Vodafone to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to 68,000 employees

The generative AI (GenAI) tool will be implemented across the organisation to improve productivity, innovation, and digital efficiency further. It will free up time spent on monotonous tasks to allow employees to focus on more varied and interesting work, enhancing services and supporting Vodafone’s 350 million customers worldwide.

This latest Microsoft 365 Copilot deal follows the announcement of a 10-year strategic partnership between Vodafone and Microsoft signed in January 2024. Vodafone is already using Microsoft’s GenAI technology to deliver a more personalised service to customers, including supercharging TOBi, Vodafone’s online chatbot in 13 countries that speaks 15 different languages.

Vodafone will now integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot into most areas of its business, from customer service to product development, network management to sales and marketing. It supports Vodafone’s strategy of becoming the best-in-class telecommunications company in Europe and Africa and Europe’s leading platform for business.

Microsoft 365 Copilot embeds GenAI into Microsoft’s suite of productivity apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, OneDrive – enabling users to draft emails, analyse data, summarise meetings and documents, generate marketing content, and create imagery, among other applications.

Commenting on the partnership, Scott Petty, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone, said: “Our AI journey is focusing on three areas: operational efficiency inside the organisation; rewiring the business to provide an enhanced customer experience; and unlocking growth opportunities through new products and services that we can create around generative AI.

“Copilot will help drive all three.”

Big impact

After an initial trial of the GenAI technology, Vodafone, working with Microsoft and KPMG, found that users had increased productivity, saving time on:

• drafting emails, meeting agendas, and documents

• summarising meetings and identifying action points

• searching for information.

The time saved – around three hours a week per person on average – freed up employees to work on more creative, innovative and valuable tasks, and improved work-life balance, Vodafone said.

Nearly all the users (90%) said they benefited from Microsoft 365 Copilot and wanted to keep using it, while 60% said it improved the quality of their work.

Some neurodiverse employees – particularly those with dyslexia – liked the software’s drafting ability and said it reduced the stress of writing documents and emails.

In addition, Vodafone’s legal and compliance team found that Microsoft 365 Copilot “supercharged” their ability to draft, review, renegotiate and renew contracts. Drafting a new contract took an hour less than usual.

Going all in

The trial success gave Vodafone the data-driven confidence to extend the benefits of these GenAI capabilities to 68,000 of its 100,0000 employees, empowering them to be more creative and productive.

“It’s not about doing more work, it’s about doing better quality work and being more customer-focused,” added Scott Petty.

“And it’s about improving the efficiency of the entire business, from the mobile and fixed broadband network and digital platforms, to our retail stores, online services and customer care centres.”

Clare Barclay, CEO, Microsoft UK, said: “It’s so exciting to see Vodafone trusting in the huge potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot and adopting it at such scale.

“Generative AI is transforming every industry and it’s going to be fascinating seeing the impact this powerful technology will have across all aspects of Vodafone’s business.”

10-year partnership

The announcement strengthens Vodafone and Microsoft’s existing far-reaching agreement in which the companies agreed to:

• transform the customer experience using Microsoft’s generative AI

• scale up Vodafone’s standalone IoT business

• develop new services for small- and medium-sized business

• continue Vodafone’s data migration to Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure.

Vodafone said it planned to invest $1.5bn (£1.2bn) over the next 10 years in cloud and customer-focused AI services developed in collaboration with Microsoft.

The digital services generated by the new partnership are being built on unbiased and ethical privacy and security policies under Vodafone’s established framework for responsible AI.