This new Microsoft tool lets enterprises track internal AI adoption rates – and even how rival companies are using the technology

Want to know if your staff are actually using that expensive AI bot you've splashed out on? Microsoft has your back with a feature that tracks adoption and usage of its Copilot AI suite.

The tool, called Benchmarks, will be rolled out to Microsoft Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights. Benchmarks will let companies compare teams inside their organization, and track adoption across different groups, such as manager types, regions, and job functions.

According to Microsoft, Benchmarks will also show the percentage of active Copilot users and returning user percentages.

"These insights help identify adoption trends and provide broader context and new opportunities to improve Copilot engagement," Microsoft said in a blog post.

That will allow companies to see whether an employee is using AI as much as their coworkers in similar roles.

"The cohort benchmark is based on a comparison cohort of employees within your company who share similar job functions, regions, or manager roles," the company noted.

"The calculation uses Job function, Region, and Manager attributes to determine expected values by role. The cohort result looks at the role composition of the selected group, and constructs a weighted average expected result based on matching roles across the tenant."

The analytics tool comes as research suggests AI may not be as useful as hoped for all tasks, with MIT reporting 95% of AI pilots fail and a census survey suggesting AI use has dipped at large companies.

However, enterprises remain keen to get staff on board, with some taking drastic action. As ITPro reported in September 2025, CEOs at IgniteTech and Coinbase both admitted to firing staff who refused to use AI tools in their work.

The Microsoft Benchmarks tool suggests managers are looking for ways to quantify adoption, which could help when it comes to reporting return on investment (ROI) to the C-suite.

Similarly, this could help reduce license costs by removing Copilot for teams that don’t really use it – but such metrics could also be used to pit employees against each other in how much AI they use.

Microsoft tool offers external comparisons

Microsoft isn't just letting companies pit teams against each other in the race to drive AI adoption, but also offering up data from rival organizations so AI users can see how they compare to other businesses.

Benchmarks includes external data to compare internal stats with other companies, such as the top companies in a similar sector, of a similar size, or in the same region, or against all other companies.

"This new feature lets organizations compare Copilot usage internally across different company groups, as well as externally against similar companies," Microsoft added in a blog post.

Microsoft stressed that external data has all been anonymized – something it doesn't promise for individual users inside a company – with each cohort requiring at least 20 companies to be used as a benchmark.

"External benchmarks are calculated using randomized mathematical models to ensure privacy," Microsoft added. "Each benchmark group includes at least 20 companies and is derived from approximations to prevent the use of any single company’s actual data."

Benchmarks will already be available to private preview customers in Copilot Dashboard, and will roll out to all customers later this month, Microsoft said, adding it will consider adding additional benchmarks based on customer feedback.

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