Should Companies Invest in Microsoft Copilot for Secure Employee Chatbot or OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise?

Thousands of companies are working to understand the tradeoffs

Enabling hundreds of thousands or employees with ChatGPT-style capabilities in a secure and responsible manner is an expensive undertaking. Individual licenses for secure, GenAI-powered employee chatbots typically cost $200 to $700 per employee per year.

In our experience, to derive true value from such a program, employees require instructor-led initial training. Simply providing a link to a video or an online self-directed course is insufficient to achieve the expected 10-20% productivity gains. Companies must approach this as a comprehensive program, complete with program management, training, and other standard program elements, all of which can bring the total investment to $1,000 to $3,000 per employee.

For a company with 500 employees, this represents a $500,000 investment. For a company with 10,000 employees, the investment reaches into the millions.

The business case for investing in secure employee chatbot programs generally rests on the following pillars:

• Employee Retention and Recruitment: Attract and retain your top talent as all your top employees and recruits know that GenAI is the biggest career accelerant ever
• Customer Perception: Demonstrate to your customers a commitment to AI innovation, especially if you sell AI-related products or services
• Financial Performance: Improve financial results through cost reduction and/or revenue growth
• Brand Enhancement: Elevate your company's brand image with all stakeholders. (Recall when new hires and stakeholders were surprised that some companies lacked a sustainability report?)
• Investor Appeal: Support the case for a stock price premium as an AI-forward company within your sector

Most companies utilize Microsoft 365 for personal office productivity, making Microsoft Copilot the default choice for secure employee chatbots. However, many executives and employees are familiar with OpenAI's consumer product, ChatGPT, and other retail offerings like Anthropic Claude or Perplexity. Some companies, including Block, Canva, Carlyle, The Estée Lauder Companies, and PwC, have invested in OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise (the business-oriented version of the popular ChatGPT product).

What are the key distinctions between OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot for secure employee chatbots? The answer is not readily apparent, as Microsoft offers dozens of Copilot products.

Fear not, GAI Insights is here to provide clarity. Our team of AI analysts is diligently working to update our feature comparison and to document emerging best practices.

Expect detailed answers from us in the next few weeks and join our virtual event on Thursday, Jan 9, at noon EST. Register here.

We had a great webinar on $10M savings at BCBS-Michigan for contract management. Listen to the recording here.

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