Westpac stands up Copilot Studio for Gen AI agent development

Westpac is rolling out Microsoft Copilot Studio across its business, enabling cross-functional teams to build and scale generative AI agents and applications within a governed environment.

From left: Smitha Janarthanan, Simon Gobbo (Westpac)

The bank already has several use cases live in production and is now focused on integrating the platform with data sources "everywhere, safely and securely."

One early application is the use of Copilot Studio agents embedded in SharePoint, allowing non-tech users to interact with dashboards using natural language.

Principal engineer Smitha Janarthanan said this use case is already generating productivity gains, assisting bankers in reading pre-built dashboards.

“Now, they can use natural language to question and interact with the data and go into the nitty-gritty of where this data is coming from; what is connected to it, and even playing around with the filter, which can get tricky,” she told an audience at Gartner IT Symposium on the Gold Coast.

“It's just natural conversation, which delivers results, and I think that's very efficient.”

The adoption of Copilot Studio builds on Westpac’s earlier work onboarding the Microsoft Power Platform, a low-code environment that allows both non-technical and IT staff to build solutions or develop applications through a drag-and-drop approach

Copilot Studio extends the Power Platform, letting employees build and manage generative AI agents and integrate them with apps like Power BI, Power Pages, and SharePoint.

The tool has already proved popular with Westpac’s “enthusiastic citizen developers,” especially in the IT function, Janarthanan noted.

These users have built integrations between knowledge articles, business processes and other Microsoft 365 components, she said.

Also speaking at Gartner, Westpac Microsoft 365 cloud service owner Simon Gobbo said previous development on the Power Platform foundation and governance framework made the adoption of Copilot Studio relatively straightforward.

“Service owners and administrators have a clear path to that service in Copilot Studio,” he said. “It really is just an add-on to that service.”

Within Westpac, Copilot Studio supports two tiers of use: individual productivity in a default environment and enterprise-grade apps that can be scaled in a governed space.

However, to access the enterprise environment, staff need to get through Westpac’s digital front door first, a process that has been automated.

“The framework is fine, but you still don't want your staff to be there bridging every request at the front door,” Gobbo said.

“The front door is great because we have a certain set of requirements. Do you know where your data is going? Where are you sourcing data from? What type of data is it, and what do you do with that data?"

Gobbo also said that these processes support staff in building useful tools, without straying into shadow IT or compromising Westpac’s risk posture.

“[Citizen developers] are trying to enrich their business areas,” he said. “Smart staff want to unlock capability. They don't want to be sitting there using dinosaur spreadsheets and all these legacy tools.”

“They're really trying to ensure that they have built something they want to scale and are trying to understand how to scale it correctly.

“We don’t want to go back to the days when people went around the technology [function]. We want them to come through the technology [function].”

Eleanor Dickinson attended Gartner IT Symposium on the Gold Coast as a guest of Gartner.