Artificial intelligence is one of the headline technologies of the modern world and is shaping how companies work massively. One of the most recent developments in AI has been language models — they’re powerful, easy to use, and can transform your daily workflow tenfold.

Enter Copilot for Microsoft 365. Microsoft has taken the technology behind the most powerful language model — GPT — and used it to power its own tool, to help businesses utilise its tremendous power. Copilot gives you your own AI assistant, which can boost your productivity and unlock time throughout the day.

In this article, we’re going to go over how you can ensure that your Copilot implementation is successful. We’ll go over how Copilot works, as well as how you can prepare for the arrival of Copilot into your organisation.

Understanding Copilot for Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a game-changing technology for any company. It’s your own AI-powered assistant, that is designed to not only enhance your productivity throughout the day but also unlock the potential of your other Microsoft 365 applications.

Leveraging large language models — namely GPT — to be able to understand prompts and undertake tasks, Microsoft Copilot is easily one of the most powerful features in the Microsoft ecosystem. What would’ve once taken hours now can be done in a few sentences, and Copilot can even provide insights and analysis along the way.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is available within every Microsoft 365 application. Here are some of the things that it can do within each —

  • Outlook: You can use Copilot to draft emails in seconds, summarise conversations between multiple people, and schedule meetings. On top of this, you can also use Copilot to label emails and find important information quickly.
  • Word: Copilot makes drafting documents easier than ever. You just need to prompt whatever you’d like it to write, and Copilot will do the rest. Copilot can also summarise text, suggest edits, and do so much more based on your writing.
  • Excel: You can use Copilot to analyse data from your spreadsheets, create visualisations and reports, and edit your data much more efficiently.
  • Powerpoint: With Copilot, you can easily generate presentations, or ask for design suggestions. You can also generate content, as well as use all of the language features of Copilot to improve the content.
  • Teams: Copilot in Teams lets you summarise meetings in seconds, generate further actions from that summarisation, and helps you find relevant information with ease.

While there are other AI tools you can use within a browser online for free, Copilot also boasts great security. This means that using it to input sensitive information is safe and won’t let that information become available to other users. It also means that you can use it and take advantage of the higher level of personalisation due to your organisational data.

On top of this, Copilot complies with all of the relevant data protection regulations, meaning that you’ll never breach compliance using it.

Preparing Your Organisation for AI Integration

Technical Readiness

Ensuring that you’re technically ready for Copilot is critical to making sure that you don’t have any speed-bumps throughout the process of implementation. To do this, you’ll need to assess your existing IT infrastructure, data, and security posture to make sure that they’re ready for Copilot’s requirements.

Here are some of the things you should focus on —

  • Licensing: First and foremost, you need to make sure that you have the correct licenses. Microsoft 365 is required, so making sure that your whole 365 implementation is correct for Copilot is vital.
  • Connectivity and Compatibility: You need to make sure that data connectivity is seamless within your organisation, and see which of your other applications or integrations outside of 365 are compatible with Copilot.
  • Data: Making sure that you have all the correct data, and that it’s secured, is a vital step. Copilot will use organisational data to generate answers from, and so ensuring it’s all correct is vital.

Business Leader Enablement

Making sure that business leaders are ready for Copilot’s arrival is vital, as they will need to know how Copilot works more than anyone to be able to implement it into the wider business strategy.

The first step would be to teach AI fundamentals and the basics of Copilot. In this, you’d need to demystify AI and ensure that ethical considerations are discussed and understood. You’d also discuss the capabilities of AI, to make sure that any strategic planning is realistic.

You’d then need to use Copilot to develop a strategy. This means figuring out ways to use Copilot in your organisation — whether it be problem-solving, decision-making, or innovation and creativity. Then, you can begin to make a data-driven culture that is AI-literate, to ensure that you can get as much as possible out of Copilot without confusion.

Departmental Enablement

It’s also important to make sure that you enable different departments within your business to use Copilot to ensure adoption is smooth and done in a relevant manner.

This means identifying the roles of each department finding their needs, and then implementing Copilot in a manner that will benefit them most. By ensuring that everyone in relevant departments has access to Copilot — as well as training on how they can use Copilot to benefit their department  — you can ensure that you’re making the most of Copilot in every department.

This, once again, requires research, preparation, and creating an AI-aware culture by training users on utilising Copilot as well as its benefits.

How We Can Help

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is one of the most powerful  AI tools available, and utilising it effectively within your organisation will take your business to new heights. By preparing for its arrival, you can hit the ground running, and take advantage of its benefits instantly.

If you’re looking to get started with Microsoft Copilot but need a helping hand, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to be able to be successful with Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Get in touch with us now, and see how we can help.