GenAI and New Ways of Working: how to seize Microsoft 365 Copilot potential?

AI and GenAI solutions offer new opportunities every day.

The hype is sky-high, but without clarity on the possible concrete applications, there is the risk of a boomerang effect, disattending initial, disproportionate expectations. A risk certainly not new, which Douglas Adams already drew attention to at the end of the 1970s in the moral of his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: it is useless to discover from the supercomputer Deep Thought that the answer to the fundamental question about life, the universe and everything is 42, if you lose sight of what the question was.

The challenge that organizations face is to understand and leverage the opportunities offered by the new technological solutions with timeliness and effectiveness, without losing the sense of measure and the concreteness of possible applications useful to the single context.

For this reason, we believe it is important to accompany the technological evolution with Adoption paths that start from real needs, from “right questions“, accompanying organizations in the coding of precise needs and personalizing paths leading the implementation of use cases functional to the single context.

By integrating Generative AI solutions with the tools of the M365 suite (Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, etc.), Microsoft 365 Copilot is fully entering into the professional daily life of many companies as an enabler of new ways of working and performance accelerator.

The value of Microsoft 365 Copilot therefore does not rely only on the potential of GenAI, but also and especially on the possibilities of correlation with the tools and daily work habits of those who use it.

By retrieving information from mailboxes, calendars, chats, recorded meetings, shared documents and all the tools of the suite, respecting the access levels and indicating the sources, Microsoft 365 Copilot offers new opportunities for innovation and acceleration.

By focusing on the most functional applications to the single context, Microsoft 365 Copilot allows people to evolve their ways of working and to:

To really tackle these potentials, however, as Douglas Adams masterly reminds us, it is not enough to acquire the technology, but it is also and perhaps even more necessary to understand how to use it effectively, ethically, and responsibly.

Ensuring the success of an Adoption path of Microsoft 365 Copilot firstly means for us to establish a management and support plan for the transformation that:

This implies designing timely, adaptive, and measured Adoption paths, anchored to some key principles:

• Quick activation: for an agile and fast start-up we find it useful to start from a pre-coded Use Case catalogue by function, which covers scenarios related to different functions and business areas (g., Information Technology, Human Resources, Marketing).
• Customization: to refine the path on real needs (the “right questions” of Douglas Adams) we aim to collaboratively define a selection of Use Cases chosen and customized according to the specificities of the context, the needs and the objectives of the organizations and the people involved.
• Continuous updating: keeping direct contact with Microsoft, we are committed to ensuring constant alignment of the designed plans with the latest technological releases.
• Practical support: the cornerstone of our approach has always been the commitment to guide learning with practical training activities in collaborative sessions and advisory, based on experiential and digital methodologies, that involve users in an active and stimulating way.
• Online training support: further support for accelerating learning is for us the storage and exchange potential offered by digital Communities, collaborative spaces where people during and after training can find materials and resources, such as prompt suggestions, to improve the use of M365 Copilot, as well as that of any new technological solution.

In conclusion, as Artificial Intelligence solutions evolve rapidly and M365 Copilot begins to enter the daily routine of many organizations as a key solution to accelerate, enhance and innovate work processes, it becomes in our lens increasingly important to act promptly to accompany the advent of new solutions with a cultural evolution of mindset, habits, and behaviours.

Or as Douglas Adams might have said: in order not to miss the opportunity to exploit the immense potential of a supercomputer, it is essential first to become aware of the human factor that interfaces with this supercomputer and to clarify: what do we, human beings, ask of technology? How can we embrace its potential?

Lucia Coltri e Giorgia Stefani