Speaking at ESPC 2024 – more AI and Copilot!

ESPC, the European SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Azure Conference - which always seems to have amazing venues which make you look tiny as a speaker, see left - always bookends the year for many of us in Microsoft tech (at least on this side of the pond). Winter timing allows us to reflect on tech developments through the year as well as discuss announcements from Microsoft’s big Ignite conference, which is typically just before (this week, November 19-22 this year). To speak at ESPC is always a privilege and I think this is my 10th year now. The event is in Stockholm this year between December 2-5 and it’s not too late to get tickets – as one of the year’s best personal development events in our space, it’s a great way to gain knowledge and take some great benefits back to your team and company.

This post is to mention the talks I'll be giving - but before then, some quick facts about the conference:

• Usually around 2000-2500 attendees, a mix of different roles but generally focused on Microsoft tech
• Always a big Microsoft representation – from senior execs like Jeff Teper to key product and strategy folks including Karuana Gatimu, Vesa Juvonen, and others
• December 2-5, starting with a day of (optional) full-day workshops on the 2nd
• Lots of coverage of AI, Copilot, Azure, Power Platform, SharePoint, Teams and more on the tech side – accompanied by lots of strategy, governance, and end-user sessions
• Typically a forum for Microsoft to make key product strategy announcements

Here’s what I’ll be talking about:

 

“AI on your data” deep-dive - comparing Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Azure OpenAI on your data

Astract: Every business can gain from combining generative AI and LLMs with company data, and so far Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) has been the most common technical approach to this. Providing an LLM with full knowledge of your company - your products and services, clients, employees and expertise, past projects, and other valuable information - has huge potential for simplifying work as we've seen with Copilot and other "gen AI on your data" technologies.

The options are complex however, and many CIOs are wrestling with AI strategy and tool decisions. Is the answer simply Microsoft 365 Copilot? What about no-code Copilot GPTs, low-code Copilot Studio, mid-range Azure OpenAI “on your data”, or building something with a "ChatGPT accelerator" using Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search? Choosing the right approach can seem like a minefield – do you want to bring in data from Microsoft 365, Azure, SQL, a SaaS app, or simply a public website? Are you trying to provide a Copilot against a small knowledge base or a more expansive ecosystem of sites? Do you want to pay by user or by AI consumption? Should the experience surface in Teams, a Copilot plugin, or be embedded in an intranet or internet site?

This session aims to be a navigator through the Copilot and "AI on your data" maze, informed by battle scars from implementing all these forms of AI.

Implementing gen AI on the UK’s biggest infrastructure project – a ChatGPT and Azure OpenAI story

Abstract: The HS2 railway construction project stands as a cornerstone of the United Kingdom's infrastructure evolution, showcasing an ambitious leap in engineering and construction innovation. The scale of HS2 introduces a unique data challenge. Every mile of construction feeds into a massive repository of information, encompassing everything from ground surveys and compaction reports to intricate local authority covenants and extensive service contracts. But with more than 20 disparate platforms in use, ranging from in-house catabases, SaaS applications, and custom apps developed by suppliers, piecing together data related to aspects of the construction was becoming more challenging.

With the explosion of generative AI, the question came from programme leadership - “Can’t we just ask something like ChatGPT the questions, and it find the answers from across our systems?” This is a case study of a unique project, where generative AI is streamlining critical processes like incident management in a hugely complex environment. The combination of cutting-edge technology (Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, Semantic Kernel and more), talented developers and engineers, and a visionary construction organisation provides a shining example of how gen AI and Large Language Models are making a real difference to the world.

This session aims to convey both the business challenge and the technical solutions, and it’s a story with a few twists and turns along the way. Not unlike the railway line!

Closing thoughts and conference details

We’re now 2 years past the introduction of ChatGPT, and in my experience 2024 has been a year where lots of AI projects have made it into production. Technology has never been more impactful on the world. At the same time, many organisations are still debating whether to go big on Copilot and how to make the right choices in their AI strategy and technology decisions. So, it’s a perfect time for ESPC and the conversations that happen there – I’m *extremely* excited for my sessions and to share knowledge and perspectives from the Advania team and I.

Hopefully see you there!

https://www.sharepointeurope.com/pricing/

Comparing productivity Copilot options - Copilot for M365, Copilot Studio, build your own Copilot etc.

