How can a Copilot Readiness Assessment Help Assure Value?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a revolutionary AI-powered assistant designed to enhance productivity and efficiency within Microsoft 365 applications by helping users create, communicate, and collaborate more effectively.  

By integrating the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, Copilot offers huge productivity gains for anyone using the various Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, etc) helping save valuable time throughout the day. It aims to empower users by making their daily activities more efficient whilst reducing the amount of time spent on mundane tasks. 

For example, Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be utilised as follows: 

• Word: Copilot helps with drafting, summarising, and editing/proofreading documents. It can generate text based on prompts, suggest improvements, rephrase sentences, and even create outlines for new documents.
• Excel: Copilot assists with data analysis by generating formulas, creating charts, and offering insights. It can help users understand data trends, automate repetitive tasks, and even suggest what-if scenarios.
• PowerPoint: In PowerPoint, Copilot can help create presentations by suggesting slide layouts, generating content, and providing design suggestions. It can also summarize lengthy content into concise bullet points.
• Outlook: Copilot helps manage email by drafting responses, summarising long email threads, and suggesting meeting times. It can also prioritise important emails and help with scheduling.
• Teams: Copilot enhances collaboration by summarising meeting notes, generating action items, and facilitating real-time transcription and translation during meetings.

Benefits of using Copilot for Microsoft 365

As mentioned above, Copilot for M365 is designed to enhance productivity and efficiency, so it’s naturally a great fit for organisations looking to increase overall output, as well as continuously improve this output via personalised assistance.

Any organisation looking to put forward a case for implementing the tool can expect to benefit in several ways, including:

• Sharper focus: By saving time on mundane and/or repetitive tasks, Copilot for M365 allows users to focus on higher-value or business-critical activities.
• Improved accuracy: Since Copilot for M365 can provide precise suggestions and corrections, it can enhance the quality of documents and data analysis.
• Better decision making: By offering data-driven insights and having the ability to summarise information / extract key points from documents and meeting transcribes, Copilot for M365 supports informed decision-making.
• Enhanced creativity: By generating new ideas, content, and design suggestions, not to mention freeing up time for more creative thinking, Copilot for M365 is a great tool for helping get those creative juices flowing.
• Streamlined communication: Automated email drafting, real-time transcription and translation in Teams, and quick task summaries means communication is made a lot easier using Copilot for Microsoft 365.
• Efficient collaboration: Copilot for M365 can help make collaborating easy, e.g., by providing meeting summaries and project management capabilities (updates on project status, pending actions, reminders on upcoming deadlines, etc.).
• Scalability: Usefully, Copilot for M365 scales to meet the needs of both individual users and large organisations, providing consistent support across different tasks and projects.
• User-friendly experience: Since Copilot for M365 integrates seamlessly across apps most of us are very familiar with, it’s easy for users to get to grips with the tool.

What is a Copilot for Microsoft 365 readiness assessment?

Copilot is a licensed add-on to the Microsoft 365 suite. However, in order for it to be a worthwhile investment for your organisation, there are a series of best practices and recommendations to consider before implementation. It can therefore be very useful to undertake a Copilot for Microsoft 365 readiness assessment – a process designed to evaluate an organisation’s preparedness to implement and effectively use Copilot.

A key part of a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment is data security, as it is important to ensure that your organisation’s data is both optimised and secure. This is because Copilot for Microsoft 365 integrates with your company data through Microsoft Graph and Microsoft apps and, before deploying the tool, guardrails need to be put in place to ensure that Copilot will find and surface only relevant information and only offer this to users that have access permission. Think of Copilot for M365 as your digital butler, as it can quickly and efficiently retrieve information for employees via Microsoft Graph – however if your data security is not sufficiently configured in the first instance, this could result in data being provided to an employee that they should not have (although this will have arisen because the employee did have the permission to read it, had they known where it was located in the first instance). Loose data permissions are the greatest risk to a successful Copilot adoption, as Copilot for M365 will inherit these to decide what information can be shared with the requester.

A Copilot for M365 readiness assessment should involve a technical assessment of the Microsoft 365 environment to determine any areas in need of remediation before the organisation commits to the licence costs and/or deploys the tool. The readiness assessment typically involves several steps and areas of focus to ensure that your organisation can maximise the benefit of Copilot, whilst still retaining tight control on the organisation’s data. The assessment helps organisations to clearly understand Copilot for M365’s potential value, along with wider assistance with:

• Helping organisations learn how Copilot for Microsoft 365 can unleash creativity, improve productivity, and uplevel skills.  
• Discovering how Copilot for Microsoft 365 works with Teams Premium and other Microsoft 365 apps to provide a seamless and intelligent experience. 
• Exploring how Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be extended with plugins to access your line of business data and applications. 
• Identifying use case scenarios and personas that might benefit from Copilot for Microsoft 365 and prioritising these for the business.  
• Exploring opportunities for value-added scenarios enabled by Copilot for Microsoft 365 with Copilot Studio, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Sales.  
• Developing an actionable roadmap and next steps to pilot and deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365 in your organisation. 
• Getting access to resources, best practices, and community support to help you succeed with Copilot for Microsoft 365. 

Assuring value with a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment 

In summary, then, a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment ensures a smoother and safer transition to the tool while also helping maximise the advantages of Copilot in advance of its deployment. It’s a way for organisations to ensure they’re ready for Copilot by working with Microsoft professionals who have decades of experience under their belt.

The value gained from undertaking a readiness assessment can be very beneficial, bringing peace of mind and advancing features and processes such as:
Technical infrastructure>: A Copilot for M365 readiness assessment assists organisations by assessing their current hardware and software infrastructure and network bandwidth and reliability. It will also review existing security protocols and compliance standards.

Data preparedness: By assessing the quality, accuracy, and availability of data that Copilot will utilise, as well as ensuring that data is well-organised and accessible, and that data privacy policies/practices are robust, a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment helps assure that data is optimised.

User readiness: A Copilot for M365 readiness assessment should help determine the level of user familiarity with M365 tools and their readiness to adopt new AI-powered features. This means any training programs necessary to bridge knowledge gaps can be planned ahead of time

Process evaluation: Through analysing existing workflows to identify areas where Copilot can provide the most significant improvements in efficiency and productivity, a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment helps ensure that business process will be enhanced without causing disruption once deployed.

Meeting the organisation’s goals: A Copilot for M365 readiness assessment ensures that the tool and its uses align with the organisation’s strategic goals and objectives. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can also be agreed at this stage to measure the success of Copilot deployment and its impact on productivity and efficiency.

Support and maintenance: Remember, your service should not end at the point of enablement; a Copilot for M365 readiness assessment can help establish a process for continuous monitoring and improvement. This might include ongoing end-user guidance, support, and education, or it may mean enabling future Copilot features as they become available.

To find out more about undertaking a Copilot for Microsoft 365 readiness assessment with Littlefish’s Microsoft experts, and the ways Copilot could benefit your organisation’s long-term success, please get in touch using the button on this page.