Accenture Invests in People to Drive Brand Innovation

What began as a pilot with a few hundred senior leaders scaled to 20,000 users and then to 743,000 employees, underscoring Accenture’s full commitment to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The global professional services firm is now executing its largest enterprise deployment of the AI tool, following clear, quantifiable gains in day-to-day effectiveness.

Data from 2025, covering 200,000 users, shows 97% of employees completed routine tasks up to 15 times faster with Copilot, and 53% reported significant improvements in overall productivity.

“Copilot is a personal digital colleague. It changes the way our people work – the way they research, ideate, analyse and execute many daily activities,” says Tony Leraris, Accenture’s Chief Information Officer.

A phased deployment

Accenture’s phased rollout allowed the company to observe real-world usage patterns and establish internal guardrails before expanding access at scale.

Throughout the rollout, the firm prioritised data strategy, governance and access controls, taking time to understand how people were actually using Copilot across Outlook, Teams and Word – ensuring speed did not come at the expense of security, accuracy or brand integrity.

The adoption programme combined one-to-one training, a steady cadence of communications on new features and group sessions.

It was powered by an active community on Viva Engage, where employees shared practical tips and supported new users – fueling grassroots momentum across the business.

“It fostered understanding and inspired people to go off and do their own experimentation and try new things,” says Haley Rosowsky, Global Microsoft Ecosystem Partner Marketing Lead.

Targeted demonstrations helped specific audiences – especially senior leaders – understand how to tailor the tool to their priorities and where it could deliver the most value.

According to Tony Leraris, Accenture’s Chief Information Officer, consistently high adoption is what enabled the continued expansion of Copilot through every phase of the rollout.

Managing workflows

Copilot’s seamless integration into Outlook, Teams and Word has been central to accelerating adoption. From managing workflows to analysing data, it is now embedded across almost every facet of the company’s day-to-day operations.

For Accenture, Copilot has become part of the daily creative and communications routine.

Jason Warnke, Senior Managing Director and Global Lead of Accenture Experiences, leads a global team of more than 320 creative professionals, including writers, designers and video producers.

Maintaining a consistent approach at that scale has long been a challenge.

“One of the things that’s massively important in a global organisation like ours is consistency of message. Before Copilot, teams would create something, it would go through a lot of review cycles, and then somebody in another part of the world would say, ‘That’s not how we talk about it’,” he says.

Writers now use Copilot to draft and validate content against existing materials to ensure voice and message consistency – accelerating throughput while strengthening brand integrity.

Teams also rely on the tool to surface parallel efforts across the organisation, reducing duplication and improving reuse.

Designers and marketers use AI to generate concepts and produce assets that align with brand guidelines from the start.

“Embedding our brand kit in Copilot lets non‑creative teams produce on‑brand materials independently,” says Jason.

On the sales front, Avanade – the 25‑year consulting and technology services joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft – uses Copilot to deliver sharper, customer‑focused insights so sellers can engage with greater relevance and precision.

Building on Copilot, Avanade has developed internal sales intelligence tools such as D3 to aggregate data and industry context, equipping teams with concise, actionable briefs.

Early results are compelling: employees using these tools generate 43% more sales opportunities than peers who do not.

Research that once took days is now available in seconds, increasing sales velocity and freeing time for higher‑value client engagement.

The technology also helps junior sellers operate at a higher level, enabling them to focus on the narrative of client conversations while bringing substantive insight to the table from the outset.

Adoption continues to widen as even non‑technical roles apply the tool in technical ways – experimenting beyond traditional boundaries to reimagine daily work.

While the technology is powerful, Accenture underscores that outcomes at this scale come from equal investment in training and people, ensuring speed is matched by capability and confidence as the AI rollout expands.