PTT Global Chemical solves office work issues ‘in one go’ with Microsoft Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service

PTT Global Chemical (GC) is making strides in transforming its internal processes and empowering its employees to deliver value to customers fast. With Microsoft Copilot, the company transformed taking meeting minutes and assigning action items, streamlining what used to take hours into mere minutes. With an internal generative artificial intelligence (AI) built with Azure OpenAI Service, analyzing documents has become a breeze, saving employees a full workday.

PTT Global Chemical (GC) is Thailand’s largest integrated petrochemical and refining business and a leading corporation in the Asia-Pacific region, both in size and product variety. From petrochemicals to biochemical products, it is the world’s top-class bioplastics producer, with joint ventures with manufacturing plants and distributors in 29 countries. "While we strive to become the leading global petrochemical company, we also have a considerable reputation for caring for the environment. Our ultimate goal is to achieve net zero in carbon emissions by 2050,” notes Sorus Urapepattanaphong, Senior Digital Technology Strategist at GC. The company has been rated number one for sustainability in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) chemicals sector for five consecutive years.

GC's approach to technology adoption is cautious yet forward-thinking. “Being a chemical company, we prefer to wait until a technology is proven and ensure that the hype is real. We value innovation, but we always make prudent investments,” remarks Sorus. This approach enables GC to invest in technologies that will have the biggest net positive effect on its operations and sustainability goals, as well as benefit its customers.

Strategic partnership to advance efficiencies

GC's longstanding partnership with Microsoft has been a cornerstone in its technological journey. "Microsoft has been our partner for decades. We’ve used Microsoft 365 since the early days,” recalls Sorus. “When we decided to move to the cloud, Microsoft Azure was an obvious choice. And when generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies proved their mettle, choosing Microsoft Copilot was an easy decision. Microsoft has everything we need in one solution, from strong support and employee training to robust technology. Plus, Microsoft is the key player in the field with proprietary access to this innovative technology from OpenAI."

GC introduced Copilot to 300 employees: executive management and senior engineers. Management mostly uses it to summarize email threads and identify key actions from meeting minutes. The senior engineers and division managers use Copilot for communication, editing documents, and preparing reports. “With Copilot, we have eliminated so many manual tasks. We can do everything faster and better. Copilot solves many problems of office work in one go,” remarks Sorus.

“We can do everything faster and better. Copilot solves many problems of office work in one go.”

Sorus Urapepattanaphong, Senior Digital Technology Strategist, PPT Global Chemical (GC)

To make life even easier for its staff, GC also introduced an internal chatbot. “Like most big companies, we had a traditional chatbot to help employees with questions about company policy, but it had limitations. Users had to be very specific about their queries. We also had to define the rules and the list of answers it could provide. It was a never-ending configuration marathon,” recalls Jirawat Padungkijjanont, Senior Digital Technology Incubation at GC. “When Microsoft launched Azure OpenAI Service, we decided to try it out.“

Enter the 'AskMeGC', GC’s in-house enterprise-grade generative AI system. "From idea to first deployment, the implementation of ‘AskMeGC’ took less than one month as we are leveraging many of Microsoft’s vertically integrated developer tools, technologies, and cloud services," notes Jirawat. GC applied strict security and privacy protocols in the 'AskMeGC's' design, with encrypted user-specific workspaces and industry-standard measures, as well as Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) for authentication. This cautious approach enables it to prevent any accidental leak of confidential information. In addition, the company also requires users to pass training on an AI ethics course before they can access the system.

Moving faster, serving better

The implementation of Copilot and ‘AskMeGC’ has brought efficiency and time-savings to GC’s staff. "It used to take an hour for people to summarize a meeting, identify key points, and assign action items,” Sorus shares. “With Copilot, it’s done in a few minutes.”

GC has also gained the leverage to stay ahead of the curve. “One of the most impactful use cases enabled by ‘AskMeGC’ is reviewing news and market reports to perform market analyses. The strategy team would previously have to read through multiple of 20 to 50 pages documents to do that,” shares Jirawat. Since the internal generative AI system can process information at a rate equivalent to more than 10,000 words per minute—much faster than humans who can read on average 280 words per minute—this has made it much more efficient to review those documents and discover business-critical information. Jirawat continues, "Instead of spending multiple hours per week reading through the documents, our colleagues can now focus on their analytical task, which is the best use of their time, and leave the mundane reading task to generative AI on ‘AskMeGC’. They can simply upload the documents to the secure server, type questions into ‘AskMeGC’, and discover relevant information for their analyses in minutes,” adds Jirawat.

“Instead of spending multiple hours per week reading documents, our employees can now focus on their analytical tasks, which is the best use of their time, and leave the mundane reading task to generative AI.”

Jirawat Padungkijjanont, Senior Digital Technology Incubator, PTT Global Chemical (GC)

This also means faster service delivery and more insightful market analysis for GC’s customers. Sorus elaborates, “Because we’re able to move faster, our engagement with customers now can be done swiftly. Copilot has ultimately made us more customer friendly.”

Empowered by technology to move faster, GC believes that speed is its competitive edge. “We’re able to support our business units better in securing deals and concluding businesses with new clients. The impact is certainly enough to justify the cost of the solution because it’s allowed us to achieve so much more,” says Sorus.

Embracing AI: A new era

The reception of AI solutions like Copilot and 'AskMeGC' at GC has been overwhelmingly positive, marking a new era in the company's technological evolution. "The reception has been kind of miraculous," reflects Sorus. “Our top management are keen to delve deeper into these applications. Currently, we have 300 employees using the solution, but we’re hoping to expand its use to our whole company of more than 4,000 employees in a few years to come.”

Moving forward, GC is glad to continue its partnership with Microsoft. Sorus concludes, “Having Microsoft enables us to use technology to enhance our day-to-day work. By that, I mean everything—less manual tasks, less energy consumption, and less need for on-site work.”