LIMA’s recent Elevate event welcomed more than 20 IT professionals to the National Football Museum for a day of discovery and discussion on AI, Copilot and Power Platform.

Our Head of Product, Ollie Potts, unpacked lessons from our own journey to Copilot, and our partners at Westcoast Cloud demonstrated some of the latest Copilot functionality, including how Copilot now integrates with elements of Power Platform.

If you missed out on the day, or you want a recap, we’ve pulled together five big takeaways from the event.

1. AI is already here, and 75% of people are already using AI at work

Perhaps the important point to note from these stats is that 78% of people already using AI at work are bringing their own tools to the table, rather than using systems managed and secured by their IT team.

Using an unmanaged AI product like Chat GPT within a business can pose risks. Without proper oversight, these systems could expose your business to data leaks, and generate inaccurate or inappropriate content, leading to potential reputational damage or legal issues.

Unmanaged AI may also not integrate seamlessly with existing business processes and tools, resulting in inefficiency and disruption.

It’s a safe bet that your end users are already using AI, so it’s important for your organisation to make a proactive decision about how and where they want their employees to use AI. By providing the guardrails of a managed system, aligned to approved documentation and information within your business, you can deliver an AI assistant that’s reliable, secure, and integrated with the approved tools you want your end-users to work with.

2. Preparedness is critical

When beginning your Copilot (or any AI) activation, laying the groundwork in advance is critical.

There is a lot to think about, and a lot of work to be done, but the ROI is potentially huge.

Here are some of the steps you need to take ahead of activation, if you’re considering Copilot:

1. Establish use cases and goals
2. Conduct a thorough risk assessment and establish mitigation measures
3. Review existing licensing arrangements
4. Review your existing M365 configuration
5. Review your existing data and folder structure
6. Appoint a team to support the wider rollout > it’s not just an IT effort

At LIMA, we’ve been through this exact process ourselves and have developed a Copilot Activation Assessment based on our learnings with Copilot, and our vast experience at deploying new software and hardware solutions. You can benefit from our experience today, with a free Copilot Activation Assessment.

Register your interest for a free Copilot Activation Assessment from LIMA

3. The features of Copilot are astounding, and they’re only getting better

Imagine having a complex report, showing it to Copilot, and asking it to pull out the important insights into an email or one pager ready to edit and share onwards. Copilot does it.

Imagine missing a Teams call and asking Copilot to summarise the elements of the discussion that you need to know about. For example, “renewing your MSP’s contract”. Copilot does it.

Imagine telling Copilot exactly what you want to do with some data in Excel, and Copilot not only creates the formula and pulls the data into the relevant columns, but also creates pivot tables and provides visualised insights from within the data.

Imagine creating a sales proposal for a new customer based on the data and templates you already have in your organisation, bringing in all of the context and experience your business has within its document library and systems. Copilot does it.

4. Power Apps is being underused by the SMB market

At LIMA we are incredibly excited about the opportunities Copilot offers to supercharge your organisation’s efficiency, but there is groundwork and internal education required to deliver Copilot securely.

Your organisation generates huge amounts of content and data, which Copilot could make much more valuable. But with great power comes great responsibility, and without proper management in the age of AI, this data can suddenly be opened up to loss or misuse.

Incorrect setup or configuration of AI systems can lead to data being improperly stored or transmitted, increasing the risk of data loss. What’s more, AI systems that continuously learn and update their models could overwrite existing data, leading to loss of historical data if not properly backed up.

Here are some important questions to start thinking about before you hand over the Copilot keys to enthusiastic employees!

5. Feedback from early adopters has been excellent!

Of Copilot early adopters surveyed, 75% said the service made them more productive, and 68% said it improved the quality of their work. Some users are already saving more than 10 hours a month, and on average users said it made them 30% faster at writing documents and creating presentations.

Need help getting your organisation AI ready?

Speak to an expert at LIMA about our free Copilot Activation Assessment.