From shopping center pioneer to AI trailblazer: ECE counts on Microsoft 365 Copilot

The challenge: Manual information searches, repetitive tasks, and time-consuming workflows

Back in 1965, ECE brought the first shopping centers to Germany. Now, 60 years later, besides managing around 200 shopping centers in ten countries, ECE develops and operates properties in all asset classes as well as entire city districts. To ensure that operations run smoothly worldwide, the company takes a targeted approach to how it manages its properties. Detailed rental concepts and focused acquisition of potential tenants minimize the number of empty units and ensure that these are occupied again as soon as possible. Numerous market analyses and location studies are carried out to help find precisely the right tenants for a particular location. ECE also takes a data-driven approach to managing its shopping centers and must be able to maintain an overview of its KPIs at all times. “In the past, making data-based decisions meant manually sourcing, collating, and recalculating data from various sources, such as an array of Excel spreadsheets,” says Hendrik Hofmann, Team Leader IT Digital Workplace at ECE. “That was time-consuming, prone to error, and took up too much of our employees’ valuable capacity.” It was the same story over in customer service, where the teams would compose individual responses to customer inquiries in multiple languages and manually compile and distribute minutes of meetings.

“Then, in 2024, we launched ECEpedia to pool the company’s collective knowledge and make it available to all employees around the world,” explains Kristoffer Mandelbaum, Head of Department IT Digital Workplace, Cloud & Identity at ECE. “Based on SharePoint Online, this central platform serves as a comprehensive information repository and integrates all internal knowledge databases.” It became clear early on, however, that the continuous documentation and maintenance for ECEpedia was also expensive and time-consuming, while not really making it easier to find and use the information stored there. The sheer range of activities and languages in play at this international family-owned company constantly spawned new challenges. “We needed a solution that would make knowledge and information as accessible and easy to find as possible, while also helping our employees bring more efficiency into their day-to-day work,” Hofmann adds. “As pioneering spirit has always been firmly embedded in our corporate culture, it’s only natural that we explore new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to see where we could use them to our advantage. And that’s what we did with Microsoft 365 Copilot.” The team run by Hofmann and Mandelbaum immediately recognized the solution’s potential and, in November 2024, they got the green light to roll it out. ECE’s Chief Executive Officer, Alexander Otto, also saw the value Copilot would add to the company and promptly gave his approval: “Microsoft 365 Copilot has the potential to save us many hours of manual and repetitive tasks each working day.”

The solution: Innovative pilot phase ensures long-term success of Copilot

As with most IT projects, this rollout began with a pilot phase, albeit in a way that was anything but typical: ECE employees themselves were tasked with deciding who should take part in the pilot. “With this approach, we aimed to get the best possible cross-section of our company, covering all our activities, roles, and cultures,” Mandelbaum says. “After all, the only way to chart the added value for the company was to integrate as many different job profiles and activities into the process as early as possible.” To ensure all data protection requirements were fulfilled, the company’s compliance department was involved in the rollout process from day one. At the same time, this department drew up a company-wide data protection agreement on the responsible use of AI. “Together, we were able to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot at an impressive pace. We went from budget approval to the first training sessions for pilot users in just three months,” Mandelbaum says. “Now we can get on with working with Copilot and reap the benefits of this new technology.”

ECE is already implementing its first use cases: in the area of center management, Copilot is transcribing what is said in meetings and compiling the minutes, generating ideas for customer presentations, and helping draft press releases. “According to internal surveys, these are the most common use cases at ECE, with 70 percent of our pilot participants reporting that they use Copilot for precisely these tasks to create first drafts that they can then develop. This eliminates the mental block that can happen when staring at a blank page,” Hofmann says. “Thanks to Microsoft 365 Copilot, our colleagues can complete their tasks with greater efficiency. This frees up time that they can invest in, say, learning and focus periods, quality control, or customer relations. As a result, 70 percent of our pilot users are keen to hang on to their Copilot license.”

What’s more, Copilot now makes it easier for ECE employees to access documentation of company knowledge. The tool organizes the information, quickly provides it when prompted, and can even summarize it in any language desired. Training sessions are held regularly around the globe, both to support employees as they continue on their generative AI journey and to gather a steady stream of feedback to inform further development. ECE has even established its own Copilot community, in which colleagues can advise and learn from each other. “We’re taking a holistic approach to rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot. That’s because the relevance of generative AI isn’t limited to IT—the entire company needs to be involved and supported. Interdisciplinary collaboration is the key to our company’s ensuring the long-term success of solutions like this one,” Hofmann says.

ECE has already mapped out the next steps of its Copilot plan: in the future, Copilot Studio and Copilot agents will help employees work more productively and creatively. “At the end of the day, we’re not a digital company; we’re a real estate and service company. But we’ll continue to count on technologies that free us up from manual and repetitive tasks and allow us to work more efficiently. In turn, we can provide our customers with even better service,” Mandelbaum says. “That’s why we see using AI as a strategic decision and a crucial milestone on the way to our company’s becoming an AI leader within the real estate industry.”