis and support in experimental treatments to help treat diseases like diabetes and lung cancer. Using AI solutions on Azure, Mount Sinai Health System is able to identify patient risks like malnutrition, delirium and falls to help reduce hospital stays. Researchers at the U.K.’s Addenbrooke’s Hospital are working with Microsoft to train an AI program to reduce wait times for radiotherapy patients. By introducing a digital skilling initiative, the Portugal Ministry of Health is increasing collaboration across thousands of health workers to deliver better patient care. Premera Blue Cross is improving stability and scaling its infrastructure to reduce costs by up to 60% — saving $700,000 the first day — while maintaining the quality of service to members and providers.
BHP uses Azure Machine Learning and AI capabilities to help its operations team make predictions.
Scaling and optimizing operations by unlocking cloud and copilot capabilities in mobility and manufacturing
With GitHub Copilot, Mercedes-Benz is revolutionizing the entire software development process for its internal teams. GM is also using it to reimagine the dev tool chain to help new developers onboard quicker by generating code suggestions in a secure environment. Goodyear is finding ways to help employees improve meeting productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Embracing the industrial metaverse, Porsche Cars North America is streamlining vehicle service and improving technician and customer experiences with HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality apps. In Chile, BHP is improving copper recovery with AI and machine learning to support the development of decarbonization technology. Israel-based Strauss Group is improving data visibility to understand customers better with the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing. Citizen developers at Komatsu Australia are building a Power Virtual Agents chatbot and an AI document processor to reduce thousands of hours spent on purchase orders. Panasonic Connect has rolled out a secure AI assistant to 12,500 employees across Japan to help automate everyday tasks like drafting emails and writing computer code. With help from partner WebSan, Canadian-based Bartek is saving nearly 50% of time for its production schedulers by connecting its business data on Dynamics 365. Siemens is saving time for its IT data analysts by accelerating the development and deployment of AI models from several months to a couple of weeks. German airline Eurowings has reduced its operating costs by over 50% while keeping employee and customer data secure with Azure Virtual Desktop. CarMax has increased customer traffic to its website while driving revenue and saving costs using Azure OpenAI and large language models.
Farmers in India learn about a new generative AI-driven chatbot for government assistance.
Reimagining digital solutions to better serve communities while optimizing costs in the public sector
To assist lawyers with the analysis and forecasting of judicial cases, the Attorney General’s Office in Brazil is implementing an AI assistant to improve decision making and the creation of procedural strategies. Working with Zammo.ai, the City of Kelowna is using cognitive search and conversational AI to become more responsive to citizen inquiries by extending service hours and accelerating housing processes. The Houston Fire Department is triaging 911 calls through its telehealth system based on Teams to save on transportation costs for 90% of nonemergency patients. While enhancing data security, the Statistical Office of Republic of Serbia is speeding up census data analysis from nine months to two hours using a digital solution built on the Microsoft Cloud. To make it easier for villagers to access government services like pensions and scholarships, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras developed a chatbot to translate information from different sources into local languages. The National Taiwan Normal University is helping students improve their English-language speaking skills through a self-learning platform powered by Azure OpenAI. After facing a ransomware attack that impacted students’ and faculty network access, Howard University turned to partner Cloudforce to ensure continuity for users and double its security score within a year — saving $1 million in annual infrastructure costs.
Partners are making plugins available to customers in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program.
Redefining customer experiences and employee productivity through AI-enhanced professional services
To help industrial organizations accelerate efficiency and value realization, Cognite is delivering contextualized data and generative AI analytics services to answer operational questions and analyze complex scenarios up to 90% faster. In Brazil, Take Blip is improving customer chat experiences by suggesting responses based on conversation history, making the transition from chatbot to human agents smoother. To help people leaders attract, retain and skill talent, SAP is integrating its SAP SuccessFactors with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Viva Learning to streamline recruiting and employee development. Aprimo and CIPIO are helping clients better engage and connect with their brand communities by empowering marketing teams with AI-generated content that is more creative and personalized. To make it easier to access everyday tools and transform how work gets done, Atlassian, Adobe, ServiceNow, Thomson Reuters, Moveworks and Mural are making their plugins available to customers within the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. With Azure AI, Confused.com’s performance team is increasing profitability by improving marketing ROI by 10% and reducing analytics lead time by 50%. In the UAE, Emrill has eliminated paper-based manual work using Dynamics 365 Finance — resulting in a 30% increase in staff productivity. Romania-based Sameday has developed its own intranet platform to give employees a better way to connect with one another and save time by answering HR questions with Microsoft Viva.
Microsoft is built upon a foundation of successfully delivering AI solutions to customers over many years — and today, we are delivering copilot experiences across the Microsoft Cloud so organizations can harness the latest advancements in generative AI responsibly and securely. We are at the beginning of a new era, and one of the most exciting and pivotal years for technology in our lifetimes. I am grateful for the opportunity to help organizations adopt the world’s most advanced cloud technology and AI platform — no matter where they are on their AI journey — and for the trust they place in Microsoft to accelerate their transformation. I look forward to the innovation we will unlock alongside our partners, startups, digital natives and customers to serve their business needs and help shape the future of industry.
Tags: Azure, Azure AI, Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI Service, Dynamics 365, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, Microsoft Cloud, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft Viva, Power Platform, Power Virtual Agents, Viva Learning