I spend a chunk of my time talking to CIOs and other leaders deciding the AI strategy for their organisation, and a common conversation at the moment is how to frame Copilot for Microsoft 365 against other options. It's the new "what to use when" conversation in Microsoft-land. If the challenge being addressed is 'providing the right set of AI tools to a business', there are multiple options from Microsoft and beyond, and choosing the right approach comes down to properly considering what you're trying to solve for and understanding not just the orientation, but also the capabilities and limitations of the various options. 

Common questions I'm hearing include:

• We're not sure about licensing Copilot for M365 across the entire business, what other options do I have?
• I see ChatGPT has an Enterprise version now - it seems to solve the data privacy risks of the consumer version, and all of our employees are familiar with ChatGPT. Should I use that?  
• Why could I not just use the free version of Microsoft Copilot (i.e. what was "Bing Chat Enterprise")?
• I understand Copilot for Microsoft 365, but where does Copilot Studio fit in?

Understanding the characteristics and pricing of the major options becomes vital to make the right decisions. Sometimes it will be an economic decision, sometimes it will be capability led - we've seen it all. I'm a strong advocate of Copilot for Microsoft 365 (as is my employer, Advania UK - we licensed 100% of employees), but it's not necessarily the answer to every AI question. Indeed, my team has solved AI challenges with "custom Copilot" approaches using Azure OpenAI that simply couldn't be done with Copilot for M365, including integrating large volumes of data from SaaS apps and custom databases, and steering the AI past the one-size-fits-all behaviour of Copilot. Despite it's strengths, Copilot doesn't quite offer the flexibility or cost effectiveness needed for certain scenarios. 

Major AI options on a slide

To help with AI strategy conversations, I produced the slide below which I'm sharing here in case it's useful for others (you can download it in PowerPoint form). It's an attempt to summarise some of the key factors and differences, though I'd be the first to say it doesn't cover every consideration and has some subjectivity to it. When I'm asked a question like "where does X fit?" or "how should I think of Y?" question, I often put the slide up to call out some of the major factors and differences as we walk through some options.

When considering AI options, I see some of the major considerations as:

• Overall positioning and value prop ("Headline" in my slide)
• The cost model
• Costs
• Data sources - which company sources of data can the AI talk to?
• Automation - whether you can fully automate a process with the tool, or whether it's purely end-user driven
• The surface - where the AI shows up
• Key limitations

I often feel this kind of thinking and comparison is what's missing from Microsoft and other vendors. The strengths of a technology are extolled in the documentation and content, but rarely the limitations and "but bear in mind...." considerations. As an example, the Copilot Studio page is unlikely to ever say that it's a great technology for some use cases, "but good luck forecasting your run costs, because the pricing model makes it really hard!" It's factors like this which are hugely relevant if you're deciding (or paying for) the AI strategy for your organisation however. 

There's quite a lot of info - and some opinion - in the slide, so I unfold some of my thinking in the notes below. Here's the slide itself (download link at the end):

Obviously the condensed text and bullets on the slide can only tell half the story in a complex landscape like this, so let's expand the thinking - at least for the major elements rather than every angle.

Headline/value proposition

Most will be familiar with the value proposition of Copilot for Microsoft 365 - your data in M365 (documents, mail, Teams chats and more) integrated with LLM capability and surfaced in the flow of work via Teams and Office apps. If you're an existing user, you'll probably cite the very strong capabilities around Teams calls and meetings as a highlight - especially intelligent recap, with auto-generated meeting summaries, action items, speaker attribution, being able to ask questions of the transcript and more. Alongside, there are lots of other capabilities which boost productivity across many organisational use cases and roles/functions, particularly when working with documents. Sometimes accuracy and results can be mixed, and that sometimes that's due to certain Copilot limitations today - more on this later. Sometimes I'm asked how Copilot Studio relates to Copilot for Microsoft 365 - but this has a different value prop entirely. Copilot Studio is suited to 'focused' Copilots for specific use cases - perhaps to provide answers on HR policies, employee onboarding, product documents, or an FAQ, and they can be surfaced internally or externally on a .com website. Copilot Studio solutions are often modern day chatbots, much more intelligent than those of the past because they combine LLM power, a focused knowledge base or set of data, and particular instructions (grounding) to the AI on how to provide the best possible answers. However, Copilot Studio isn't suited to solving broad AI needs (e.g. an internal Private ChatGPT) because of the limitations on data integration and difficulties predicting costs. For smaller needs it's perfect though - our team has built some amazing solutions already, and I predict many apps and in particular Power Apps, will shift to be Copilot Studio solutions in the next few years. We're just all comfortable with using chat for different things compared to 5 years ago now that it can actually work - CIOs and app makers should be cognisant of this.

