In this Office Optional with Larry English, Larry discusses Microsoft Copilot as a viable option for meeting AI business needs and the steps you need to take to get ready for rollout.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Although Uncle Ben originally imparted this wisdom to Spider-Man, there isn’t a more important guiding principle for business leaders to follow when becoming AI ready.
In early 2024, Microsoft made Copilot for Microsoft 365, its AI assistant, widely available to organizations of all sizes. This represents a huge opportunity for companies to take advantage of the powerful productivity gains possible with AI.
But there’s also big potential risk around compliance, data privacy and job disruption. Careful, intentional preparation is necessary both to ensure successful adoption and to mitigate the risks associated with artificial intelligence.
Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Get Ready For Copilot
Microsoft Copilot can accomplish an impressive array of tasks, including instantly summarizing large bodies of content; retrieving and synthesizing information saved across multiple files; analyzing data; and drafting emails, articles, and presentations.
Early adopter results speak to the impact this tool can have. According to Microsoft, 70 percent of users said Copilot made them more productive, 57 percent said it made them more creative and 68 percent said it improved their work quality.
In other words, Copilot has the potential to transform work. Organizations that become AI ready now will quickly realize productivity gains, leaving their competitors behind. Think of it like compound interest. Copilot and similar AI tools learn and improve as they’re used, so investing now not only means value today but increasing value over time.
If you’re doubting how ubiquitous Copilot and other AI tools will become in the workplace, consider this: It took seven years for 100 million users to begin using the internet. To reach that same milestone, it took Facebook 4.5 years and ChatGPT only two months. The AI wave is coming and quickly. There’s simply no stopping it.
A Strategic Plan For Microsoft 365 Copilot Readiness
Acquiring a Copilot license is one small step on the road to the safe and strategic use of AI in the workplace. Before letting employees begin using Copilot, organizations need to become AI ready by completing the following four steps:
1. Educate leadership on AI and Copilot.
The first step of a successful Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness journey is to get full leadership buy-in. Leaders need to understand the capabilities of both AI generally and Copilot specifically. Identify specific use cases across the organization and what roles would benefit the most from an AI assistant.
2. Complete a technical Copilot readiness assessment.
This is a big hurdle for companies when opting for AI. Data needs to be in the right place for Copilot to access and be useful to people. At the same time, organizations need to ensure only the appropriate data is accessible. For example, you don’t want users to have access to sensitive information such as employee salaries or information controlled by regulatory bodies.
In short, it’s essential to have proper access controls and policies around data retention and data sharing. Microsoft does offer a tool, Microsoft Purview, to help organizations manage, protect and govern data, but many organizations will also want to turn to a trusted third party to help with this high-risk aspect of AI readiness.
3. Have a plan for Copilot adoption.
Even the most fully productive organizations can benefit from Copilot, but you can’t simply turn the tool on and expect to see amazing results. Leaders and employees alike must reevaluate their processes to identify where the tool can best accelerate productivity. What tasks eat up a lot of time? Where can Copilot help lighten the workload and free up employees to focus on higher-value tasks?
Additionally, to ensure widespread Copilot adoption, leaders must provide training on Copilot and its capabilities. Training should include prompt engineering – the quality of the prompts you feed into Copilot directly impacts the quality of the tool’s output. A great tool is Microsoft’s Copilot Lab, a portal that offers education on prompt engineering, including many specific scenarios.
4. Align on short- and long-term goals for Copilot.
Organizations should know what they’re hoping to achieve with Copilot. Increased productivity, fewer meetings, more rapid response to sales leads and smoother collaboration are just a few examples. Have goals in mind for the short- and long-term, then take advantage of the Copilot dashboard to track the tool’s productivity impact. It provides a number of useful metrics, such as active users, what Copilot features they’re using, hours saved and more.
The time is now to take action and get ready for Copilot. Two years from now, organizations that have used Copilot from the beginning will have realized impressive productivity gains. What’s more, throughout that entire time, the Copilot tool will just keep improving, becoming an increasingly more powerful productivity accelerator.
Microsoft recently changed its licensing model for those who can access Copilot for M365, opening it up to more businesses and individual users. Learn what this means for you.
