From 53% to 86%: Scaling AI Across a National Beverage Distributor

The organization had invested in several AI tools: Copilot Chat for every associate, Amazon Quick for a select group and Claude for specialist users. The licences were in place, but most people had not yet seen the value. In a baseline survey, most respondents said they rarely or never used Copilot Chat, and more than half were using other AI tools. Some associates still relied on an older in-house chatbot that was due to be retired.

Leadership wanted to grow productivity without adding expensive licences too quickly. They needed a clear policy on responsible AI use, a group of internal champions, and training that spoke to the work their sales, finance and operations teams do every day.

We built a tiered program around three audiences. Each audience got the tools and depth of training that fit its role.

• All employees: a mandatory AI Acceptable Use policy eLearning, assigned to more than 6,300 associates with weekly completion tracking
• AI Champions: 210 peer leaders onboarded to Amazon Quick through seven live sessions covering Spaces, Deep Research, custom agents and AI in everyday Microsoft 365 apps
• Copilot for everyone: a five-part live series, from "Meet Copilot" through prompt engineering and agents to a final session on use cases for the company's own workstreams
• Team-based sessions: dedicated sessions for Trade Analytics, eCommerce, Category Development and Customer Insights, Field Market Operations and Customer Development
• Realistic practice: hands-on demos using sample account profiles, supplier reviews and executive dashboards that mirrored real sales and finance work
• Resource hub: an AI Enablement site with session recordings, prompts, FAQs and tips
• Measurement throughout: registration and attendance tracking, post-session surveys, and Copilot and Quick usage compared before and after training

Over 1,000 people attended the Copilot sessions and nearly 400 attended the Champions sessions. The biggest change showed up in day-to-day usage.

• Copilot use nearly doubled: 86% of trained employees were active in the last 30 days, up from 53%. Active use among employees who were not trained rose by only 8 points.
• Lapsed users came back: 82% of trained employees who had stopped using Copilot returned, compared with 37% of everyone else.
• Deeper use: prompts per user grew five times faster among trained employees.
• Amazon Quick took hold: monthly active users more than doubled compared with July, queries rose 43%, and use of custom agents grew about six times.

Participants rated the training highly

• Copilot sessions: 4.66 out of 5. 97% rated the training 4 or 5, and 90% said they could apply what they learned.
• Champions sessions: 4.31 out of 5. 94% left with a specific action to apply, and 94% would recommend the sessions.

For most people, AI is not a habit, so they don't see the value. This program shows that practical, role-based training can turn licences that are already paid for into daily use, with results leaders can measure. The organization now has a Champions network, a governance foundation and a clear roadmap to scale.