Microsoft also offer Copilot (free) and Copilot Pro (£19 per month) as the evolution of what was Bing Chat Enterprise, but these should be seen as competitors to public/consumer ChatGPT rather than a true organisational solution. The main callout is that you have no roadmap or possiblity of integrating company data with these tools - they are LLM only. In Copilot Pro you can use the AI with a document you have open in Word (e.g. for summarisation, generation, rewording, analysis etc) and there is enterprise data protection so any sensitive data can't leak out, but Microsoft Copilot/Copilot Pro don't provide any way of answering questions from company data at scale. A CIO might find Microsoft Copilot appealing as a free option with no barrier to entry, and while it's arguably safer in the workplace than public ChatGPT, my view is you're likely to confuse employees if it's made available as a first step in AI, but then subsequently replaced by other AI tools (e.g. Copilot for M365 or an internal Private ChatGPT) as you unfold your AI strategy.

A Private ChatGPT solution built on Azure OpenAI can be attractive because the costs aren't per-user. Because the costs scale in a different way (i.e. they are "platform + AI consumption" rather than per-user), we've seen a lot of interest in this from mid-sized and larger organisations who aren't sure about a large scale Copilot investment but do want to provide generative AI tools integrated with organisational data. In quite a few cases, the organisation is choosing to deploy a platform like this in addition to Copilot rather than instead of, and at Advania we've had quite a lot of success with our clients in this space. We commonly integrate Microsoft 365/SharePoint/Teams data so the AI is able to answer questions related to the company's clients, projects, people, policies, sales and product information etc. It becomes a powerful tool that changes the employee experience significantly because it provides a new way to find organisational knowledge and get straight to the answer. As alluded to earlier, it can also be the foundation for a tailored AI platform designed to support specific use cases and integrated with data from different platforms. We've integrated Azure OpenAI with incident management systems, HR data, employee skills/certification data, access card systems and much more. As such, a Private ChatGPT solution built on standard gen AI approaches can go beyond simply being a digital assistant for common productivity and creativity tasks, and be the AI platform where high value processes and use cases are enabled. We're seeing many organisations think in terms of an AI platform for the business that can scale and be extended over the next few years as AI opportunities and use cases emerge. 

Further thoughts

As you can probably tell, there are many considerations across multiple dimensions trying to come out in the slide above - and even then it's only a biased, partial view. I'm not unfolding every point referenced on the slide, but just a couple of others to call out:

• Is the tool automatable? 
• Whether the AI tool supports automation is a key factor that isn't always considered. For some use cases you want to throw 100 or 1000 items to the AI in bulk, but ready-to-go solutions like Copilot for Microsoft 365 don't lend themselves to this because they have no API. We're doing a lot of work in this space with Private ChatGPT/Azure OpenAI solutions for Due Diligence Questionnaires, Cyber Security/InfoSec questionnaires, RFPs etc. - in many of these cases, organisations are seeing the potential for better outcomes than with specialist tools they already have, but which don't use AI with their data effectively and/or haven't really landed with the business, which is interesting. I posted about this observation here.
• Limitations 
• Every AI tool has boundaries and someone supporting your decision-making should understand them. Some examples are called out on the slide, but of note is that Private ChatGPT solutions typically can't index Teams chats and e-mails in the way that Copilot can (nor do they provide Teams meeting support) - they are limited to understanding knowledge found in documents primarily. Conversely, Copilot for M365 has limitations in understanding long documents, and this can be very relevant in some scenarios. Microsoft recently announced the limit is now around 80k words when using Copilot in Word, but it's worth also understanding that - as far as I know - it's still only around 20k words in terms of what Copilot Chat will understand (i.e. when asking Copilot questions of your data generally), because that's how much gets indexed into the Semantic Index.
  
