Absa Experiments with Microsoft Copilot to Boost Employee Efficiency
Absa· South AfricaMicrosoft 365 Copilot · GitHub Copilot · Microsoft Copilot for Sales +1
South African financial services group Absa experimented with Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot and Copilot for Sales across its corporate and investment banking, relationship banking, legal and marketing teams. Employees used Copilot to summarize financial statements and contracts, translate documents, summarize emails and build Excel analyses; the story quotes an Absa executive saying Copilot saves at least two hours per day for some users, and a marketing colleague saying reading and summarizing a set of PDF documents took 20 minutes.
Overview
South African financial services group Absa experimented with Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot and Copilot for Sales across its corporate and investment banking, relationship banking, legal and marketing teams. Employees used Copilot to summarize financial statements and contracts, translate documents, summarize emails and build Excel analyses; the story quotes an Absa executive saying Copilot saves at least two hours per day for some users, and a marketing colleague saying reading and summarizing a set of PDF documents took 20 minutes.
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Inspect the highlighted sourceThe challenge
Absa's leaders felt the only way to remain competitive in a dynamic banking landscape was through the right use of technology and changing ways of working. Its Sales team had to dedicate a lot of time to studying financial documents before client meetings, client-facing teams were inundated with emails, and the formal auditing process was laborious and time-intensive.
The solution
Absa chose to experiment with Microsoft Copilot rather than a standalone AI tool because it was already using Microsoft 365 and Copilot is embedded in the Microsoft application stack. Frontline and other teams, including Corporate and Investment Banking, Relationship Banking, Insurance, Legal and Marketing, use Copilot to summarize financial statements, contracts and emails, generate meeting actions, translate documents, and create pivot tables, formulas and graphs in Excel. Absa also extends its use of AI with GitHub Copilot, aiming to increase its velocity in producing code.
Reported business value
An Absa executive says Copilot saves at least two hours per day for some users on tasks such as summarizing emails and generating meeting actions. A marketing colleague reports that reading and summarizing several PDF documents took 20 minutes, audit evidence can be quickly summarized and correlated, and less experienced Excel users can create pivot tables, merge data sources and add formulas without interrupting more technical colleagues.
Sources
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