AI in Action

How Microsoft is making AI real for every organization

and every employee today
Contents
It’s time to put AI in action 3
Learn about the current state of AI and Microsoft’s vision for its future.

The importance of a holistic approach 5

Understand how to establish a holistic approach to AI that includes defining an AI
strategy, enabling an AI-ready culture, implementing AI at scale, and prioritizing AI
responsibility.

Transforming processes in every industry 8

Read about examples of AI in action across industries to inspire your own AI
transformation. Learn how pre-built industry-specific solutions and horizontal business
applications can help quickly transform core business processes.

Bringing AI to every employee 10

Get familiar with the AI tools and technologies that are empowering all employees to
achieve more, from developers and data scientists to business users.
It’s time to put AI in action
In today’s complex and disruptive world, industries shift rapidly, and
We are pursuing AI so
organizations face immense pressure to remain agile and resilient.
that we can empower
Now more than ever, it’s critical for organizations to consider how AI
can help them achieve their goals.
every person and every
institution with tools of
As leading organizations are discovering, AI can be a powerful lever AI so that they can go
to help accomplish what’s important, from developing new revenue
on to solve the most
streams to creating measurable efficiencies in core processes. In
pressing problems of
addition, employees are motivated to use AI solutions that help them
our society and our
uncover critical information, improve decision-making, streamline
economy.”
teamwork, and avoid tedious repetitive tasks. In fact, we recently
conducted a survey of over 10,000 employers and employees — Satya Nadella
CEO, Microsoft
worldwide, which found that 91% of employees want new skills that
will help them succeed alongside AI (KRC Research, 2020).

Organizations that harness and scale AI quickly will have a long-term competitive advantage. A recent
Harvard Business Review study that surveyed 1,500 C-suite executives reported that companies had
more success when they skipped proof of concepts (Harvard Business Review, 2020). These companies
scaled AI projects twice as often and achieved nearly three times the return on their AI investments
when compared to their counterparts. While not every organization can move at this pace, it’s clear
that the time is now to get started, and a willingness to move quickly is a major key to success.

We understand that realizing the full potential of AI does not happen overnight, but it is time to move
beyond proof of concept and put AI into action. There are a wide range of AI applications available
today suited for different use cases and levels of expertise. These include common business
applications with AI built-in, out-of-the-box AI solutions for specific business processes, and AI
platforms for creating custom solutions. The next step is not just to scale AI with additional use cases
across the organization, but also to define a strategic vision for AI, prepare leaders and employees to
succeed with AI, and consider how to use AI responsibly.

AI IN ACTION | 3
Microsoft’s AI vision
At Microsoft, our vision is to help every organization
in every industry—no matter where they are in their
AI journey—put AI into action at scale to create
meaningful business impact. We are committed to
empowering organizations to implement solutions that
deliver real business value, resilience, and differentiation
today while also creating a roadmap for the future.

To realize this potential and impact, AI must be infused

into every business function in transformative ways and
put in the hands of every employee as part of their
everyday work, regardless of their role or technical
expertise.

Gartner identified the democratization of AI as a top 10

strategic technology trend for 2020 and predicted that
by 2024, “low-code application development will be
responsible for more than 65% of application development
activity” (Gartner, 2020). But we alone provide an
integrated, comprehensive set of offerings that bring AI
to everyone today—from developers and IT teams to
business users in every department. AI for Everyone is
Microsoft’s unique perspective and commitment to making
this real for our customers, which is squarely aligned with
our corporate mission to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.

In this paper, we’ll show why now is the time to put AI

in action. To do this, we’ll first share the importance of
establishing a holistic approach to AI and the four key
areas that need to be considered in any AI approach. Next,
we’ll show how AI offers immediate impact by transforming
core processes across industries. Finally, we’ll cover how we
are putting the power of AI in the hands of every employee
—from developers and data scientists to business users—
through a wide array of AI tools and technologies. No
matter where you are today, the time is now, the urgency is
critical, and the future is fast approaching. We would love
to be your partner on your AI journey.

AI IN ACTION | 4
The importance of a holistic approach
The key to unlocking success with AI is to think about the big picture. When making AI investment
decisions, considering typical factors like solution features and financial impact is a good starting
point. But to achieve more with AI across the organization, those considerations should be aligned
with a broader plan. Organizations that are finding the most value from AI are using it throughout
their organization to reimagine business models, help teams work smarter, and drive operational
efficiencies with an eye toward long-term transformation.

We recommend a holistic approach that focuses on three areas: AI strategy, AI culture, and AI
responsibility. As these competencies become stronger, they generate more momentum, engagement,
and value across the organization.