  At the same time, these limits and the general value of the Copilot proposition should only improve from here.

Conclusions

There's a lot to know, and as I mentioned at the start this is the new "what to use when" in Microsoft technology - but options and flexibility are rarely a bad thing if you can find your way to the right choices. 

If you're interested in these perspectives and can make it to this year's ESPC24 Conference in Stockholm this December, I'll be speaking about this in my session AI on your data Deep-Dive – Comparing Copilot Studio, Copilot GPTs, and Azure OpenAI on your Data. Hopefully the slide is useful to someone either way.

Download my Copilot options slide here

Join me at ECS 2024 for a full day workshop on Microsoft Copilot solutions with Jussi Roine

2024 will be a pivotal year for Microsoft AI and their range of Copilots in particular - and it was great to hear plans and insights during a week on campus with Microsoft in Seattle for the MVP Summit recently. This is the year when the AI strategy is in full swing for most organisations (or at least, should be), and the need to understand and decide what to provide to employees really takes effect. Between Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, role-specific Copilots (such as GitHub Copilot, Copilot for Security, Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service etc.), or custom Copilots built with Copilot Studio or Azure OpenAI, there’s a lot to consider. For anyone tasked with charting the path forward, the big Microsoft-oriented conferences this year are the place to jump start your learning, hear how others are approaching it, and take back ideas, plans and recommendations – if you haven’t already spoken to your boss about this (or allocated budget if you're the lucky purse holder), now is the time.

With over 2500 attendees, 150+ sessions, talks from senior Microsoft leaders, and a great expo hall with over 75 exhibitors to talk to, the European Collaboration Summit 2024 is actually the biggest Microsoft 365 and Power Platform conference in the world. The conference is held 14-16 May 2024, in Wiesbaden, Germany. I’m thrilled to be running a full day workshop on Microsoft Copilot solutions with my friend and fellow MVP Jussi Roine. Say what you like about that man but you can't deny his vast experience and love for broccoli. We're badging this a "Copilot Powerclass", giving some coverage to a broad range of Copilots but also diving deep on Copilot for Microsoft 365, Windows Copilot, Copilot Studio, and various things to know about data governance, licensing and more.

Despite speaking at big conferences for a decade and half now, I'm excited about this and I have to confess a bit nervous :) This will be my first full-day workshop and it feels like a lot of hours to fill. On the other hand, there's a lot to talk about and every client conversation I have at the moment about Copilot seems to need more time. In any case, Jussi tells me my role is simply to bring vegetables and he'll take care of everything else. 

Still tickets left, but going fast (for both the overall event and our workshop)

At the time of writing (end of March 2024), you're not too late to make it to the European Collaboration Summit - I hear from the organisers that the the vast majority of tickets are allocated, but there's definitely time to join us in Germany in May if you're quick.

And if you like the sound of the full day Copilot session Jussi and I are running, there's still time for that too. We were expecting 30-50 attendees, but at the time of writing we have 87 sign-ups already which is amazing. We still have room for a few more though as the room fits 120 apparently, and we'd love to see you there if you have an interest in learning more about Copilot.

There are also several other workshops with amazing speakers which look great by the way - see ECS 2024 tutorials for the full list). The page to go to is Tickets - European Collaboration Summit (collabsummit.eu)

 

More details on our Copilot workshop

Microsoft Copilot(s) Powerclass

In today's digital age, organizations require powerful tools to improve their productivity, speed up decision making, and secure their environment. The Microsoft Copilot capabilities offer this and more. Join this Full Day Tutorial, designed for business decision-makers and technical decision-makers, to learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot, Windows Copilot, Security Copilot, and Power Platform Copilot. Over the 8 hours, you will also learn about critical technical topics such as Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), licensing, use cases, productivity, and possibilities. 

Explore how these Copilots can help your organization improve productivity by handling your various operations automatically. Additionally, you will learn about their security capabilities to ensure your environment is kept safe at all times. You will also learn about the licensing requirements for using these Copilots and how they apply to your organization. Finally, there will be discussions on the possibilities and use cases for these Copilots, with hands-on experience that will enable you to harness their full potential. 

The workshop is specially designed to empower you with the knowledge, insights and inspiration you need to make informed decisions around utilizing Microsoft Copilot capabilities to improve your organization's performance. Join us and elevate your business to the level.

