Jeremy Wanamaker | Jan 20, 2025
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Recent advancements in generative AI have lifted the field from the shadows of research labs to become a key topic for business leaders. The buzz is palpable. The fear of missing out is real. Everyone seems to have adopted a gold rush mentality.
One unfortunate truth, however, is that many of the leading AI solutions available today are prohibitively complex or costly to deploy. Typically, specialized training and expertise are required to derive real-world benefits from these tools. Such steep barriers to entry can prove challenging for small businesses operating with limited capital and technical resources.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean sophisticated AI is completely out of reach for these organizations.
Copilot for Microsoft 365, for example, has emerged as a comprehensive, user-friendly, and economical option that directly injects AI into day-to-day workplace operations. This article thoroughly explores Copilot and offers practical examples of how small businesses can use it to greatly benefit their organization.
| “With Microsoft Office Copilot, small businesses can harness the power of AI to enhance productivity, streamline collaboration, and drive smarter decisions effortlessly.” – Jeremy Wanamaker, CEO of Complete Network |
When explaining Copilot to our clients, the first question we often hear is – “Isn’t Copilot just the Bing version of ChatGPT?” The short answer is no.
However, the confusion is understandable because Microsoft offers a Copilot feature for Bing users to enhance their search experience with a conversational chatbot.
M365 Copilot, available for Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium as well as Enterprise subscribers, is more expansive in terms of its scope and use cases. It offers a complete suite of AI-powered capabilities embedded within popular Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, OneNote, Whiteboard, and Power BI, to name a few.
Under the hood, Copilot connects generative models directly to company-specific data repositories. Using Microsoft Graph, it pulls insights and information from documents, emails, and meeting chats. The system is designed to derive understanding and context from these data points, enabling accurate, relevant responses tailored to your specific organization’s unique policies, communication channels, and workflows.
Essentially, M365 Copilot is like having a skilled coworker in the form of an AI assistant who is always at your side, ready to help.
The second most common question we’re asked is – “Is my company’s proprietary data safe with Copilot.” The short answer is yes.
Microsoft is aware of users’ privacy concerns. The company explicitly states that “your data is logically isolated and protected within your Microsoft 365 tenant, and always within your control.” They also stress that “your data isn’t used to train the models.”
Having explored Copilot for Microsoft 365 at a high level, let’s dive deeper into the core benefits for small businesses. Through our experience, we’ve identified three areas where Copilot positively impacts day-to-day operations: saving time, enhancing communication, and facilitating better decision-making.
For this next section, we’ll expound on each of these benefits in detail.
Time efficiency directly impacts profitability. Anything that accelerates workflows, streamlines collaboration, and increases the throughput of key business functions positively influences a company’s financial health.
M365 Copilot liberates employees from several time-consuming duties by furnishing the capability to automate a range of tasks, such as updating Excel and producing PowerPoint slides to more complex processes.
Take scheduling as an example. Traditionally, creating a schedule demands significant administrative effort. Someone must coordinate calendars, propose meeting times, and suggest alternative slots when conflicts arise. Copilot can automatically send calendar invitations, reserve meeting rooms, and adjust schedules when conflicts arise.
This level of automation minimizes the amount of back-and-forth communication previously required, freeing up time for more strategic activities.
Another area where Copilot can help skyrocket productivity and reduce time is generating initial drafts of reports, proposals, or marketing materials. Typically producing such pieces requires extensive research, data compilation, and coordination among team members. However, since Copilot is content-aware regarding your organization’s existing company data, prior communications, and relevant market information it’s able to accelerate this process.
When all team members operate from the same page and clearly understand their roles and responsibilities, operational efficiency is significantly enhanced. Unsurprisingly, Copilot helps with this too.
To build upon the automation example above, Copilot for Microsoft 365 goes beyond its ability to automate scheduling by enhancing meeting preparation as well.
For instance, meeting prep usually requires substantial time invested in gathering relevant materials, understanding context, and setting clear agendas.
Microsoft 365 Copilot addresses these challenges by autonomously compiling essential information from previous meeting notes, pertinent documents, and key discussion points, providing a comprehensive briefing that ensures all participants are thoroughly prepared. It also helps with note-taking during meetings by transcribing discussions in real-time, highlighting action items, and capturing decisions made.
Another persistent challenge that M365 Copilot helps to alleviate is managing email correspondence efficiently. Many users find that Copilot excels in both summarizing lengthy email threads and assisting in composing emails since it:
| Learn More About How You Can leverage AI safely for your Business |
The modern business battlefield is won by organizations that can best transform raw information into strategic foresight.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 greatly lowers the barrier to advanced data engagement, empowering a wider array of your workforce to interact with relevant data via natural language. This democratization of analytics encourages a scenario where more individuals, regardless of their technical skill level, can extract insights to inform strategic decision-making.
Consider a junior marketing coordinator in a small business who lacks proficiency in tools like Microsoft Excel. Traditionally, surfacing insights from sales data would require complex spreadsheet wrangling. With Copilot, this barrier is significantly lowered.
The coordinator can simply ask Copilot, “Which marketing campaigns generated the highest customer engagement in the past month, and how does this compare to the previous month?”
Equally impressive are the data visualization capabilities that Copilot offers. Now it’s simple for users to translate complex data sets into intuitive visual representations with minimal effort and without requiring specialized expertise. Simply articulating to Copilot the same way you’d ask a skilled coworker lets any employees generate charts, graphs, and interactive dashboards within familiar applications like Excel and Power BI.
Going even further, Copilot unlocked more sophisticated methodologies previously restricted to specialized data science teams, such as trend forecasting and scenario modeling. By providing contextually rich, data-driven projections that support dynamic “what-if” strategic planning, Copilot empowers enterprises to lean heavily on trend forecasting and scenario modeling to make more informed, forward-looking decisions with less complexity and greater agility than traditional approaches.
| Get The IT Assistance You Need in The Following Locations | |||
| Albany, New York | Charlotte, North Carolina | Savannah, Georgia | Bluffton, South Carolina |
There’s a great deal of complexity in AI adoption, especially if you want to ensure a lasting ROI. The team of seasoned IT professionals at Complete Network possesses a proven track record helping clients in Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina adopt new technology without uncertainty or budget overruns.
Contact our friendly team at 877 877 1840 and [email protected]. We look forward to speaking with you!
In an ideal world, technology would be a consistent source of competitive advantage and benefit for small and midsized businesses. The reality is that many fail to realize that confidence.
Without the right resources and support, even a highly skilled technology team can become overwhelmed by the growing list of technology management duties. When important tasks get neglected, it creates ripple effects throughout an organization that damage productivity and efficiency.
The co-managed IT services model solves these problems by providing your existing IT team with all the support and resources they need to successfully plan, manage, and defend your network technology.
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