Powering intelligent decision-making with Azure and AI

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, data is the foundation of innovation for organizations in any industry. With the transformative capabilities of AI, businesses can unlock the power of their data to gain deeper insights, make more informed decisions, and achieve better outcomes. Part of the broader Art of Practical AI series, this blog explores how companies are using Microsoft Azure and AI to drive strategic insights, optimize operations, and enhance customer experiences. 

Gaining strategic business insights by adopting AI

The first step in implementing AI for strategic insights involves establishing a secure data environment. As cyberattacks continue to increase and intensify, it’s crucial for organizations to take a proactive approach by adopting strict control measures, such as Zero Trust policies, to protect data against unauthorized access.  

Additionally, optimizing existing infrastructure—including security systems—ensures that data environments can handle the increased use by AI applications. With a comprehensive solution in place, AI can drive real business impact. 

For example, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is migrating its IT infrastructure to Azure so that it can use the full set of Microsoft solutions to build and run AI models more easily. With all of its data streamlined in the cloud, the NBA can quickly use its AI-powered applications in a secure environment and gain deeper, more impactful insights. As a result, the NBA has achieved faster time to market for innovations while delivering personalized content for fans, driving engagement, and expanding its reach to new countries and languages. 

In another example, the Finance Data and Experiences team at Microsoft is handling large volumes of revenue data and compiling important reports using AI. By adopting Microsoft Fabric as a faster, simpler, and more scalable way to unify its data, the team reduced processing times by 67%. “With Fabric, we’ve gained the speed to data we were hoping for, we’ve expanded data access, and we’ve even reduced the cost of generating that data by 50%,” says Ramakrishna Burugupalli, Engineering Lead for Commercial Finance Data and Experiences at Microsoft. 

Benchmarking AI models and driving detailed analytics

Adopting new technology leads to many changes throughout an organization. To get the most out of AI solutions, it’s important to choose AI models that will integrate seamlessly into existing workflows. This is where benchmarking plays a central role. 

Marketing company Dentsu adopted Azure AI Foundry to build a predictive AI analytics copilot that assists its analysts with media forecasting and budgeting. Azure AI Foundry acts as a central place for designing, customizing, and managing AI models, and the company uses it to access and quickly benchmark the latest generative AI models. 

Dentsu built the solution in under 12 weeks on Azure OpenAI Service and has increased its insights time by 90%. “It was great to get a head start with the scripts that were part of the Azure AI prompt flow template,” says Simon Ransom, Lead DevOps Engineer at Dentsu. 

To maximize the benefits of AI, companies can identify opportunities where AI-powered automation can improve efficiency and reduce operational costs, such as data-heavy workloads and repetitive tasks. For example, Toyota is building a system of AI agents to store and share internal expertise that will accelerate new vehicle development. Engineers can ask agents questions about their workflows and receive informative answers from multiple agents at once. The system, which runs on Azure OpenAI Service, has been used by more than 800 engineers working on the company’s power trains since January 2024. 

ABB, a global leader in electrification and automation, uses Azure AI to improve its industrial operations. ABB’s IoT and AI suite, ABB Ability™ Genix, provides customers with insights into manufacturing and operations status, but extracting those insights required advanced skills. To make this easier, ABB created Genix Copilot, which uses generative AI to allow users to get answers to critical questions using natural language. This has led to significant savings in operations, maintenance, and improvements in energy and emission optimization.   

Enhancing decision-making with AI

As you explore how AI can benefit your business, ask a few key questions to choose the right AI models:  

• What is your primary use case?
• What’s the best opportunity for a first proof of concept?  
• What will it take to scale your solution for production workloads?  

Then, promote experimentation and internal knowledge sharing as you implement AI tools to achieve the most significant benefits. 

Azure and AI are transforming how today’s businesses excel, providing strategic data insights that drive intelligent decision-making. By adopting the trusted infrastructure of Azure, companies can optimize their operations, enhance customer experiences, and achieve significant business outcomes. 

The NBA, Dentsu, Toyota, ABB, and the Microsoft Finance Data and Experiences team are just a few examples of organizations illustrating the transformative power of combining Azure and AI to deliver insights and spark innovation. 

To discover how your organization can use AI to drive impactful business outcomes, explore the following resources: 

• The Art of Practical AI: Delivering Strategic Insights e-book: Learn how industry leaders are using AI to address challenges and foster innovation with proven strategies across data, applications, AI tools, security, and infrastructure. 
• Assess your AI readiness: Answer a few simple questions to begin preparing your organization to extract meaningful business value from AI. 
• Discover Microsoft AI solutions: Find out how Microsoft is empowering the world to achieve more with AI, and discover the technology-driven transformation you can make for your organization.