LINK: Microsoft Copilot Powerclass - European Collaboration Summit 2024 (collabsummit.eu)

Hopefully see you there! 

Getting started with plugin development for Copilot for Microsoft 365

In my last post we looked at the return on investment for Copilot for Microsoft 365, specifically in terms of time savings required for the $30/£24.70 per user per month licensing investment to make sense. In this post I want to turn attention to extending Copilot and getting started in the world of Copilot plugins. Copilot for Microsoft 365 can become even more powerful when integrated with other company systems - I created the slide below recently for a deck I was working on, and the four areas provide ideas on where the value might be and potential scenarios:

However, at the current time (February 2024) getting started with plugin development is a bit gnarly - there's lots of documentation to read and there are some interesting practicalities to consider. I’ve spent some time on this, and the sections below give a quick summary of initial findings which may be helpful for anyone else going down this path.

Tenants and licensing

Much of the initial complexity falls into this bucket. Things to know include:

• Copilot plugin development needs production Copilot licenses, there’s no way around this. This may mean developing in your production tenant (if you are a licensed user) or buying extra Copilot licenses for other tenants
• Microsoft 365 Developer tenants cannot be used for plugin development 
• If you’re on the Microsoft 365 Developer TAP (we are at Advania), these tenants can be used but you still need to buy Copilot licenses in that tenant
• In addition to the core Copilot license, the user also needs to be assigned a "Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 developer license"
• Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses effectively grant “Copilot Studio use rights” – importantly, this allows you to create and run M365 Copilot plugins only, not to run standalone Copilots (see note in the blue box below) 
• Since plugin development is still in preview, production tenants need to be enabled for it via a special helpdesk ticket - there's special wording to use, indicating this is somewhat hand-cranked in the backend for now (see the Copilot extensibility prerequisites article linked at the end for the exact words to use) 

Developing standalone Copilots (not plugins)

Coming the other way round from the plugin focus of this article, the other primary use of Copilot Studio is to develop standalone Copilots using a low-code approach. Examples could be a HR chatbot providing answers on policies and internal benefits and hosted in Teams or a SharePoint intranet page, or a customer service chatbot on an external website providing answers from a knowledge base of uploaded documents. In these cases, you don't need a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license but you will instead be paying the $200/£165 per month run cost, which gets you 25k messages across all such Copilots (with additional capacity charged extra). There's a bit of nuance in what constitutes a message - a typical interaction counts as one message but invoking gen AI counts as two - but in short you are calculating based on expected usage.

The image at the bottom of this article more directly compares the two flavours.

Building Copilot plugins using the Power Platform (low-code)

The prospect of using low-code for plugin development is very appealing. In this space, note the following:   

• Power Platform connectors can be turned into Copilot plugins by converting them to be a “Connector AI plugin” – whether custom or pre-built connectors (e.g. ServiceNow, Zendesk etc.) 
• However, today connectors need to be certified – meaning custom connectors cannot easily be used for plugins, since certification is a complex process for major ISVs (i.e. not internal teams or partners simply trying to create solutions for a single organisation)  
• Additionally, only read-only actions are supported for now 
• Other Power Platform approaches are possible – using Power Automate Flows, the new AI prompts capability etc. in Copilot plugins. However, again this does not seem to be possible at the time of writing unfortunately 

Building Copilot plugins using Teams message extensions (pro-code) 

The alternative architecture for Copilot for Microsoft 365 plugins is based on Teams development, specifically Teams message extensions. This makes sense, and before the dawn of GPT we've used this approach at Advania UK to build other conversational bots in Teams. Some details to be aware of here:

• The advantage of Teams message extensions is that plugins with more advanced UI can be used (e.g. adaptive cards in AI responses)
• Conceivably, the solution you build as Copilot plugin could also be a regular Teams message extension in Teams chat and be surfaced in Outlook - enabling you to provide your experience in different ways within Microsoft 365
• Teams message extensions are the right approach if you're working at scale (with large volumes of data or user load) 
• Permissions - if you are developing your plugin using Teams message extensions, you’ll need the ability to side-load apps into the tenant

So that summarises some of the initial considerations in getting started with plugin development. It's also worth noting that Microsoft are pushing to create an entire ecosystem around plugins with marketplace approaches, meaning plugins can be sourced from internal developers, partners, specialist vendors and so on.