Define an AI strategy
With all of the opportunities AI offers, it’s easy to get caught up in the breadth of applications and
possibilities but not know quite how or where to start. In order to take the first step forward in the AI
journey and create a clear path to success, an organization needs an AI strategy to guide AI-related
decisions and investments. In AI Business School, we have created a simple but powerful framework
for defining an AI strategy and prioritizing where to start.

The first step in this process is to assess the external industry environment. This includes
factors like shifting buyer behavior, new competitors and business models, changes in
government regulations, and the arrival of new technologies. Understand what kinds of AI
solutions are table stakes in the industry and what is differentiated.

Secondly, it is important to evaluate where AI can add the most value in the organization,
or what has the highest return on investment. AI solutions should be measured by their
impact on business outcomes.

And finally, it’s critical to consider the relevant AI skills, capabilities, mindset, and overall
state of the organization. Do the technical departments have the skills and tools necessary
to integrate or develop AI solutions? Is the quantity and quality of data enough to build
custom AI solutions? Is there buy-in from leaders, managers, and front-line employees?
Each of these factors define an organization’s level of “AI maturity” and where to get started.
The AI Maturity Model Assessment can help you evaluate your maturity and identify next
steps. It is also important to note that lack of technical skills should not be a barrier to
getting started. As you will see, we have powerful AI solutions for every employee, from the
everyday user to the developer and data scientist. We also have comprehensive and world-
class resources on MS Learn that any organization can leverage as part of their AI strategy.

AI IN ACTION | 5
Enable an AI-ready culture
Like any groundbreaking technology, a new AI solution affects more than just software. New AI
solutions create disruption at the cultural level: they require people to collaborate in new ways, gain
new skills, and adopt new processes.

This cultural change doesn’t just involve the worker using an AI solution or the developer creating it.
Leaders across business and technical teams should be continually involved in design, implementation,
maintenance, and evaluation to ensure that solutions are aligned with business goals and processes.

Organizations need to learn how to become data-driven, enable cross-functional collaboration, help
employees gain new AI-related skills, and lead effective change management.

To learn more about creating an AI-ready culture, visit the AI Business School.

Scale AI across your organization

TransLink, the transportation
As we’ve mentioned, in many cases companies can use out-of- network in Vancouver Canada,
the-box AI solutions where Microsoft creates and continually wanted to use Azure Machine
updates the machine learning models under the hood. Learning to provide highly reliable
bus departure time estimates for
However, those looking to gain additional benefits with more
its riders. This meant creating an
customized solutions should consider MLOps. MLOps, or AI model for each bus stop and
DevOps for machine learning, enables data science and IT segment in the system. With over
teams to collaborate and streamline the machine learning (ML) 18,000 models to train, TransLink
lifecycle at scale, from building models to deployment and relied upon MLOps to help them:
management. • Automate model training and
deployment processes through
MLOps processes and technologies ultimately facilitate better
pipelines
model quality, accelerate time to market, and improve business
• Create an approval process for
results. They help teams collaborate and stay on the same page
automated model training results
through auditable documentation. They provide the ability to
centrally manage assets like models, environments, code, and • Integrate a data drift system
into build-and-release pipelines
datasets so teams can track, share, and reuse them. They also
so that retraining is triggered
create efficiencies and accelerate the lifecycle with automation
automatically if data drift is
and repeatable workflows. Whether models are built in-house detected
or by an outside partner, MLOps is a critical component of
The solution improved the accuracy
scaling AI across an organization.
of predicted departure times by
Look into the Azure Machine Learning platform to learn more 74% and reduced average customer
about how to streamline model reproducibility, validation, wait times by 50%.

deployment, and retraining with MLOps capabilities.

AI IN ACTION | 6
Prioritize AI responsibility
Microsoft’s six AI principles
As with all great technological innovations, the use of AI
can have unintended consequences. While organizations Fairness: AI systems should
treat all people fairly
can’t predict the future, it’s our responsibility to anticipate
and mitigate risks to ensure AI is created and used in a Reliability & Safety: AI
systems should operate reliably
responsible manner. If AI will become as integrated into our
and safely
lives as cars, we need to subject it to the equivalent of auto
safety standards. Privacy & Security: AI systems
should be secure and
At Microsoft, we are committed to helping organizations protect privacy
develop and use AI responsibly. We recognize that every Inclusiveness: AI systems
organization will have their own beliefs and standards for should empower everyone
responsible AI, but we want to share what we’re learning in and engage people
hopes of providing a useful perspective. Transparency: AI systems
should be understandable
We encourage all organizations to develop human-centered
and explainable
AI principles to guide their AI development and use. In 2016,
we released our own six AI principles that shape everything Accountability: People should
be accountable for AI systems
we do in AI: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and
security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.

