How Levi Strauss Uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to Cut Project Timelines from a Year to a Day

Levi Strauss & Co. has spent nearly 175 years defining American denim culture, but the company faced a distinctly modern challenge: making its workforce as agile and data-driven as its ambitions. Operating across more than 110 countries with a stated goal of becoming a “fan-obsessed, direct-to-consumer” business, Levi’s needed technology infrastructure that could match its pace of change. Device inconsistencies, data overload, and manual reporting bottlenecks were slowing progress at every level of the organization.

The core problem was multifaceted. Finance teams processing tens of thousands of rows of data were seeing computers crash mid-task, losing hours of work. Employees joining meetings or requesting software access encountered wildly inconsistent experiences depending on location. Meanwhile, reviewing the company’s thousands of Standard Operating Procedure documents — a task critical to simplification efforts — was estimated to take a painful year if done manually. The company needed a foundation that could support both operational consistency and AI-powered productivity.

Levi’s first standardized endpoint management by deploying Microsoft Intune across all endpoints globally, enabling automatic application installation and consistent device configuration regardless of geography. This served as the foundation for a move to Windows 11 as the company standard. The company then introduced Surface Copilot+ PCs, purpose-built for AI workloads, pairing them with Microsoft 365 Copilot to embed AI directly into employees’ daily tools. Teams then began building Copilot agents — including one called “Ask Ben” that helps employees navigate HR benefits — using the no-code agent-building capabilities in Windows.

The results were striking. Lisa Stirling’s finance team used Copilot to audit thousands of Standard Operating Procedure documents in a single day — a process previously estimated at up to a year. Sheena Kunhiraman’s HR team built the “Ask Ben” benefits agent and went from concept to executive demo in three weeks. Finance manager Ryan Katreeb, who previously dealt with crashing computers while processing 20,000-line datasets, described his new Surface Copilot+ PC as “phenomenal,” with anxiety levels now “way down.”

Levi Strauss is now developing “Rivet,” a Microsoft Teams-based orchestration layer that will serve as a single conversational interface routing employee queries across multiple behind-the-scenes AI agents. The company sees this as the next step in its journey from heritage brand to what Chief Digital & Technology Officer Jason Gowans describes as a “frontier firm” — one where AI is embedded in every layer of the employee experience and directly powers its fan-centric retail model.