Also remember, Copilot extensibility is not just about plugins

All of the options and considerations above relate to plugin development, but this sits alongside the alternate path of bringing data into Copilot for Microsoft 365 using Graph Connectors. In that approach, the data you integrate is indexed (stored in the semantic index which sits behind Copilot) rather than simply being available via a read/write call-out of some kind. Graph Connectors bring other advantages such as making the data available in Microsoft 365 search, Viva Topics, Context IQ and even being used for content recommendations in Microsoft 365, but if you're working with data at scale you'll to purchase additional Graph Connectors index quota (you get 500 items for free per E5 or Copilot license). Microsoft's article Choose your extensibility path expands on these considerations.

Zooming out from plugin development in a different way, it's worth considering Copilot Studio as a whole since it's not just about Copilot for M365 plugins.

Copilot Studio - varying audiences, varying outputs

Copilot Studio can be slightly confusing in the Microsoft AI space because it's used to create different solutions and experiences - essentially including Copilot for Microsoft 365 plugins and standalone Copilots built with low-code. Many people recognise it as "what used to be Power Virtual Agents", but between licensing variations and what can be created there's a bit more to it than that. I posted the following on LinkedIn which summarises the two major usages of Copilot Studio:

That hopefully gives a sense of things from a Copilot Studio lens. Some of this is made clear from this table in the Power Platform licensing guide - see the image below, and note specifically that the output formats and available channels are different between the two paths, and that Copilot plugins using Power Platform approaches can use Standard, Premium and Custom connectors:

Summary

Extending Copilot for Microsoft 365 with plugins can be a great way to derive additional value by integrating systems, and opens the door to the possiblilty of Copilot becoming a universal interface for all of the apps and platforms an employee works with. The next few years could see significant changes to the employee experience in this regard, at least for organisations making the investment in Copilot for Microsoft 365. Other forms of Copilot can also be created - standalone Copilots (as Microsoft refer to them) are often focused on a particular business domain or use case, and can reach a broader audience because they surface in different places and don't rely on Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses. Both experiences are created by makers/developers in Copilot Studio, but there are licensing and reach differences - and today, some things aren't quite in place (early 2024) because we're still in a preview phase for plugin development. No doubt the path will get smoothed out as we go through 2024.

References

• Copilot extensibility prerequisites - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/extensibility/prerequisites

• Extensibility options for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/extensibility/decision-guide

Copilot for Microsoft 365 - the surprising truth about time savings and ROI

Now that Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be purchased by anyone (with no minimum license count), organisations are starting to think about it more seriously as they form AI strategies and budgets. Looking across Microsoft's family of Copilots, some are free, some are licensed, some are general, and some are targeted as specific personas - but most would agree it's Copilot for Microsoft 365 which stands as the principal Copilot for workplace use. We could be moving from an era where countless hours go into creating and consuming information in very manual ways to a new era where generative AI is doing more of the work - to write that report, create that presentation, or write the words to respond to that e-mail. Those are creation examples, but when AI can summarise, identify key points, generate follow-up actions, and even identify areas of accord and discord, so many of the consumption-based subtasks we do also become more optimised and accelerated too. With the most expensive price tag, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also the one where the decision-making for the investment is most complex.

Something I spoke about in a recent talk (at the European SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Azure Conference) that some people latched onto is how surprising the numbers are in terms of time-savings needed for Copilot to pay for itself. The license is a significant investment of course at $30 or £24.70 per user per month with a 12 month commitment - whichever way you slice it, that's an expensive proposition given that the list price of E3, the entire productivity suite for enterprise users, is $36 or £33.10 per user per month. When seen as a "AI bolt-on" the cost of Copilot is indisputably high, and perhaps unsurprisingly when Microsoft announced pricing the common response seemed to be "far too expensive, it doesn't make if it costs nearly as much as the entire suite". There are lots of ways to look at this, but despite the similarities (both Microsoft offerings, both related to productivity, both additive to each other) a direct comparison of one vs. the other actually doesn't make too much sense to me personally - the propositions and value provided are so different. 

