DFA drives efficiency for nearly 5,500 family dairy farms and about 19,000 employees using Copilot

Companies around the world are finding new ways to innovate and enhance the workplace using AI. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) is adopting AI to transform operations for workers in the dairy industry, saving time and empowering creativity.

In 2023, DFA realized that AI could help it meet meaningful goals. It explored ways it could use AI to improve efficiency and provide new opportunities for employees. It deployed Microsoft365 Copilot across multiple departments to see how employees could use it to do great things within their areas of expertise.

Empowering nearly 5,500 family farms to supply dairy worldwide

DFA is a cooperative with nearly 5,500 family farms across the United States. As one of the largest dairy companies in the world and a leading supplier of raw milk globally, it serves hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide with high-quality dairy products.

DFA is committed to upholding traditions and supporting the small family farms that supply its dairy. In 2023, DFA leadership sought ways to embrace cutting-edge technology to enhance operations. “Our CEO, Dennis Rodenbaugh, really wanted us to help our cooperative evolve by using an emerging technology like AI to drive more value back to the farm families that own our operations,” says Michael Lichte, Chief Insights and Optimization Officer at DFA.

To serve its farmers and customers better, DFA wanted to drive efficiency and agility for internal staff. Its nearly 19,000 employees faced routine challenges like communicating effectively with customers, researching and analyzing data quickly, and creating content that spoke to its customers’ needs.

To meet these challenges, DFA decided to use Microsoft tools and expertise to create a solution that would empower employees and farmers across the country.

Incorporating Copilot seamlessly with existing technology

DFA used Microsoft365 for internal processes and subsequently decided to move forward with Copilot. DFA was confident that with Copilot, it could help protect sensitive customer information and provide secure access to data for employees who support farmers in milk marketing and farm service efforts. “We’ve always been very satisfied with the Microsoft products we use,” says Jeff Hurley, Chief Information Officer at DFA. “Copilot was a tool that quickly rose to the top because of the interaction and connectivity it had with the tools currently in place at DFA and because of the security it provided, so we could be sure our data would be safe.”

In October 2023, DFA began its AI journey by hiring a dedicated director to lead change management and adoption. “We started with employee awareness,” says Jonathan Oufnac, Senior Director of Emerging Technology at DFA. “Then, we enrolled our first people in Copilot—our C-suite.” From there, DFA rolled out Copilot to other departments to see how employees might benefit from its capabilities. The process was seamless because Copilot integrated smoothly with the Microsoft solutions that employees were already using, such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook.

Increasing employee satisfaction and saving up to 20 hours a month with Copilot

Within months, DFA noticed that its employees who used Copilot were streamlining routine tasks and increasing agility in innovative ways. “We started seeing the users apply the technology to their institutional knowledge,” says Oufnac. “We weren’t uncovering new information. We were uncovering new ways to work better with the information we already had.”

Employees across departments saw impressive results. Internal communications teams completed research and produced content faster because Copilot helped them access specific and relevant points from DFA’s vast dairy-related data. Quality teams used Copilot to move more quickly through large amounts of technical documentation. Customer service teams implemented AI to improve the notes they take on customer calls, better supporting customers. Soon, employees were saving up to 20 hours a month, time that was previously spent on routine tasks.

In one instance of success, a marketing leader created a workflow using Copilot to combine business insights, consumer trends, and DFA’s ingredient capabilities to produce a complete marketing campaign with potential product offerings, value-added features, and an introductory email. This new process can be repeated across multiple sales teams, savings hours of work that can be reinvested in personal interactions that weren’t possible before.

In internal surveys, 93% of the employees who used Copilot said they would recommend it to colleagues and did not want to give it up. After incorporating Copilot into their operations, DFA’s employees are delighted with the new capabilities.

“Copilot has helped me too,” says Lichte. “I still take notes with pen and paper. I was sharing my notes with Jonathan and some other staff members and saying I wished I could get them into our customer relationship management (CRM) system without having to type them up. Jonathan told me to send him a picture of my notes, and when I did so, he took that picture and got Copilot to transcribe my notes accurately so I could simply copy and paste them into the CRM.” Lichte was also able to interact with his notes using Copilot chat and internal documents, thus fully incorporating his handwritten thoughts into his daily workflows.

Enhancing employee creativity with AI

Within a few months, DFA embraced AI technology to serve employees and drive efficiency. Copilot helped DFA workers apply their expertise in new and creative ways. Preparing for the future, DFA will continue working with Microsoft to expand its use of AI. “In just a few years, people are going to be dependent on AI for many things,” says Hurley. “We want to stay relevant to attract and support the right talent for our organization.”

Moving forward, DFA is excited to see the new ways its employees will think of to use AI. “We’re opening up the conversation to our employees,” says Oufnac. “We’re hopeful that Copilot extensibility will help us deploy it to provide custom solutions that are unique to our business needs and unique to our employees and the ideas they come up with.”

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