AI is the hot buzzword that continues to make headlines both good and bad, and it’s almost impossible to have not experienced AI in some form by now. Whether you are luke-warm to AI, or you think it threatens our very way of life, it’s going to be hard to ignore the new technology.
Let’s take a look at how your business can use AI in some pretty interesting ways that might help you become more effective and profitable. Specifically, we’re going to look at Microsoft’s AI offering, Copilot.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
The first thing you need to know is that Microsoft, like most massive businesses, has its hands in a lot of different pots. They don’t just make Office and Windows. Microsoft creates extremely high-end applications for larger (or growing) enterprises. They own LinkedIn, which is the world’s biggest social network for professionals. They own GitHub, which is one of the largest code-repository services used by developers. Microsoft Azure is a massively popular hosting environment, and your kids are probably at least familiar with Microsoft’s successful foray into entertainment and gaming.
Microsoft isn’t the de facto digital empire, but they sure are close, especially when it comes to business. We’re not saying they have a flawless track record, but they definitely put thought and effort into making technologies that work and make sense.
Even when Microsoft joined the smartphone market back in 2010, they certainly didn’t come out on top, but they did create devices and an experience that a lot of users appreciated over the overwhelmingly popular flagships that Google and Apple brought to the table.
In other words, when Microsoft invests in something, they usually put thought and expertise into it.
With AI, that’s important. Every software company has been frantically trying to plug AI into their services so they can charge more and brag that they use AI, and it’s been pretty hit or miss the last couple of years. A great example is Google Search, which has been one of the world’s most trusted technologies for years. It simply worked as it’s supposed to, but has seen massive usage drops and received criticism for tossing AI into the mix.
Personally, we’re really excited about what AI can bring to the table, but at the same time, our expectations are tempered. We’re disclosing all of this simply because we feel a lot of our audience is a little skeptical, and at the time of writing this, Microsoft’s Copilot might be one of the best ways for a small business to dive into AI and actually get value from it.
In short, Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s built-in AI assistant.
If you remember Cortana from Windows 10, Copilot is baked into Windows in sort of the same way. If you remember the early days of Windows 10 when Microsoft was showing off what they had planned for Cortana, Copilot is essentially that realization.
Cortana was neat, but she more-or-less sat idle for most users because she wasn’t much different than your typical smart speaker. You could ask her what the weather was going to be or have her do a Bing search for you. That novelty wears off pretty quickly. I’ve seen some people incorporate Cortana into their day-to-day process but, when she went away, she probably wasn’t missed by most.
Microsoft’s grand vision was to use Cortana to sift through large amounts of data and help you visualize charts and graphs from spreadsheets and other databases, as well as contribute to other complex work processes. In 2016, this was extremely exciting stuff, but it never came to fruition and eventually, Cortana was set out to pasture. Now, Microsoft’s Copilot is here to fill Cortana’s shoes and be everything she was promised to be and more.
Copilot for Free Vs Copilot Pro
You’ve probably spotted Copilot on your Windows 11 home PC, as Microsoft has been pushing out the basic version to users. Plus, it’s built into the Edge browser. This version of Copilot is a simplified one for the average consumer. It’s essentially what Cortana was back in the Windows 10 days, with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. The real power is in Copilot Pro, which has a per-user cost and is an add-on for Business and Enterprise Microsoft 365 customers.
Microsoft has different tiers depending on the type of user (including sales and service-based iterations). Trying to navigate which version to buy will likely need a whole article in itself, but for now, we recommend reaching out to one of our IT experts by giving us a call at (410) 531-6727 to discuss your specific needs and go over the licenses you already have with Microsoft.
For the remainder of this article, we’re going to focus on the Pro version of Copilot which is geared towards businesses.
AI That’s Trained on YOUR Data
When you use most AI tools, such as ChatGPT, it generates responses based on millions of pieces of data from across the Internet. These tools pull from publicly available information, copyrighted information, and just general content from the Internet. You can’t simply log onto ChatGPT and ask it to look at your sales data over the last year and give you some insights—it simply doesn’t have access to the data.
This makes Copilot Pro special; it learns and pulls insights from the data you already have. This means it can help you make better decisions based on YOUR information, streamline tasks without needing to be educated (as much), and a whole lot more.
What Makes Copilot Stand Out
First, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft Copilot is built on the same technologies as other AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, DALL-E 3, and others. That’s okay if you don’t know exactly what that means; basically, Copilot isn’t just some standalone AI; it’s using the same technology and tools that the bleeding-edge AIs are. Microsoft added its own technologies to it to add value.
These include:
Choice of AI models. In the Copilot mobile app, you can select GPT-3.5 (faster) or GPT-4 (more accurate) to power your chats. Copilot Pro subscribers can choose GPT-4 Turbo for even faster, more accurate responses.
Choice of style. When you ask Copilot to write text for you, you get to choose the style of the response, with the options being More Creative, More Balance, or More Precise.
Voice input and spoken responses. You can interact with Copilot using your voice (which you currently can’t do with ChatGPT) in addition to typing text.
Image upload. In certain scenarios, you can upload images for Copilot to interpret.
Links to sources. Though you usually get your full answer in the chat, Copilot includes more and more prominent links to its sources of information than other AI chatbots do.
Image generation for free. With ChatGPT, you need a paid Plus account to use DALL-E image generation. It’s built into Copilot Pro.
Copilot can use your data. This is the big one. Safely handle sensitive data from your OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Excel, Exchange Online, and Microsoft Planner. Depending on the software you already use to manage and run your business, Copilot may be able to “learn” and use that data to help you process, analyze, and forecast.
Some Copilot Use Cases
Let’s look at a real-world example of how Copilot could improve your business.
Copilot and Your Sales Team
Your typical sales team needs to manage customer relationships, follow up with leads, and close deals. They can prioritize their day-to-day by accurately forecasting sales data—for example, putting more effort into leads that spend more time on your website or show other signs of interest compared to tire-kickers.
In our example, the sales team primarily uses four tools for storing data: Exchange for email, communication, and calendars, SharePoint for their sales documents, OneDrive for their pitch decks, and they use Salesforce for the CRM.
Copilot can automate a lot of routine tasks, such as scheduling follow-up calls in Exchange, drafting personalized sales pitches based on existing slide decks, and providing data analysis to help prioritize the warmest leads or adjust tactics based on what historically has the best close rate.
These tasks could easily take 20% of a sales team’s time, but once it’s up and running, Copilot can be worked into your workflows so your sales team can focus more on closing sales and earning more for the company.
Copilot and Your HR Department
Let’s look at another example—HR is typically tasked with recruiting, onboarding, and managing benefits for employees. HR also tends to handle employee records, payroll, and performance reviews, which means they work with a lot of sensitive information.
Copilot can automate routine tasks like scheduling performance reviews, generating reports from reviews, looking for trends in employee feedback, and summarizing and comparing resumes. The need for strong data protection is high when it comes to the type of information HR tends to deal with, so you wouldn’t be able to rely on just any AI tool, but Copilot is compliant with some of the strictest regulations so you can be confident that it isn’t putting your business at risk.
Microsoft Copilot Could Be a Game Changer for Your Business
While being skeptical of the miraculous claims of AI is pretty healthy, there are real-world situations where AI can save a business a lot of time and money while also helping the business do things that it couldn’t normally do. From automating routine tasks to drawing out insights based on large amounts of data, Microsoft Copilot is a powerful tool with a wide array of use cases.
Want to discuss how AI can help your business get more done and stay competitive? Give Dresner Group a call at (410) 531-6727.
