In a joint effort to address the growing demand for AI transformation, Accenture and Avanade, along with Microsoft, have announced the launch of a new copilot business transformation practice. This initiative is aimed at helping organizations transform their business functions using generative AI and Copilot technologies.
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture, stated that this investment with Microsoft will enhance their partnership by accelerating and integrating AI at scale. She emphasized that "the powerful combination of Microsoft Copilot, agentic and generative AI technologies, and Avanade’s and Accenture’s deep industry and functional expertise will help enable enterprises to reimagine their processes."
The newly established practice will provide technology and industry experience to clients, assisting them in utilizing Copilot across various enterprise sectors. The collaboration includes developing templates, extensions, plugins, and connectors for organizations to leverage data effectively. Additionally, Microsoft's gen AI-powered security capabilities will be utilized to improve security operations.
The team consists of 5,000 professionals from Accenture and Avanade supported by Microsoft product specialists. They aim to deliver industry-specific transformations by tapping into over 50,000 trained professionals in Microsoft Copilot technologies.
Judson Althoff from Microsoft expressed satisfaction with the collaboration stating: "By bringing together Copilots and human ambition... we can accelerate AI transformation for organizations across industries."
Accenture has already developed agents designed to streamline workflows. For instance, they created a supplier discovery agent that offers real-time insights which could result in significant cost savings.
Furthermore, Accenture is collaborating with Udacity on an Azure Generative AI Engineer Nanodegree program. This initiative aims to equip learners with skills necessary for designing AI-driven applications on Azure.
Accenture continues its support for Microsoft's internal transformations while establishing four Co-Innovation Labs dedicated to incubating blueprints for AI-led design within Accenture offices.
