KARL STORZ builds a governed AI foundation with Microsoft 365 Copilot

In a MedTech environment defined by constant regulatory change, information must be accurate, accessible, and audit-ready at all times. But as organizations scale globally, it often ends up dispersed across systems, slowing decisions and increasing risk.

At KARL STORZ, those pressures were felt across a workforce of nearly 10,000 employees worldwide. As a global MedTech organization headquartered in Germany, the company depends on precise documentation and secure collaboration across regions and regulatory environments. 

“There were information overload issues across the organization,” says Matt Butcher, Vice President of IT for North America, KARL STORZ. “People were spending excessive amounts of time on activities like locating data, summarizing meetings, and aligning on decisions.” 

Information lived across emails, documents, and collaboration tools, but accessing and applying it required time and effort, slowing decision-making and limiting how quickly teams could move forward.

That environment created an opportunity to move faster while reinforcing enterprise control. In a regulated MedTech setting, any system operating on enterprise content must meet the same standards for security, compliance, and trust that govern the rest of the business.

Meeting those standards shaped how KARL STORZ approached adoption. Rather than introducing AI as a standalone capability, the company treated it as part of its core IT environment from the beginning. “We were most concerned about making sure we had the right guardrails in place from a regulatory compliance perspective,” says Butcher. “How do we ensure we’re not sharing sensitive company information or intellectual property?”

Because KARL STORZ operates globally, those expectations had to hold across regions with different requirements for data residency, retention, and access. IT, legal, compliance, and security aligned on a shared model so that AI capabilities would operate within the same boundaries as the rest of the environment.

Embedding AI into the enterprise environment

With regulatory requirements in place, the path forward became clear.

“We wanted to use Microsoft Copilot where our data already lives,” says Oliver Rösch, Global IT Architect, KARL STORZ. “There was no need to move information outside of our established environment.”

That decision kept AI aligned with how work already happened. Employees continued working within Microsoft 365 while gaining AI capabilities within the same environment. “Copilot respected our existing data permission structure. It’s designed to only deliver documents that users are already authorized to access,” says Rösch.

Aligning AI output to existing permissions allowed KARL STORZ to scale without changing how access was managed. IT could extend new capabilities while reinforcing the same governance model already in place.

KARL STORZ began with a focused rollout tied to real work. Teams used Microsoft 365 Copilot for meeting summaries, drafting, and information retrieval—tasks that previously required switching between tools and manually reconstructing context.

Embedding those capabilities directly into Microsoft 365 reduced that friction. Work that once required navigating multiple systems could now be completed in a more connected way.

Adoption followed quickly. Active usage reached 97% across licensed users, with 93% returning month over month. These signals reflect sustained use. Copilot became part of how work gets done rather than an isolated experiment.

From productivity gains to broader impact

As usage expanded, the impact became more visible in day-to-day work. Copilot reduced the need to search across systems before taking action and helped teams move more quickly from information to execution.

Employees can generate meeting summaries, pull relevant documents, and draft follow-ups in one place. 

“Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat was really a game changer. It’s natively integrated into Microsoft. You’re getting information from SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook. With no silos, Copilot easily finds the conversations and the information,” says Marius Sigmund, Senior Director of Global IT Digital Platforms, at KARL STORZ.  

This shift streamlined work that previously required manual coordination. Instead of moving between tools or recreating context, teams could access relevant information within a single environment.

“Once we enabled Copilot, we realized how important document hygiene really is,” says Hannah Ryan, AI Analyst, KARL STORZ.

Copilot made the quality of underlying information more visible. Outdated or inconsistently structured content became easier to spot as employees relied more on AI to surface and synthesize information.

Improving how documents are created, stored, and maintained became part of strengthening the system itself. In this way, Copilot influenced both how work is completed and how information is managed across the organization.

From an IT perspective, the impact builds over time. Copilot simplifies day-to-day work while reinforcing the importance of a well-governed information environment.

Building toward the next phase of AI

Building on a cohesive foundation, the company is moving into more advanced scenarios.

“The first step was providing information from documents,” says Butcher. “The next step is making that information more tailored to the individual and eventually supporting broader business processes.”

This progression moves AI from access to action. Early use cases focus on retrieving and summarizing information, while future scenarios extend into more contextual, process-driven work.

At the same time, KARL STORZ continues to expand its Copilot rollout. After scaling to 2,000 users, the organization is extending access more broadly, with plans to expand to 5,000 licenses across the business. This growth reflects sustained adoption and growing confidence across the business.

Because Copilot operates within Microsoft 365, the expansion does not require reworking governance or introducing new systems. Identity, permissions, and compliance structures scale alongside usage, allowing IT to extend AI capabilities while maintaining consistency.

As these use cases increase, the same governance and architectural decisions continue to support scale. KARL STORZ approached AI as infrastructure. By using Copilot capabilities within Microsoft 365, aligning it with governance from the start, and supporting adoption through structured enablement, the organization created a model that scales while maintaining control.

For IT leaders, this approach demonstrates how governed AI can scale inside an existing environment while maintaining security and compliance controls. KARL STORZ extends AI into new workflows while upholding the standards required in a regulated industry and setting the foundation for continued innovation as AI becomes part of everyday work.

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