Microsoft is promoting the use of its self-developed AI virtual assistant Copilot across its finance department of about 5,000 people to improve workflow efficiency. Cory Hrncirik, the company's modern finance lead, said finance professionals are using the tool to complete daily tasks faster and gain data-driven insights.

"The finance department has become one of the main user groups of Copilot within Microsoft," Hrncirik said in an interview. "In this process, we have accumulated a wealth of use cases and built our own prompt library, as well as related videos and demo materials."

Microsoft's finance organization has prioritized the adoption of Copilot as part of its broader digital transformation strategy. Hrncirik has been leading this transformation since becoming modern finance lead in 2018.

Meanwhile, the software giant is competing with other large tech companies to dominate the AI market. Since 2023, Microsoft has released multiple Copilot products, conversational chatbots embedded across its suite of applications and services to assist users in completing tasks.

In February last year, Microsoft launched Copilot for Finance, a feature integrated into Microsoft 365 apps such as Excel, Outlook, and Teams, aimed at streamlining financial processes. According to a spokesperson, the tool is still in "public preview." Microsoft has also released similar role-specific virtual assistants for sales and customer service personnel.

Key use cases in finance

Internally at Microsoft, one of the most typical use cases for Copilot for Finance is data reconciliation in Excel. Hrncirik said, "We use the tool quite a bit for reconciliation, especially in certain teams."

According to an internal case study shared with CFO Dive, the accounts receivable reconciliation feature helped Microsoft's global treasury and financial services team reduce time spent comparing across data sources, saving an average of 20 minutes per account. In another case, a Microsoft financial planning and analysis team reduced weekly time spent on data reconciliation from an average of 1-2 hours to 10 minutes.

Microsoft's finance team is currently testing variance analysis capabilities, with encouraging initial results, Hrncirik said. Variance analysis is a method of comparing planned or expected financial performance with actual results.

"Copilot for Finance can help you gain these insights faster than traditional manual methods in the past," Hrncirik said.

On Monday, Microsoft announced what it calls the "next wave of Copilot," including a new feature called Copilot Pages that allows multiple users to collaborate on AI-generated content.

"Over the past 18 months, using Copilot has become a daily habit for people everywhere, helping them complete tasks faster, hold more meaningful meetings, collaborate more effectively, and streamline business processes," Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at Work at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post announcing the news.

In other examples cited in the blog, customer service agents at virtual healthcare provider Teladoc used Copilot to draft responses to common customer questions, saving up to 5 hours per week.

The announcement coincided with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff saying on last month's earnings call, "Many customers are disappointed with what they bought from Microsoft Copilot because they are not getting the accuracy and response they expected."

Salesforce is preparing to launch its own generative AI platform, Agentforce.

Microsoft's response

Benioff's remarks prompted a rebuttal from Microsoft.

"Every customer is at a different stage of their journey, but overall, what we hear from Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers is quite different," Spataro said in an email statement. "In the last quarter alone, our customer growth exceeded 60%, and daily active users more than doubled—this clearly shows the value Copilot brings to the market."

Hrncirik believes that the quality of Copilot's generated results is closely related to the user's prompts.

"I think there is indeed a learning curve to truly become a power user," he said. "The more context you provide, the better basis you give for getting the best response."

Microsoft has set up a public webpage called Copilot Lab, offering resources such as training videos and example prompts to help users master the technology.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's finance department is developing its own finance prompt library, Hrncirik said.

"We have compiled about 300 example finance prompts, which are very useful in helping people advance from basic prompts to more advanced usage," he added, noting that the library is currently an internal private resource.