Schneider Electric charges into the future with Microsoft Copilot for Sales

Schneider Electric’s global sales team is one of the largest users of Salesforce’s customer relationship management (CRM) systems. And to maximize the time they spend with their customers and partners, the sales team is working to reduce the heavy load of administrative tasks. As Audrey Hazak, SVP, Digital Customer Relationship Management, says, “Improving the efficiency of operations of our salespeople is absolutely essential.”

Irina Zubova, VP, Digital Sales & Customer Support Enablement, agrees. Along with managing communications and meetings, sales reps were spending considerable time on manual research and data entry in Salesforce CRM. Schneider Electric seized the opportunity to modernize its sales operations by deploying Microsoft Copilot for Sales, energizing the efficiency of its salespeople with AI. “One of the strategic initiatives we are managing is to build a seamless, fully integrated, and consistent digital experience for our sales population, hiding all the tools and apps complexity behind the scenes,” she says. “This strategic approach moves our teams away from repetitive manual tasks and multiple screens and allows them to allocate more of their time to core activities and connecting with customers.”

Copilot for Sales seamless integration with Salesforce CRM ensured a smooth adoption process. It’s already being used by 5,000 people in more than 30 countries where English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German are spoken. With this global deployment, the company is on track for 10,500 Copilot for Sales users by the end of 2024.

AI-powered CRM data

Copilot for Sales connects directly to Salesforce CRM, and for Schneider Electric, the efficiency gains came early. Sellers can control the data that’s automatically shared between email and appointments in Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams calls and meetings, and the CRM, saving them time and improving the quality of CRM data.

The benefits of Copilot for Sales became evident early in the pilot phase. Claudia Castillo, Sales Engineer, finds the integration with Salesforce CRM a game changer. She says, “I can’t imagine my daily tasks without it.” Ljiljana Budimir Vukicevic, Sales Enablement Digital Capability Leader, also praises the seamless updates. “The impact here is clear. With Copilot for Sales, our sellers are seamlessly updating Salesforce CRM in the flow of work in Teams or Outlook, increasing contact acquisition and contact management data—which is the goldmine in CRM.”

A baseline comparison of contact generation before and after deploying Copilot for Sales shows a significant increase. With AI-assisted contact creation, sellers need only to validate information pre-filled from the email signature and save the new CRM record. They regain valuable time that can be directed to their customers, generating more prospects that lead to more opportunities and sales.

Lightning-fast email summaries

Schneider Electric’s varied seller roles find different value points, but all the sales teams agree that email summaries in Copilot for Sales save them time. Conversations with strategic customers tend to occur in months-long email threads that drain sellers’ time and mental energy as they scroll through, looking for a particular piece of information or simply to get up to speed. With Copilot for Sales summarizing long emails and email chains, sellers now spend significantly less time looking back, and far more time planning what’s to come.

Of course, it isn’t only customers who can be a bit verbose. Cloé Marche, Lead Product Owner, praises the value of Copilot for Sales email summaries for internal as well as external email chains. “Our sellers can receive up to 100 emails per day. The straightforward, bulleted recaps shave administrative time by a meaningful amount, enabling deeper focus on customers and quick determination of priorities.”

Copilot for Sales doesn’t just summarize email, however. Unlike the email summary capabilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot for Sales summaries include valuable sales insights and even AI-powered translation. Collaboration extends beyond borders, with colleagues in the United States, for example, able to support their peers in Spain or France using Copilot’s language change function to read email threads and summaries in English and get up to speed in minutes.

Meetings also take on a new level of connection with Copilot for Sales. Rather than splitting their attention between actively listening, solving problems, taking notes, and updating the CRM record, sellers can maintain fluid and focused conversations knowing they can rely on Copilot for Sales for an accurate recap of their Teams meetings. Customers benefit from a more engaged experience, and sellers can be confident that notes—including next steps—provide actionable, intelligent insights automatically saved in the CRM.

Powering progress with thoughtful change management

When Zubova reflects on the success of Schneider Electric’s Copilot for Sales deployment, she describes an environment of communication and support among employees, managers, Schneider Electric, and Microsoft. “The integration of Microsoft generative AI solutions was a natural evolution of the long partnership between our two companies, leveraging Microsoft's secure and innovative technology together with our deep industry knowledge,” she says. “We are innovating and co-designing the evolution of the solution, working together on the new use cases. We feel heard by Microsoft. Product teams react fast to our needs and ideas, and rapidly develop digital solutions to address our customers' and frontline's unique challenges on a broad scale.”

Adding a new and innovative solution at scale takes thoughtful planning. Schneider Electric’s change management playbook is one to take a lesson from. On a global level, highly engaged IT and leadership teams championed the deployment from the start, boosting organizational excitement. Schneider Electric’s culture and customer-centric approach is clearly an important part of its change management strategy. In each of the ten deployment zones, a single point of contact is designated as a project champion and owner. Each zone is provided with communication assets and value statements but may present messaging independently, allowing for the reality that different zones seek different value outcomes and that sales processes vary by country and culture. Only the people on the ground know the best way to drive adoption for systemic change.

Successful deployments require more than strong project management and support mechanisms, however. Hazak stresses the importance of maintaining open communication channels with stakeholders through testing, piloting, and continuously collecting feedback, which contributes to iterative improvements. Because after all, that’s the magic of Copilot for Sales—the more it’s used, the greater its benefits.

Lighting the way forward

Hazak is optimistic about the benefits of Copilot for Sales and the efficiencies the sales operation has gained. She says the company is already considering deploying Copilot in areas like marketing and project management. “By leveraging Copilot's capability in diverse context, we aim to simplify processes, improve collaboration, and boost overall productivity,” she says. “We are planning to deploy user-generated use cases, including gen AI-assisted code development for programmers across our operation and offerings.”

Marche is also excited that Schneider Electric is ushering in a new era of efficiency for its employees just as it does for its customers around the globe. “It's key and very strategic for us to empower our sellers to use AI technology,” she says. At Schneider Electric, creating impact by empowering all to make the most of their energy and resources is more than just an objective—it’s what drives the company’s purpose in a more electric, digital world.