To put those guiding principles into practice, we recommend

establishing a system for internal oversight that provides
guardrails for how AI solutions are used and monitored. It’s AI for Good initiative

also helpful to stay informed about regulations, sponsor At Microsoft, we are also providing
training programs for employees, and collaborate with other our AI technology, resources, and
organizations. expertise to empower those
working to preserve cultural
For organizations developing AI solutions in-house, we heritage, solve humanitarian issues,
encourage technical employees to leverage practical design improve the health of communities,
guidelines, checklists, and tools that make it easier to identify and create a more sustainable and
and mitigate potentially harmful issues. To help organizations accessible world. Learn more about
find these resources, we’ve launched an online Responsible our five AI for Good programs and
the 600 projects we are already
AI resource center than compiles important research projects,
supporting by visiting the AI for
open-source software, managed services, and other tools
Good homepage.
that our developers and data scientists leverage to better
understand, protect, and control AI systems.

To learn more about responsible AI, visit the Responsible AI

Learning Path in our AI Business School.

AI IN ACTION | 7
Transforming processes in every industry
Leading organizations across industries are already making powerful use of AI to gain competitive
advantages. In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive landscape, all organizations need to embrace
AI to remain agile and resilient. At Microsoft we are working with customers across every industry to
accelerate business process transformation with enterprise-ready, AI-infused experiences.

As mentioned, a key part of formulating an AI strategy is to evaluate what industry competitors

are doing and where AI can add value. It’s important to consider two kinds of use cases: those that
provide quick wins in response to economic pressures and market opportunities, and those that create
a path for future transformation. We recommend evaluating use cases in both categories:

Respond: Not every AI application involves revolutionary changes. In fact, using AI to improve
or automate existing processes is becoming essential to remaining competitive. There are
countless powerful AI applications that can optimize processes, empower employees, and
engage customers in every industry.
Reimagine: Achieving lasting competitive advantage requires creating value with AI in
unique ways. These custom solutions address the biggest challenges and opportunities in an
organization and help create new revenue streams or business models.

Respond Quick win AI examples

While transformative AI innovations like self-driving cars will Detecting defects in
undoubtedly change the world, there are countless other, manufactured parts or systems
more immediate applications of AI that provide crucial
Using a chatbot to interact
advantages. Every organization has processes that can with customers using
be improved quickly with the right kind of AI, whether it’s natural language
automating routine tasks or unlocking insights. Adopting
Compliance monitoring in legal
these common AI solutions helps organizations respond to contracts or financial traders
increasing cost pressures and gain a significant leg up on
Detecting fraudulent behavior or
their competition.
anomalous incidents
Let’s say a firm manufactures electronic components of some Analyzing sentiment in
kind. If their quality control experts can inspect 100 parts per customer feedback or
hour while their competitor down the road has an AI system social media
that lets their experts inspect 1,000 parts per hour, the firm is Scoring marketing leads
quickly going to lose market share or revenue. Applying AI to Supply chain, inventory, or
these tasks will save labor, avoid mistakes and waste, speed price optimization
outcomes, improve quality, and capture revenue that might
Demand or revenue forecasting
otherwise be lost.

AI IN ACTION | 8
Take Piramal Glass for example. They provide glass packaging for
pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and perfumery, and specialty food and
beverage industries. Piramal Glass leveraged AI to detect product Glass manufacturing is
anomalies and defects, improving production efficiency and product a complex industry with
quality. Their solution has led to a 1% improvement in production fixed costs and capacities
efficiency and a 5% reduction in defects, which translates into that are therefore very
enhanced predictability of delivery timelines for its customers. sensitive to variations in
Packaged partner solutions demand. It was vital to
optimize the operations to
An easy way to get started is by leveraging pre-built solutions
drive profitable growth.”
from our strong network of Microsoft partners. Our AI partners
have unique expertise across Data & AI and have custom solutions – Vijay Shah,
that they have built on Azure to deliver immediate impact through Executive Director,
industry and horizontal solutions. Piramal Enterprises Ltd

For example, our partner KPMG, a leading professional services organization, used Azure Cognitive
Services to build an AI-powered risk analytics solution for financial institutions. This solution uses
AI to transcribe and translate calls, then analyze communications for fraud, misrepresentation, data
breaches, and other compliance risks. This cuts time, cost, and effort by as much as 80%. One KPMG
client has already used the solution to increase the effectiveness of its compliance program while
reducing its overall cost.

To find out more about how our partners can help your transform your organization today, visit our
digital transformation homepage and our AI partner ecosystem homepage.

