Vodafone is signing up for an extra 68,000 new Microsoft Copilot licenses to boost worker productivity and collaboration.
In an extension of Vodafone’s 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft, and following a successful trial period across the business, the former will roll out the latter’s enterprise-specific Gen AI solution, Microsoft 365 Copilot, to up to 68,000 of Vodafone’s roughly 100,000 employees across several countries.
Vodafone is already leveraging Microsoft’s GenAI technology to enhance customer service, notably by upgrading TOBi, Vodafone’s online chatbot, which operates in 13 countries and supports 15 different languages.
Scott Petty, Chief Technology Officer at Vodafone, commented:
Our AI journey is focusing on three areas: operational efficiency inside the organisation; rewiring the business to provide an enhanced customer experience; and unlocking growth opportunities through new products and services that we can create around generative AI. Copilot will help drive all three.”
Vodafone says it’s set to incorporate Microsoft 365 Copilot across various facets of its operations. This integration will span customer service, product development, network management, as well as sales and marketing, aiming to enhance efficiency and innovation throughout the company.
The announcement bolsters Vodafone and Microsoft’s existing agreement, under which the companies have committed to transforming the customer experience using Microsoft’s Gen AI, scaling up Vodafone’s standalone IoT business, developing new services for small- and medium-sized businesses, and continuing Vodafone’s data migration to Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure.
Vodafone also announced plans to invest $1.5 billion over the next 10 years in cloud and customer-focused AI services developed in collaboration with Microsoft.
“It’s great to see Vodafone’s AI leadership adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot at such scale,” said Clare Barclay, CEO of Microsoft UK. “Generative AI is transforming every industry, and we look forward to unlocking the benefits this powerful technology will bring to all aspects of Vodafone’s business.”
Vodafone’s Productivity Figures
After an initial trial of the GenAI technology, Vodafone, working with Microsoft and KPMG, found that users had increased productivity and saved time drafting emails, meeting agendas, and documents, summarising meetings, identifying action points, and searching for information.
Vodafone said the time saved—around three hours a week per person on average—freed up employees to work on more creative, innovative, and valuable tasks and improved work-life balance.
Nearly all users (90 percent) reported benefiting from Microsoft 365 Copilot and expressed a desire to continue using it, with 60 percent noting an improvement in the quality of their work. Some neurodiverse employees, particularly those with dyslexia, appreciated the software’s drafting capabilities, which they said reduced the stress of writing documents and emails.
Additionally, Vodafone’s legal and compliance team found that Microsoft 365 Copilot significantly enhanced their ability to draft, review, renegotiate, and renew contracts, reducing the time required to draft a new contract by an hour.
“It’s not about doing more work, it’s about doing better quality work and being more customer-focused,” added Petty. “And it’s about improving the efficiency of the entire business, from the mobile and fixed broadband network and digital platforms to our retail stores, online services and customer care centres.”
Microsoft Announces Copilot ‘Pages’ For AI-Powered Collaboration
This week, Microsoft announced Copilot “Pages”, a new offering within Microsoft 365 that enables AI-powered project and document collaboration, as the flagship feature of its new “Copilot Wave Two” campaign.
Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of AI at Work, describes the company’s new solution as “a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration”. It appears like it will be a complement to, rather than a direct replacement of, Microsoft Loop.
This tool allows users to share Copilot Pages with a single link, enabling colleagues to instantly start editing, similar to the functionality of shared Word documents. Furthermore, users can embed Copilot Pages into other pages as components, enhancing collaboration and integration across different projects.
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