Microsoft UAE Says AI Has Freed Half Its Finance Team's Time and Created Two New Roles

Maalouf told the NAFA Summit Dubai, an event run by Khaleej Times, that Microsoft did not use the saving to cut staff. It created two finance positions that did not exist a year ago. "I have someone who looks after strategic partnerships that we do at a country scale. And I have someone who looks after our Copilot and AI business," she said. The headcount stayed the same.

Finance chiefs across the Gulf are under pressure to show what their AI spending actually returns. Maalouf's account gives a concrete answer: hours are moved off data collection and onto commercial work, and the team does not shrink.

The system is called the UAE Command Centre. Maalouf said it combines financial metrics with information from the company's regular business meetings, so the agent sees both the numbers and what different departments are reporting. The agent contacts business teams for updates on anything that could move the forecast up or down. It then recommends whether each item should stay in the forecast, be removed, or be flagged as a risk or opportunity.

The finance team still decides. Maalouf said staff review the agent's recommendations and use their own judgement before changing a forecast. She said finance professionals have to be able to question what the AI produces rather than accept it.

She said getting value from AI takes more than the tools. Companies also need clean, unified data, proper security controls, and employees who know how to redesign existing processes. "The differentiator is the human element," she said. In her view, staff need the technical skills to work with AI and the judgement to tell whether its output makes business sense.

She did not say how long the redesign took or whether Microsoft plans to roll the Command Centre model out to finance teams in other countries.