Microsoft's New Copilot For Finance Is Here To Help You From Data Entry To Strategic Analysis

Microsoft Corporation MSFT unveiled its public preview of Microsoft Copilot for Finance, a new offering within the Microsoft 365 suite. This extension aims to revolutionize how finance departments operate and is designed to streamline financial tasks, automate workflows, and provide insights.

What Happened: The new addition to the Copilot suite, Copilot for Finance, is set to empower finance professionals with AI-powered, role-based workflow automation, recommendations, and guided actions in their daily work, announced Microsoft in a blog post on Wednesday.

According to the announcement, the Copilot for Finance is now available for public preview. It is designed to address the challenges faced by finance leaders and teams, such as being stuck in data entry and review cycles, preventing them from pursuing more strategic work.

The tool is integrated with widely used productivity apps such as Excel and Outlook, providing workflow and data-specific insights for finance professionals. It draws essential context from existing financial data sources, including traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, and Microsoft Graph.

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Key features of Copilot for Finance in the public preview include simplifying the reconciliation process in Excel, providing a complete summary of relevant customer account details in Outlook, and turning raw data in Excel into presentation-ready visuals and reports.

Why It Matters: Microsoft’s AI-driven tools have been in the spotlight recently, with some facing criticism. The ChatGPT Rival Copilot faced turbulence, with early adopters questioning the $30 fee for the AI upgrade. The software, which integrates with Word, Outlook, and Teams, was considered useful but often failed to justify its price by testers.

However, Wedbush’s Dan Ives pointed to Microsoft’s strong performance, particularly the high demand for its Copilot AI tool, as early proof of the accelerating AI revolution. The launch of Copilot for Finance adds another dimension to Microsoft’s AI offerings and could help address the concerns raised by early adopters.

Microsoft’s AI technology has also shown some intriguing developments. The Copilot AI chatbot, for instance, unveiled an unhinged version of itself named “Sydney,” which users found entertaining. This suggests that Microsoft’s AI technology is continuously evolving, and the launch of Copilot for Finance could be a significant step in this evolution.

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