What Microsoft Copilot Could Mean for Your Business
The September 21st Microsoft Event revealed several game-changing features coming to Microsoft 365 customers starting November 1st, 2023, which includes some free new features within Bing Chat for the general public. With Microsoft aiming to transform the way you work, Copilot will have a humungous impact on employee productivity across a multitude of different departments and job descriptions.
Learn about how being an early adopter of Copilot will help you gain a competitive advantage in numerous key areas of your supply chain.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered productivity tool that combines your organization's data with large language models (LLMs). In case you’re not familiar, LLM is a type of AI that uses statistical models to analyze vast amounts of text to learn patterns and connections between words and phrases of existing content to generate original content. Integrated with other 365 apps (such as Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Power Automate, and Outlook), Microsoft’s Copilot aims to provide an unparalleled unified experience for users. Copilot is designed to be a versatile tool, able to be leveraged by a range of different industries for a range of different functions. Some of the industries include the Real Estate, Financial, Healthcare, Retail, and Manufacturing Industries which will benefit from a range of enhanced functions through Copilot such as for Marketing, Data Analysis, Task Management, and more.
How does Microsoft Copilot work (via: Microsoft)
Key Features and Highlights
With Copilot’s integration to Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, Power BI, and PowerPoint, to name a few, users will now have the ability to ask Copilot to carry out a task, have Teams calls transcribed, easily transform presentations, and swiftly excel in Excel. Beyond the basic features and functions Copilot can carry out, some of the more interesting concepts Copilot can be applied to include:
Efficient learning
Teams within an organization can quickly educate themselves on an internal subject, project, client, or process by simply asking Copilot
The onboarding process for employees will become much simpler, which may serve as a huge contributing factor to employee retention
Ever had an employee leave? Knowledge retention could save your company millions.
Unified database
(Example) When using Copilot for Teams, you can engage with clients without needing to take notes or use an external transcribing software. With this feature, you are able to open up Word and ask Copilot to create a proposal or Statement of Works (SOW) based off of the meeting notes with any particular client. This process can save employees countless hours of tedious work. This feature could greatly benefit businesses who create action items out of meeting minutes.
In Power Automate, Copilot can understand your intent, set up connections, apply parameters, and make changes to your flow based on your requests. It can also answer questions about your flow and the product, pull out relevant information from other sources within your internal database (that you have access to), and provide helpful guidance along the way to help you streamline your automation process by making it faster, easier, and more intuitive to build flows that suit your needs.
Continuous learning & personalization
Most businesses have standard practices in regards to documentation and client deliverables. One of the capabilities of Copilot is that it is able to continuously learn and evolve with you, allowing it conform to certain templates employees need to abide by for their deliverables. This could apply to a multitude of scenarios, helping employees maintain brand consistency, compliance, and more.
Copilot example: (via: Microsoft)
How to Prepare Your Business for Microsoft Copilot
In addition to training courses that Microsoft posts online for users to get familiar with Copilot, it’s essential to know whether your business is ready for A.I. or not. Perform a A.I. readiness assessment: Set clear goals, get a diverse team on board, and make sure the top brass supports you. Sort your data, check if your tech can handle AI, and see if your team needs some AI know-how knowledge. Don't forget the legalities, restrictions, ethics, alignment of AI with your business goals, and most importantly; a strategy that plans for risks and costs.
Prepare for Copilot
In order to use Copilot, you will need the following:
Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license; if you are a SMB Customer a base license of Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium
An Azure Active Directory-based account
A OneDrive Account
New Outlook for Windows
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Loop
How much does Copilot cost?
Microsoft Copilot will be an add-on cost to your existing 365 subscription. As of now, Copilot is priced at $30 USD per user; available for users with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium licenses.
Microsoft Co-Pilot will be available on Nov. 1st, 2023.
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