Edition Six
How to run a Successful Copilot for M365 Pilot: lessons learned from early adopters
'Tatiana Arventi, Copilot for M365 UK Go to Market Lead'
The advent of AI in the workplace heralds a new chapter in productivity and innovation, whilst the introduction of Copilot for Microsoft 365 marks a significant step in this direction. Our learnings from customers adopting Copilot for M365 reveal what makes a successful Copilot for M365 pilot that leads to high daily active usage and tangible business outcomes.
Successful organisations have a change-oriented culture, invest in training and support, and integrate the benefits derived from Copilot into their strategic objectives. Even during the pilot stage, they report gains in productivity, collaboration, wellbeing, inclusivity, quality of work and time saving. Let’s take a closer look:
Lesson 1
Increase in productivity
Understand and articulate Copilot's potential (and limitations) Familiarise yourself and your key stakeholders with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and its alignment with the business challenges you are trying to solve for. Early adopters have reported a 70% increase in productivity and a 68% improvement in work quality (1). When rolling out Copilot it's essential to set up the right expectations on what it can and can’t do (yet) to effectively address your specific business needs.
→ Best Practice: Deliver an Art of the Possible Workshop for your key stakeholders, include Line of Business Leads and IT Teams that can act as sponsors going forward. The more live demos on what Copilot can do, the better. Get inspired here
Lesson 2
Reduction in time spent on repetitive tasks
Embrace Change and Encourage Adoption. Organisations that have successfully adopted Copilot for M365 share a common trait: a culture that embraces change. These organisations understand that technology is a powerful enabler of productivity and collaboration but the true power lies with people using it. By encouraging the adoption of AI tools like Copilot, they have seen significant improvements in efficiency. For instance, early adopters report a 25% increase in productivity and a 30% reduction in time spent on repetitive tasks (1). Insights from Microsoft's own adoption journey highlight the need for a user enablement framework and the creation of an AI council to guide the adoption process and the culture shift needed.
→ Best Practice: Keep everyone excited about the prospects of AI to transform the way we work, and make your organisational strategy clear i.e. What will AI solve for ? You can find valuable resources here
Lesson 3
Increase in Copilot usage
Invest in Training and Support. One of the key factors for successful adoption is investing in training and end user support. Employees need to understand how to utilize the full potential of Copilot to enhance their work, to achieve that Copilot organisations are running launch days, prompt-a-thons, internal competitions, office hours, prompt excellence training etc. Additionally, our research shows that organisations providing comprehensive training see a 40% increase in Copilot usage and a 35% higher satisfaction rate among employees. Investing in training ensures that all team members can fully utilize Copilot and rip the benefits faster.
→ Best Practice: Align resources to lead the Adoption and Change Management activities for Copilot rollout. If you don’t have the expertise in-house, use a Microsoft Partner to set your organisation up for success.
Lesson 4
Address Security and Compliance Concerns. Early security and compliance are paramount when adopting any new technology. Microsoft's commitment to responsible AI practices ensures that Copilot meets the highest standards of data privacy, security, and compliance, including GDPR and EU Data Boundary. Additionally, Microsoft 365 Copilot inherits all data governance permissions from Microsoft Entra ID by respecting the access rights defined within the identity system. In the pilot stage, we see more and more organisations running technical readiness activities in parallel with end user enablement by establishing a trust agreement with pilot users, assessing and accepting the minimal risk of data exposure.
→ Best Practice: Maximise utilisation of available tools within your Microsoft 365 subscription i.e. Purview. If data oversharing concerns persist, use SharePoint Restricted Search (RSS) to limit Copilot's access to a curated set of SharePoint sites during the pilot phase.
Lesson 5
Measure Success and Expand Reach. Successful organisations set clear metrics to measure the impact of Copilot and use this data to make informed decisions on further end user training and license distribution. Productivity gains, capacity creation, quality improvements, and user satisfaction are few of the key metrics organisations use to measure success. We’ve also learned that value realisation is different on individual and functional level and users that had a peer to learn with are seeing faster time to value.
→ Best Practice: Make sure you have a significant cohort of users within same LOB function during the pilot. Once key scenarios within functions are identified in the pilot stage, use the momentum to enable others with Copilot.