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The work of public finance professionals provides the financial foundation for all government activities, from delivering basic services to ensuring economic stability. However, public finance organizations are struggling to meet new demands in a rapidly changing world.
Across industries, 80% of finance teams face challenges in doing strategic work beyond operations.1 For public finance organizations, this is exacerbated by unique pressures such as budget constraints, revenue volatility, public demands for transparency, complex regulations, and workforce challenges.
Modernization is crucial in helping public governments navigate this landscape. New cloud and AI solutions are enabling governments to reignite economies by simplifying taxation, improving budgeting, and mitigating fraud and corruption. The Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance, an AI-powered, role-based Copilot agent, is designed to help government agencies accelerate time to business impact. It is now in public preview and will be delivered in the coming months.
At Microsoft, our focus is on helping governments achieve more through technology, particularly in public finance. We aim to help government finance organizations take full advantage of this new opportunity.
How Copilot for Finance empowers finance professionals in new ways
Imagine a typical day for a budget officer or procurement operations manager, spent reviewing emails, preparing for meetings, and analyzing data. Despite their best efforts, much of their time is consumed by essential tasks that demand complete and precise attention, leaving little time for strategic work.
Generative AI has already proven effective in easing this burden, with Microsoft 365 Copilot delivering significant productivity gains in its first year.2 Users reported a 29% increase in speed when performing time-consuming tasks.2
Copilot for Finance extends the core power of Copilot with new features designed to enhance financial operations. By drawing on a range of financial data sources, it helps professionals and teams accelerate their impact by speeding time to financial insight.
At Microsoft, we’ve seen the value firsthand. Our treasury and financial planning and analysis team piloted Copilot for Finance to automate and simplify the data reconciliation process, resulting in a 22% cost savings and reducing the time spent on reconciliation tasks from one to two hours to just 10 minutes.3
4 important benefits of Copilot for Finance for public finance
Copilot for Finance is designed to be an everyday assistant for finance professionals, helping them reimagine how they operate and serve the public. Here are four ways it aims to deliver new benefits to improve cost and impact.
1. Optimizing processes
Copilot for Finance helps automate labor-intensive tasks, such as data consolidation, verification, and updating financial data across systems. This reduces the time and effort required, freeing people to do more strategic work.
2. Controlling expenses
Beyond saving time and money with optimized processes, Copilot for Finance helps organizations focus on expense control with AI-powered reconciliation and data set preparation. Teams can identify cost variance and opportunities to save costs earlier, thanks to variance analysis and insights drawn from multiple data sources.
3. Improving collections
Copilot for Finance provides new ways to work with taxpayers and drive productive communications, leading to better collections and reporting in less time. Drawing on information from multiple sources, a collections manager can quickly review payment history and relevant details.
4. De-risking revenues
Copilot for Finance helps improve strategies and processes to reduce financial risks associated with revenue streams. With AI monitoring and summarization, it can shift the focus from reporting to planning and forecasting, enabling better outcomes.
Learn more about Copilot for Finance
The future of public finance is here, and for many governments, it’s powered by AI. Copilot for Finance offers a new opportunity for finance teams to operate more successfully and efficiently than ever before. Learn more about how Microsoft is helping governments solve society’s biggest challenges and how we’re helping to drive financial accountability with public finance technology solutions.
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance
Accelerate time to business impact
1 Future of Finance Trends, 2023.
2 Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report, 2023.
3 Internal Microsoft data.
As Director of Public Finance, Valentina leads the Microsoft sales and industry solutions strategy, enabling a strong organization that supports Ministries of Finance, Tax Agencies, Customs and Trade Agencies, National Treasuries, as well as Financial Market Regulators, embarking on the digital transformation journey.
