By Heath Huxtable, Executive head at Braintree
400 million paid Office 365 users. That’s how many users have invested into the Microsoft ecosystem as of its latest earnings report which also showcased impressive overall growth for the company at a time when most are struggling. A large percentage of this growth is attributed to Microsoft’s decision to incorporate Copilot into almost everything – currently it’s available on 75 million Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems and this is only set to grow as more companies adopt the technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) empowered productivity is on a rapid rise throughout the Microsoft ecosystem as it enhances systems and processes across everything from GitHub to emails. However, companies should pause before they integrate to ensure they get the value they expect from this technology.
Currently, all companies with a Microsoft 365 licence have access to the basic version of Copilot, an intelligent chatbot capable of providing answers pulled from the web. It provides minimal support within the ecosystem and online and offers no commercial protection for the data that’s being entered into its system. The next level of Copilot is available within companies that have a corporate account or Office 365 licence and an active directory account. It’s indicated by the Pre-Copilot icon on the desktop and comes with several layers of data protection. Finally, there’s the subscription model of Copilot that costs $30 per user per month and that grants comprehensive access to everything within the Copilot ecosystem from Outlook to Office to everything else in between.
And this is where companies should pause before clicking the ‘Subscribe’ button. Implementing Microsoft Copilot should follow a steady, incremental approach that allows time for the business to answer crucial questions about infrastructure, strategy and user readiness. Companies need to consider the journey – how will Copilot best be leveraged within the business, how can it be optimised within different silos and departments, what are the areas that would benefit most from the technology – and their data – how clean is the data, how accessible is it, how can it be fully leveraged by the Copilot functionality?
The most important ingredient for the successful integration of Copilot is the data. It must be clean, structured and in the cloud. Copilot cannot access data that isn’t in the cloud which means companies will only feel the benefit of the technology if they’ve already embarked on a cloud-ready strategy.
Companies need to know where their data is sitting, who can access that data, and how this will be managed within the Copilot environment. Managing and cleaning the data needs to be a priority as companies need established data and security protocols to ensure user access to information is contained. IT needs visibility into which users can access which parts of the system using the Copilot functionality to ensure security and data privacy remain a priority.
Accessing, using and optimising Copilot also hinges on the data layer being connected to the Microsoft Graph – if this isn’t set up correctly, Copilot doesn’t know where to go for information and will essentially be just an expensive AI assistant sitting on the desktop. It can pull data from Word documents and information on the desktop, but it won’t be capable of providing in-depth analysis, offering perhaps 10% of the true extent of the technology.
However, if the ‘i’s are dotted and the ‘t’s are crossed, Copilot can deliver a return on its initial investment – both in time and money.
The $30 per user per month price tag isn’t cheap, but the hours returned to the business in terms of admin reductions, improved data visibility, enhanced productivity and streamlined collaboration more than add up to a measurable ROI. Copilot is capable of sifting through vast quantities of data to answer core business questions, speed up access to information, find threads and patterns, and identify ways of optimising business processes.
It's worth the time taken to unpick the data layers within the business and embed the right levels of security. A Copilot questionnaire should be developed to take customers on a journey through their business, unpacking their data locations, their licensing modules, the number of employees requiring access to Copilot, and their level of access. With this project-led approach, companies can fully realise the potential of Copilot, creating an environment agile enough to enhance data access and evolve with this technology.
