Feature
In its promotional material, Microsoft claims Copilot offers productivity gains and other benefits for users. Like marketing material for other products and services, the potential benefits are promoted, but the reality is that some of the promised benefits and some of the inferred ones may not be fully realized.
However, not everyone achieves the same benefits, according to Jeff Pollard, Forrester VP and principal analyst. “Those getting the most value aren’t new and inexperienced personnel. It was the more experienced personnel who received the most benefits in terms of a productivity gain.”
Below are some of the tasks the users have found that the technology can — and can’t — do.
Can: Streamline Repetitive Tasks
Copilot streamlines repetitive, time-consuming tasks, especially in a Microsoft environment, said John Yensen, Revotech Networks Ltd. president.
“Drafting emails, summarizing meeting notes, generating first pass reports can also save people meaningful time. In Excel as well, Copilot can analyze trends, suggest formulas and even build out basic dashboards from raw data.”
Can’t: Succeed Without Monitoring
A user needs to train its team on prompt engineering, manage expectations and closely review its outputs, Yensen noted.
Microsoft Copilot can miss nuance, especially when data is inconsistent or lacks context. When working with sensitive data, Copilot can’t reliably differentiate between what should and shouldn’t be pulled into its summaries or suggestions — a concern in terms of data privacy and accuracy.
Related Article: Beyond the Hype: The Hard Realities of AI's Cost, Control and Coming Correction
Can: Improve Efficiency
One report found a variety of efficiency improvements during a Copilot trial with the Australian Digital Transformation Agency.
Trial participants estimated time savings of up to an hour when summarizing information, preparing a first draft of a document and searching for information. The highest efficiency gains were observed by Australian Public Service (APS) Work Level Standards levels 3-6, executive level (EL) 1 staff and those in information and communication technology (ICT) roles.
Additionally, 64% of managers perceived uplifts in efficiency and quality in their teams, while 40% of trial participants said they were able to reallocate their time to higher-value activities such as staff engagement and strategic planning.
Can’t: Deliver Results Without Proper Training
Forrester noted that some companies have bought thousands of Microsoft Copilot licenses, then deploy them without employee training.
Most employees aren’t ready to use Copilot, given their artificial intelligence quotient (AIQ), the research firm said. “Readiness includes, but goes beyond, hard skills and training. As a financial services provider told us: ‘We start by building a growth mindset. If we jump to Copilot first, we lose them. Getting their minds open and getting them motivated are the first steps.’”
To be successful with Microsoft Copilot, according to Forrester, a company needs to devise plans for its:
- Learning strategy
- Use case optimization
- License distribution
- Ongoing program management
Can: Help Improve Messaging
Copilot provides guidance and feedback to support workers’ writing, presentation and analysis skills, noted a KPMG report. “These value-add capabilities empower workforces to spend more time on focusing on improving customer engagement and fulfilling sales tasks.”
Can’t: Create Slide Presentations From an Outline
While Copilot can help improve writing, presentations and analysis, it needs a more than limited input to offer those benefits. For example, one can’t give Copilot an outline and expect it to produce a PowerPoint (or other slide) presentation. It needs more detail at the beginning.
Can: Help With Personalization
Microsoft Copilot can help companies communicate with people in their native or preferred language. According to that same KPMG report, the tech allows marketers to curate highly personalized and targeted segments and enables them to generate engaging content for their campaigns based on audience insights and best practices.
Copilot can generate marketing messages based on the targeted prospect’s age, gender, geolocation and other aspects. The more granular the available information, the more micro-targeted the messaging can be.
Companies like Adobe are combining some of their own capabilities with those of Copilot to further improve the personalization.
Along with aiding with personalization in communicating with customers, the technology also helps with personalization for internal use, Pollard noted. Copilot offers multiple languages, which can help attract more diverse talent.
Related Article: 10 Top AI Assistants
Can’t: Ensure Compliance With Privacy Rules
Personalization can provide tremendous marketing benefits by communicating to a prospect/customer as an individual, rather than as a generic entity. But oversight is needed to ensure that any Copilot-generated messaging complies with HIPPA, GDPR, CCPA and other privacy rules. Violations of these regulations can result not only in fines, but in reputational damage.
According to Gartner, oversharing and security concerns significantly impact Copilot deployments. In Gartner's survey, 40% of respondents noted a delay of 3+ months with their Copilot rollout, while 57% limited their rollout to lower-risk, trusted users to manage these concerns.
“Though large language models and generative AI may level the playing field and allow for accelerated security talent development, no amount of out-of-the box prompt books and guided response steps replaces fundamental security knowledge, skills and experience [of humans],” Pollard added.
So even if they install Microsoft Copilot to help repetitive tasks — like updating dates on compliance documents — companies should expect to continue spending on cybersecurity skills and training, mentoring and job shadowing, according to Pollard. “Also expect a fair amount of change management and training for even your most seasoned practitioners to take full advantage of Copilot.”
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Can: Help With Supply Chain Management
According to KPMG, companies are using Copilot to help operations and supply chain managers optimize their resources and processes.
Copilot AI summaries, available on many of the most-used pages in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, provide information personalized for the current user, such as the number of lines on a purchase order, the number of items in a warehouse or the number of overdue invoices for a vendor. The data is limited based on the user’s security roles and permissions.
Related Article: Why Bad Data Is Blocking AI Success — and How to Fix It
Can’t: Provide Supply Chain Management Benefits Without Accurate Data
If any data is inaccurate in south materials (i.e., dates, names, contact info, invoices) are inaccurate, so will any resulting Microsoft Copilot results.