Reimagine
In the long-term, organizations that are finding the most value
from AI are using it to reimagine their business models. Achieving IndiaLends, a credit underwriting
lasting competitive differentiation with AI requires leveraging platform that serves over 5 million
consumers, uses Azure AI to power
knowledge that only your organization has: your data and the
their entire business architecture
expertise of your employees.
from security to customer checkout.
As an example of this type of transformation, consider Al-Futtaim, This intelligent solution has reduced
the leading lifestyle conglomerate in the Middle East. Al-Futtaim their internal processing time by
50% for transactions and has led
adopted an intelligent customer data platform (CDP) that uses
to an increase of 75% in net new
Azure data services to aggregate their customer data from across
business in the first 6 months.
more than 120 brands and provide holistic insights. These insights
build a complete picture of each buyer, helping Al-Futtaim create
hyper-personalized experiences for its customers that foster
customer loyalty and boost profitability.

AI IN ACTION | 9
As another example, National Oilwell Varco (NOV) saw an opportunity to transform its manufacturing
operations with AI. Using Microsoft Autonomous Systems solutions and a new approach to machine
learning called machine teaching, NOV engineers built their own intelligent control systems that
reduce machine downtime and help their operators focus on more strategic tasks.

To read more examples of how Microsoft customers have leveraged AI to create industry-changing
solutions, please visit our AI customer stories webpage and Microsoft AI business homepage.

Bringing AI to every employee

Transforming business processes is a key step in an organization’s AI journey. But to truly realize the
potential of AI, it’s essential to bring the power of AI to every employee—from developers and IT
teams to business users in every department. Microsoft has a breadth of solutions and technologies
that empower everyone in ways that are relevant and meaningful to their daily work.

For developers and data scientists, we have the industry-leading AI platform and services that can
help them seamlessly develop, deploy, and manage a wide range of transformative AI solutions.
For subject matter experts like researchers and engineers who have critical business expertise, we’re
putting the power of custom AI models directly in their hands in revolutionary ways to help accelerate
their learning cycles and apply their knowledge more efficiently and effectively. To empower business
users to achieve more, we’ve infused AI capabilities directly into the products and services they already
use every day like Outlook and Word. We’ve even developed low-code and no-code tools that enable
them to transform their work by creating their own AI models.

AI IN ACTION | 10
AI for developers and data scientists
If you are looking to build custom AI models and applications for your business, data scientists and
developers are key to turning AI ambitions into reality. Armed with the right set of tools, they have an
opportunity to play an integral role in growing their organizations’ AI capabilities.

Microsoft empowers developers and data scientists to be AI leaders with a comprehensive set of AI
services and learning resources. Building on over 27 years of investment, Microsoft Research continues
to achieve breakthroughs across vision, speech, and language. Those breakthroughs are built into
our Azure AI services, so developers and data scientists can build on the cutting edge while still using
familiar coding languages and frameworks.

Azure AI offers a range of technologies suited for different business use cases and skill levels, from
cognitive APIs and drag-and-drop model training to advanced data science tools. We are committed
to an open, flexible approach where users can work with the tools and frameworks of their choice and
deploy AI across the cloud and the edge. Our vision is to help our customers invent with purpose,
with productive, mission-critical, and responsible solutions.

Building custom machine learning models

Azure Machine Learning is ideal for creating custom machine O2, one of the world’s best-known
telecomms brands, wanted to use
learning (ML) models. It’s an enterprise-grade platform that
Azure Machine Learning for their
streamlines the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle, including
new auto insurance service.
data preparation, training, testing, deployment, and ongoing
model monitoring and management. It empowers developers O2 Drive uses Azure Machine
and data scientists with experiences for all skill levels, from a Learning to analyze telemetry data
gathered from an app on drivers’
no-code drag-and-drop interface (Azure ML Designer) to code-
phones to more accurately assess
first experiences with best-in-class support for open-source
risk and determine a fair priced
frameworks and languages.
insurance premium. For those that
Azure Machine Learning helps data scientists accelerate model opt-in, driver data is then further
development with automated ML, which automatically creates leveraged through Azure to run
‘safety driver campaigns’ that reward
models in a few steps. But this doesn’t mean it’s a black box—it
good drivers with monthly perks and
includes model interpretability that helps users evaluate and
competitions.
understand why a particular model was recommended. Users
also get access to industry-leading MLOps capabilities, or
DevOps for machine learning, which help accelerate and scale
the ML lifecycle and make it easier for data scientists, developers,
and IT teams to collaborate and stay on the same page.

AI IN ACTION | 11
Knowledge mining
Businesses collect a staggering amount of data every day, largely in unstructured formats like PDFs,
images, videos, audio files, and Office files. Using Azure Cognitive Search, developers can ingest
disparate structured and unstructured content then use AI services to uncover insights. In addition to
built-in AI capabilities, developers have the flexibility to integrate their own custom models to identify
information specific to their business, like legal clauses, industrial parts, or pharmaceutical terms. The
AI output can then be used for a number of end-user applications like search, business applications, or
analytics. Ultimately, Azure Cognitive Search helps stakeholders find essential needles in haystacks of
files, make better-informed decisions, identify risks and opportunities, and much more.

