4 Key Benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMEs

Eager to embrace the latest business technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise your operations?

Look no further than Microsoft 365 Copilot: the new AI assistant for the Microsoft 365 suite.

Promising to help users turn their words into one of the most powerful productivity tools on the planet, this innovative AI solution combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with the capabilities of Microsoft applications like Outlook, Teams, Excel, Word and PowerPoint to deliver a range of exciting functions for companies of all sizes and sectors.

So, what benefits could this tool have for SMEs after its general launch in Q1 2024? Keep reading to find out…

1. Automate day-to-day email management

The average employee spends 28% of their time reading and answering emails, with the heaviest users spending 8.8 hours on these tasks every week. Over a year, this adds up to weeks of company time spent purely on tackling emails — weeks that could be better spent on skilled work.

So, what would happen if you could send a detailed and professional response to any internal or external email in moments?

With Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can do just that. Copilot will learn from all previous interactions in Outlook to develop tailored messages that are accurate in grammar and context and consistent with the user’s tone of voice and style — increasing output while ensuring more unity across communications.

This technology can also summarise the meaning of an email chain and help you compose an appropriate response with just a few prompts — unlocking more capacity within your teams to concentrate on specialist work.

2. Optimise meetings in Teams

Many of us spend several hours in meetings every day. So, why not make life a little easier by harnessing AI to automate all the admin that comes with them?

When switched on in Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot can capture minutes in real-time and automatically summarise the actions that come from a call for attendees. Its advanced AI can detect the intent and context behind discussions to deliver a deeper understanding of meeting outcomes — providing tailored summaries to ensure no one misses a thing (even if they missed the meeting itself).

Plus, with the introduction of Microsoft’s Business Chat feature (working across all your Microsoft 365 apps and data), you can use Copilot to provide automatic status updates to your team, simplifying the follow-up process.

For example, you could ask Copilot to ‘summarise the project strategy we discussed in this morning’s meeting’, and it’ll comb through your Microsoft apps, calendars and emails to generate a comprehensive overview — no more pouring over your scribbled notes to make sure you’ve covered everything.

3. Complete skilled tasks with ease

 With nearly half (46%) of small business leaders surveyed by takepayments naming financial challenges as their top concern in 2023, finding ways to optimise and streamline productivity is crucial to saving precious time and money.

Copilot can help. Thanks to its broad accessibility and user-friendly interface, any employee can begin to complete skilled tasks that would previously have required extensive training — meaning you’ll no longer have to find additional resources for this work.

For example, say you want to analyse a set of financial data. In this case, you can ask Microsoft’s Copilot extension to generate an Excel table and analyse the results — presenting usable insights as a basis for informed decision-making.

Alternatively, you could use Copilot to create a template for a job offer, improve your writing in real-time or even generate code within Microsoft Power Platform — all tasks usually requiring expert support.

And it’s not just the technical stuff Microsoft 365 Copilot can help with. It can also unleash more creativity across workloads — producing detailed, high-quality PowerPoint presentations in just a few simple commands. From animation to translation, there isn’t much Copilot can’t do!

As a result, this AI-powered tool can help you get more value from your existing team members while freeing up skilled experts to focus on more challenging work — reducing bottom-line costs and improving your output overall.

4. Improve consistency across the organisation

Where existing AI tools such as ChatGPT can support generation of content they are hard to train to produce consistent outputs for your organisation.

LLMs are trained on a huge number of data sources and decades of internet content that reflect many perspectives. As a result, they struggle to recognise and use which narratives and ways of presenting information are most appropriate for your organisation.

On the other hand, Microsoft 365 Copilot draws from the content that exists within your IT estate. So, Copilot’s responses will mirror the tone and style of your business’ documents and data. Helping you to personalise output ensuring performance and supporting your company values.

However, the fact that Microsoft 365 Copilot learns from your internal environment means it’s crucial to get your data governance policies, access configurations and file infrastructure in order before turning it on — or risk compliance and privacy complications down the line.

So, if you want to prepare your systems for a Microsoft 365 Copilot implementation and get the most out of these benefits, act now to ensure you’re ahead of the competition when this exciting productivity tool becomes available…

Keen to embrace Microsoft 365 Copilot as soon as possible? Book a readiness assessment with our team of Microsoft experts today!