Bristol Myers Squibb accelerates life-changing scientific pursuits with Microsoft AI

At global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), every employee and every role ladders up to a single mission – to transform patients’ lives through science. Sydney Klein, Global Chief Information Security Officer and Head of Enterprise IT, Bristol Myers Squibb, sees the company’s AI strategy as indistinguishable from this critical mission. “Our ultimate goal is to bring more medicines to more patients faster,” she says. In the world of pharmaceutical research and drug development, efficiency has very real consequences. “We talk to patients all the time who are waiting for treatment that has the potential to change their quality of life or even prolong their life,” says Klein. “To accelerate what we do in research and the very complex world of a clinical trial, that’s where we’re aiming our AI investments.” 

BMS took a forward-looking approach to AI. “We immediately understood the transformative power generative AI could have,” says Klein. BMS encouraged its people to experiment with AI in private, secure environments early in the AI-era. Finding the right partners to speed up enterprise adoption and enable BMS to become more technologically fluent was a key first step. “We look for partners that complement our strengths and help us reach our ambitions. That’s what led us to work with Microsoft,” Klein adds. 

BMS rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot during its broader enterprise AI transformation and significantly expanded access across the company by 2025, democratizing AI for 30,000 team members. Today, Copilot adoption at BMS has reached 96%. 

Building AI IQ with a purpose-built learning academy 

For Ethan Sena, Vice President, AI, Cloud & Productivity, Bristol Myers Squibb, democratizing AI at BMS meant understanding the best pathway to build confidence in the tools. “AI adoption has taken off across BMS. Our employees already live in Microsoft 365, so Copilot was a natural fit. It works seamlessly with the documents, emails, and meetings they're in all day,” he says. 

“Our approach to AI adoption was that we had to make failing comfortable,” says Michael DiPaolo, Senior Director, Productivity Ecosystem Services, Bristol Myers Squibb. “It’s part of our culture at BMS to cultivate a ‘fail fast’ mentality where we constantly try new things,” he says. “If they work, great. If they don’t work, we quickly move on. You aren’t going to learn unless you fail along the way. 

Stemming from that ‘fail fast and learn’ mindset, BMS created AIQ Academy, a mandatory training program to help employees learn how to use AI confidently and responsibly. The Academy features instructor-led training and a repository of recorded sessions that employees can search and review on their own time. After completing mandatory courses, employees can opt in to more advanced learning that is either persona or app specific. For instance, before receiving a Microsoft Copilot Studio license, employees must complete an advanced course. 

Putting AI champions center stage for transformation

Recognition is an important aspect of the AI transformation underway at BMS. To encourage use, for example, BMS introduced personalized AI Adoption Scorecards that give employees a private, monthly view of their AI usage. “It becomes less about an organization saying ‘you have to do this’ and more about a peer saying ‘look at what you can do if you take the opportunity to learn,’” says Sena. 

BMS also sponsors a network of 400+ AIQ Champions from across the business. DiPaolo finds that peer support encourages adoption. “We encourage our people on the ground to model best practices,” he says. Microsoft Viva Engage serves as a platform to connect champions with employees company wide. “Those conversations inspire so many other people to try new ways of working and new ways to use these tools,” says Sena 

Encouraging adoption with insights and future-ready governance

DiPaolo and his team took a hands-on approach to monitoring adoption and refining training. “We use Microsoft Viva Insights to understand what departments are best positioned to use these tools,” he says. Rather than reacting simply to low adoption, DiPaolo and his team follow up with both heavy and low adoption segments. BMS features top AI learnings and use cases on an internal Microsoft SharePoint that features a blog called ‘Working Smarter’, helping drive adoption further. To reinforce those efforts, BMS also publishes a monthly AIQ Academy newsletter alongside its AI Adoption Scorecards, highlighting standout use cases, practical tips, and employee success stories.

DiPaolo and his team put the aforementioned “fail fast” mindset into action when they evaluate AI tools and run proof of concepts and technology pilots. The rapid pace of change has made agile governance paramount. “We have a human-in-the-loop governance model with security, risk, and compliance all involved,” says DiPaolo. “My team uses Microsoft tools to help data stay protected and govern AI agents at scale,” says DiPaolo. “It’s a balance between governance and creativity.”

Transforming clinical trials and generating time savings for project managers

Today, Copilot adoption and AI use has moved from theoretical to fundamental at BMS. 

“When we look at how we have applied AI across the company, we have examples in every single line of business,” says Klein. “Whether it's working with clinical trial sites or different regulators around the world, there's a lot of content generation and a lot of duplication,” Klein explains. In the research and early development phase of a project, AI influences 100% of BMS small molecule designs — the pills and tablets most people picture — and the majority of its large molecule, or biologic, medicine designs. BMS is also using AI to maximize manufacturing yields. “AI helps us understand how we can get more doses of medicine out of the same amount of raw ingredients we use to produce them,” says Klein. Optimized manufacturing processes have helped deliver up to a 40% yield improvement for certain medicines.

Lakshman Yerramalla, Director of Portfolio Governance and Delivery for Global Manufacturing Operations, Bristol Myers Squibb is an AI Evangelist and Change Management Leader at the company. Using Copilot Studio, he created RABIT, a custom agent that analyses meeting transcripts, identifies risks, surfaces action items and delivers insights directly within employees Microsoft 365 workflows. The result is better informed decision-making and proactive project management. “The RABIT agent connects the dots across meetings, helping teams make better decisions while reducing administrative follow-up work,” says Yerramalla. “Project managers who use the tool save up to an estimated 20% of their time and stakeholders have the information on their finger tips through the life of a project.”

The company now boasts 25,000 agents in use enterprise-wide. “We saw consistent demand for agents across organizations,” says DiPaolo. Today, agents at BMS help with everything from third-party risk management to document review. “The success we have seen with our Copilot adoption is due to us really understanding where AI fits,” says DiPaolo.

For BMS, AI isn't a side project - it's a bet on its own people. The company saw the technology's potential early and chose to put it directly in employees' hands rather than lock it away in a specialist team. “We made a deliberate choice to give our people these tools,” says Klein. “AI is taking the repetitive work off their plates so they can spend their time and expertise where it matters most: on the science that reaches patients.”

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