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Accenture is undertaking what Microsoft describes as the largest enterprise deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot to date—rolling the platform out across a workforce of roughly 743,000 employees worldwide.
For enterprise leaders navigating their own AI adoption strategies, the scale of the rollout is notable. But what stands out even more is how Accenture approached it: not as a technology launch, but as a people-first transformation program built around adoption, governance, and measurable business outcomes.
According to company data from 2025 involving 200,000 users, 97% of employees reported completing routine tasks 15 times faster with Copilot, while 53% reported significant improvements in productivity and efficiency.
“Copilot is a personal digital colleague,” said Tony Leraris, chief information officer at Accenture. “It changes the way our people work, the way they research, ideate, analyze and execute many daily activities.”
Tony Leraris, chief information officer at Accenture
Starting Small Before Scaling Big
Accenture began its Copilot deployment in August 2023, shortly after Microsoft introduced the tool.
It started with a pilot involving a few hundred senior leaders and select employees before expanding to 20,000 users. During that early phase, the company focused heavily on data strategy, governance, access controls, and understanding how employees were using Copilot inside familiar applications like Outlook, Teams, and Word.
“We were fine-tuning our adoption strategy and developing a blueprint for how it would be used in daily work,” Leraris said.
That deliberate approach was critical for a company operating in more than 120 countries with approximately 780,000 employees globally.
Rather than applying a single adoption strategy across the business, Accenture built a tailored change management program that included leadership coaching, group training sessions, regular communications, and active peer-to-peer support through Viva Engage inside Microsoft Teams.
“You can’t take a one-size-fits-all message into adoption,” Leraris said. “We really had to demonstrate to certain people, especially leaders, how to use the tool and what the value would be specifically for them.”
High Adoption Proved the Business Case
The company says strong employee engagement became the clearest proof of Copilot’s value.
In one group of roughly 200,000 licenses, monthly active Copilot usage reached 89%. In a survey of those same employees, 84% said they would “deeply miss” the tool if it were no longer available.
“If Microsoft 365 Copilot weren’t delivering real value, our people simply wouldn’t be using it – our high adoption rate is what shows us that there is value,” Leraris said.
“That’s what led us to continue deploying Copilot to more people.”
Transforming Marketing and Communications Workflows
Within Accenture’s global Marketing a Communications and Experiences team, Copilot has become embedded in daily creative and content workflows.
Jason Warnke, who leads the team of writers, designers, and video producers, said maintaining consistent messaging across a global organization had long been a challenge.
Before Copilot, content often required multiple review cycles across regions to ensure consistency. Now, teams use Copilot to draft, revise, and check content against previous materials, helping align messaging faster and reducing duplication across teams.
Jason Warnke Senior MD & Global Experience Leader, Accenture
“One of the things that’s massively important in a global organization like ours is consistency of message,” Warnke said.
Designers and marketers also use Copilot to generate early concepts and create assets aligned with Accenture’s brand guidelines, while non-creative teams are using embedded brand kits to produce stronger presentation materials on their own.
“It gives people a serious leg up on generating something in the flow of work that represents the brand,” Warnke said.
Using Copilot to Improve Sales at Scale
At Avanade—the long-standing consulting and technology services joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft—Copilot is also helping transform sales operations.
Avanade’s sales innovation team built an AI-powered sales intelligence platform called D3, short for Data Driven Decisions. The tool combines proprietary internal data, external research, and industry insights to help sellers build a fuller picture of customer needs and opportunities.
Copilot powers both the AI intelligence layer and the conversational interface, allowing sellers to complete in seconds research that previously took days or weeks.
Harry Holstrom, vice president and U.S. sales lead at Avanade, said the tool helps teams focus less on manual research and more on strategic conversations.
“It’s about bringing content and context to the conversation,” Holstrom said.
“That allows us to scale and move quickly and be much more effective in those client conversations.”
Harry Holstrom, vice president and U.S. sales lead at Avanade
AI Adoption Starts With People
For Leraris, the biggest lesson from the rollout is that enterprise AI success depends far more on adoption than deployment.
Because Copilot is embedded directly into Microsoft 365 tools employees already use every day, the company was able to reduce friction and make AI part of normal work rather than a separate destination.
“Accenture people work in Microsoft platforms every day for a significant part of their day,” Leraris said. “What we want is the generative AI to meet the employee in the flow of their work.”
He believes the real return on AI investment comes from helping people understand how to use it confidently and effectively.
“Real value from AI investments like Copilot doesn’t come from simply turning it on,” Leraris said. “It comes from investing in your people – helping them understand how to use it, how to trust it and how it fits into the way they work.”
This article was produced by the editorial team at North America Outlook and published as part of the Outlook Publishing global network of B2B industry magazines.
Outlook Publishing delivers industry insights, company stories, and sector coverage across manufacturing, mining, construction, healthcare, supply chains, food production, and sustainability.
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