Is Your Company Ready for Copilot? 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 introduces a fresh approach to enhancing your organization's business value, employee engagement, and creativity.

To fully leverage these groundbreaking AI capabilities, investing in the human aspect of change is essential. Employees seek purpose and satisfaction, while employers strive to tap into worker ingenuity. With a diverse, multi-generational workforce that can work from anywhere, success hinges on effective collaboration, increased productivity, and fostering creativity across global teams. You can maximize your investment and drive positive transformation through AI capabilities by guiding your users to understand these powerful tools. 

With all the potential that it can deliver on, it isn't a magic wand. Copilot needs context to understand your reference fully. If you reference something that is specific to your team, say your company is working on something you’re calling “Project Optimo,” Copilot will have no idea what “Optimo” means, let alone know how to look for it, unless you’ve trained it. If data is missing or out of place, or if your users don't know how to utilize the products, AI can pick up information we may not be ready for it to learn. It's important to assess whether your data is truly searchable.  

Preparedness Self-Assessment: Are You Ready for the Next Step? 

A great way to start your Copilot journey is to answer these questions honestly. 

Give each of the following statements a 1 to 5 rating (1 meaning strongly disagree and 5 meaning strongly agree) 

My employees are very open to utilizing new tools.  

Copilot is only as good as the users that use it. Your users need to be open to new experiences for streamlining their work. The best way to get your team started is by opening them up to a library of Copilot references. The ability to work with user groups across different companies to share ideas, successes and challenges can be an important building block in bringing Copilot where you never knew it could go.  

We have a great support structure for training employees on new applications.  

Training your users to use Copilot is integral to the implementation process. Not only do your users need to know how to manage Copilot, but they also need to be trained to manage data moving forward.   

My data is being managed well, and I have a clear understanding on the management structure and hierarchy.  

Data storage, security, and management need to be precise. If someone asks Copilot, "How much does my boss make?" Copilot will know that information, but how well it is managed changes whether it can be kept protected.  

It’s easy to search through my data, and my data security is strong.

Copilot uses semantic searching, but that doesn't mean your data shouldn't be labeled. Clear labeling can help train AI models, ensure quality assurance, generalize, and avoid bias.   

We have clear goals planned to see how Copilot does for us, and we have preliminary data to back up those goals.

Knowing how well your company is doing before implementing Copilot is vital to determining how much It can support you. Where are there holes in your productivity, collaboration, and data analysis as it stands now? Build out some goals and plan to track Copilot's progress after implementation. 

The Results Are In 

If you scored a 25-20, you may be ready for the next step with Copilot! Microsoft suggests taking the Copilot for Microsoft 365 Optimization Assessment to analyze your organization’s computing environment and will provide recommendations on how you can optimize for Copilot for Microsoft 365. Since you’re well on your way to becoming a Copilot company, think about what Copilot can do fot you. Build your own bots with Copilot Studio, or leverage other OpenAI protocols through Azure AI Studio.  Talk with Sparkhound about how we can take you there! 

If you scored a 19-0, you may not be quite ready for Copilot, but Sparkhound is here to help. With Sparkhound’s Copilot Preparedness Acceleration program, have a Microsoft partner help you get your data, security, and users ready to implement Copilot. Learn more about the program and how to set yourself up for Copilot success.