Cemex builds an always-on HR experience with a Copilot Studio agent

From concrete to conversational: Cemex’s digital HR vision

Cemex is a multinational construction materials company focused on building a better future through sustainable products and solutions. The company manufactures and markets cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and other construction materials such as admixtures and mortars, enabling construction projects across its markets. Through customer-centric solutions, operational excellence, and continuous innovation, Cemex delivers high-performance materials that meet the industry's evolving needs. 

With a workforce of around 40,000 employees worldwide, Cemex provides reliable, sustainable, and high-quality products and services, partnering with its customers to deliver solutions that create long-term value.

For a company of this scale, driving continuous improvement and operational excellence across the organization is a strategic priority. Alberto Luis de Armas, SVP of Human Resources at Cemex, saw an opportunity to reimagine how HR services and employee support are delivered—not just to reduce cost, but to improve the workforce experience across the enterprise. To bring this vision to life, Cemex used Microsoft Copilot Studio to build Consult HR, its conversational HR agent.

As de Armas puts it, “Consult HR reflects how we are reimagining employee support at Cemex—making reliable HR information available when people need it, while helping our teams focus on the work that creates greater business impact.”

When every question lands on a person’s desk

Cemex’s HR support model was built around traditional, manual, and business-hour-dependent channels—such as phone, email, and direct interactions with HR Business Partners (HRBPs). While effective in the past, this approach often meant HRBPs were frequently addressing the same recurring queries, leading to slower response times, duplicated effort, and operational bottlenecks within the HR team. Although HR policies and FAQs were available on the company’s intranet, employees frequently preferred direct interaction with HR representatives to clarify their questions. The preference for conversational support increased inquiry volumes and placed additional pressure on HR teams.

The challenge was further complicated by Cemex’s global footprint. Employees needed support outside standard business hours, and multilingual accessibility was essential to serve a diverse workforce. The traditional HR support model could not scale to meet 24/7 demand while maintaining consistent service levels.

Building an AI colleague that never clocks out

Cemex partnered with Microsoft to build Consult HR, a conversational HR agent powered by Microsoft Copilot Studio. Designed as a custom Microsoft Teams agent, Consult HR provides employees with natural-language access to HR information, policies, and services directly within Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot—the tools they already use every day.

The solution securely retrieves HR knowledge from SharePoint Online, using both structured data from lists and unstructured content stored in PDF documents. This approach helps ensure responses are based on current, enterprise-approved information. Deep integration was a key design principle. Through Power Platform connectors and workflows, Consult HR enables employees to create and track HR service tickets directly through a conversational interface. 

The integration scope continues to expand. Cemex is connecting SAP SuccessFactors through APIs, custom connectors, and Power Platform workflows to access employee data. Transactional scenarios—such as time-off requests and employment letters—are progressively enabled through these connected services creating a more personalized experience. Over time, Consult HR is evolving toward orchestrating fully integrated, end-to-end HR transactions across enterprise systems.

The team was impressed by how approachable the technology was. As Pamela Garcia of Central Digitalization Functions, at Cemex recalls, “Copilot Studio was a very new technology for us, but it turned out to be the perfect answer to all our problems because it was low-code and low-complexity.”

Beginning in late FY25, the team completed a proof of concept in November and followed it with a controlled 25-user pilot to validate functionality and user experience. After positive pilot results, Consult HR moved into full production on January 26, 2026, supporting approximately 800 employees in Central Mexico.

The low-code architecture of Microsoft Copilot Studio enabled rapid iteration, allowing the team to refine and expand capabilities without significant developer involvement.

Always-on, always accurate: a new standard for HR support

What once required emails, phone calls, and follow-ups can now start with a simple question in Teams. 

For example, an employee can ask Consult HR about the current year’s eyeglass reimbursement benefit. The agent responds right away with the latest information and offers to help submit a request if needed.

If the employee decides to go ahead, Consult HR guides them through the process. An adaptive card appears, where they can fill in the details, upload an invoice and submit the request. The information is sent directly to ServiceNow and the employee immediately receives a ticket number to keep track of it. What previously required extra steps can now be completed within a single conversation.

Since launching on January 26, 2026, Consult HR has transformed how employees interact with HR. The agent delivers 24/7 self-service access to policies, benefits information, and HR services for 800 employees in Central Mexico. The impact extends beyond availability. By reducing repetitive inquiries, Consult HR has decreased manual effort and improved the employee support experience. Employees receive consistent answers in seconds while HR teams can focus on strategic initiatives, complex employee cases, and programs with broader organizational impact. 

For Alberto, the results validate the original vision: "Consult HR is now our priority HR self-service tool in Cemex Central, designed to provide leaders and teams with fast, reliable information while allowing our HR experts to focus on initiatives that drive greater impact for the business."

Integration with ServiceNow has also improved operational visibility. HR teams can track service requests and resolution progress through integrated systems, improving governance and service consistency across operations. Employees benefit from a seamless experience where they can ask questions, submit requests, and check status updates from a single conversation.

Scaling the conversation across borders

Following a successful launch in Central Mexico, Cemex plans to expand Consult HR to reach more employees, with plans for additional language support and broader employee access. 

The low-code foundation of Microsoft Copilot Studio positions Cemex to iterate quickly by adding new use cases, refining knowledge sources, and expanding integrations as the business evolves. Future enhancements may include deeper workflow automation, additional SAP SuccessFactors integrations, and new conversational experiences beyond HR.

For teams beginning their own AI journey, Paola Briones, HR Evolution Advisor at Cemex, offers simple advice: “Don’t be afraid to start, don’t be afraid to learn… just jump and learn.”

For Cemex, Consult HR is more than an HR tool. It represents a new model for how the company delivers employee services at scale, using AI to provide faster, more consistent support whenever employees need it.

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Looking for more inspiring agentic AI transformation stories? Explore additional customer successes on the Microsoft Agent Transformation Stories site.