How Microsoft Copilot can make you an AI-powered organization

ARTICLE | April 30, 2024

Authored by RSM US LLP

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how companies in all industries do business, introducing new opportunities to increase business capabilities, efficiency and insight. One of the key applications at the center of this current AI revolution is Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, an AI companion that helps users unlock new levels of creativity, productivity and analytics.

RSM US LLP’s Todd Bleeker and William Jones recently joined presenters from Microsoft and AI for Social Progress and Economic Growth (AI4SP) for a webcast that provides details into how Copilot works, and reviews current trends for the application and its transformative potential moving forward.

The current AI landscape

Recent AI4SP research shows that 76% of organizations are familiar with AI and 52% are currently using AI, with different degrees of adoption. Almost three-quarters of survey respondents (74%) are satisfied with AI results, but 57% have security and privacy concerns. The reasons companies have not used AI yet include misconceptions about cost, return on investment or use cases; skill gaps and trust; and lack of awareness.

The data shows that most companies are using AI to take advantage of automation to reduce costs. Automation of marketing, sales and client interactions; employee recruitment and retention; scheduling; and data-driven decision making round out the top uses of AI.

Your peers are likely using AI to improve key processes. If you have not already, you should begin considering a strategy to embrace AI in a responsible way that maintains the security of data and information.

How Copilot is powering change

Copilot is integrated into the Microsoft 365 applications you likely already use, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams and Outlook. All the data points you have access to, such as emails, files stored in OneDrive, calendars and meetings are securely shared between Microsoft Graph and a large language model to create responses to your requests from Copilot.

In terms of security, you remain in control of the data in your specific graph, as nobody else has access to your specific information. Your data remains your data, and that is unique among other leading AI applications.

“The content you query and prompts and responses that you use are solely for your benefit and only for you to see,” says Bleeker.

With the benefits available within Copilot, saying that it is changing the way people work is no exaggeration. With advantages available with Copilot, users can:

• Enhance productivity: Copilot can rapidly find and summarize content, draft documents, revise and improve content, and analyze content so you can gain a deeper understanding.
• Strengthen searches: With Copilot, the web and all of your work is easy to query. Securely find answers from real-time content on the web, or from personal data within Graph.
• Jump-start the writing process: Copilot in Word can transform writing efficiency and creativity. Seamlessly create first drafts, rewrite sections, receive suggestions for improvement, summarize text and discover additional information.
• Stay focused on productivity: Copilot in Outlook can manage necessary follow-ups and generate more effective communications. It can summarize email threads, customize email prompts, include viewpoints in conversation summaries and create meeting prep materials.
• Increase coordination with teams and customers: With Copilot in Teams, you can stay on top of chats, meetings and calls. Catch up with anything you miss, summarize meeting decisions and tasks, build agendas based on past meetings, and discover answers based on existing chats and meetings.
• Recap meetings: Copilot can generate built-in meeting summaries with answers to questions from users.
• Analyze data and generate formulas: Copilot in Excel can analyze, comprehend and visualize data with ease. You can create new formula columns or inset charts, insert pivot tables, refine data and identify trends, and create visualizations.
• Store, access and prioritize notes: With Copilot in OneNote, you can revolutionize the way you plan, stay prepared and take action. You can discover deeper insights about your notes, make better sense of longer notes, and organize sections or generate bulleted lists.

Copilot everywhere

Since Copilot is already integrated in many of the key productivity tools you already have in place, with further expansion into applications such as SharePoint, OneDrive and Stream coming soon, the potential time savings to search for information, summarize a missed meeting or even draft an email are already significant, and efficiencies will only grow as Copilot becomes more integrated into your environment.

Getting ready for Copilot

Implementing Copilot is unlike anything many businesses have seen before, as it uses natural language to interact; it is a big change from past processes. Your organization should still create a comprehensive plan to build a foundation for success. The key elements of that plan include developing a governance strategy, identifying the implementation team, outlining business scenarios, defining goals, drafting a mission statement and establishing a training approach.

In addition to the plan, your security processes should be reviewed, including whether your teams have proper access to content and if anything needs a closer look before being introduced within Copilot.

The takeaway

Copilot has the potential to transform many of the key processes within your business. It can enable employees to become more productive, collaborative and effective. But it will mean changes to how users navigate their productivity applications and a detailed plan to help ensure it delivers on expectations. However, those efforts can pay big dividends through the competitive edge it delivers throughout the organization.

Getting ready for Copilot

Implementing Copilot is unlike anything many businesses have seen before, as it uses natural language to interact; it is a big change from past processes. Your organization should still create a comprehensive plan to build a foundation for success. The key elements of that plan include developing a governance strategy, identifying the implementation team, outlining business scenarios, defining goals, drafting a mission statement and establishing a training approach.

In addition to the plan, your security processes should be reviewed, including whether your teams have proper access to content and if anything needs a closer look before being introduced within Copilot.

The takeaway

Copilot has the potential to transform many of the key processes within your business. It can enable employees to become more productive, collaborative and effective. But it will mean changes to how users navigate their productivity applications and a detailed plan to help ensure it delivers on expectations. However, those efforts can pay big dividends through the competitive edge it delivers throughout the organization.

For more on the webcast, the full recording and presentation slides are now available.

All of the research we shared in the presentation is available on the Microsoft and AI4SP.org website, as well as the free AI Compass evaluation, which provides a personalized assessment with recommendations on how to implement AI responsibility for your company to increase revenue or reduce costs.

RSM and Microsoft are also excited to offer you a no-cost AI consultation. Visit our complimentary AI consulting evaluation for small and medium-sized organizations to sign up. Once you select your preferred method of contact on the form, you will have the option to choose RSM as the Microsoft event sponsor.