EY harnesses agentic AI via Copilot to empower employees, elevate client success

As one of the largest professional services organizations in the world, EY needs to stay ahead of the curve with AI. With technological change happening so quickly, what’s the best strategy for this seismic shift?

EY deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 150,000 employees worldwide. This encouraged AI adoption for daily work in a familiar environment. Then, with Copilot Studio, employees learned to build their own agents to accelerate productivity.

EY is laying the groundwork for the agentic frontier, where humans direct teams of agents that run entire business processes and workflows, checking in as needed, and reviewing work for quality and business value.

Businesses everywhere stand at the edge of a seismic shift, where humans and machine intelligence collaborate to discover new possibilities. Given its scale and influence in the professional services world, EY is reinvesting to empower its people so that they can help clients seize the moment and stay ahead of the curve.

“The stakes are high right now for our clients and for EY, particularly around the area of measuring and managing the value of AI,” says Edwina Fitzmaurice, Global Innovation Market Activation Leader at EY.

As the speed of business accelerates, a gap is growing between what organizations must achieve in the future and what humans can deliver with today’s capabilities and technologies. EY set out to bridge that gap with agentic AI.

“Microsoft AI has been instrumental in putting EY at the forefront of technology. We’re not just flipping the script. We’re writing a whole new story.”

Anthony Caterino, Global Managing Partner, Business Enablement, EY

Bridging the gap

EY’s transformation started with Microsoft 365 Copilot, deployed to more than 150,000 employees and expanding rapidly worldwide. By focusing on change management and hands-on Copilot learning sessions, EY quickly transitioned from viewing agents as mere assistants to recognizing them as colleagues and then integral team members, all while delivering valuable business outcomes for clients. “AI is giving us an opportunity to rethink and really flip the script. How would we create a process if we could start from scratch and design it with agentic AI in mind?” says Anthony Caterino, Global Managing Partner, Business Enablement at EY.

“Our AI initiatives are not theoretical. They’re operational. AI is embedded into every part of our business,” adds Roger Park, Global Business Enablement, AI and Innovation Leader at EY.

“I love building agents now because I can. So can anybody. You can take Copilot Studio and create teams of agents.”

Edwina Fitzmaurice, Global Innovation Market Activation Leader, EY

Empowering people

With the foundation laid, and every employee trained in using an AI assistant to help them work better and faster, EY began adding agents to workstreams. AI agents join teams as digital colleagues, taking on specific tasks at human direction. Using tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, EY employees create agents that build on an individual’s experience and expertise to establish new agentic colleagues while redefining their work.

“At my core, I’m a maker,” explains Fitzmaurice. “I love building agents now because I can. So can anybody. You can take Copilot Studio and create teams of agents.” She built an agent for Innovation Maturity Modeling, which helps benchmark a company’s innovation level without requiring full benchmark data. She also built a Technology Convergence Framework agent, designed to explore intersections of frontier technologies such as AI and blockchain, or AI and quantum computing. A handful of personal agents help Fitzmaurice practice her agent-building skills while making her life a little easier. They include an editor agent to review her writing, alongside a skeptic and advocate agent to challenge her as she develops a point of view.

“With Copilot Studio, our people are innovating with agents that help them get more work done, more accurately, and more quickly,” notes Park. EY’s finance team, for example, built a purchase order analyzer agent to streamline multisystem processes. The agent tackles a common pain point at EY: multiple systems and people trying to collaborate on a shared outcome. It automates purchase order analysis, saving time and effort. The finance team’s approach demonstrates how business users, not just engineers, can drive innovation.

Learning by doing

Change management remains central. EY encourages leaders and teams to be “curious learners,” experimenting hands-on with AI to build fluency and confidence. “Learning is a gift and a joy—you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s okay. It’s still important for leaders and their teams to get hands-on with the technology,” Fitzmaurice advises.

“Agentic AI is unlocking the potential of our people to transform our business so we can help our clients transform theirs.”

Roger Park, Global Business Enablement, AI and Innovation Leader, EY

EY is laying the groundwork for the agentic frontier, where humans direct teams of agents that help run entire business processes and workflows, managing, overseeing, and adjusting as needed. This unique combination of capabilities and experiences allows EY to create tailored solutions at the leading edge of AI. “Agentic AI is unlocking the potential of our people to transform our business so we can help our clients transform theirs,” says Park.

Transforming the future

The future at EY is about intentional transformation—amplifying human ingenuity, codifying expertise, and freeing capacity for judgment, creativity, and growth. “Microsoft AI has been instrumental in putting EY at the forefront of technology. We’re not just flipping the script. We’re writing a whole new story,” Caterino concludes.

EY’s journey is a model for businesses everywhere: embrace change, empower people, and lead with technology to shape extraordinary outcomes.

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