How AI innovation powers Microsoft’s finance journey

Microsoft’s work to bring AI-enabled efficiency to the finance function began with two parallel efforts, Replay AI and Finance Launch AI.  

Replay AI: merging finance data for effortless queries and analysis 

The work began with the development of Replay AI, a centralized ecosystem that hosts various AI-based applications linked to different finance databases. By building a modular AI platform, Microsoft can now seamlessly reuse core functionalities — such as summarization, extraction and analysis — across various applications, significantly accelerating the development of minimum viable products (MVPs). This approach centralizes the infrastructure within a single environment and provides a unified user experience, reducing operational overhead and time to market for new features. 

Further, Replay AI enables users to communicate in natural language, allowing finance and business teams to manage complex calculations and data analysis without needing technical acumen. Replay AI can summarize documents, translate files, and identify trends and patterns in large datasets, thereby enhancing financial data fluency across the entire organization. By leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP), Replay AI transforms user queries into Structured Query Language (SQL) queries, enabling the generation of detailed reports that present financial information in charts and graphs, thereby aiding in the prediction of future trends.

Finance Launch AI: streamlining product launch processes with automation 

Finance Launch AI is a chat-based application powered by a large language model designed to simplify essential financial processes, enhance user productivity and enable task automation for new product launches. It provides product launch managers with a comprehensive collection of data and insights related to key launch requirements. At its core is a knowledge library, a repository of historical proprietary data in various formats, including Excel, Word, PDF, PowerPoint, email, JPEG, OneNote and Visio.  

With AI integration, the finance team can easily access a wide range of financial documents, from pre-launch specs to post-implementation report summaries. This access helps build a strong collection of institutional knowledge and reduces the discussion timelines needed to find the right launch parameters. Finance Launch AI simplifies the requirements process by studying and assessing comparable previous launch data. It also improves the team’s ability to understand and summarize complex process documents, making it a valuable tool for customizing new product launches. 

One standout feature of Finance Launch AI is its ability to draft initial finance requirements, saving Microsoft employees valuable time and effort. For example, when team members inquire about internal tax and compliance considerations for releasing a new stock keeping unit (SKU) in a specific region, Finance Launch AI provides clear answers. Additionally, it can identify unmet requirements, surface similar product launch details, and highlight key stakeholders involved, enabling teams to move forward with confidence.  

"Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) was implemented to enhance the performance of both Replay AI and Finance Launch AI by confirming that the systems reference trusted sources of information,” emphasizes Dr. David Guarrera, EY Americas Generative AI Leader. “This responsible AI approach helps provide more accurate, relevant and useful responses, promoting reliability and trustworthiness." 

With Replay AI and Finance Launch AI, Microsoft’s finance team is not just keeping pace with industry changes, they are leading the charge. These innovations promise to unlock new levels of productivity and insight across the organization. 

Replay AI and Finance Launch AI serve as groundbreaking examples of how emerging technologies can drive significant efficiencies within Microsoft’s finance organization. Finance Launch AI has achieved remarkable adoption rates within the Microsoft finance team, with some users describing it as "magic." 

Over 100 employees are now utilizing Finance Launch AI, which enables them to query and prompt hundreds of documents and thousands of pages in seconds — a true game-changer. This advancement underscores the technology's effectiveness and supports the company's goal of reducing the time required to gather finance requirements for new product introductions from 6-8 weeks to just 3-4 weeks.

Replay AI reduces AI application MVP development from four months to six weeks. It allows Microsoft departments to reuse essential components for various AI projects, eliminating the need to start from scratch and significantly lowering the cost of AI deployments across the enterprise. Additionally, it ensures secure access to data and insights while providing a consistent user experience.

This technology sets a new standard, demonstrating how AI can transform and streamline complex financial processes, enabling users to leverage institutional knowledge and data through natural language.

The keys to these successes lie in several critical strategies. First, staffing the projects with professionals from various areas of the business provided a comprehensive understanding of the needs and challenges across departments. Second, developing the systems using a modular design allowed for the creation of separate, interchangeable components, enhancing flexibility and scalability. Third, testing and validating the systems through proofs of concept (POCs) delivered valuable insights and refinements from small, preliminary versions. Finally, applying best practices for responsible AI strategies helped protect data security, mitigate the potential for hallucinations and prevent overreliance on AI.

"Our AI-driven solutions are setting new standards for efficiency and innovation in our industry,” notes Ayala. “By simplifying complex processes and reducing the time needed for data analytics, Replay AI and Finance Launch AI are more than just tools — they are trusted partners in driving financial excellence."