What Can Microsoft Copilot do for your Business?

Microsoft Copilot has been attracting a lot of attention, but many people still haven’t seen it in action and are left wondering, “What can Microsoft Copilot do for my business?”

Microsoft Copilot is designed to change the productivity game by bringing powerful AI tools directly to your Microsoft 365 apps, helping businesses automate, analyze, and streamline work like never before.
We’re going to give you a closer look at what Copilot is and what Copilot does well. Plus, we’ll even share what Copilot doesn’t do well.

First, let’s answer, “What is Microsoft Copilot?”

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Back in early 2023 and the hay-day of the world first beginning to buzz about upcoming AI advancements and investments, Microsoft announced their plans to invest heavily into OpenAI. Now, their investment has started to see the light of day in the form of Microsoft Copilot.
By having their own specific AI assistant directly integrated into their business applications, Microsoft has catapulted the output that can be achieved from working in their applications.
Through the prompts you give Copilot, it will work to create an output that matches what you we’re looking for, whether that’s drafting a PowerPoint presentation, summarizing a long business meeting, or crafting an on-brand email message. Copilot is there to create content, saving you lots of time, frustration, writers block, and often times provide you with skills you may not have.
While it sounds like a content producing magic spell, there is a gigantic warning we want to share with you at the end of this blog…so be sure to check out the final point.

Let’s get right into what Copilot can do…

What are some of the efficiencies, benefits, and outcomes you can expect to experience by utilizing Copilot with other Microsoft applications?
Here are 6 ways Copilot can benefit your business.

What can Microsoft Copilot do for your Business?

1. Email Assistance Made Simple

Writing effective, on-brand emails quickly can be a hassle, especially when juggling multiple priorities. With Copilot integrated into Outlook, you can draft on-brand emails faster than ever. Just set the tone (professional, casual, etc.) and let Copilot draft the message. You can even choose a length, ask it to summarize long threads, or find and respond to specific points in lengthy email chains. Copilot makes managing communications faster and more efficient by handling these time-consuming tasks, giving you back time to focus on higher-level tasks.

2. Smart Summaries and Follow-ups in Teams

Keeping up with conversations in Microsoft Teams can get a little overwhelming, especially when multiple discussions or projects are happening simultaneously. Here’s where Copilot shines in Teams. You can use it to instantly summarize chat threads, emails, and documents shared within Teams. And for busy professionals, Copilot’s integration as a real-time note-taker during meetings, complete with actionable to-do lists, provides a great resource for capturing the key points and next steps. It’s overkill to bring a personal assistant into every meeting or conversation you have but with Copilot, it makes keeping track of every project detail and team update easy without having to use up someone’s valuable time in just taking notes.

3. Content Creation in Word

Whether you’re drafting reports, proposals, or even social media content, Copilot in Word can help you create and refine documents more efficiently. Begin with a simple outline, and let Copilot expand it into a full draft. This tool can also adapt your writing style and adjust the tone, making content that reflects your brand while cutting down on time. Plus, if you need to make adjustments or include additional information on a topic, you can prompt Copilot to add more content seamlessly, making it ideal for creating drafts, memos, and blog posts quickly.

4. Presentation Creation in PowerPoint

Creating presentations is often a long process of gathering data, refining ideas, and designing slides. Copilot for PowerPoint can streamline this entire process. You can use it to create an entire presentation from an existing Word document or simply prompt it to generate a slide deck on any given topic. The tool can even pull in relevant images, create data visualizations, and structure the slides to make them visually appealing. With the integration of Microsoft Designer, you also have the flexibility to enhance and personalize each slide’s layout and style.

5. Document Summaries for Faster Reviews

If your business deals with lengthy reports, contracts, or any dense documentation, Copilot’s summarization feature in Word can be a huge asset. Instead of wading through pages of text, Copilot can distill key points and highlight sections that matter most. For instance, summarizing long contracts to focus on risks, benefits, or terms saves time and helps stakeholders make faster, informed decisions. This functionality is especially beneficial when you need to quickly understand a document’s content before a meeting or when comparing multiple reports at once.

6. Data Insights and Formatting in Excel

Look, we aren’t going to sugarcoat this. There aren’t a lot of exciting things to share about what Copilot can do in Excel. It will keep improving, but as of now, Copilot can perform data summaries, conditional formatting, and even identify outliers or trends. For example, if you have a sales forecast spreadsheet, you can ask Copilot to identify top-performing products or highlight trends. The tool can also answer specific questions about your data directly within Excel, which can cut down on manual analysis and reduce errors in data interpretation. 

What should you watch out for when using Copilot?

Copilot is not Autopilot.
While it is impressive how much Copilot can do, it’s important to remember that it is not “Autopilot.” Copilot does not produce content or outcomes that are 100% prime-time ready. Meaning, you or your people still need to review Copilot’s output and be ready to edit and often re-work it.  Don’t fall prey into thinking that Copilot can replace people.

Copilot’s Output is Only as Good as Your Input.
An important skillset you’ll need to develop to work with Copilot is effective prompting and feeding. If your prompting skills improve, Copilot will get to a result you’re pleased with a lot faster than if you are vague and general. 
Feeding your brand voice, and other relevant information into your Copilot prompts will also help you to get to a desired outcome much faster.

Pricing and Availability: Getting Started with Copilot

To get started, businesses using Microsoft 365 can add Copilot as an annual add-on for $360 per user. For organizations that want to experiment before committing, Microsoft offers a “Pro” version on a monthly basis, which offers many of the same features but with some capacity limitations.
To purchase Copilot and ensure you’re business is set up with the proper cybersecurity and data protection, it’s best to get Copilot through a managed service provider like Snap Tech IT, to help with customization and integration.

Ready to Unlock Copilot’s Full Potential?

Microsoft Copilot isn’t just another productivity tool; it’s a way to rethink workflows, enhance collaboration, and tackle routine tasks with ease. From email generation and meeting summaries to comprehensive report writing and data insights, Copilot brings AI capabilities to the tools you’re already using. By letting the AI handle the repetitive stuff, your team can focus on strategy, creativity, and decision-making. Interested in exploring how Copilot can fit into your current Microsoft 365 environment? Reach out to Snap Tech IT today, and let’s make AI work for you!