agricultural questions. Meanwhile, American clothing firm Levi Strauss & Co. is using an Azure-native orchestrator agent embedded in Microsoft Teams to coordinate multiple subagents, enabling employees across corporate, retail and warehouse environments to access fast, accurate answers to questions like ‘what are the upcoming corporate holidays?’, ‘what is the travel and expense policy?’ and eventually ‘how do I process a return for an online order?’. “These are examples of what we call ‘frontier firms’,” says Taylor. “They are organisations blending human ambition with AI-first innovation to maximise their potential and impact on society. These companies aren’t just deploying tools, they are embedding intelligence into every workflow, decision and process to amplify insight across their business.” Microsoft identifies four key trends that set frontier companies apart from others. “First, they empower employees to automate repetitive work so they can focus on creativity and strategy,” explains Taylor. “Second, they reimagine customer engagement through personalised, data-driven experiences. Third, they transform business processes for greater accuracy, speed and efficiency. Fourth, they accelerate innovation by bringing new product and experiences to market faster.” One practical example comes from Lucerne Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland. Working with Microsoft and partner Polypoint, the 29
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