Balancing Hype with Reality: Setting Realistic Expectations for Microsoft Copilot

In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, integrating generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot is essential for businesses to stay competitive. However, senior business executives must approach these innovations with realistic expectations regarding cost savings, time savings, and return on investment (ROI)

Understanding of Realistic Expectations

The tech industry, especially vendors and suppliers of GenAI, will often showcase impressive numbers to back up the use and purchase of GenAI tool, for example these are numbers from the Microsoft website on adoptions of Copilot for Microsoft 365;

1. Productivity Boost: 70% of Copilot users reported increased productivity1.
2. Quality Improvement: 68% of users felt that Copilot improved the quality of their work1.
3. Efficiency Gains: Users were 29% faster in tasks such as searching, writing, and summarizing1.
4. Meeting Efficiency: Users could catch up on missed meetings nearly 4 times faster1.
5. Email Management: 64% of users said Copilot helped them spend less time processing emails1.

Now, I can hear all the teeth sucking from here, and I know some of the things that people will say is “Can/Will you guarantee these types of numbers for our organisation?” How can you measure it?”, etc. These are all questions, and more, that I get when talking to various organisations about adopting Microsoft Copilot. My response to the organisation is that it is my belief that NO ONE can guarantee specific numbers when talking about savings and gains when rolling out GenAI as in most of the feedback obtained are subjective. This doesn’t mean you won’t see these numbers or can strive to achieve them, it only means it is extremely important to set realistic expectations about what it can do and how it does it, and try not to get over excited by promises or compare yourself to other organisations that might be in a different field or place then your organisation, and then ultimately be disappointed when the returns aren’t where you think they will be.

For instance, tech companies, with their majority of tech-savvy employees, are more likely to adapt to new technologies faster and more efficient at first than organizations in that might be in healthcare, not for profit, or finance, where the focus and passion of these employees will lie in other areas of the business. Therefore, when implementing GenAI to your organisation, work with a company that can help you set realistic expectations to start from on areas like time savings, return on investment, and adoption rates for your organisation. This will help set the scene for your adoption of this technology to be successful and give you room to grow and expand, avoiding disappointment, which could lead to pausing or not continuing to deploy. Expect it will be a gradually start and with an explosive adoption down the road. That explosion will take a bit of time and will not generally happen in the first few weeks or months so set your companies goals accordingly.

Example of Realistic Expectations

I wanted to give an example of one are you could look at building expectations with the company to rollout Microsoft Copilot. One of the biggest blockers I hear often from organisations is the cost associated with implementing Microsoft Copilot. At an initial cost of $30USD/￡23GBP per user per month, and with up some companies having thousands to 10’s of thousands or more employees that is a very large number on the bottom line. If you were to consider only this and a metric to work toward of just saving 20 minutes a day in tasks, then the Maths could be justified to use. In this example, within the UK, the average wage is ￡35,828/year (Forbes Article), saving employees an average of only 20 minutes a day be available to complete other tasks can translate to the monthly savings of ￡420/month that can be used for other tasks. I know the Maths is a bit loose and the number one thing I get asked is “How will we know if the employees will use that time savings for work”

My response is generally the following “I can't guarantee that the employee will use this time for more work, and the likelihood of them using this time for more work initially is quite low. They will most likely see this as free time that they can use for a longer lunch, to go and do something that they wanted liking checking out a Social Media thing. What I can say from my own experience is that over time that free time that's being freed up begins to be used for to start a new task or respond to an e-mail that I didn't think I was going to be able to get to until tomorrow. Now I am also able to ?add things in and when colleagues ask if I can add something in or respond to them quicker on a question or issue it makes me look a bit of a hero? and I actually have the time to do these things because I know I'm going to save time in other tasks by using Microsoft Copilot I then subconsciously do these other things. You can't guarantee that the employee will initially do this but with my own experiences you will start to see them using that time more productively. Although it will take time a bit of adjusting for your employees to get used to using this sort of technology and what you don't want to do is think because that ramp up time does take time all will wait will employ it down the road. You will want your people to start adjusting today because it will grow as they start to use this more and begin to help them augment their time, and they'll start to get more comfortable and creative around how they use it which means they get more benefits and this could be the make or break that you need in today’s market that's volatile and changing rather than waiting to see what happens and then everybody's on the bandwagon and now you're trying to play catch up

Leveraging Expertise (Shameless plug)

Partnering with organizations that have expertise in rolling out Microsoft Copilot can significantly enhance the adoptions and implementation process. Companies like Kyndryl, with our deep understanding of Microsoft Copilot, having rolled out to over 25,000 users internally, can provide you and your organisations invaluable guidance and support.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is my belief to successfully adopt Microsoft Copilot it will require organisations to set realistic goals to achieve and then ultimately surpass. Please share any thoughts, experiences, and challenges with your rollouts. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know.

#kyndryl, #Microsoft, #MicrosoftCopilot, #MicrosoftCopilotM365, #DigitalDreamwalkers