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See how Levi's transformed from year-long projects to one-day wins

Picture this: You're a 175-year-old denim legend trying to transform into a fan-obsessed, direct-to-consumer powerhouse, but your employees are drowning in device crashes and data chaos. That was Levi's reality.

Willem Lock, Director of End User Services at Levi Strauss & Co. explains. Meanwhile, the company's ambitious shift to put customers—or "fans," as they call them—at the center of everything created a tsunami of data that overwhelmed existing systems.

Lisa Stirling, VP of U.S. and Canada Finance, says. Finance Manager Ryan Katreeb lived this nightmare daily. He went through two different devices, neither capable of handling his workload. His monthly task of summarizing 20,000 lines of data routinely crashed his computer and wiped out hours of work.

Levi's didn't just patch the problem—they put AI directly into employees' hands and empowered them to solve their own business challenges. By deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot across the organization, teams could automate and accelerate complex, data-intensive tasks that previously took months or years.

Michael Womack, VP Technology Services, says. Stirling's team proved this by using Copilot to create an agent for auditing thousands of Standard Operating Procedure documents—a task that would have taken up to a year manually.

She reports. But here's where it gets really interesting: employees started building their own solutions without waiting for IT.

Sheena Kunhiraman, VP of People Systems and HR Analytics, says. Her team created "Ask Ben," an AI agent that helps employees navigate benefits information—no coding required.

The tech stack reads like a modern enterprise playbook: Microsoft Intune for endpoint management, Windows 11 as the standard OS, and Surface Copilot+ PCs for AI-optimized hardware. Microsoft 365 Copilot was integrated directly into daily workflows, giving employees AI capabilities natively within their devices.

Jason Gowans, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, explains. The company is also developing "Rivet," a super-agent that will use Microsoft Teams as a portal for employees to access multiple AI agents through one conversational interface.

Let's be real—Levi's didn't wave a magic wand and fix everything overnight. The sheer volume of data from their direct-to-consumer push overwhelmed legacy systems, causing frequent device failures and lost work.

Womack explains. This foundational work was essential to support AI at scale, but required patience and a methodical approach.

The key lesson? You can't build AI capabilities on infrastructure held together with digital duct tape.

Here's where the numbers get jaw-dropping:

• Project timelines slashed from 1 year to 1 day for auditing and simplifying thousands of Standard Operating Procedure documents. Stirling notes it would have been an enormous undertaking if done manually, taking up to a year and a painful one at that.
• AI agent development accelerated from concept to executive demo in just 3 weeks. Kunhiraman's team demonstrated how simple Copilot made the agent-building process.
• Company-wide innovation velocity increased as employees were empowered to focus on business goals, not manual drudgery. AI agents like "Ask Ben" quickly addressed complex information needs and inspired demand for even more automation.
• Zero device crashes or data loss since implementing Copilot+ PCs. Katreeb's transformation tells the whole story: "My anxiety level is way down. My Surface Copilot+ PC is light, the battery life is great, and it hasn't crashed on me or lost any data. Going forward, I'm a lifelong user."

Two critical insights emerge from Levi's journey that every executive should tattoo on their brain:

First, a consistent, modern IT foundation is essential for AI transformation.

Lock says. You can't build AI capabilities on shaky infrastructure.

Second, empowering employees to build their own AI solutions unlocks rapid, business-driven innovation. The most impressive results came when employees created their own solutions.

Derek Shirk, Lead UX Product Designer, says.

🐯 Tiger Takeaway:

When you give employees reliable, AI-enabled tools, you don't just speed up work—you redefine what's possible. Levi's shows that with the right foundation, year-long projects can become one-day wins, and innovation can happen at the speed of business. The question isn't whether you can afford to upgrade your tech stack; it's whether you can afford to watch your rivals turn annual projects into daily victories while you're still rebooting crashed computers.

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