AI-Powered Reporting with Excel and Copilot

Overview

Microsoft Copilot is now embedded directly inside Excel, and for the first time, AI assistance lives where the data lives. For reporting professionals, that means the tasks that used to consume a reporting cycle — cleaning data, building formulas, configuring PivotTables, generating charts, and writing the narrative — can be substantially compressed.

This session focuses on how to use Copilot in Excel for the reporting workflow specifically. We will walk through how to prepare data so Copilot can actually help with it, how to ask Copilot for the analysis you need, and how to use Copilot to generate the formulas, pivots, and visuals that make up a typical report. We will also cover the gaps — the places where Copilot falls short and where a human still needs to step in.

If your organization has rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot, or is about to, this session will help you turn that license into real reporting productivity. We will also cover what you can accomplish with general-purpose AI tools alongside Excel if Copilot is not yet available in your environment.

Why You Should Attend

Microsoft has invested heavily in making Copilot useful inside Excel — but most professionals are not getting full value from it. They use it for one or two ad hoc tasks and then forget about it, missing the larger workflow gains that come from using it consistently for reporting.

This session is designed to change that. You will see exactly how Copilot fits into a real reporting workflow, what kinds of prompts it responds best to, and where to use it versus the regular Excel ribbon. You will leave with concrete techniques for the next time you have to build a month-end report, prepare a board pack, or turn around an ad hoc request from leadership.

If you are an Excel-heavy reporting professional, the techniques in this session can take hours out of your typical reporting cycle.

Who Will Benefit

• Financial analysts and FP&A professionals
• Business and operations analysts
• Reporting analysts and BI specialists
• Accountants and controllers
• Marketing, sales, and revenue operations analysts
• HR and people analytics professionals
• Excel power users and trainers
• Anyone responsible for recurring Excel-based reporting

Areas Covered in the Session

• Where Copilot fits in the Excel reporting workflow
• Preparing data so Copilot can actually work with it
• Using Copilot to generate and explain Excel formulas
• Building PivotTables and PivotCharts with Copilot
• Generating clean, readable charts and visuals
• Drafting written commentary and executive summaries
• Automating routine month-end reporting steps
• Handling sensitive data responsibly inside Copilot
• Where Copilot falls short — and what to do instead
• Building a repeatable AI-assisted reporting workflow.