Microsoft 365 Copilot in Practice

As we've discussed in the past, Cognizant is a big believer in "Drinking Our Own Champagne" - we always want to prove the value to clients by letting them know we are running the software first inside our own organization. So when we agreed to join Microsoft's early access program for Microsoft 365 Copilot - we knew it would be a game-changer. Now that Microsoft 365 Copilot has reached General Availability (GA) - we can start to bring some of those insights to the broader public.

Dipping your toes in AI? Start with the basics: Bing Chat Enterprise. I'll wait.

In the same spirit - for organizations that want to see immediate benefits to using AI at work - I've come up with a quick list of five scenarios that will immediately pay for themselves in the first week of using Microsoft 365 Copilot.

If you want the short answer, of course I'll tell you that the quickest way to see solid results is to simply engage us at Cognizant. Our Microsoft 365 Copilot Deployment offering is designed to speed up your adoption and focus on the real-world benefits you can implement as quickly as possible.

Okay, now the long answer.

Time is a precious resource for information workers, who often have to juggle multiple tasks, deadlines, and communication channels. That's why Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed to help you work smarter, faster, and easier. Copilot is a powerful AI assistant that can help you with various aspects of your work, from writing documents to scheduling meetings. Here we will show you the top five time saving techniques that using Copilot can help you adopt - all with the least amount of time spent. 

1. Write faster and better with Copilot's suggestions 

One of the most time-consuming tasks for information workers is writing documents, whether it is reports, proposals, emails or blogs. Copilot can help you write faster and better by providing you with relevant and high-quality suggestions as you type. Copilot can help you with spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, tone, and formatting. It can also suggest content, such as facts, figures, quotes, and examples, based on your topic and audience. You can easily accept or reject Copilot's suggestions with a simple click or keyboard shortcut. Copilot can also help you generate summaries, outlines, and headlines for your documents, saving you even more time and effort. If a large portion of your day depends upon generating content for websites, sales collateral or communications to stakeholders, this is the quickest, easiest way to instantly save hours of time each week. And yes, I use Copilot to help me with LinkedIn posts - and with sales efforts. It is the lowest hanging fruit.

2. Find and reuse your previous work with M365 Chat + Copilot

Another way to save time with Copilot is to leverage your previous work and avoid reinventing the wheel. Copilot can help you find and reuse your previous documents, emails, presentations, and notes - simply ask M365 Chat "what are the last five PowerPoint decks I worked on?" and it will quickly list them, along with links to each of them. But the time savings of having access to old decks is often outweighed, historically, by the somewhat dull task of updating those decks. With Microsoft 365 Copilot - inside of PowerPoint, you can simply say "replace all the old year dates with today's year" and Copilot will make the changes to each slide in your deck. Sure - if you were using Master Slides properly - this would be simple to fix - but in many cases, the folks and the work product you are working with isn't ideal. And Copilot won't force you to change an entire system: it will simply adapt to your request. I've already saved hours each week thanks to this simple "update" process using Copilot.

3. Learning how to use Microsoft 365 Apps more effectively 

Often, I know generally what I want to do with a document, spreadsheet or presentation, but do not know how to accomplish that task. Take Excel: I know how to multiply columns with simple formulas. But once you go beyond the basics - I have to look up how to do something. This "search for tool knowledge" is supercharged in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Just last week, I was working in a column, and needed to multiple every number by a percentage, and then round that down to the nearest whole number. Rather than researching how to do it - I asked Copilot, who provided me in seconds with the correct formula - pasted it into Excel and validated it worked. Copilot in this case is acting as a true partner - instead of searching for the answer on the internet or asking a friend, I was able to get the right answer validated in seconds. This sort of knowledge is great - and now - I don't need to be an excel expert to save hours each week.

4. Meeting Agendas + Summaries with Copilot + Loop

Copilot during meetings is transformative. Every one of us, multiple times per day, are in meetings where we struggle to ensure folks keep to an agenda, sign off on action items and end on time.

From the moment you schedule a meeting in Teams, you can set an Agenda up (inside Loop) that folks can use to write a quick list of what needs to be discussed or decided upon in the meeting.

I can already hear the jokers in the back saying "but setting an Agenda up won't work because no one follows it!"

This is where Copilot shines: simply near the end of the meeting, you can simply inside of Copilot ask "please summarize the meeting" and it will write a neat set of bullet points to encompass what was said, by whom, and who is taking each action item.

Chances are this simple task, of summarizing a meeting and sending an email follow-up, or a Teams post afterwards, would take up minutes of time that no one has to spare. Often - this is why being the "meeting notetaker" is delegated to an intern (who lacks context) or worse, to someone perceived as "not important" in the organization. Instead of alienating your junior team members (or having them make a silly mistake) - use Copilot for summaries - saving time and ensuring you have a great new meeting process that doesn't add any additional headache to the mix.

5. Sharing Positively

The final feature I want to call out is one that most would think already exists. What is it? Fostering an internal culture of collaboration.

Yet prior to Copilot - we've found many organizations silo data and documents into so many "need to know" pockets - that it is impossible to perform work efficiently. Take a standard ask: to get the latest marketing decks to use for a sales presentation. In the past at many orgs, only a few "official" people have access to the latest decks - forcing staff to use, and re-use, old decks all the time, which again introduces errors into the mix.

Enter Copilot.

On day one - you can ask for the marketing deck - and if you don't have access then you know a better policy needs to be implement. As more and more folks realize what Microsoft 365 Copilot can do - they are going to tear down those silos and demand that popular private Teams flip to public access - and that all documents should always be in the cloud - to enable real-time editing and collaboration and access to Copilot. For organizations that enable this way of thinking - the savings can be measured in days, not hours.

Getting it Right 

Microsoft 365 Copilot is so easy to start using - many organizations are going to jump in without thinking how to best take advantage of it.

That's a mistake.

It's one of the reasons that I encourage everyone to reach out to Cognizant, and to leverage our skills with Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment.  You don't want to have your roll-out run into issues and be stuck waiting months to see quick wins: you need the most needed personas helped immediately - and to be able to track the time saved and put wins on the board as you do so. Microsoft 365 Copilot is going to help you win against your competitors - and every minute counts in that race.