By Luca Collina
I reunited with Taryn Nixon, copilot adoption lead in PROMPTAI and Change Manager practitioner, with whom we got PROSCI certification some years back.
She has extensive experience in change management using AI within the AI product Copilot framework. The interview below summarises where the product is at a high level while also sharing insights on how it is adopted.
In a Nutshell, What Is A Copilot? Think of Copilot as your AI-powered assistant sitting next to you on all Microsoft Office products. It helps out with various tasks across the suite, including those performed by Outlook and its email threads. For example, it could achieve shorter emails or summarise long presentation talks via the app.
It incorporates your data into standard Microsoft Graphs and leverages the capabilities of OpenAI GPT models for natural language understanding and generation.
What are the key functions and features that make it different from other AI tools? For instance, chat GPT differs from Copilot as it is embedded in your everyday productivity suite. The semantic indexing means that Copilot understands you and what you work on. For example, if you are running a marketing event and need ideas for the marketing plan, ask Copilot, who will create the first draft quickly.
High-Level Effective Support in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
Word: Summary of Important Documents, email and draft documents, key question answers search out with Copilot, making writing and editing easier for users. Copilot helps create professional presentations quickly, saving time during presentation creation and delivery.
Excel: Automate tasks like creating the basics, such as defining data tables or handling simple numerical calculations. You need to include conditional formatting, etc.; setup or reformat tables; write up formulas or functions within any cell stand; and do profiling work using basic data set profiling methods, too, including row/column sort and filter provision alongside conditional formatting plus advanced data analysis or insight delivery support, etc.
Teams Meetings: Summarize meetings with action points in under 30 seconds.
What value does it deliver to people working within a company? Employees at any workplace stand to gain a lot when they use Microsoft 365 Copilot in their day-to-day activities. This tool can come in handy for them in several ways.
- Timesaving: Employing this tool may save around 200 minutes every week, translating into large sums of money if individuals base it on how much they earn every minute being online through such applications as those above-mentioned communication platforms (Microsoft Outlook or similar). For instance, taking 12,500 users, then such usage translated into a net present value of $82.5M after three years with an ROI of 857%, according to one business case analysis
- Content Development: Involves using Copilot to help make client presentations from where presentations were made during a conversation about the client
- Presentation Enhancement: In PowerPoint, Copilot assists in creating professional presentations by quickly generating output
- Learning and Development: A learning tool helps Copilot unlock productivity and serve as creative inspiration
- Accessibility: Assist in reducing cognitive load for people with disabilities through giving writing assistance, which improves efficiency and learning, too
- Team collaboration and Project management: It increases efficiency amongst teams, freeing up time to be more effective in roles like project management. However, it’s essential to manage expectations and ensure employees have realistic views of what Copilot can and cannot do to maximise its value.
Are there any clear affirmative outcomes or case studies that could show how valuable copilot is for businesses? One such example is Bayer Innovation Journey with Microsoft Copilot.
Expectations and Reality vs. Hype:
Myths or misconceptions about MS Copilot
The program is like an autopilot that works instead of you, but it cannot be used to replace human beings completely in their jobs; the copilot only provides assistance while allowing the driver to carry out his or her responsibilities.
How can companies ensure their employees have realistic expectations about what Copilot can and cannot do?
A comprehensive user adoption plan is required to implement Copilot properly, as it has a steep learning curve. Therefore, people would have specified instructions on how to prompt them for benefit realisation.
This represents a significant shift in behaviour for someone else to know perfectly before all departments become proficient in using this innovation.
Organisations should implement measures that will enhance practical benefits from Copilot and support workplace needs practically:
- Define clear objectives Such as time savings with Copilot
- Integrate Copilot into Daily Workflows. Encourage employees to use Copilot
- Measure and Share Value Use research methodology to measure the value of Copilot1
- Promote Intelligent Adoption By adopting Copilot
- Provide Training and Support. Offer resources and support to help employees understand how to use Copilot effectively
- Gather Feedback and Iterate Collect user feedback and use it- as an organisation- to improve
All these steps will ensure organisations can use Copilot effectively and hence realise some tangible benefits to their staff.
About the Author
Luca Collina is a transformational and AI Business consultant at TRANSFORAGE TCA LTD. York St John University awarded him the Business – Postgraduate Programme Prize and CMCE (Centre for Management Consulting Excellence-UK) for his paper in Technology and Consulting Research Prize. Author/External Collaborator of CMCE.
Reference
- My notes: Time Tracking Tools Toggl: https://toggl.com/ | Clockify: https://clockify.me/ Project Management Tools Trello: https://trello.com/ | Asana: https://asana.com/
