Microsoft announced on Thursday that it will release Copilot, a chatbot that can perform critical tasks for workers in the financial industry. The software company will first make the tool available in public preview. **Details will follow.
Many business software providers, including Hubspot and Salesforce, have struggled to provide generative AI to their existing products in an effort to improve the efficiency of their customers. In 2022, startup OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot, which can spit out natural-sounding text or other content by manually typing a few words.
A typical company is made up of a wide variety of teams in which employees work on specialized work. In an interview with CNBC in San Francisco on Wednesday, Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's vice president, said, "We want every department to have Copilot and become more fulfilling as a result." ”
Microsoft has provided Copilot for general industrial use for Office applications and has released Copilot designed for sales and customer service staff.
Copilot for Finance will first run ANOVA, reconcile the data in Excel, and speed up the collection process in Outlook. The software can make use of information stored in SAP and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Later this year, the financial Copilot will have more features, Ramana said.
Ramana said Dentsu, a Japanese advertising agency, will use Copilot to complete its financial tasks.
Microsoft says its finance department has provided input into the development of the new Copilot and has seen some early benefits of using it.
Comparing data from different systems is "something that every finance team on the planet does on a regular basis," says Cory Hrncirik, a modern treasurer at Microsoft's CFO office. He said that a financial planning and analysis team of thousands of people each spends one to two hours a week doing reconciliations, whereas with the new Copilot, it only takes 10 to 20 minutes a week.
The purpose of this is to help these employees spend less time on tedious tasks, freeing up time to do more engaging work and contribute more to the company. But Hernesirick said Microsoft's finance staff doesn't need to use the new Copilot.
However, if a company's many finance professionals take advantage of these automated technologies, the company may close out faster.
"That's a big selling point for CFOs," Ramana said.