For finance professionals, working with complex formulas and large datasets can be challenging and time-consuming. Harriett Gray, our Finance Director, has discovered how Copilot in Excel can simplify and optimise finance activities, making her more productive and confident in her data analysis.
The Challenge
Before Copilot, it could be a struggle to quickly verifying the formulas and calculations in Excel spreadsheets that had been created or populated by someone else. The team also spent a lot of time formatting and highlighting data manually, which was tedious and prone to errors.
The Copilot Solution
With Copilot, Harriett and her team have found a smart and reliable assistant that can explain formulas, format data, and perform tasks with natural language commands. She can ask Copilot to show her the percentage of total revenue from each region, highlight the lowest five budgets in a column, or add a column that combines the customer’s first and last name. She can also use Copilot to reconcile financial data with partial matching, which saves hours of manual work.
The Impact
The result? A significant improvement in efficiency and accuracy, allowing Harriett to focus on more strategic and value-added tasks. Copilot doesn’t just simplify data analysis; it enhances the collaboration and communication between finance team members, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and understands the data sources and calculations.
A Glimpse into the Future with Copilot
Harriett’s workflow is a testament to the benefits Copilot brings to her role. She is excited about the upcoming features that Copilot will offer, such as variance analysis, which will help her identify and explain the differences between actual and expected results. She is also looking forward to learning more about how Copilot can leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide insights and recommendations based on data.
Conclusion
Harriett’s story is a powerful example of how Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a game-changer in the finance industry. By handling the data complexity, Copilot empowers finance professionals like Harriett to excel in their roles, providing them with the tools to be more efficient, accurate, and insightful.
Learn more here: Overview of Microsoft Copilot for Finance 2024 release wave 2 | Microsoft Learn
