Becoming Customer Zero: creating a foundation for AI-driven innovation

Infinity Group has been a Microsoft partner for nearly 25 years, evolving from a telco-focused Managed Service Provider (MSP) to a full-stack Microsoft Cloud Service Provider (CSP) that helps small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and mid-market accounts digitally transform—with the added distinction of being the largest Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner in the UK. Infinity Group has always believed in taking a “Customer Zero” approach to its services, deploying Microsoft technologies internally to help its teams improve productivity and streamline operations. But with multiple acquisitions and a rebrand that drove massive business expansion, the company found itself in the same situation as many of its customers: three different finance systems, multiple data sets, different tools for marketing, and some less than streamlined sales processes. “It wasn’t that we were necessarily struggling,” said Chris Marshall, Chief Marketing Officer at Infinity Group. “We just realized that we had the opportunity to use our Microsoft expertise to drive the transformation we are known for with our customers within our own business.”

Infinity Group completely replatformed its entire business on the Microsoft Cloud. Microsoft Fabric now serves as a common data platform, and the full Microsoft 365 stack provides productivity and security. For customer relationship management, the company rolled out Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Field Service for its sales, client support, and engineering teams, along with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights for the marketing team. And for backend operations, a single instance of Dynamics 365 Business Central now serves as the central finance system, with an extension from partner Work 365 for streamlined billing. Infinity Group is also using Dynamics 365 Project Operations for the project management teams. “By consolidating on a single, connected ecosystem where data flows seamlessly, processes are automated, and security is built in, we can scale without complexity and adapt quickly to market changes. It’s how we can stay competitive in a climate where doing more with less is essential,” said Tristan Shortland, Chief Technology Officer at Infinity Group.

In addition to future-proofing the organization against shifting economic pressures, talent shortages, and customer expectations, the decision to replatform also creates new opportunities for innovation. “Moving to this unified infrastructure brings us significant operational efficiencies, but doing the legwork around our core infrastructure, data platform, and security also gave us a viable foundation to start utilizing Copilot and agents,” said Marshall. “And AI was a cornerstone of our transformation plans.”

Using agents to grow profitability, improve customer outcomes

Infinity Group’s AI journey has been focused on AI agents, with the goal of embedding them into critical workflows to further transform operations and insights. The team started by utilizing first-party agents in Dynamics 365 wherever possible, activating Microsoft 365 Copilot in both Sales and Customer Service apps along with:

Sales Qualification Agent, Sales Research Agent, and Opportunity Research Agent in Dynamics 365 Sales
Knowledge Management Agent and Case
Payables Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Time Entry and Approval Agent in Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Customization of first-party agents was used to further enhance results. For example, Copilot in Customer Service was connected to Azure DevOps and Microsoft Learn support documentation to help service desk engineers pull in a customer’s DevOps backlog along with Microsoft best practice guidance to better address customer issues. “These agents have helped us make decisions faster by surfacing insights in real time. Our teams can act quickly and strategically and eliminate repetitive, or time-consuming manual tasks to focus on higher-value work like building relationships and driving innovation,” said Shortland.

Infinity Group has also developed a library of custom agents that focus on solving specific business challenges. Members of different teams present their ideas for custom agents to a Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank style approval board. Approved ideas get added to an Azure DevOps backlog where they are then picked up by the internal delivery team to scope. Many of these agents are built using AI Builder in Power Automate, such as a risk identification agent that reviews customer call transcripts for nuanced parts of presales and sales conversations for potential project delivery or timeline issues. The risk identification agent utilizes events raised in Microsoft Graph to detect when a customer meeting is completed, then runs a Power Automate flow with an AI Builder custom prompt to review the transcript and extract any identified risks, which are then stored in the opportunity record within Dynamics 365 Sales. Other agents that Infinity Group has built include:

A service delivery agent used by service delivery managers and sales teams that takes context from call recordings, documents, and Dynamics 365 data to formulate service update reports for customers
A recruitment agent that sits in on screening interviews to help assess skills and cultural fit of potential candidates
A Business Central sales qualification agent—built on the Microsoft Researcher agent and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Qualification agent—for a fixed price, fixed outcome offering that automatically creates a statement of work based on customer input, increasing lead volume and reducing sales development team workload

The result of implementing these agents has been extraordinary. Infinity Group has achieved 40% business growth in the past 12 months without increasing headcount, is saving more than 180 hours across the business every week due to automation and agents, and has increased project profitability by 14%. The business has also saved over £1 million in operational expenditure.

Another benefit of its AI-powered operations investment is a 16% increase in Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSATs). “AI and agents are helping us deliver more projects, but we’re also delivering better outcomes for customers because our processes are better and we’ve got more intelligence and automation layered into our project delivery,” said Marshall. “Everyone within the business is using the tooling we deliver to our customers, including AI and Copilot, so they are champions of the technology while also being able to empathize with what the AI journey looks like from a customer perspective.”

Building toward Frontier Firm status

The investment that Infinity Group has made in transforming itself with AI and agents has the company firmly on the path to becoming a Frontier Firm. “We are doubling down on AI. The agents we’ve deployed so far have already proven their value, but this is just the beginning. We’re exploring new AI-driven capabilities to enhance forecasting, automate even more complex workflows, and deliver predictive insights to help us stay ahead of customer needs. The goal is simple: to create a business that doesn’t just react to change but anticipates it,” said Shortland.

The next phase of the company’s transformation will focus on deploying Dynamics 365 Contact Center to create a single, unified experience for faster, smarter, and more personal customer service. “We’re going to shift the dial on our customer experience, bringing in AI-tooled knowledge bases for customer self-service and enabling our engineers and representatives with a complete view of conversations, history, and context in real time,” said Marshall. “AI and agents will help us resolve queries faster than we’ve ever been able to before.”

“Moving to this unified infrastructure brings us significant operational efficiencies, but doing the legwork around our core infrastructure, data platform, and security also gave us a viable foundation to start utilizing Copilot and agents.”

— Chris Marshall, CMO, Infinity Group

“We are doubling down on AI. The agents we’ve deployed so far have already proven their value, but this is just the beginning.”

— Tristan Shortland, CTO, Infinity Group

Customer Zero: Infinity Group uses agents to drive 40% growth in 12 months