What can Microsoft Copilot do for my business?

Microsoft’s generative AI is transforming the ways work gets done. Not by replacing humans with machines, but by helping people get tasks done more efficiently and effectively as a ‘Copilot’. The extent of these integrations is a game-changer. In fact, a better question might be: what could you do better with a Copilot?

Microsoft announced the rollout of various Copilots into some of your favorite productivity tools in 2023. In its earliest form, Copilot – your everyday AI companion – started rolling out from September that year as a free update to Windows 11 in products such as Bing and Edge. 

For enterprise customers, Copilot for Microsoft 365 became generally available from November 1st, 2023. In January 2024, it finally became available to all. Still playing catch-up? Here’s an introduction to Copilots. 

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot is a next-generation AI for work. Combining your data with chat interfaces and large language models (LLMs) Copilots answer, create, and take actions from natural language prompts inside Microsoft 365.  

Microsoft positioned itself as a ‘Copilot’ company in 2023, integrating generative AI across multiple products. And, if you need further evidence that Microsoft is all-in on AI, look no further than the first major change to Windows keyboards in 30 years – the introduction of the Copilot key in 2024. 

With Microsoft owning around 50% of OpenAI – the creators of ChatGPT – 2024 is gearing up to be the year for democratizing AI, making it available to all. In enterprises with a Microsoft tech stack, AI Copilots will become increasingly incorporated into Microsoft 365 apps and everyday workflows. So what might that look like for your organization?

How you can work with Copilots

Copilots eliminate the need to click through multiple layers of a user interface. Instead, the  AI surfaces and synthesizes information within any given context in response to natural language prompts inside a chat. This communication facilitates a frictionless interaction between humans and AI. It also presents limitless possibilities. 

Here are just some of the applications inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem:

• Draft content, such as proposals, in Word using information from other documents. Copilot scans the files, then extracts key information. It can even format the content.

• Summarize a Teams meeting. Copilot can summarize the meeting so far, the key points, and actions to take forward. It can also summarize the sentiment of the room.

• Research information to resolve a customer problem automatically when an email is received inside Outlook. Copilot can also personalize replies.

• Transform proposals in Word documents into PowerPoint presentations (or the other way around). Then edit and polish them using Copilot prompts.   

• Analyze data like sales results, and derive trends and actionable insights in no time at all. Copilot can also follow up on trends and visualize ‘what if’ scenarios.  

Copilot in WorkPoint 365

Any AI integration within our platform needs to provide real value for Partners, customers, and end-users. That’s why we have a dedicated AI team with responsibility for implementing AI within WorkPoint 365. At the same time, we’re an enabler of AI, specifically Copilot implementations within Microsoft-based organizations. 

One of the major hurdles to the adoption of AI tools is the safety and security of data. What if the AI surfaces data that it wasn’t supposed to? This presents a huge risk, and organizations need to be able to trust their Copilots.

WorkPoint provides governance and an extra layer of security over SharePoint, and important data held by your organization, ensuring user access is up-to-date, and that they have just-enough access. That’s in addition to the protection already provided by Microsoft. Our solution also helps get your data AI-ready, by automating metadata tagging for example,  thus enabling you to leverage the benefits of Copilots without putting data at risk. 

Discover how WorkPoint 365 can enable your organisation to become AI-ready.