Vodafone extends Microsoft agreement by introducing Copilot to employees worldwide

Strategic agreement to improve productivity, innovation, and digital efficiency across the company

Vodafone to introduce Microsoft 365 Copilot AI, Microsoft's GenAI tool, to up to 68,000 Vodafone employees across multiple countries through extended strategic agreement.

The GenAI chatbot will be implemented across the organisation, as the company aims to improve productivity, innovation, and digital efficiency.

It will also integrate most areas of the British company, from customer service to product development, by way of network management to sales and marketing.

"It's so exciting to see Vodafone trusting in the huge potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot and adopting it at such scale," said Clare Barclay, CEO of Microsoft UK.

From Berkshire to the world

The partnership with the American giant will boost the Berkshire-based telecommunications company's strategy across Europe and Africa.

Already available across six continents, Vodafone counts 350 million customers worldwide and is already using Microsoft's GenAI technology to supercharge its online chatbot, TOBi, in 13 countries and 15 different languages.

Microsoft has already partnered with an international company this year, with Bechtle announcing the deployment of Copilot for Microsoft 365 to sites in 14 countries.

Five months later, Dirk Müller-Niessner, CTO of Bechtle, told CRN that the company had already observed tangible benefits.

As of now, Vodafone also seems satisfied with the results of this collaboration.

The future of the partnership

It all started in January 2024, when the two companies announced a ten-year strategic partnership to transform the customer experience, after Vodafone said it planned to invest £1.2bn over the next ten years in cloud and customer-focused AI services developed in collaboration with Microsoft.

After a recent Copilot trial, Vodafone determined that the GenAI tool increased productivity amongst its employees.

90 per cent of employees said they benefited from Microsoft 365 Copilot and wanted to keep using it.

Another 60 per cent said it improved the quality of their work.

Some neurodiverse employees said the software's drafting ability reduced the stress of writing documents and emails.

"Our AI journey is focusing on three areas: operational efficiency inside the organisation; rewiring the business to provide an enhanced customer experience; and unlocking growth opportunities through new products and services that we can create around GenAI," said Scott Petty, CTO of Vodafone (pictured).

The trial gave Vodafone the confidence to extend these GenAI capabilities to 68,000 of its 100,0000 employees, in a mission to allow them to be more creative and productive.

"It's not about doing more work, it's about doing better quality work and being more customer-focused," explained Scott Petty.