How can Microsoft CoPilot for Microsoft 365 be the next big disruptive technology?
You’ve probably seen a lot of hype around generative AI’s like ChatGPT, Google Bard, DALL-E, and others and probably have even played around with them to see what they are all about. In general, where they stand now is that they are a pretty cool toy. Maybe you’ve used them to help generate an idea or flesh out one that you already had. But you probably haven’t figured out how they can help you in your day-to-day life effectively.
So, if that’s the case, how can I say that Microsoft (who isn’t even listed in the tools above) is going to be the company that disrupts the industry? Microsoft is on the verge of releasing their own generative AI in the form of Microsoft 365 CoPilot that will be heavily integrated with the Microsoft 365 family of products. Why is this different from the tools I’ve already mentioned? Think of MS 365 CoPilot as an AI-powered digital assistant.
Let’s give you some examples of the time savings benefits you can achieve. Think about how much time you spend each week just reading and responding to emails? What if you had a tool that could summarize what was a priority for you when you came in each morning? And even better yet, help you quickly draft a reply. That is one of the many features that will be available with MS 365 CoPilot. The average professional spends 28% of their workweek (11 hours per week) reading and responding to emails according to a McKinsey analysis. If you were to use CoPilot to prioritize your inbox and help draft emails and, you could realistically save 30% of that time, saving you over 3 hours per week. How does that equate to a return on investment? Let’s do some simple math. For an employee that is making $50,000/year (~$24/hour), that 3 hour a week savings equates to approximately $312 of productivity gain per month. That is a 10x ROI for a $30/month license. Not too shabby.
But email isn’t the only place where CoPilot fits in. If you use Microsoft Teams for meetings, how would you like the ability to have CoPilot follow the meeting and provide a summary of the meeting, any decisions that were made, and any tasks that you might have from the meeting? Not only would that be helpful for meetings you attend but you can have CoPilot follow meetings that you have to miss and give you the same information. For those of us that are frequently double booked, this is a game changer.
Maybe you frequently have to create PowerPoint presentations. One of the hardest parts is just coming up with the initial idea of how to create the PowerPoint. Using CoPilot for MS PowerPoint, you can give it a few sentence prompts describing what you would like the presentation to contain, such as the topic, number of slides, and other specifics and it will create the first draft to help you hit the ground running.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what CoPilot has in store. It is going to be an interesting year as Microsoft continues to add functionality and products to the CoPilot line. While there is a lot to be excited about, there is also work that needs to be done now to ensure the security and availability of your data that CoPilot will have access to. If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft CoPilot or what steps you should be taking now to prepare, contact your Keller Schroeder Account Manager and let us help you get ready for your journey.
Written By:
Ryan Kremer
Vice President
Infrastructure Solutions Group
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