Vodafone Group Plc has signed a significant agreement with Microsoft Corp. to integrate AI assistants across its operations. The telecom firm will acquire 68,000 licenses for Microsoft’s AI-based Copilots. These AI applications intended to boost efficiency will be available across Microsoft Office products, including Word, Excel, and Teams. This follows a Vodafone trial, which showed that by using Copilots, employees were able to gain three hours of time back per week.
Vodafone is not the only company that has turned to Microsoft’s AI solutions. Other big companies such as Honeywell International Inc. and Finastra Group Holdings Ltd. have also integrated the Copilot technology. According to Microsoft, the number of users of its Copilot in the last quarter increased by more than 60 percent, and the number of clients with over 10,000 Copilot users doubled in the same period.
Microsoft leverages OpenAI to enhance Office applications
The AI tools are part of Microsoft’s overall approach to incorporating artificial intelligence into its products. With the use of OpenAI, Microsoft has positioned its products far better than those of other competitors in the market. The integration helps in getting the best out of Office applications with features that go beyond the usual.
Microsoft is also improving and extending the availability of its Copilot tools. Among the new features, there is Pages that provide a workspace where employees can share and modify the AI-created material. This new function improves team interaction since users are able to generate ideas together with the AI but make changes based on the user’s input. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, this feature fosters creativity and teamwork.
Besides Pages, Microsoft is also launching a new version of Copilot for Excel. These AI assistants assist users in generating charts and pivot tables as well as performing complex data analysis.
Other new features are Word, PowerPoint, and Teams that are designed to help save time and effort. For example, a new feature in the Outlook called ‘Prioritize My Inbox’ is an AI based tool that aims to assist users in managing their inbox by prioritizing the emails.
Vodafone and Microsoft forge long-term partnership for AI
As we reported at the beginning of this year, Vodafone and Microsoft signed a 10-year agreement that aims at developing generative AI, digital offerings, and cloud services for 300 million businesses and customers in Europe and Africa.
This news comes as Microsoft recently announced that Carolina Dybeck Happe, the ex-CFO of General Electric, as the new Executive Vice President and COO. Dybeck Happe was the CFO of GE between 2020 and 2023 and played an important role in the strategic changes of the company. Happe will be reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Also this year, Microsoft appointed Mustafa Suleyman, an expert in the field of AI and the co-founder of DeepMind, as the head of its AI division.