Levi Strauss & Co. takes project timelines from a year to a day with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot+ PCs

Levi Strauss & Co. is a nearly 175-year-old heritage brand with a very modern goal, to be at the forefront of AI innovation in retail. “Levi invented blue jeans, so we have always been comfortable being the first movers,” says Sheena Kunhiraman, Vice President, People Systems and HR Analytics at Levi Strauss & Co. Today, the company is powering two simultaneous transformations. The first is aimed at how the business interacts with customers – referred to as “fans” to acknowledge the unusual level of devotion Levi’s jeans inspire. “There is a big push at Levi’s to become a fan-obsessed, direct-to-consumer business — putting the consumer at the center of everything we design and deliver,” says Derek Shirk, Lead UX Product Designer at Levi Strauss & Co. The business is also focused on making the employee experience as modern and seamless as possible. Both initiatives look to technology as a key enabler. “You can’t do what we are aiming to do without highly polished digital tools,” says Shirk. 

Varied processes and reams of data create inefficiencies

In the past, inconsistencies plagued how employees joined meetings, requested applications and navigated application access, and more. “Our number one challenge was inconsistencies with how a device is delivered,” explains Willem Lock, Director, End User Services at Levi Strauss & Co. For Lisa Stirling, Vice President, U.S. and Canada Finance at Levi Strauss & Co., the move to a more direct-to-consumer approach created an influx of data. “There’s a lot more data to deal with,” she says. 

One employee, Ryan Katreeb, Finance Manager at Levi Strauss & Co., experienced how overwhelming the amount of data at the company had become, and struggled to find a device that could manage it. “I have gone through two different devices and none of them were able to handle the workload that I needed them to,” he says. That workload included some 20,000 lines of data to be summarized into a reporting file, a monthly task that often led to Katreeb’s computer crashing and data being lost. “It was very frustrating,” he says. 

Building consistency and a modern foundation 

Today, Levi Strauss & Co. is focused on consistency. “One of the first steps in our journey was to deploy Microsoft Intune across all endpoints in the company,” explains Michael Womack, VP Technology Services at Levi Strauss & Co. 

Deploying Intune helped deliver consistency and streamlined reporting in the process. “Now, no matter where you are in the world, you just get a brand-new laptop, sign in, and applications are automatically installed,” says Lock. “Reporting and future planning all become much easier,” he adds. The move to Intune also accelerated a move to Windows 11, now the standard at the company. “We could not have done that without a tool like Intune,” says Lock. 

Accelerating the pace of business with hardware specialized for AI

A standard endpoint management solution and operating system served as the foundation for the next strategic move at Levi Strauss & Co.– embracing the full potential for AI to propel the business. That’s why Levi Strauss & Co. chose Surface Copilot+ PCs. Katreeb, who previously worried about his device crashing due to 20,000 lines of data, describes the change as nothing short of “phenomenal.” “My anxiety level is way down,” he says. “My Surface Copilot+ PC is light, the battery life is great, and it hasn’t crashed on me or lost any data.” 

The pairing of Windows 11 and Surface Copilot+ PC’s helps Katreeb do more. "Having Microsoft 365 Copilot directly in Windows 11 and my everyday tools makes it feel like part of my workflow, not another app to learn,” he says. The integration of Copilot into the Copilot+ PC device itself takes the synergy even further. “With the Copilot key built into my PC, help is just one click away,” adds Katreeb. “Going forward, I’m a lifelong user.”  

Jason Gowans, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Levi Strauss & Co, breaks down the appeal of the new hardware. “A Copilot+ PC running on Windows 11, it really just makes folks’ lives easy and helps us provide an amazing employee experience,” he says. 

Taking project timelines from a year to a day with Copilot

With AI capabilities at their fingertips, employees can focus on business goals without distraction. “Pushing Copilot to all of our employees allows us to innovate at the speed of business,” says Womack. Stirling and her team put that innovation into practice when they used Copilot to help create an agent to assist with an audit of Standard Operating Procedure documents and identify opportunities for simplification. With thousands of these documents across the business, it would have been an enormous undertaking if done manually. Stirling estimates that reviewing them would take up to a year, and “a painful one,” at that. “With Copilot, we had results in a day,” she says. 

Kunhiraman had a similar experience when she and her team created a Copilot agent designed to help employees navigate information about benefits. Called “Ask Ben,” the agent was simple to produce and led to demand for even more agents. “With Copilot on Windows, building an agent was so simple that my team went from concept to presenting a demo to the executive team in three weeks,” says Kunhiraman. 

Becoming a frontier firm in partnership with Microsoft

What’s next for a company of first movers? Today, Levi Strauss & Co. is partnering with Microsoft to create “Rivet.” This orchestration will use Microsoft Teams as the portal for employees to access a one-stop-shop where questions can be answered by any number of behind-the-scenes agents, all filtered through one conversational super-agent. Paired with hardware like the Copilot+ PC, Levi Strauss & Co. is harnessing the power of AI to help move a heritage brand into the ever-innovative future of retail, a future with fans at its heart. “Copilot is a tool that helps get us closer to that fan-obsessed model, enabling faster and more efficient decision-making,” says Shirk.

Discover more about Levi Strauss & Co. on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and YouTube.