How UK Power Networks is turbocharging operations using Microsoft 365 Copilot
Energy distribution company UK Power Networks is using Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Azure to improve productivity, boost creativity, and speed up the pace of innovation across its operations, to the benefit of employees and customers.
UK Power Networks, a Distribution Network Operator (DNO) responsible for distributing electricity to 8.5 million homes and businesses in the South-East of England, East England and London, has been on an AI transformation journey since 2023.
This resulted in the company rolling out 1,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences in December 2024, which has had a profound effect on the business.
Success story
Since the roll-out, UK Power Networks reports that it has achieved an adoption rate of 96% across the business and has delivered a return on investment (ROI) of 480%.
“We’ve been able to unlock new levels of efficiency and creativity“
Microsoft 365 Copilot has enabled employees to automate many administrative tasks that were taking up a significant amount of time and resources, and to collaborate more effectively, says Martin Knoebel, the company’s Head of Digital Solutions and Analytics. This has freed up staff to focus on more strategic activities.
“We’ve been able to unlock new levels of efficiency and creativity, turning mundane tasks into opportunities for discovery and growth,” he says.
For example, some teams have used Copilot within SharePoint to speed up the production of high-quality, visually engaging reports full of valuable insights and accurately formatted data.
“Copilot has been a win-win for us“
Other teams have used Copilot to create email monitoring systems that help manage and prioritise the workflow, or to create AI agents that have made buried SharePoint documents easier to search, empowering employees to find historic information more easily.
“By focusing on specific use cases that previously were time consuming and mundane, we delivered value from day one,” he says. “Besides the time savings and quality improvement, we see a measurable impact on employee satisfaction and engagement.
“Copilot has been a win-win for us.”
Planning ahead
But this success only came after a lot of preparatory work.
Knoebel started by setting out a vision for how the company, which has 6,500 employees and a network spanning nearly 120,000 miles (189,000Km) of cable, could benefit from the power of AI.
He believed that generative AI assistants, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, could not only improve customer service, but also performance across the back office and front line of the organisation, including the maintenance and enhancement of their network.
So CEO Basil Scarsella and the Executive Management Team gave the green light to a trial of the GenAI assistant.
Rolling the pitch
UK Power Networks first established a Copilot Task Force to ignite interest in Copilot and its capabilities.
Then in January 2024, it launched a two-phased approach, starting off with 300 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, before scaling up to 1,000 licences by the end of the pilot in December 2024.
The team conducted nearly 40 ‘deep-dive interviews’ to understand how Copilot could best help each team – from Communications to Legal, Complaints to Network Operations – and subsequently identified close to 50 different use cases.
For example, the Procurement team used Copilot for contract reviews; drafting emails for supplier communications; and generating reports on spending trends. Whereas the Customer Service team used Copilot to make their communications more empathetic, and to prioritise outstanding complaints.
The Task Force also ran workshops for more than 950 colleagues, and 12 Copilot Champions encouraged and guided colleagues with their AI learning. The support continues today, with daily nudges and tips, lunch-and-learn sessions, competitions, and office-wide Copilot celebration days, says Knoebel.
He believes the high Copilot adoption rate is down to this bespoke training the company gave to each team enabling them to change their processes and ways of working. And restricting training group sizes to 20-30 people also made things more targeted.
One employee said the tailored training “really helped us understand how to use the tools effectively. It has transformed the way we work.”
Smart meters, smart collaboration
UK Power Networks has not just been using Microsoft 365 Copilot, says Knoebel. Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Logic App, and Power Automate have all been fundamental to fulfilling the company’s AI vision of enabling the UK’s Net Zero transition at the lowest cost to customers, providing the best customer service in the industry, and keeping its employees productive and safe.
The company migrated its aggregated smart metering data to Microsoft Azure in 2023 for additional analysis and insight.
Aggregated smart meter data and alerts enable UK Power Networks to gain an extra level of monitoring of its electricity network that it has never had before, says Knoebel. The company can now use these data and alerts to spot network issues before customers get in touch, enabling it to re-route power around network faults or repair them faster. This minimises disruption for customers.
Using the scalability of Microsoft Azure in combination with an Azure hosted AI model, Smart meter data also enables UK Power Networks to manage and reinforce the electricity network more effectively in areas where electric vehicles or heat pumps are connected.
UK Power Networks also uses Generative AI hosted in Azure OpenAI Service, part of Azure Foundry, to manage its flow of incoming e-mails, enabling customer service specialists to offer a better service to customers and respond to incoming safety alerts more quickly.
Nearly all UK Power Networks’ workload is hosted on Microsoft Azure now, he adds, and this cloud infrastructure is enabling the company to develop innovative applications, which gives them reliability, insight and control.
A better-managed network is cheaper to run, more efficient, and leads to happier customers, explains Knoebel, and will help the company build an electricity network that enables the UK’s Net Zero transition.