AI transformation in action—how organizations are innovating today

Today’s business environment is fast-paced, and to keep up and thrive, organizations are looking to improve their business outcomes, advance productivity, and maximize efficiency. I hear this all the time when I speak to customers of all sizes. Over the past year, the conversation has started to shift from “if” AI can help a company achieve their goals—now it’s “how” and “how fast can we do this?” One way they’re achieving transformation is through the Microsoft Cloud and AI technologies.

And this transformation is not just a vision for the future. AI is demonstrating real business value and economic impact for our customers today. In fact, companies have reported significant benefits from using Microsoft AI. Things like cost savings, optimized processes, reduced emissions, and personalized customer experiences.

As every company and organization looks to lead in the new era of AI, we believe there are four imperatives that define business success: customer engagement through AI, AI-empowered employee experiences, reshaping business processes, and bending the curve on innovation.

There are so many examples of organizations across industries turning to AI to launch innovative products, accelerate development time, reimagine data and AI at scale, and transform their work culture. Today I’d like to share how a few are using the power of the Microsoft Cloud and AI technologies to achieve all of this.

Reinventing customer engagement

Customer loyalty is key to any business’s success, and there’s persistent pressure to personalize and improve the experience people have with brands they love. This is especially true in media and entertainment, for example, as companies are always looking for ways to better connect with their audience and grow market share.

More fans are turning to digital content to connect with the game and the National Basketball Association (NBA) wanted to grow its fan base with a highly customized and comprehensive experience.

“At the NBA, we’ve partnered with Microsoft to revolutionize the fan experience. Through the power of Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies, we are able to harness the potential of our vast array of data sources and extensive historical video archive,” said Melissa Brenner, NBA Executive Vice President, Digital Media. “This has enabled us to create more personalized and tailored fan experiences, helping drive a 50 percent growth in NBA League Pass subscribers and tripling NBA App content video views from the previous season.”

Enriching employee experiences

While delivering engaging customer experiences is a critical business outcome, there’s another audience that’s just as important: the employees who serve those customers. And AI can create better experiences and empower the employees doing the work behind the scenes.

More and more, enterprise leaders want to help their employees with automated processes, the advantages of conversational AI, and even creative work. Moveworks is filling this need with a conversational AI platform that accurately interprets what employees require, regardless of how they phrase it—and delivers quick, customized responses that reduce interruptions to work.

Thread is on a mission to make it easier for IT technicians to communicate with customers. They used Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to help automate time-draining tasks and developed a new tool that utilizes generative AI models to streamline service requests. With these solutions, Thread helped free up IT service providers to focus on what matters most—delivering incredible service to customers.

Reshaping business processes

Many companies have already built systems that address certain issues for certain functions over time, but they end up with isolated pieces of useful information that can be hard to access and combine. AI can reveal integrated insights that help anticipate and speed up the information teams need by finding and making the right connections.

Heineken has a vision to be the best-connected brewer, and it is always looking for ways technology can help its mission. They’ve been exploring AI to help update their business processes and are now developing internal chatbots to help connect employees with corporate resources, help executives access meaningful financial data, and help employees manage equipment across their supply chain. Heineken is discovering that using AI efficiently can save employee time and mental energy to deal with more significant and creative business problems. 

“Fast fashion” is a term used to describe the mass manufacturing of runway styles quickly and cheaply. However, today’s consumers are increasingly concerned with sustainability and often make their purchasing decisions accordingly. So fashion designers need to find a way to meet demand while reducing waste. I love the story of Fashable, a fashion company based in Portugal. They faced challenges of unsustainable production, excess inventory, and long production cycles. With the help of Microsoft AI, they developed an algorithm to create original clothing designs, helping match customer demand, accelerate market entry, and reduce clothing waste.

Bending the curve on innovation

Companies in every industry are eager to gain any kind of edge to stay ahead of competition. In the financial services industry, we’ve seen that one of the biggest opportunities is data: delivering the right data at the right time, while reducing complexity and increasing flexibility.

As part of our 10-year strategic partnership, Microsoft and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) are reshaping the future of global finance. Sophisticated analytics and advanced modeling are now a critical success factor for any customer making strategic business decisions – and data is the most meaningful factor in that equation. LSEG is working with Microsoft to bring together our horizontal software capabilities with their industry-specific financial market infrastructure, data, and analytics, enabling customers to realize increased value, faster, with streamlined workflows tailored specifically to their needs. And with this data foundation, LSEG can deliver AI-powered solutions that are even more valuable for financial services organizations – generating insights that are reliable, trusted, and relevant to the task at hand.

Accelerate your AI journey responsibly

It’s clear that AI is transforming every industry and creating new possibilities and challenges for businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to improve your operations, enrich your customer experience, or foster innovation in products, services, or business models, AI can help you reach your objectives and keep you competitive. To thrive with AI, you need a clear vision, a solid strategy, and a reliable partner.

At Microsoft, we’re committed to the progress of AI guided by ethical values and believe AI systems should be responsible by design. We believe AI must be built on a foundation of security, risk management, and trust. We documented our own journey of creating AI principles, tools and best practices and shared our Responsible AI Standard playbook as a resource every customer can use to build their own Responsible AI practices, policies, and processes. Every organization has unique needs and challenges they’re looking to address with AI, and resources like the Responsible AI Standard can help you accelerate your journey.

So, how could AI help your organization? How can you save time, create better experiences, or realize new insights for your business? 

As a first step, we suggest you explore the five pillars of AI success, where you can find out how to plan and implement a successful AI strategy based on insights and best practices.

Next, build your AI skills and capabilities with this learning path, which provides business leaders with the information and tools to implement AI in their organizations. It covers how to plan, strategize, and grow AI projects in an ethical manner, so it’s a great resource.

Beyond the insights and all the stories shared here, you can also check out the Official Microsoft Blog for more information on the business opportunity of AI. The blog discusses how AI can help organizations drive economic value and solve their challenges.

We’re here to support you in your AI innovation with resources, guidance, and tools. Now the only question is, are you prepared to accelerate your AI journey?