At Advania, we’ve taken a big step towards artificial intelligence (AI) transformation by licensing Copilot for Microsoft 365 across our entire workforce of over 1,000 people in the UK. We’re one of the first major Microsoft partners in the UK to be making this commitment to the AI assistant. Find out how the success of our pilot programme helped us make the decision to go all-in on Copilot for Microsoft 365 in this newsletter exclusive. Â
How we embraced Copilot for Microsoft 365 internally
We started our Copilot for Microsoft 365 journey back in October 2023 with the wider Advania group joining the Early Access Programme (EAP), receiving a number of licenses in our Norwegian tenant. This provided some key individuals across the group with early hands-on access to the Copilot technology.
Once Copilot became available through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme, we immediately invested in 50 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences for our UK production tenant which accelerated our pilot programme.
Working with our management team we identified key pilot users, including consultants delivering Copilot-related services to our customers, plus a variety of user personas from functional teams right across our business. To alleviate any concerns around the historical over-sharing of documents in the business, we also asked our initial pilot group to work to an NDA so they could feel comfortable and enthusiastic about experimenting with prompts on our company data.
During this early adoption stage, we used Microsoft Purview, SharePoint Advanced Management and our own custom scripts to assess and mitigate the sensitive document sharing risk in our tenant.
As we began to see the value that our first cohort of pilot users were getting from Copilot for Microsoft 365, we decided to enrol a further 70 users to the programme just a few months later in March.
Bringing us to present day, the success of this pilot helped us make the decision to license Copilot for Microsoft 365 to all our UK staff, leading us to purchase an additional 1,000 licences last month.
Developing our commercial offering for Copilot for Microsoft 365
As a leading solutions provider for Microsoft Cloud, we were uniquely placed to leverage our expertise, existing knowledge base and services around Microsoft 365 to create a comprehensive and differentiated Copilot for Microsoft 365 offering for our customers.Â
We got started by creating a Copilot Readiness Assessment to help customers understand the prerequisites, benefits and risks of using Copilot for Microsoft 365 in their environment. This was then followed by a Copilot Adoption Framework, guiding customers through the stages of planning, deploying, adopting and optimising Copilot for Microsoft 365. After all, in order to realise value from Copilot, users have to change the way that they work which can be a challenge for even the most enthusiastic technology advocate.
Our Copilot training and engagement programme is designed to help our customers get the most value out of their investment in Copilot for Microsoft 365. It helps users master the skills and best practices of using Copilot for Microsoft 365 effectively and responsibly.
Bringing Copilot for Microsoft 365 to our customers
Leveraging the lessons we learned internally, we have delivered many successful Copilot engagements to support customers realising value from their investment in Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Leading with our Adoption and Change Management practice, we help customers to deliver a structured pilot, focusing on developing valuable use cases for Copilot as well as embedding its use in day-to-day activities. Typically in parallel with this early Value Experimentation, we help customers to identify and mitigate their sensitive data sharing risks which are more likely to be surfaced with Copilot.
By working closely with users to get them up-to-speed with Copilot and experiment, not only do we help them to derive value from the technology quickly, but we get to measure that value. What we uncover can be extrapolated to the broader organisation, not only developing a business case founded on use cases specific to the business, but also identifying those users who would benefit most from Copilot, allowing the customer to deliver a phased deployment prioritised by user satisfaction and business value.
Our approach to leverage our technical and change management expertise, and to focus on the business case and return on investment for the customer sets us apart from other Microsoft partners and makes us the partner of choice for the customer in this space.
Leading the way with Copilot for Microsoft 365 in the UK
Licensing Copilot for Microsoft 365 across our entire workforce of over 1,000 has made us one of the first and leading partners in the UK to make such a commitment. We’re proud to be enabling our people to continue delivering on our proven track record of providing value and innovation to our customers with the support of Microsoft’s AI assistant.
Our teams are constantly exploring new ways to extend the reach and capabilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365, adding more knowledge sources, skills and use cases. We’re also experimenting with Copilot Agents, a new feature that allows Copilot to automate tasks and processes asynchronously, saving users even more time and energy.
At Advania, we’re committed to elevating our business leadership in AI by staying ahead of the curve, sharing our learnings and collaborating with partners like Microsoft. This also extends to our commitment to our customers – to help them achieve more with Copilot for Microsoft 365 by providing them with the best solutions, services and support.
Join us on our Copilot for Microsoft 365 journey
You can find out more about the Copilot for Microsoft 365 services we’ve got on offer through our Copilot webpage.
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