Heritage brand Levi Strauss & Co. is on a fast-paced growth trajectory, but employees struggled with laptops that couldn’t handle sophisticated workloads and often crashed, losing data and derailing workflows.
The company chose to deploy Surface Copilot+ PCs as part of its strategic decision to embrace AI and grow the business.
Today, Levi Strauss & Co. has improved employee experiences, boosted productivity and invested in a highly secure and consistent experience across the global workforce.
“We made a strategic decision to move to Copilot+ PCs because we knew that AI was a strategic technology that we want to deploy to all of our employees.”
Michael Womack, Vice President, Technology Services, Levi Strauss & Co
Ryan Katreeb, Finance Manager at Levi Strauss & Co., went through four PC’s before discovering one that could stand up to his monthly workload. “The Surface Copilot+ PC is the first laptop I’ve used that can handle anything I throw at it,” he says. Katreeb’s work involves reporting on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis – a process that puts him in touch with multiple different data sources and requires pulling some 20,000 lines of data. With mounting frustration, Katreeb watched as his previous PC’s crashed, data was lost, and his workflow was derailed. “My anxiety level was just off the charts,” he says.
Today, the Surface Copilot+ PC has been deployed across Levi Strauss & Co. The new hardware is part of a key initiative on the part of the business. Michael Womack, Vice President, Technology Services at Levi Strauss & Co. explains: “We made a strategic decision to move to Copilot+ PCs because we knew that AI was a strategic technology that we want to deploy to all of our employees.”
“The Surface Copilot+ PC is the first laptop I’ve used that can handle anything I throw at it.”
Ryan Katreeb, Finance Manager, Levi Strauss & Co.
As Levi evolves from a largely wholesale business to a brand that prioritizes a direct-to-consumer model, AI has become a lynchpin of how the business plans to develop. “Levi’s is a growth company,” says Jason Gowans, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Levi Strauss & Co. “Right now, we do about 6.5 billion dollars in annual revenue and we are on a path towards 10 billion.” Devices like the Surface Copilot+ PC, 400 of which have already been deployed, were chosen to support the velocity that Levi Strauss & Co. needs to bring its projected growth to fruition. “Surface Copilot+ PCs give our teams a modern, future‑ready device platform that positions us to integrate AI into everyday work as our business continues to evolve,” says Gowans.
Among the AI features that Katreeb and his colleagues use to accelerate their work are Copilot search capabilities and the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot to help produce presentations faster. “On a transactional level, the Surface Copilot+ PC gives us the ability to analyse data quicker,” says Katreeb. “At the end of the day, it’s saving us time and giving us confidence.” The presence of a dedicated Copilot key on the Surface Copilot+ PC helps expedite workflows even further. “With the Copilot key built into my PC, help is just one click away,” adds Katreeb.
“Surface devices provide hardware‑rooted security that strengthens Levi’s defense against modern threats and helps safeguard sensitive data.”
Jason Gowans, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Levi Strauss & Co
In addition to supporting productivity, Surface Copilot+ PCs were also selected for their unique security features. “Surface devices provide hardware‑rooted security that strengthens Levi’s defense against modern threats and helps safeguard sensitive data,” says Gowans. Surface Copilot+ PCs are designed according to zero-trust principals, including multiple layers of defence and an assumption of compromise built in. “Microsoft being a huge enterprise partner of ours, we know that it's secure,” adds Gowans.
IT teams at Levi Strauss and Co. are also benefiting from streamlined fleet administration, thanks to the combination of Surface Copilot+ PCs and Microsoft Intune. “We use Intune as our device management platform for all devices globally,” says Willem Lock, Director of End User Services at Levi Strauss and Co. “The seamless integration between Surface devices’ and Microsoft solutions helps our IT team improve operational efficiency and reduces daily overhead. It’s all about providing the IT team with a trusted and resilient platform to support our global workforce.” Employees too benefit from a consistent experience with the help of tools like Windows Hello and Autopilot as well as capabilities like single sign-on. “You just get a brand-new laptop out-of-the-box, sign in, and applications are downloaded,” Lock explains. “That’s the biggest advantage that we’ve seen so far is that consistent experience.”
While Levi Strauss and Co. continues to embrace AI and its emerging status as a frontier firm, Surface Copilot+ PCs are gaining a loyal user base within the company. “Going forward, I’m a lifelong user,” says Katreeb, who has replaced the stress and unpredictability of reporting with a renewed sense of ease. “I’ve been using this laptop for more than six months, and my anxiety level is way down,” he adds.
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