You will be pleased to know that Microsoft 365 Copilot is finally here for SMEs.
This true game changer AI assistant for the Microsoft Office suite is on target to completely transform the business world – helping to make rapid improvements to both efficiency and productivity.
Given this has recently been launched, there are actions you will need to take before enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot to avoid exposing business data.
In our latest blog article, we discuss what you need to know before getting it up and running in your business.
First, what does Microsoft 365 Copilot mean for your business?
- Any channel can leverage the technology, this is available on CSP program.
- There are no licensing minimums, meaning you can get in now with a small number of users and scale as you need.
- You can leverage one of the most powerful productivity and AI tools for your enterprise.
It is widely believed that businesses that have already started using Copilot have discovered that no matter what role, employees can speed up tedious tasks and get support in their daily tasks.
How does it work?
You will notice that it brings together all the power contained within LLMs with data in Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps to improve productivity. This enables your employees to work alongside Copilot with the access needed to make use of its ability to summarise, create and even evaluate in Microsoft apps they’re already using. You will find that this all happens if your business has leading security, compliance and access controls to keep your business data safe and secure.
Why should your business use Copilot?
How come this AI technology has been developed?
It goes without saying but we all know about OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This chatbot is fantastic at producing entertaining content and making research much easier. However, it isn’t an appropriate tool for businesses to use daily.
You will find that the information provided by employees will be used to generate responses for other users and users aren’t able to completely rely on the accuracy of responses or the GDPR compliance of the data they share. The great thing about Microsoft 365 Copilot is that it personalises this element.
Copilot is used as an AI assistant inside your IT infrastructure. Embedded between your business content, it will learn from internal files and communications networks to ramp up the relevance of responses and make sure that all of your sensitive information is added – enabling you to review security and compliance concerns around generative AI.
By making the decision to deploy this form of technology, employees are able to finish tedious tasks through the use of a simple command and realise the true power of Microsoft 365’s stack of applications and productivity tools to their maximum capacity.
Better still, by using the advanced capabilities, you would be able to enjoy higher quality, more efficient outputs – allowing you to maximise you and your team’s resources as well as output.
Despite these benefits, there are also some elements of AI to consider before implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot across your business.
How to get your business ready for deploying Copilot
With Microsoft 365 Copilot now available for all businesses, it can be used to speed up processes, but it is also important to note that giving AI access to your business can bring several risk factors.
It is a given that AI will learn and draw conclusions from all the information held across your systems. So, once Copilot is ready, anyone in your business could request potentially sensitive information stored deep in your folders.
Put simply, this means that without properly taking this into account, a user could find almost anything such as employee wages and progress reports to the finances of a client – or be totally thrown off by bad or inaccurate data within your IT infrastructure.
To combat this, you will need to make that all your data is tidy and put into action the right governance policies and review configurations before hitting the Copilot on switch to help to reduce the risk of private or out of date information being revealed by cybercriminals.
You will be pleased to know that the overall process can take weeks or months depending on your specific requirements. So, if you are wanting to get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot now, you will need to consider the following to be able to maximise its benefits as well as bringing down the overall risks.
How to resolve stale datasets
To help guarantee that Copilot is not using out of date files to formulate responses, you should if you haven’t already put into place suitable data retention policies to make sure that all stored data is segmented and organised into relevant folders. Also, you will need to archive any information you no longer wish to have.
A great way of doing this is to use categorisations to help streamline these processes and make it easier to gather the information that you need quickly. Furthermore, by taking the time to ‘label’ your data, you can request from Copilot that it only searches for information based on specific requirements, ensuring that the results are more accurate and reduce the chances of the assistant learning all about inaccurate data.
Get building a Centre of Excellence
When we talk technology, we need to make sure that business users have suitable resources and training to make sure that Copilot is used effectively.
Depending on whether your business is large or small, it might not require a Microsoft Centre of Excellence to be set up for internal users. On the other hand, sharing knowledge, asking questions and delivering feedback is vital to ensuring a successful program rollout.
This only just scratches the surface.
You will find that other technical and organisational requirements have to be taken into account to make sure that your Copilot adoption doesn’t cause your business headaches further down the line.
So, if you want to get your business up & running on Microsoft 365 Copilot, we suggest that you begin your journey with a dedicated readiness assessment which you can get booked in with one of our IT experts today.
Are you looking for more Copilot content? Be sure to sign up to our mailing list to get articles delivered directly.
