Microsoft, the American multinational technology firm, is gearing up to launch new AI capabilities next month. These capabilities will let clients create autonomous agents using Copilot Studio.
Besides allowing clients to create AI agents with Copilot Studio, the tech giant is also introducing 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamic 365, its cloud-based suite of business applications.
“Today, we’re announcing new agentic capabilities that will accelerate these gains and bring AI-first business processes to every organization,” stated Jared Spataro, CMO, of AI at Work.
Through the new Microsoft autonomous AI agents, organisations will be able to access “a constellation of agents” for a variety of needs including simple prompt-and-response or undertaking fully autonomous tasks.
The automation capability allows AI to make decisions without much human intervention depending on the tasks.
Microsoft’s new AI agents aim to automate various tasks and processes within organisations to improve efficiency and productivity.
Spataro says to think of these agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world.
“They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate business processes,” added Spataro.
Copilot will allow individuals to interact with these AI agents, and they’re equipped to perform operations including accelerating lead generation, processing sales orders and automating an organisation’s supply chain.
Today, Microsoft announced that the new capabilities will be shifted to public preview next month which will let users be more creative with conducting organisational processes using AI.
Spataro said that these AI agents draw on the context of a user’s work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service.
Autonomous agents in Dynamics 365
Microsoft also introduced 10 new autonomous agents already pre-built in Dynamics 365 for users to transition to “AI-first business processes.” The tech giant says that these new agents are designed ti help every sales, service, finance and supply chain team drive business value and are just the start.
“We will create many more agents in the coming year that will give customers the competitive advantage they need to future-proof their organization,” Spataro said.
Some of the agents introduced specialise in sales qualification, supplier communications, and customer intent and customer knowledge management agents.
The ‘Sales Qualification Agent’ enables sellers to focus their time on the highest priority sales opportunities while the agent researches leads, helps prioritize opportunities and guides customer outreach with personalized emails and responses.
Microsoft Dynamics 365’s ‘Supplier Communications Agent’ enables customers to optimise their supply chain and minimize costly disruptions by autonomously tracking supplier performance, detecting delays and responding accordingly — freeing procurement teams from time-consuming manual monitoring and firefighting.
The ‘Customer Intent and Customer Knowledge Management Agents’ help organisations make a first impression by helping customer care teams facing high call volumes, talent shortages and heightened customer expectations. These agents work hand in hand with a customer service representative by learning how to resolve customer issues and autonomously adding knowledge-based articles to scale best practices across the care team.
What is Microsoft Copilot Studio?
Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform that provides a user-friendly interface, allowing organisations to create custom-tailored Copilot agents. These copilot agents are autonomous agents designed for specific tasks and processes.
Copilot also provides organizations with the capability to build automation using Power Automate and extend Copilot for Microsoft 365 with their own enterprise data and scenarios.
These new tools to create autonomous agents on Copilot Studio were made available earlier this year, however, these capabilities are currently private.
Microsoft believes that the success of Copilot and AI agents demonstrated through internal use, could potentially help organizations increase revenue, achieve faster customer case resolution, experience higher conversion rates, and provide more accurate employee self-service.
Microsoft Copilot Studio Use Cases
The tech giant also said that organisations such as Clifford Chance, McKinsey & Company, Pets at Home and Thomson Reuters are already creating autonomous agents to increase revenue, reduce costs and scale impact.
They have seen Pets at Home, a British pet care retailer develop an agent for its profit protection team to more efficiently compile cases for skilled human review, which could have the potential to drive a seven-figure annual savings.
McKinsey & Company, a business management consultant is already developing an agent that aims to speed up the client onboarding process. The pilot showed lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work reduced by 30%.
While, Thomson Reuters, a Canadian multinational information conglomerate built a professional-grade agent to speed up the legal due diligence workflow, with initial testing showing some tasks could be done in half the time.
Spataro said this agent can help Thomson Reuters increase their work efficiency for clients and boost its new business pipeline.
Microsoft has also seen internal success using Copilot and agents, leading to increased revenue, faster customer case resolution, higher conversion rates, and more accurate employee self-service.
One of their sales team reported 9.4% higher revenue per seller and closed 20% more deals. The firm’s marketing team also observed a 21.5% increase in conversion rate on Azure.com with a custom agent designed to assist buyers.
