Practical applications to elevate your AI Implementation with Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Copilot has opened the door - just a crack - into the future of AI-supported productivity.

But what does that look like exactly?

What are some solid examples of how you can use Microsoft 365 Copilot to benefit your organization?

In this newsletter, I’m going to describe some productivity-boosting examples of clear use-cases that can deliver value in pretty much every sector.

First, the pivotal role of enterprise content

Because Copilot comes fully pre-trained, it doesn't need to be trained on your data.

Instead, you can leverage your enterprise content to give Microsoft 365 Copilot the context and intelligence it needs to be your organization’s AI assistant.

This allows your organization to retain its unique edge, while reducing manual steps in everyday processes.

But it’s not as simple as plug-and-play. There’s an investment involved.

The more higher-quality content you have, the more contextual metadata you can provide - and this enables your AI to perform better. Also be aware, permissions need to be correct, this is all incorporated by Copilot.

Once you get to grips with the vocabulary and structure of prompts, and how to specify resources you want it to use - you’ll be amazed at what you can do.

Top use-cases for Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2024

Copilot is still evolving. Today, the best use cases are for office workers and knowledge workers in practically every sector.

The greatest value right now – the lowest hanging fruit if you like – is for using the Microsoft family of products (Excel, SharePoint PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, etc.,) in the most frictionless way possible.

Such tasks are numerous – and the time saved across an entire organization can be huge.

Customer service

There are many, many ways Copilot can enhance productivity in a customer service setting.

This is a very strong area of application, because customer service still relies on a lot of manual steps. We’re already seeing some integrations that automate processes with ticketing applications, CRMs, and contact centers.

• A simple prompt can get Copilot to query CRM data. You can analyze sentiment from interactions, extract common or specific issues, and record how your organization responded.
• Use Copilot to search for specific data; fishing out everything relating to a topic, customer, product, or other identifier. (Useful perhaps if you’re compiling information for a claim or audit).
• Create continuously updated FAQs, using Microsoft 365 Copilot to identify the most common questions and your answers to them.

Product development

Extracting insights from your content is a powerful way to extract value, and product development is just one application of this capability.

• Copilot as an advanced search engine: you can mine your enterprise content and CRM data to evaluate the sentiment for existing products and their features.
• With the addition of publicly-sourced data from the web/social media (e.g., via a web crawler) you can unlock further insights about in-demand features that you don’t currently offer.

Keeping collaboration on-track

After a busy Teams meeting, it’s important to make sure that everyone has a clear overview of what was discussed, and what action needs to be taken (and by whom).

• Microsoft 365 Copilot can create a summary of each Teams meeting (from transcripts).
• Turn bullet points into action, by emailing the summaries, action points, or customized versions of these to participants.
• It’s also easy to create reminders in Teams for tasks, and schedule follow-up meetings.

Self-help and troubleshooting

How often does your IT team need to help with simple troubleshooting? Or how much time is spent clarifying the procedure for an uncommon/occasional process like a Paid Parental Leave (PPL) request?

• By using knowledge from enterprise content (like user manuals), Microsoft 365 Copilot can offer automated help on a multitude of tasks, using natural language to find the information needed.

Content creation with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Proposal creation

This is one of the most interesting use-cases, as it can reduce many hours of work into about an hour of editing.

• With a few parameters about a client and specifying content resources to use, Microsoft 365 Copilot can write a personalized proposal (draft).
• When it comes to creating content like this, you can expect quality of 80%, needing some careful editing and proof-reading to make sure it’s 100% before sending out.

Create a PowerPoint presentation

A perfect example of how Copilot + your content in Microsoft 365 can deliver considerable gains in productivity.

• By giving a prompt that specifies the topic and content to use (outline, notes, product specifications, customer profile, stylebook, etc.,) Copilot can create a draft for a PowerPoint in seconds. Time saved: many hours.

Drafting emails and communications

Emails take time, and are often repetitive. Other information-rich communications such as announcements and press releases may also take time to put together.

• By instructing Copilot on the task details and using your organization’s style guide, templates, etc., it can draft emails, announcements, and other communications in seconds.
• This has special value for announcing something sensitive such as a takeover or acquisition, as you can keep the ‘circle of trust’ very tight and avoid the need to sign NDAs just to write a press release and FAQs.
• It’s important to set up rules that protect access to sensitive data – especially if integrating 3rd party resources and data.

What can you achieve with your enterprise content + Microsoft 365 Copilot?

There are numerous ways to use this productivity tool to ‘chat’ with your back office, interrogate databases, and analyze content for sentiment, topics, and more.

Instead of creating a BI query or involving developers in building an API, you can simply use natural language – and ask.

Some of the examples above may require training staff on prompts, while others may need some customization with Copilot studio to get the best results. It’s also important to be aware of the limitations and other roadblocks that can stand in your way.

If you’re ready to start this journey and make your organization Copilot-ready, we’re ready to offer help and advice. Just reach out!

About Xillio

Xillio software empowers organizations to maximize their Microsoft 365 investments by offering a robust platform for content migration and integration. Tailored to enhance the SharePoint experience, our platform not only simplifies the migration of valuable data into Microsoft 365 but also enables the integration of diverse sources for Copilot utilization.

Xillio is proud to be a Microsoft Content AI preferred partner.