Microsoft 365 Copilot: What it is, Uses and Benefits

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot

In the context of adopting new technologies, there is a fundamental reality: the use of digital tools by people often exceeds our expectations and control. With the emergence of generative AI-driven technologies like ChatGPT just over a year ago and now M365 Copilot, a significant challenge arises for leaders of organizations of all kinds. They face the challenge of guiding their teams at a time when both the tools and their work are constantly changing and evolving, making it very difficult to assess the return on investment of adopting them at the enterprise level. Additionally, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation: Is our environment prepared and optimized to deploy M365 Copilot with guarantees?Suddenly, doubts arise due to the lack of visibility to detect and mitigate risks related to security breaches or inappropriate information exposure, and due to the lack of knowledge about government regulations on data privacy, the ethical use of AI, or transparency in automated decision-making.

Programs Where to Use M365 Copilot

• Microsoft Word: Copilot can help draft and edit documents, facilitating content creation.
• Microsoft Excel: Uses AI to analyze data and generate reports, optimizing spreadsheet work.
• Microsoft PowerPoint: Transforms texts into visually appealing presentations, improving efficiency in slide creation.
• Microsoft Outlook: Manages emails and summarizes conversation threads, simplifying communication and email organization.
• Microsoft Teams: Ability to transcribe or summarize meetings, improving their management and follow-up.
• Chatbot for Microsoft 365: In development, aimed at using data to generate useful summaries and reports.

Uses of Microsoft Copilot

Copilot in PowerPoint transforms your ideas into impressive presentations with ease. Ideal for those with fewer creative skills, it acts as a perfect assistant for storytelling. This tool can convert written documents into detailed presentations, including notes and references to enhance your presentation. It also allows you to start a new presentation from a simple prompt or outline. With a single click, Copilot can condense extensive presentations and perfect the design. It reformats text and synchronizes animations seamlessly using your natural language instructions.

Features include:

• Creating draft presentations in slides from information in other documents.
• Summarizing extensive presentations.
• Modifying the design of specific slides.
• Compacting text and synchronizing it with existing animations in a presentation.

Benefits of Incorporating Copilot in a Company

Deploying Copilot in our organization without previously checking the health of our environment in terms of information governance, security, privacy, and identity protection can be very dangerous. Copilot is natively secure, private, complies with government regulations, and is responsible, but humans are not.When deploying Copilot, security holes that have been open for a long time but have so far remained hidden in a sea of documents may come to light.It is highly recommended that before performing a massive deployment of this technology in our company, we review sensitive information, labels, DLP, SharePoint permissions, compliance, etc., to ensure that when making queries, employees only receive responses based on documents they have at least read permissions for.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many licenses are needed?

The allocation of Copilot licenses must be strategic, focusing on specific roles such as executives and sales teams, as not all employees need it or would use it efficiently, considering the training and adoption costs when evaluating its ROI.

Is training needed to use it?

The changing environment of M365 Copilot requires a focus on learning to learn, ensuring that employees quickly adapt to new functionalities with continuous training and little organizational support. Effective adoption of Copilot focuses on practical and relevant use cases for the daily tasks of each department.

When can my company adopt this technology?

Implementing Copilot without previously reviewing the health of the company’s environment in terms of information governance, security, and privacy can reveal pre-existing security gaps. Before a massive deployment, it is crucial to review sensitive information and permissions to ensure that employees only access authorized documents.

Is it profitable for my business to use M365 Copilot?

Although the initial cost of M365 Copilot for a company of 300 employees may seem high (€9,000/month), the time savings it provides justifies the investment. For example, if it helps a data analyst earning €50,000/year save at least one hour a month, a return on investment of 1:1 is achieved. Previous experience with AI like ChatGPT, which has offered an ROI of 60:1, suggests that integrating corporate data from M365 Copilot could further increase accuracy and efficiency.

Conclusion

The adoption of M365 Copilot in companies is a strategic decision that is not limited only to technological implementation. The commitment is focused on continuous training and employee adaptability, along with ensuring proper data management and providing security.On the other hand, accurately identifying those employees who will truly benefit from Copilot and evaluating their return on investment in economic terms, efficiency, and added value will allow organizations to move towards a more efficient and productive company.By adopting a culture of continuous learning and experimentation and firmly focusing on information security, we will place our company and its employees in a favorable position to successfully face a work environment that we do not know where it will take us but that we do know will evolve very quickly and continuously over the coming years.If you want to know how Artificial Intelligence can be integrated and give a boost to your company, do not hesitate to contact us.