Adding intelligent experiences to apps

Used by over 1 million developers, Azure Cognitive Services Progressive wanted to interact with
their customers more on mobile
make it easy to build intelligence into apps. Cognitive Services
channels. To accomplish this,
include over 25 pre-built AI models in categories like vision,
Progressive used Microsoft Azure
speech, language, search, and decision. Without machine
Bot Service and Cognitive Services
learning expertise, developers can deploy AI for various use to quickly and easily build the Flo
cases using familiar programming languages. All it takes is an Chatbot which answers customer
API call to give an app the ability to communicate with users in questions, provides quotes, and
natural language, identify content in images, detect anomalies, even offers a bit of witty banter in
translate speech or text, and much more. the well-known style of the company
spokesperson, Flo.
One of the most common use cases for AI in the enterprise
is chatbots or virtual agents. These solutions can provide
customers with on-demand, personalized service across channels or help employees find information
more quickly. With Azure Bot Service, developers can create anything from a simple Q&A bot to a
branded virtual assistants for sophisticated scenarios.

AI for subject matter experts

One of the most transformational opportunities for organizations is to empower subject matter
experts with tools and applications that help them apply AI for reasoning. These employees are
tasked with solving some of the most complex and highly cognitive problems, and AI can help.

As you have seen, there are a wide variety of AI models available today. However, most workers can
only use AI models that have been embedded into applications for a specific purpose. In complex
fields that require deep expertise, employees need the flexibility to pivot their approach if they have a
new idea or new evidence to work with. Telling a developer or data scientist what they need ahead of
time would be at best impractical and more likely impossible. But real transformation happens when
everyone can use a wide range of AI models to reason over complex information. This means they can
freely choose which AI models to use for different purposes and what information sources to analyze
with them.

AI IN ACTION | 12
AI for reasoning is exactly that. It is highly valuable for subject matter experts who have business-
critical expertise, such as researchers, operations managers, field technicians, marketers, business
developers, and more. With powerful AI applications, they can apply their knowledge more efficiently
and effectively, speed up learning cycle iterations, and deliver real business impact at a rate never
before possible.

Today we are working with many partners and customers to make this a reality.

Novartis
One amazing example of how companies are empowering every employee with AI for reasoning is
the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. They are truly bringing the power of AI to the desktop of
every employee—not just data scientists and developers—to transform how medicines are discovered,
manufactured, and commercialized.

To make this happen, they have taken a holistic approach, redefining every business function with AI—
from research to manufacturing to distribution. Novartis has over 50 thousand employees, and most
of them deal with a huge amount of information, like medical journal articles, chemical
representations, gene sequences, and clinical trial results.

By leveraging AI for reasoning, Novartis has enabled its researchers to freely choose which AI models
to employ for different purposes and what information sources to analyze with them. Researchers can
also capture and share their reasoning with peers in an explainable, collaborative, and replicable way.
In this new paradigm, users can leverage AI more easily to follow ad hoc lines of thought, confirm
hypotheses, highlight contradictions and anomalies, and enrich and organize information.

With this new ability to co-reason with AI and colleagues, employees can quickly make sense of and
derive key insights from this vast amount of unstructured information to take on the next wave of
challenges in medicine. Not only are the individual employees able to transform their daily work in
powerful ways but whole teams can collaborate, share, and explain their reasoning with others in the
company so steps and learnings can be shared, replicated, and improved upon.

AI IN ACTION | 13
Mackmyra Whisky
We always strive to challenge
Another great example of how customers are making this
real today is with the Swedish-based company Mackmyra the traditions in the very
Whisky. Mackmyra has found a way to combine 1,000-year- traditional whisky trade,
old techniques and human expertise with AI to take product and that’s something we can
quality to the next level. really do now with the help
of AI. We see AI as a part
Mackmyra has partnered with Finnish tech company
of our digital development,
Fourkind and Microsoft to deliver an AI solution for the
and it is really exciting to let
world’s first whisky developed with AI.
AI be a complement to the
Using existing recipes, sales data, and customer preferences, craft of producing a high-
Mackmyra’s AI models, built using Azure ML, have generated quality whisky. For me as a
more than 70 million recipes. The models predict the Master Blender, it is a great
combinations, production details, flavor notes, and overall
achievement to be able to say
product outcomes that will be popular and of the highest
that I’m now also a mentor for
quality based on what kind of cask types there are in the
the first ever AI-created
warehouse.
whisky in the world.“
Thanks to the algorithm’s ability to sift through and calculate
a vast amount of data quickly, new and innovative — Angela D’Orazio

combinations that would otherwise never have been Master Blender at Mackmyra

considered can be found.

