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Before you dive headfirst into the AI revolution, a crucial step is often overlooked: ensuring your business is Copilot-ready. Discover the hidden pitfalls of Copilot adoption and learn how to avoid them. From data security to user training, we’ll guide you through Peter Graham’s essential steps to ensure a smooth transition. Trust us, you’re going to want to read to the end.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

What This Blog Covers:

In the previous blog, we took you through Peter’s Copilot experience – both as a Microsoft expert and a Copilot user. However, the “wow” factor aside, this transformational NextGen AI solution comes with its challenges – namely around adoption and integration. With this in mind, we asked Peter how businesses can proactively navigate these roadblocks and get Copilot-ready sooner rather than later – and here’s what he had to say:

Is Your Business Copilot-Ready?

Contrary to popular belief, taking your business to new heights with Copilot is not as simple as purchasing a licence from your trusted IT services provider. You need to take care of a few prerequisites before getting ready for take-off. Some important questions to consider before getting started are:

  • Where is your data stored?
  • Who’s got access to your data?
  • What are your security parameters and permissions?
  • Who is going to be getting a Copilot licence?

Tip: get Copilot-ready by downloading our MVP Introduction to Copilot for M365 Readiness guide here.

“Most people have been paying attention to their security posture for the last 10 or so years. Security is always going to be number one and remains top of mind.  It’s no secret that data is worth more than oil. So where your data is stored – and who has access to it – is a close second.” – Peter Graham, Partner Development Manager at Ingram Micro

As a Microsoft solutions provider, Ingram Micro is working with them on a new type of ‘get Copilot in a month’ framework because it takes over a month on average for an organisation to get ready for Copilot. This delay in adoption is usually on account of:

  • Needing to organise and restructure their data, and archive old information.
  • Ensuring that certain distribution groups within the environment only have access to certain information and conduct sensitivity labelling.
  • Training people on how to label documents that are confidential or public.

“There’s a lot of background stuff that businesses don’t understand. So, we’re looking to bring those things to the forefront and start turning on policies and features as they begin to use Copilot. This is still risky but is a way to streamline adoption.” – Peter Graham, Partner Development Manager at Ingram Micro

Further speaking to data protection, Microsoft introduced ‘restricted search’ within SharePoint earlier this year – allowing you to prohibit certain search capabilities that Copilot cannot access. This removes the chance of people finding information accidentally and is a quick way to hide sensitive data. However, the repercussion of that is even if you search for something in SharePoint, you cannot find it. You physically have to know where it is to get it. That’s how Copilot works: you’re effectively removing all the paths for search to work in that folder or SharePoint site.

Ingram Micro is also working on a framework around data compliance that will give their partners and customers – who have an immediate need for AI – actionable steps to speed up the Copilot implementation process.

Adoption Pitfalls and Best Practices

In addition to not having their data in order, one of the biggest adoption challenges Peter has noted is due to a lack of Copilot training.

“What we’ve found across the industry is that once Copilot is purchased, many companies are not willing to pay extra for Copilot training. They tend to think that it’s the same as having Alexa at home or using ChatGPT, or would simply rather figure it out on their own. But I cannot say this enough, adoption training is needed – especially for Copilot.” – Peter Graham, Partner Development Manager at Ingram Micro

Both Ingram Micro partners and customers alike are constantly asking for business tech support from experts and in forums. Some common issues are people not prompting correctly or they are using Copilot for one specific task and not exploring all its other features.

Tip: visit GitHub to learn how to prompt better in Copilot and share your best practices with others.

Here are some of the best practices Peter seen that have led to successful Copilot adoptions:

  1. Licence a few people in an environment or an entire department alone.
  2. Those individuals then go on an adoption journey with their Copilot partner or expert and have multiple sessions.
  3. Create a Teams channel where they collaboratively share ideas, their biggest pains and gains, and some top tips.
  4. After three or six months have passed, that group of people can then articulate and translate all that they’ve learned to the rest of the business.

“You can’t expect one or two people to influence an entire organisation. Or even expect management to make the sole decision of whether Copilot would be useful to the business.” – Peter Graham, Partner Development Manager at Ingram Micro

Peter’s Secrets to Successful Copilot Adoption

Peter ended his Copilot review with two key takeaways that he wants you to walk away with:

A Strategic Investment for Specific Teams

Firstly, don’t just give Copilot to the CEO or the IT administrator because they won’t use it like any other department. Sometimes you’ll find that the CEO or management typically won’t have the time to play around with Copilot.

The best departments to put Copilot into are Finance and Marketing because they’re the ones that have long repetitive tasks – like trying to get an invoice approved or creating content for a marketing campaign – that can take days or even weeks. Moreover, you can immediately see the ROI in those departments, as Copilot significantly reduces the time spent on those tasks.

After purchasing one licence per department, coach and work with them every week. Ask each person:

  • What have been the best and worst interactions you’ve had?
  • How have you been speaking to Copilot?
  • Which features have you benefited from the most?

The GCSE Framework

The second thing to think about is Microsoft’s GCSE framework. This is an acronym for how to engage with GenAI:

“The longer your prompt is, the better the response will be. Stick to the GCSE Framework, and you will typically never go wrong.” – Peter Graham, Partner Development Manager at Ingram Micro

The Journey to Integration

There you have it: a snapshot of what you can expect at the beginning of your Copilot journey. Like any voyage, you are bound to face some obstacles along the way. Luckily, these can be mitigated in advance by preparing your organisation for a successful integration. By following Peter Graham’s expert advice and prioritising Copilot adoption training, you can ensure a smooth transition and reap the rewards of AI-powered productivity.

Want to see Copilot in action? Check out this video to see how Copilot transforms your Microsoft Teams experience.

Lynn Murape

Marketing Content Creator at Babble