Accenture rolls out Copilot to 743,000
- Microsoft and Accenture said April 27 they will deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot across Accenture’s roughly 743,000 employees, the software’s biggest enterprise rollout yet. - Accenture said a 200,000-user cohort reached 89% monthly use, while 97% reported routine tasks finished up to 15 times faster. - The deal gives Microsoft a marquee customer as Copilot adoption remains limited among Microsoft 365 enterprise users. (reuters.com)
Microsoft is rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot to Accenture’s roughly 743,000 employees, the largest enterprise deployment of the software so far. (reuters.com) (news.microsoft.com) The companies announced the expansion on April 27, and they did not disclose financial terms. Microsoft called it its biggest Copilot rollout to date. (reuters.com) (news.microsoft.com) Copilot is Microsoft’s generative artificial intelligence assistant inside Outlook, Teams, Word and other Microsoft 365 apps. Accenture started testing it in August 2023 with a few hundred senior leaders and selected employees before widening access. (news.microsoft.com) (itpro.com) The rollout then grew to 20,000 users, and later to about 200,000 by the end of 2025, while Accenture worked on data governance, access controls and training. The company said it tailored adoption by role instead of using one companywide script. (news.microsoft.com) (itpro.com) Accenture said its early numbers came from 2025 data covering 200,000 users. In that group, 89% were monthly active users, 97% said routine tasks were completed 15 times faster, and 53% reported significant productivity and efficiency gains. (news.microsoft.com) (reuters.com) Accenture’s chief information officer, Tony Leraris, said employees would not keep using the tool at that rate if it were not useful. A separate company survey found 84% of users said they would “deeply miss” Copilot if it were removed. (news.microsoft.com) (itpro.com) The deal lands at a sensitive moment for Microsoft’s artificial intelligence business. Reuters reported that a little more than 3% of Microsoft’s 450 million Microsoft 365 enterprise users pay for the $30-a-month Copilot offering. (reuters.com) Reuters also reported that Microsoft shares were down 12% for the year after a steep January-to-March decline, as investors questioned returns on the company’s artificial intelligence spending. Accenture’s rollout gives Microsoft a high-profile customer case as those doubts persist. (reuters.com) Accenture has been one of Microsoft’s most aggressive corporate artificial intelligence adopters, and Reuters reported the company has tied top-level promotions to artificial intelligence usage. Julie Sweet, Accenture’s chief executive, said teams are already doing “higher-value work” with Copilot. (reuters.com) The closing test is no longer whether a pilot can impress a few thousand workers. It is whether Copilot keeps those usage and productivity numbers when Accenture takes it from 200,000 people to nearly three-quarters of a million. (news.microsoft.com) (reuters.com)