The beauty of the solution is fully realized when these insights and recommendations are put in the
hands of the Master Blender. Master Blenders evaluate, test, and refine the AI recommendations based
on their expertise and deep knowledge of the craft. With the power of AI, they can innovate at a pace
and with a level of detail that was previously unattainable.

It is important to stress that these AI scenarios are designed to enhance human expertise, not replace
it. With AI for reasoning, users can refine their craft, amplify their insights, increase efficiency, and
deliver transformational impact to the business.

AI IN ACTION | 14
Mondelez International
Building on the success at Mackmyra, Fourkind is
partnering with Mondelez International to create the
same transformation in the snack industry. If you are
not familiar with Mondelez, it is one of the world’s
largest snack companies, famous for popular brands
like Oreo, Sour Patch Kids, Trident gum, Toblerone,
Cadbury, and many more. Mondelez is always
looking for innovative ways to bring the next great
snack to market.

Using AI, they will now be able to provide insights

and recommendations to their master tastemakers
to improve snack quality, discover new taste
experiences, and delight our taste buds in new ways!

We are beyond excited to see what is possible as

more customers engage in this truly revolutionary
and transformational approach to AI. By putting the
right AI tools in the hands of subject matter experts,
they can do what they do best and deliver real
business value today.

AI for business users

Finally, to scale and truly realize the transformational opportunity of AI, we must put AI in the hands
of every business user. AI has the capacity to empower all people to achieve more, not just developers
and data scientists or researchers and subject matter experts. In fact, last year, Gartner predicted
that “in 2021, artificial intelligence (AI augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value and 6.2
billion hours of worker productivity globally,” (Gartner, 2019). Most of this enormous value will come
from non-technical business users working with AI. On top of that, in a recent survey of over 10,000
employers and employees, we discovered that employees of companies that have integrated AI
throughout found more meaning in their jobs and want to use AI more (KRC Research, 2020).

AI provides business users and subject matter experts with limitless opportunities to get more done
and do things that weren’t possible before. For instance, AI can help employees uncover hidden
insights, find critical information in overwhelming amounts of data, improve collaboration, and
automate repetitive tasks.

AI IN ACTION | 15
Our goal is to make AI easily accessible to all business users. With the right tools, we believe we
can help business users complement their expertise with AI-powered insights, making them more
innovative and effective. To accomplish this, we are weaving intelligence into business applications that
people use every day. We are also working to democratize AI development with no-code tools and
platforms that enable business users to create their own AI models, helping turn their visions
into reality.

Everyday AI
From virtual communication to overwhelming amounts of information, there are some realities every
employee must address to thrive in a modern workplace. To help employees succeed, we are putting
AI to work in Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day—like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office.
With intelligent productivity experiences in Microsoft 365, employees can collaborate and conduct
meetings more effectively, focus their time on value-added work, and uncover timely insights to
improve their work.

Virtual meetings are becoming more and more critical. While there’s no true replacement for
in-person collaboration, we’re working harder than ever to decrease pain points, increase human
connection, and make virtual work more engaging with Microsoft Teams. Intelligent experiences
like background blur and custom backgrounds can help meeting participants minimize the chances
of disturbances appearing on their screen. Live captions help improve accessibility for meeting
participants who are hard of hearing or have hearing loss, non-native English speakers, or even for
those with a sleeping baby nearby. Business users can also leverage real-time noise suppression to
reduce distractions such as loud typing or a barking dog.

AI IN ACTION | 16
Whether working remotely or in a physical workplace, AI can
also help employees focus their time and attention on what
During the past four decades, the
matters most. For instance, the Briefing email from Cortana Cerner Corporation has helped
aggregates important information about upcoming meetings its healthcare customers better
and outstanding tasks in Outlook and enables employees understand their data so they can
to set aside daily “focus time” to work uninterrupted with improve patient care, reduce costs,
Microsoft Teams notifications silenced. With Play My Emails in and increase operational efficiency.
Outlook mobile, employees can use natural language to ask As part of its 2020 vision, Cerner
wanted to create an intelligent work
Cortana to read out their new emails and share any changes
environment where their associates
to their schedule—so they can catch up even when their hands
take advantage of AI to work
are busy with other things. smarter. To accomplish this, they
choose Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Research breakthroughs in image and speech
recognition, machine reading comprehension, and language
“We were looking for borderless
understanding have also enabled us to transform personal
mobility, an intelligent work
productivity with familiar Office apps like PowerPoint, Word,
experience infused with AI.
and Excel. To help prepare more engaging presentations, users
And we wanted that work to
can take advantage of intelligent suggestions for slide designs
happen in an environment with
in PowerPoint. They can even rehearse the presentation and
receive real-time feedback to improve pacing and limit filler
tight security from the start.
words or culturally insensitive phrases. With Editor, writers Microsoft 365 delivers on all
can take advantage of intelligent suggestions in Word to not counts.”
only correct spelling and grammar but also rephrase entire — Bill Graff
sentences for more impact or clarity. Writers can also get
Chief Information Officer,
intelligent suggestions for spelling out acronyms, putting
Cerner Corporation
numbers in real-world perspective, citing reference material,
and even flagging potentially unoriginal language. With natural
language queries in Excel, users can ask a plain language
question of their data to get answers.

