Microsoft is set to launch a finance-oriented Copilot chatbot designed to streamline tasks for finance professionals, initially available in public preview, with pricing to be announced later, the company announced on Thursday.
This initiative aligns with the trend of integrating generative AI into business software, sparked by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, to enhance productivity. Microsoft’s new Copilot, tailored for finance tasks, joins its suite of Copilots for sales, customer service, and general Office applications, developed with insights from its own finance department to optimize operations and potentially expedite financial processes for businesses.
In an interview with CNBC in San Francisco on Wednesday, Charles Lamanna, a Microsoft corporate vice president, explained that a typical company is made up of various groups where employees perform specialized tasks. He stated, “We want every one of the departments to be enabled and enriched with a Copilot.” Lamanna also mentioned that the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu would be using the Copilot for finance tasks.
Meanwhile Cory Hrncirik, the modern finance lead in Microsoft’s office of the chief financial officer, noted that comparing data from various systems is a common task for finance teams worldwide. He observed that on a financial planning and analysis team of a couple thousand people, each member typically spends one or two hours on reconciliation each week. However, with the introduction of the new Copilot, this time is reduced to about 10 or 20 minutes per week. The goal of introducing Copilot is to reduce the hours employees spend on monotonous tasks, thereby freeing up time for more engaging and productive work that offers greater value to the company. Nevertheless, Hrncirik mentioned that Microsoft’s finance employees are not mandated to use the new Copilot.
Featured image: At a press event in San Francisco on February 28, 2024, Charles Lamanna, the corporate vice president for business applications and platforms at Microsoft, delivered a speech. Credit: CNBC
