From Experience to Impact
Browse this gallery of resources built from our own lessons learned. This includes practical guides, briefs, and videos to help you innovate in your daily work.
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CEO Summit - CFO perspective on how to unlock business value with AI
This presentation highlights how AI is transforming finance to unlock business value. It outlines the evolving role of CFOs in driving innovation, efficiency, and measurable outcomes across functions—from quote-to-cash and record-to-report to tax, treasury, planning, and compliance. The deck showcases real-world AI-enabled use cases within Microsoft Finance, quantifying impact through time savings, accuracy gains, and process improvements. It also provides actionable insights on data governance, cultural transformation, and AI adoption strategies, supported by examples of Microsoft Copilot prompts and integrated Azure solutions. This resource is designed to inspire finance leaders to lead with AI and reimagine value creation across the enterprise.
Our AI Journey In Finance
This presentation showcases how Microsoft’s finance organization is modernizing operations through digital transformation, with a focus on automation, centralized procurement, and integrated platforms. It highlights the launch of several Microsoft AI solutions and highlights the outcomes. It invites finance professionals to engage in peer-to-peer discussions and collaborate on leveraging emerging technologies to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and drive performance.
Finance innovation stories
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Explore briefsGenerative AI Fundamentals
This brief introduces the foundational concepts of generative AI, highlighting its transformative potential across industries—particularly in finance. It explains how generative AI differs from traditional AI by focusing on the creation of new content, such as text, images, and models. The document outlines practical applications including fraud detection, credit risk modeling, algorithmic trading, customer service automation, forecasting, personalized marketing, document analysis, and portfolio management. It also features a case study from Microsoft’s Audit, Risk, and Compliance team, showcasing real-world implementation. Designed as a primer, the brief emphasizes that generative AI is not just a future innovation but a present-day tool reshaping how organizations operate and make decisions.
Data Driven Innovation
The brief outlines how finance professionals and citizen developers can harness data-driven innovation to solve everyday business challenges using tools like SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate. It introduces a practical, non-technical framework for identifying opportunities, evaluating processes, and designing solutions that leverage data to improve decision-making, streamline operations, and enhance customer experiences. Through a two-part structure—building blocks for opportunity assessment and a real-world case study—the document empowers users to understand the value of data-driven efforts and prepare for implementation. Common finance applications include customer insights, financial close analysis, compliance risk management, and forecasting.
Prompt Engineering
This brief explores how prompt engineering—a method of crafting clear, goal-oriented instructions for AI tools—can empower finance professionals to work more efficiently and insightfully. By leveraging Microsoft Copilot and other generative AI technologies, finance teams can automate routine tasks, generate tailored reports, and extract meaningful insights from complex data. The document emphasizes that prompt engineering is not just a technical skill but a strategic capability, enabling finance leaders to drive innovation, improve decision-making, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Video resources
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Learning section
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The Art and Science of Working with AI
This article from Microsoft WorkLab explores how AI—particularly Microsoft 365 Copilot—is transforming the way we work. It emphasizes that effective use of AI is both an art and a science, requiring thoughtful prompting, iteration, and collaboration. Drawing on insights from Microsoft leaders and real-world usage data, it outlines best practices for crafting prompts, highlights the evolving role of AI as a productivity partner, and encourages leaders to foster new work habits that embrace AI’s potential to reduce cognitive load and enhance creativity.
2025: The Year the Frontier Firm is Born
This report explores how AI is reshaping the future of work, introducing the concept of the "Frontier Firm"—organizations powered by AI agents and human-agent teams. It outlines a three-phase journey where AI evolves from assistant to autonomous collaborator, transforming workflows, roles, and organizational structures.
Define a Microsoft AI strategy to create business value in finance
This module is designed to help finance professionals understand and adopt Microsoft AI solutions. It covers key AI use cases in financial services, introduces relevant tools like Azure OpenAI Service, and shares real-world success stories from companies such as Swift and Manulife. The content is structured to guide users through defining an AI strategy that creates business value, with short lessons and an assessment to reinforce learning.
Driving AI Success with Microsoft: Real-World Business Impact
This LinkedIn Learning course highlights how Microsoft is using AI to transform core business functions such as HR, Finance, Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Operations, and IT. Featuring insights from senior Microsoft leaders, it presents real-world use cases—like demand forecasting, content generation, and document processing—that demonstrate how AI delivers measurable ROI. The course emphasizes the value of human-AI collaboration in boosting productivity, reducing costs, and building a future-ready workforce.