As the world’s information grows by around 60% every year, staying up to date and making sense of
it all can be increasingly overwhelming (IDC, 2018). Yet harnessing information has become the key to
almost everything—from improving productivity to understanding customers and much more. That’s
why our Microsoft 365 experiences come with Microsoft Search embedded, helping business users
wade through this data to uncover more impactful insights and make better data-driven decisions.
Microsoft Search enables users to search for people, files, sites, and more across their organizational
data and public web data—all from within the Microsoft 365 products they’re already working in.
Results are even personalized to each user to ensure relevance.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. To learn more about AI capabilities in Microsoft 365, click here.

AI IN ACTION | 17
Core process optimization
Explore a few of our Dynamics 365 AI
For horizontal functions like sales, marketing,
applications:
customer service, and finance, organizations
across industries can use AI to proactively solve Dynamics 365 Customer Insights increases
problems and gain insight to drive meaningful confidence with a single view of customers to
optimize engagements and discover insights that
actions. The first step is often with software-as-a-
drive personalized experiences.
service (SaaS) AI solutions, which deliver results
quickly and cost-effectively. Dynamics 365 Sales Insights goes beyond pure
automation to enable users to sell smarter with
We are making this possible by infusing AI into embedded insights within workflows.
our Dynamics 365 offerings as a core ingredient With Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights
to enhance, not replace, the capabilities of users gain insights to proactively address increasing
business users. Enterprises from every industry volumes and manage efficient agent distribution.
already use Dynamics 365 to help them run Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps merchants
their entire business. With powerful intelligence decrease fraud costs, protect revenue, and improve
in their existing workflows, organizations can the online shopping experience for customers.
empower their business users to be more Learn more about Dynamics AI 365.
proactive and effective. Dynamics 365 enables
users to bring together relationships, processes,
and data across applications to gain increased visibility and control so they can do their best work.

To explore more of our Dynamics 365 AI offerings, visit the Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI webpage.
To learn how we’ve transformed our own internal Microsoft processes with AI, see the e-book
Empowering employees with AI: A look into how Microsoft uses AI to do business.

Build AI without code in Power Platform

Of course, business users may need AI capabilities beyond the out-of-the-box AI experiences baked
into Microsoft products. In some cases, they may have access to AI solutions created by data scientists
and developers within their organization. But we want to go beyond that as well.

We want to give everyone the ability to add AI capabilities to their apps and automate their workflows,
regardless of technical experience. For this reason, we’re working to democratize AI development with
no-code tools and platforms that enable anyone to create and use AI models.

For example, we’ve created a new Power Platform capability called AI Builder. Without writing a single
line of code, business users can train, publish, and run AI models using customizable templates and
a guided process in AI Builder. They can also use pre-built models from Cognitive Services for
common scenarios.

AI IN ACTION | 18
Business users can leverage a wide range of customizable
templates for training their own AI models, including:
The G&J Pepsi IT team uses
• Form Processing identifies the structure of your
AI Builder and Power Apps to
documents based on examples you provide to extract text
create the next generation of
from any matching form.
our Store Audit App, enabling
• Object Detection lets you count, locate, and identify better mobility and efficiency
selected objects within any image. You can use this model
for our field personnel. AI
in PowerApps to extract information from pictures you take
Builder will help build an AI
with the camera.
model to automatically identify
• Prediction identifies patterns in historical data and then and track our products using
detects learned patterns in new data to predict future object detection. For our field
outcomes.
worker, it will be as simple as
Business users can also take advantage of a range of pre-built taking a photo and letting AI
AI models that require no training or customization. These Builder do the rest.”
prebuilt AI models include:
— Eric McKinney
• Business Card Reader models allow for the extraction of
Enterprise Business Systems
information from business card images such as name, job
Manager, G&J Pepsi
title, address, email, company, and phone numbers

• Sentiment analysis models detect positive or negative sentiment in text data and provide an
overall sentiment score for each text data

• Text recognition models extract words from digital, printed, and even handwritten documents and
images into machine-readable character streams

The AI models from AI Builder can then be used with Power Automate to automate processes or
Power Apps to enhance the intelligence of existing business apps.

With democratized development platforms like AI Builder, those who best understand the business
problems can create the right AI solutions to solve them.

To learn more, please visit the AI Builder and Power Platform product pages.

