Kantar reimagines data prep, puts Copilot Studio agents to work readying data for AI

Scaling AI from pilot to production is a challenge facing every industry. About 75% of organizations are still working to capture AI’s value at scale, often running into roadblocks with data preparation, cleaning, and integration, according to Gartner and McKinsey. The reality is that tagging, formatting, and validating the data that powers AI is still a largely manual—and often thankless—task.

As a global data and insights organization, Kantar knew that AI-powered processes could unlock consistency, accuracy, and significant time savings across its business. With Microsoft 365 Copilot deployed to every employee across the organization, Kantar was committed to its AI journey. But the question loomed: who would bring the data under control for agentic workflows? 

Taming the data beast

For Kantar’s People Team, the need was urgent and specific: build an HR advisory agent for more efficient, personalized responses to employee queries across 60 countries. The data challenge was vast. “We needed to clean up and organize 4,000 artifacts in multiple languages so AI could create 400 policy documents in just six weeks,” recalls John Dicken, AI Solution Lead for the People Team at Kantar. “Nobody wants to do this kind of work. What we really needed is AI to help us prepare for AI.”

Democratizing AI development

With a strong foundation in Microsoft 365 Copilot and nearly three decades in people management, Dicken stepped forward to bring his expertise to Copilot Studio. “The beauty in a tool like Copilot Studio is our less-technical people who are experts in their area are now empowered to create agentic workflows,” observes Andy Doyle, Chief People Officer at Kantar.

“We realized early on that the technology would only be as good as the content it sat on,” says Dicken. “So, we broke the problem down into smaller, manageable tasks and built a team of agents, each responsible for a specific step in preparing documents for AI.”

One agent had the sole task of locating relevant documents across the company’s files for review and categorization. Once that task was done, another agent translated documents to English to make development work easier. A third agent was responsible for identifying duplicate policies and creating a starting version, formatted correctly, for each document. “I had a team of 10 AI agents working for me, getting our data into a properly formatted, tagged, and organized state,” Dicken says. Publishing to Microsoft Teams made access to the agents quick and intuitive.

Building on experience

“Copilot Studio made it possible for us to ground each agent in our organizational knowledge, break tasks into subtasks, and publish everything to Microsoft Teams so it was easy for everyone to access,” Dicken continues. “What surprised me was how quickly we could go from idea to execution. It was empowering for people who didn’t see themselves as technical.”

For Giuliana Zussa, Talent Acquisition Partner at Kantar, the impact was immediate. “I’m not a technical person by background, but building agents with Copilot Studio was intuitive,” she says. “We started with small tasks, like a job description builder and a document finder. Then we quickly saw how these agents could standardize and speed up our recruitment processes across countries. It’s made our work simpler, more efficient, and more consistent.”

Reshaping teams

The results are already reshaping Kantar’s People function. The team of agents laid the groundwork for the HR advisory agent, and now the People Team can focus on talent retention and training, workplace planning, and finding the right candidates, while building relationships with hiring managers and understanding the needs of the company. “With the HR advisory agent, we’re anticipating a significant reduction in queries to HR, freeing our people to focus on more strategic work,” says Doyle. 

Kantar’s journey is ongoing, but the cultural shift is clear. “We’ve democratized technology,” Doyle observes. “With Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, we’re giving everyone the tools to innovate, regardless of their technical background. That’s how we’ll continue to grow capability and capacity—by making work simpler, stronger, and more human.”

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