Principles for a Copilot value case

Before we look at the numbers, let's agree on three things:

• The value case for Copilot for Microsoft 365 shouldn't hinge on time savings and an easily-modelled financial equation alone - there are other benefits which are less easily quantified which constitute value. Every organisation will need to form their view on this, but I list examples later in the article.
• Time savings have to result in genuine gains - whether it's five minutes or five hours, most organisations will take the view that any time saved needs to translate into real value. In other words, there's no ROI if the organisation doesn't benefit from the additional time, perhaps because the time benefit goes exclusively to the employee instead or it simply doesn't go on productive work
• Basing the model on known or anticipated use cases doesn't work - you can try to predict use cases ahead of time, but the reality for both Copilot and generative AI on the whole is that the business will find benefit in unpredicted ways. Better to pilot the technology in some way and see what happens
  
  

A simple ROI model

The calculator below models the break-even point for Copilot for Microsoft, based on time-savings alone, for three different salaries. I'll go into details below but it uses UK parameters for employer tax and so on to arrive at the "true" total cost of an employee per day, but the currency used is Euros since that's where most of my readers are.

The real point of course, is that it doesn't take five hours or even two hours per month saved for Copilot to pay for itself. So long as we can stand behind them, the time savings required are quite minimal:

As the salary increases even less time needs to be saved of course - but even on the lowest salary we're talking only 36 minutes per month. This is the surprise to many people.

Some detail on the calculation:

• The calculator uses UK parameters, in fact the true cost per day of an employee in our company (Advania UK). This means the current employer tax rate (National Insurance in the UK) and a 4% pension contribution, but excluding other aspects sometimes modelled such as an allocation for office space etc. 
• I haven't looked, but I suspect these percentages won't vary wildly across countries enough to skew the overall model dramatically
• Although the tax parameters used etc. are UK, the currency used is Euros to reflect my readership
• The Excel is linked below if you want to download and amend

Download the file here: Copilot for Microsoft 365 breakeven - Excel calculator

If using or pointing people to a web page works better for you, Dan Toft has taken this and created a great online calculator which also allows you to edit the parameters - ROI Calculator (dan-toft.dk).  You'll need to be able to calculate the total cost from a base salary yourself (i.e. calculations for employer taxes and pensions aren't built in), but it depends what you need. Excellent work Dan.

 

The wider value case for Copilot for Microsoft 365

I mentioned earlier that measuring the ROI for Copilot based on time savings alone is only part of the picture, that it's not just about productivity gains and time efficiencies. I used this slide in my talk to expand the discussion to some of the wider benefits:

There's obviously quite a lot wrapped up into those four bullet points and they're not quantitative benefits you would model into a licensing business case, but the positive impact on the employee experience and output needs to be considered somewhere. I feel there's a reduction in cognitive load, and switching between different contexts and tasks becomes easier and less painful. When creating content, regardless of how good you are as a writer your output can be improved - Copilot will often bring in a point you hadn't considered or simply articulate the message better than you would. That's not to say that Copilot outputs are always ready to go or it's able to do the work for you - that would be lovely, but more often than I iterate with further prompts and/or add/edit/delete to what Copilot has created. Nevertheless, I'm faster on quite a few tasks and Copilot's ability to research and bring in facts or approaches others have used helps on the quality front.

As referenced in the last bullet, one area Copilot is particularly helpful in is comms and e-mail. There's drafting e-mails of course, and being able to ask for a summary of my inbox in the last week and pull out any actions I need to take is extremely powerful - even if I scan through the mails myself too, I'll spend less time doing so. Using the "Summary by Copilot" feature to summarise the main points of a long individual e-mail or thread works very well too - picking up context and making a judgement at speed on any action/response makes moving through your inbox simpler and quicker. Finally, the "Coaching by Copilot" capability in Outlook is surprisingly useful too - there's an initial novelty of having your communications and tone judged at first but we all write mails at speed often without considering enough quite how it might read on the other side, and it has enabled me to catch a couple of sub-optimal communications. I'm a senior leader in our company, and perhaps Copilot is right to catch me on phrases such as (real example here) "it seems bonkers to me that...." and suggest some wording that might be more appropriate! You can take it or leave it depending on the context (and there's an argument that some authenticity often comes from our from-the-hip communications), but having things pointed out at least prompts the reflection and supports the choice.

