Copilot for Finance streamlines productivity and workflow for professionals

Microsoft announced the public preview launch of Copilot for Finance that basically extends the capabilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with financial-specific tools.

It’s not the first such service. Microsoft also previewed the Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service dedicated bots to help professionals in specific business areas.

What is new about Copilot for Finance?

The essence of Copilot for Finance is Copilot for Microsoft 365, that will use efficiently the Office tools (Excel, Outlook, Word and more) and it connects it to other productivity apps from the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP, and the Microsoft Graph.

Here are the key features of Copilot for Finance, as laid out by Microsoft in their announcement:

• Helps financial analysts quickly conduct a variance analysis in Excel using natural language prompts to review data sets for anomalies, risks and unmatched values. This type of analysis helps finance provide strategic insights to business leaders about where it is meeting, exceeding or falling short of planned financial outcomes and why.
• Simplifies the reconciliation process in Excel with automated data structure comparisons and guided troubleshooting to help move from insight to action, which helps ensure the reliability and accuracy of financial records.
• Provides a complete summary of relevant customer account details in Outlook, such as balance statements and invoices, to expedite the collections process.
• Enables customers to turn raw data in Excel into presentation-ready visuals and reports ready to be shared across Outlook and Teams.

Microsoft blog

So, in a few words, Copilot for Finance will help professionals make better and faster financial assessments, create customer account summaries and generate meaningful presentations based on the available data.

Microsoft’s idea behind Copilot for Finance is to help finance professionals with data management and review cycles:

Eighty percent of finance leaders and teams face challenges to take on more strategic work outside the operational portions of their roles. However, 62% of finance professionals say they are stuck in the drudgery of data entry and review cycles. 

Microsoft blog

Would you use Copilot for Finance to manage data from your business? Let us know about that in the comments section below.