TotalEnergies
TotalEnergies rolls out Microsoft 365 Copilot to almost 30,000 staff after a 300-person test
TotalEnergies tested Microsoft 365 Copilot with 300 employees in 2023, then rolled it out to almost 30,000 staff within weeks. Microsoft reports that 70% of employees use it weekly and nearly half use it daily, and that a maintenance-report tool built on the same platform improved fault-cause identification.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
30,000
Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses rolled out to employees2
70%
Share of employees who use Copilot weekly2
300
Employees in the 2023 test phase1
25%
to 45%
Improvement in identifying fault causes with MARGE, a tool built on Copilot Studio that sorts maintenance reports2
What it took
The problem
TotalEnergies is a global energy group with more than 100,000 employees. Like many large companies, it wanted staff to save time on everyday office work and to build their own small tools, without sending sensitive data outside the company.
What they built
The company first opened Bing Chat Enterprise, a secure chat assistant, to employees in August 2023. It then bought Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant inside Word, Outlook, Teams and similar apps, and added Power Platform licenses so staff can build simple apps with little or no code. Later it built its own AI agents on Microsoft Copilot Studio, including MARGE, which sorts industrial maintenance reports, and BuyerCompanion, which helps buyers with procurement.
How they did it
A test phase with 300 employees started in September 2023. The company says the results were positive and decided to deploy more widely. Microsoft's story says the tool was shown to senior management in early 2024 and reached almost 30,000 staff within weeks. TotalEnergies planned training for every employee in 2024, and Microsoft reports workshops, webinars, question sessions and a support community. A validation committee reviews each new agent for value, technical feasibility, cybersecurity and duplication.
Results
Microsoft reports 30,000 Copilot licenses rolled out, with 70% of employees using it weekly and nearly half using it daily. It also reports a 25% to 45% improvement in identifying fault causes with MARGE, and says more than thirty further applications are deployed or in development. The company itself describes the benefits of its original test as better operational efficiency and user comfort, without numbers.
Lessons for your project
Test with a small group first. TotalEnergies ran a 300-person trial before it chose to buy for the wider workforce.
Pair licenses with training. Microsoft reports that TotalEnergies held about one training or awareness event per day during rollout.
Set up a review committee for new AI agents. TotalEnergies checks each one for value, technical fit, cybersecurity and overlap with existing tools.
Measure results per tool. The headline adoption numbers say little about value; the maintenance-report tool was tied to a specific measure (fault causes identified).
Caveats
- The February 2024 press release gives no figures for the test results: it says only that they were positive. All usage and impact figures come from a Microsoft customer story, so they are vendor-reported.
- The Microsoft story says 70% of employees use Copilot weekly. The wording is the vendor's and the survey or usage method is not given.
- The 25% to 45% figure is Microsoft's description of one internal tool (MARGE), not of Copilot as a whole. The baseline and measurement method are not stated.
- Microsoft's page lists the company at 10,000+ employees, while TotalEnergies' own press release says more than 100,000. The scale line here follows the company.
- The deployed date is the press release date of the rollout announcement (February 2024). Microsoft's story says only that rollout followed within weeks of early 2024.
- The sources do not name an underlying language model.
Sources
- TotalEnergies unlocks the potential of generative artificial intelligence for its employees
TotalEnergies · 2024-02-27 · Press release · totalenergies.com
- From Microsoft 365 Copilot to Copilot Studio: TotalEnergies at the forefront of AI transformation
Microsoft · 2025-10-22 · Vendor case study · microsoft.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.