All in all, there are lots of benefits beyond the hard numbers. It's also an interesting thought that as employees increasingly expect a high-fidelity employee experience and toolset that allows them to give their best, Copilot for Microsoft 365 does make a clear statement on that and perhaps becomes a differentiating factor between organisations and teams battling for talent.

License strategies for Copilot for Microsoft 365

So, do you license everyone or just a subset? Start big or with a small, focused pilot? No single answers on this of course, and it's going to be fascinating to watch how the Copilot era unfolds and how organisations approach the investment and benefits realisation. I won't share all the guidance we're giving to clients, but starting with a pilot covering different user types and personas makes sense for any significant investment in new technology like this - and that's how most 1000+ seat organisations I've spoken to are starting. With regards to coverage, clearly the investment required for Copilot is dramatically different if licensing 10-20% of the business compared to 100% - and this differential obviously scales to big numbers for the largest organisations. To license all users at list price for 30,000 employees would cost over £10m, and no less than £33.6m for 100,000 employees. No doubt those are hypothetical scenarios since such a deal would be heavily negotiated as part of an Enterprise Agreement (and/or perhaps in exchange for a high-profile case study - look out for those soon), but it is illuminating to consider the difference between licensing some and licensing all.

My feeling is that most orgs will structure the case based on licensing a subset of users according to persona/role and the value conferred. This makes sense because no-one would argue that all roles will benefit from Copilot and gen AI to the same extent, and licensing users who simply aren't adopting the tool heavily doesn't make sense either. 

Along with the information governance/data security piece (something we've spent a lot of time on developing services for), the different aspects of licensing mean that there can be a few steps on the Copilot for Microsoft 365 journey for most companies who are buying in. Hopefully this post on some of the economics has been useful though.

Speaking about Copilot for Microsoft 365 – IntraTeam webinar, January 11 2024

Copilot for Microsoft 365 presents a huge opportunity to transform work and unlock productivity. If you're interested in the world of AI, Copilots, and Copilot for Microsoft 365 specifically, I'll be delivering a webinar on the topic as part of an event run by IntraTeam on January 11 - the event is free and hosted over Microsoft Teams, but note that it's for practitioners working with Microsoft 365 in global companies only I'm afraid - if you're a consultant, vendor, student etc. then apologies, but IntraTeam need to keep a more focused audience for this event. Hopefully anyone interested will be able to find me at other events through the year though - it's great to finally be talking about Copilot for M365, and I had great feedback from a similar talk at the recent European SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Azure Conference - so, I'm looking forward to sharing what I know, hearing the perspectives of others, and no doubt learning a lot from the conversations myself.

2024 is going to be a pivotal year for Microsoft's Copilot offerings, and in the entire landscape I'd argue it's Copilot for Microsoft 365 which is the most prominent and relevant for many organisations. At Advania, we've been on the Copilot Early Access Program and have learnt a lot from early hands-on use, and in this period we’ve also spent a lot of time developing our views, approaches, and tools on the best way to prepare for Copilot. Data security and information governance comes into focus for sure, and while there’s a lot of generic/high-level guidance out there (both from Microsoft and partners), we’re feeling good about the ground we’ve covered and guidance we’re able to give. Additionally, we’ve learnt a lot from being immersed in "custom Copilot" build projects which implement generative AI for our clients. The headline is that there's certainly a space for both, and the AI strategy for many organisations will combine multiple tools.

This webinar will focus on Copilot for Microsoft 365 however. Here’s the agenda for my 1 hour session:

Copilot for Microsoft 365 – What to know

• Copilots everywhere - Microsoft AI for every role
• Digging into Copilot for Microsoft 365:
• Real-world scenarios and demos with our data
• Advanced usages and prompts
• Is it worth it? Copilot economics, ROI, and value case
• Copilot readiness - licensing, security, and information governance
• Extending Copilot - integrations and plugins
• Where does Copilot for SharePoint fit? Simplifying content authoring and intranet management
• Summary and the path forward

I look forward to sharing some information, demos, thoughts, and lessons learnt from our experience so far. If you’re interested in the topic, the session runs at 10:20 CET on January 11 and here’s the registration link:

Copilot for Microsoft 365 – What to know - IntraTeam.com

 

Content snippet

There's lots to talk about! Here are a couple of snippets of things I'll show and discuss:

Join us if you can!