Why nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot

Hello everyone and welcome to my newsletter where I discuss real-world skills needed for the top data jobs and specifically the AI Agent Role. 👏

 This week we discuss Microsoft’s dominance in the Agent space.

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Right now, 70% of all Fortune 500 companies are using Copilot in some capacity. That’s nearly a monopoly. For those who have followed me for any length of time know that I made this prediction over six months ago. Where the data lives, is where the companies live. That number will ballon to over 85% over the next five years. One reason. Data.

That echoes an industry trend: A recent IDC study showed that generative AI is on the rise, with 75% adoption among companies surveyed in 2024. In addition, for every $1 invested, companies are realizing a return of $3.70, and leaders are saying they are realizing as much as a $10 return, according to the study.

Here are two examples of Copilots success in the real-world. Number one. Intelligent power management company Eaton leveraged Microsoft 365 Copilot to help streamline and automate operations, improve data access, centralize knowledge and empower teams to focus on higher-value tasks. One immediate challenge addressed through Copilot focused on the manual, time-consuming documentation process in Eaton’s Finance operations. Copilot helped Eaton document over 9,000 standard operating procedures (SOPs), resulting in an 83% time savings for each SOP.

Number two. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company is creating an agent to speed up the client onboarding process. The pilot showed lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work reduced by 30%. The agent automates complex processes, such as identifying the right expert capabilities and staffing teams and acts as a single place where colleagues can ask questions and request follow-ups. By streamlining tasks and reducing manual inputs, this agent could potentially save consultants many hours, allowing them to spend more time with clients.

Microsoft continues to add on to Copilot’s existing offerings. Copilot Actions, now in private preview, enable anyone to automate everyday tasks with simple, fill-in-the-blank prompts, whether it’s getting a daily summary of meeting actions in Microsoft Teams, compiling weekly reports or getting an email upon return from vacation that summarizes missed meetings, chats and emails.

Let’s look at one more. Why are we focusing on real-world examples in this post? These are real-world companies, using Copilot on real-world problems and attaining real-world results. My goal is to help you attain a role as an agent engineer, not learn a tool like N8N that’s used for desktop problems. Microsoft is building large scale real-world solutions.

Here’s a final example from the Bayer company. Best known as the creator of aspirin, today it’s one of the largest companies in the world, with core competencies in the life science fields of healthcare and nutrition.

Here are the results obtained by Florian Hase, a research scientist working in Bayer’s Computational Life Science department, Häse combs through reams of research to support the search for that one molecule that could lead to a new crop protection product to enable plants to thrive and boost yields.

His Experience With Copilot: Bayer Crop Science is focused on finding new ways for farmers to produce more food for the growing world population. To do that, Häse has been using Microsoft Copilot to help pick through research data the company has gathered over the years and even decades. “Not only does it assist me in finding that information, but it also shows how to extract that information from unstructured data sources, whether they’re reports or slide decks,” he says. Copilot also helps him keep up with the latest research, which is essential in a fast-moving field. “It can be quite a challenge to figure out who knows what at which point in time, and getting that contact you need to solve the task at hand,” he says. Before Copilot, he used to spend days and weeks finding that information. “The process has certainly sped up,” he says. “Now you don’t miss out on opportunities to connect with the colleagues you should be talking to.”

Agents are truly transformational. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, you gotta hunt where the ducks are, and the data here are the ducks and Fortune 500 companies and more have decided Microsoft is their best option.

Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Don’t forget to check out Logikbot, my platform for learning predictive and generative ai. I also have a path for those who want to attain their first entry level role in IT by focusing on the data analyst role. This is a great first start in the tech field for anyone interested in working in the artificial intelligence space.