AI IN ACTION | 19
Get started today
AI Business School
It’s clear, now is the time to put AI in action. Empowered with Learning Paths:
our tools, every organization has the potential to amplify
1. Define an AI strategy
human ingenuity across every role and gain industry-changing
competitive advantages. 2. Enable an AI-ready culture

3. Responsible AI
Taking the next step in AI means thinking big about how AI
can have the greatest impact. Microsoft is ready to become a 4. AI technology for business
strategic partner for our customers and help them bring AI to leaders
every process and employee in their organization. 5. Bring AI to business users
As you develop your organization’s AI approach, we encourage 6. Scale AI in your organization
you to visit our AI Business School. This free, on-demand
7. Industry-specific learning paths
master class series is designed specifically for business leaders
to empower you to be successful and get results from AI. It
covers the full AI spectrum, from exploring how AI is transforming specific industries like retail and
healthcare, to illuminating the technologies like deep learning that make this possible. Taken together,
the modules of the AI Business School will enable you to learn and share the knowledge you need to
transform your organization with AI.

AI IN ACTION | 20
Additional resources
Additional resources for everyone
Learn more about our approach to AI and our intelligent products and services
• Microsoft AI homepage – Learn how Microsoft AI brings people and organizations together, find cutting-
edge examples of Microsoft AI in action, and see how you can leverage Microsoft AI in your organization

• Microsoft AI for business – Get your business AI-ready with tools and resources to help you strategically
apply AI within your organization

• Azure AI platform – Learn more about how the Microsoft AI platform can help you develop AI solutions in
conversational AI, machine learning, data sciences, robotics, IoT, and more

• Intelligent applications – Experience the intelligence built into Microsoft products and services you use
every day like Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365

• Microsoft 365 AI - Learn more about the AI capabilities embedded in our Microsoft 365 products.

• Dynamics 365 AI – Explore our Dynamics 365 AI offerings and see how we are enabling the people closest
to business challenges to resolve them

• Power Platform and AI Builder – Learn more about how you can enhance your apps and business processes
with AI that’s easy to build and configure within Power Apps

• Autonomous systems – Learn about a new class of systems that can automate and simplify
everyday processes

• AI for Good – Learn more about our five AI for Good programs: AI for Earth, AI for Health, AI for
Accessibility, AI for Humanitarian Action, AI for Cultural Heritage

• Microsoft AI blog – Hear about the latest Microsoft breakthroughs in AI technology

Find guidance to help ensure your organization develops and uses AI responsibly
• Responsible AI homepage – Learn more about our approach to ensuring AI is developed and used
responsibly

• Responsible AI in business learning path – Receive guidance on how to set up principles and a governance
model in your organization, as well resources, best practices, and tools

Additional resources for business leaders

Learn how to best integrate AI in your organization
• AI readiness assessment tool – Take a brief online assessment to find out how ready your organization is for
AI and gain recommendations for moving forward

• Insights tool – Use our interactive data-rich assessment tool to learn how AI is providing a competitive edge
for businesses like yours

AI IN ACTION | 21
• AI Business School – Get insights and practice guidance from top executives on how to strategically apply AI
in your organization

• Microsoft AI Transformation Customers Stories – Explore real-life examples of how AI is impacting

organizations of all sizes across industries

Additional resources for developers and data scientists

Expand your knowledge of AI concepts and development techniques
• AI Labs – Learn and code real-world AI while testing experimental apps

• AI Demos – Experiment with interactive demos that bring Microsoft AI technology to life

• AI School – Build confidence in developing AI through educational courses and tutorials

• MS Professional program – Gain job-ready skills with hands-on labs and expert instructors

• Microsoft Learning Partners – Sharpen your technical skills with in-depth training solutions that combine
video, hand-on labs, and Microsoft Certification preparation

Take advantage of available AI tools and techniques

• Visual Studio Tools for AI – Build, test, and deploy deep learning solutions in an integrated
development environment

• ML.NET – Create custom ML models and integrate them easily into .NET applications

• Data Science VMs – Save time with pre-configured cloud environments for data science modeling,
development, and deployment

• Responsible AI resources – Access important research projects, open-source software, managed services,
and other tools to better understand, protect, and control AI systems

Experiment with groundbreaking AI technology

• Cognitive Research Technologies – Get an early look at emerging cognitive capabilities through APIs and
SDKs and provide feedback to influence development

Collaborate with other developers and the open-source community

• GitHub – Leverage the tools and frameworks you already use and exploit the full power of the
open-source community

• Azure Open Datasets – Utilize curated public datasets to add scenario-specific features to machine
earning solutions

• Azure AI Gallery – Discover, share, and collaborate with other developers

© 2020 Microsoft. All rights reserved. This white paper is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information presented here.
This document is provided “as is.” Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet website references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it.
This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes.

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