Microsoft has announced the release of a new AI chatbot, Copilot for Finance, designed to assist finance workers in performing common tasks in Excel and Outlook. The tool, which will be available in public preview, is the latest in a line of Copilot products from Microsoft, which aim to use generative artificial intelligence to improve efficiency for clients.
The Copilot for Finance will initially be able to perform tasks such as variance analysis, data reconciliation in Excel, and speeding up the collections process in Outlook. It can draw on information stored in SAP and Microsoft Dynamics 365, with additional features set to be added later this year.
The Japanese advertising agency Dentsu is among the first companies to use the new Copilot for finance tasks. Microsoft’s own finance department provided input into the development of the new Copilot and has seen some early benefits from using it.
Cory Hrncirik, modern finance lead in Microsoft’s office of the chief financial officer, said that comparing data from different systems is a common task for finance teams. He said that a couple of thousand people on a financial planning and analysis team each spend one or two hours doing reconciliation each week, but with the new Copilot, that takes more like 10 or 20 minutes per week.
The aim is to help employees spend less time on tedious tasks and more time on engaging work that can contribute more to the company. While Microsoft’s finance employees are not required to use the new Copilot, if many finance professionals in a given company take advantage of the automations, the company might be able to close its books more quickly.
Charles Lamanna, a Microsoft corporate vice president, said that “We want every one of the departments to be enabled and enriched with a Copilot.” Microsoft already has a Copilot for general-purpose industrial use in Office applications, and it has released Copilots designed for sales and customer-service workers.
The trend of using AI to supercharge existing products has been growing among business software providers, including HubSpot and Salesforce, since startup OpenAI in 2022 launched the ChatGPT chatbot, which can spit out natural-sounding text or other content with a few words of human input.
Microsoft has not yet released pricing details for the Copilot for Finance.
Source: Microsoft
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