Microsoft is working with professional services network EY to help businesses launch AI projects.
In a $1 billion partnership announced Thursday (May 21), Microsoft Forward Deployment Engineers (FDEs) and EY industry experts will work together to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).
“AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to a core driver of business performance, and the companies that lead the way are those that scale their AI transformation,” Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business, said in a news release.
“Our work combines Microsoft’s trusted AI platform and engineering team with EY’s industry capabilities and experience as Client Zero, applying these technologies across their organizations to help customers move beyond pilots to enterprise execution, enhancing decision-making and delivering measurable impact.”
In its role as “Client Zero,” EY deployed Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant to 150,000 users and saw a 15% productivity increase “reinvested in client delivery and learning,” according to the release.
EY will also use Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite to extend Copilot to more than 400,000 employees worldwide, embedding agent AI capabilities across the enterprise and “driving business impact,” the companies said.
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Microsoft and EY said the partnership will initially focus on finance, tax, risk, human resources and supply chain operations in the financial services, industrial/energy, consumer/retail, government and healthcare sectors.
As a recent PYMNTS Intelligence study shows, this partnership comes at a time when many American workers have received little or no training on how to use AI in the workplace.
A study called “Wage to Wallet™ Index – The Resilience Deficit: Labor Workers in an Automated Economy” found that 48% of U.S. workers in educated, professional, high-wage roles (who are typically salaried) “come to work every day faced with AI tools they are not prepared to use effectively,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.
This is happening at the same time that companies are rapidly incorporating AI into their operations, according to additional research from PYMNTS Intelligence.
Chitra Norvat, an advisor to venture capital and private equity-backed firms and a former Deutsche Bank executive, told PYMNTS that she sees a growing disconnect between what workers are being told about the changes brought on by AI and the factors that are currently leading to attrition and career risk.
“From a large corporate perspective, the impact right now is minimal,” she says. “Chatbots don’t replace sales processes. They don’t negotiate contracts. All of these companies have thousands of employees and are on a maturity curve for every product, service line, and feature.”
