Manchester City Council enhances citizen services with Microsoft 365 Copilot & Copilot Studio
Background
Manchester City Council is committed to delivering better outcomes for employees and residents through digital innovation, with a particular focus on its contact centres and highways services.
Building on its wider digital transformation journey, the council is now focused on becoming a true Frontier Council by embedding artificial intelligence across its operations and services.
This work builds on Manchester City Council’s earlier digital transformation programme with ANS, which helped modernise its technology foundations and enable future innovation.
Challenge
Like many large public sector organisations, Manchester City Council wanted to scale AI in a way that was both secure and practical.
The challenge was not only to drive the adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio across a large workforce, but also to help employees access trusted information faster, reduce time spent on manual processes, and identify opportunities to improve services for residents.
“Becoming a Frontier Council for us is really about embedding artificial intelligence in every area of our organisation.”
Jon Burt, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Manchester City Council
Solution
Working alongside ANS, the first UK Microsoft partner to achieve the Microsoft Frontier Partner designation, and Microsoft, Manchester City Council rolled out Microsoft Copilot across the organisation, including Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
The council also began developing targeted AI solutions using Copilot Studio, creating AI agents grounded in trusted organisational information.
Early use cases included a housing contact centre agent to support new starters, as well as a “joiners, movers and leavers” agent designed to simplify onboarding and offboarding processes for contractors and NHS workers.
Outcomes
Key outcomes from Manchester City Council’s adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio include:
- 1,000 employees – approximately 15% of the workforce – are using Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of their day-to-day work.
- In the housing contact centre, AI agents have helped reduce onboarding time from 4-5 days to just 1 day, enabling new starters to become productive faster.
- Faster access to trusted knowledge across the housing contact centre, reducing time spent searching for information and responding to resident enquiries.
And that’s just the beginning.
Copilot changed everything. It is just brilliant. We had three new starters, and they were on the phones within a day, which previously used to take one to two weeks.
Jon Burt
Head of Enterprise Architecture
Manchester City Council
What's next
This project with ANS represents a key milestone in Manchester City Council’s AI transformation journey, with Microsoft recognising it as a transformative AI use case.
Manchester City Council is now developing AI-powered knowledge and collaboration capabilities that will connect teams to trusted information more effectively, supporting its vision of becoming a leading AI-powered Frontier Council.
