Microsoft Launches Copilot for Finance in Microsoft365
Leading technology provider Microsoft has launched a public preview of Microsoft Copilot for Finance, its newest Copilot offering that extends the current Copilot available on Microsoft365 in a bid to revolutionise how finance teams approach their daily work.
Businesses can now access Copilot for Finance alongside Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service, which enables finance teams to leverage AI-powered, role-based workflow automation and recommendations.
Microsoft: Addressing the need to create more value-added work
Indeed, Microsoft research reveals that 80% of finance leaders and teams face challenges to take on more strategic work outside the operational portions of their roles, while a further 62% are stuck in a cycle of repeated data entry and review work.
With Copilot, Microsoft says finance teams can be freed of mundane, repetitive tasks to focus on more value-added tasks, enabling finance to play a more hands-on role in delivering counsel and insights to their business.
As part of Microsoft365, Copilot for Finance can help supercharge Microsoft productivity apps that businesses frequently use, such as Excel and Outlook.
What’s more, Copilot taps into context from existing financial data sources, including still frequently used ERP systems – of which Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP and the Microsoft Graph are examples.
Don Hobson, CIO at Visa – one of Microsoft’s Copilot for Finance clients, says: “Building on our 30-year history of embracing AI, Visa is on a journey to roll out generative AI across our entire company to empower our employees and develop new solutions to serve and protect our cardholders, merchants and the broader ecosystem.
“We’ve seen our employees embrace the broad rollout of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, and we’re excited to continue to bring employees new ways to take advantage of the technology, transforming how we work and how we service our clients.”
Copilot for Finance: The key features
Now in preview, Copilot for Fiance introduces several key features to enhance FinOps, including:
- Helps financial analysts quickly conduct a variance analysis in Excel using natural language prompts to review data sets for anomalies, risks and unmatched values. This type of analysis helps finance provide strategic insights to business leaders about where it is meeting, exceeding or falling short of planned financial outcomes and why.
- Simplifies the reconciliation process in Excel with automated data structure comparisons and guided troubleshooting to help move from insight to action, which helps ensure the reliability and accuracy of financial records.
- Provides a complete summary of relevant customer account details in Outlook, such as balance statements and invoices, to expedite the collections process.
- Enables customers to turn raw data in Excel into presentation-ready visuals and reports ready to be shared across Outlook and Teams.
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