Do you love reading a week’s worth of emails when you return from your holidays? Love taking meeting minutes, and then sending actions immediately afterwards? Are you passionate about searching for the correct Excel formula to mine data for answers, or to make that chart you’ve been envisaging? Didn’t think so.

If these tasks excite you, maybe the whole AI revolution thing isn’t for you. If you hate these tasks as much as I do, then there is a way to put the “work smarter, not harder” idiom into practice.

Microsoft Copilot helps your team tackle repetitive or complex tasks, especially when data analysis is involved. It enables employees to stay focused on their core responsibilities while offering support and insights when they need it most. With easy integration into various Microsoft tools like Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Word, and Excel, to name a few, it is possible to support multiple tasks simultaneously. To take advantage of this new capability, while saving time, there are some best practices, key policies, and ways of working that must be adopted.

Getting Copilot right

The most common issues organisations face when adopting Copilot include data overload, poor user experience, and a lack of clear success metrics. For example, if Copilot has to search through an abundance of data, it can increase the time it takes to respond. Also, the data being analysed may be too old, which can lead to inaccurate responses.

To combat this, new data storage and archiving strategies must be adopted, including new policies to define what can (and cannot) be crawled by the AI tool. This is an opportunity to “clean the house” with file stores and databases.

To get the most out of Copilot, your organisation must understand its different forms. What are the differences between Windows Copilot, Bing Copilot, and Copilot for Work, for example? Additionally, there are embedded Copilots in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and they are specialised to optimise each of those apps. These bespoke versions of Copilot help create content much faster, allowing users to focus on their core job functions. The only way for end users to get the most out of each of these versions is by understanding the difference between each one.

What happens if you watch Copilot pass you by?

By ignoring Copilot’s potential for your business, you could be missing out on a more focused and efficient workforce, reduced operational costs, and time saved by having it complete your simple and repetitive tasks. By sitting on your hands, your competitors might gain the advantage.

It’s time to work smarter.

The next time you hear “work smarter, not harder” from a colleague in the office or from the many business gurus on your LinkedIn feed, you know how to achieve it in real-time – Copilot. That being said, we understand that the thought of deploying Copilot might be a little daunting. We get it. We are here to help.

Allow us to devise new data strategies, and policies and support your adoption of Copilot through understanding your needs and tracking Copilot’s measured progress after implementation. Let us know what you need, and we will be happy to support your journey. Reach out to one of our team today: info@applicable.com