Is M365 Copilot Worth the price tag?

gary.blunden

First things first - What is it?

Copilot allows business users and their teams to focus on more strategic tasks, thereby saving time and increasing efficiency.

M365 Copilot, as an AI-powered assistant, can help businesses streamline their operations. It can manage tasks such as scheduling meetings, organising emails and even drafting responses. This allows business users and their teams to focus on more strategic tasks, thereby saving time and increasing efficiency. Simple.

Copilot can also play a crucial role in improving productivity. It can provide instant answers to queries, offer suggestions based on context and even learn from user interactions to provide personalised assistance. This means you spend less time searching for information and more time on task execution.

For small businesses, resource optimisation is key. Copilot can help here by reducing the need for additional administrative staff. As an AI assistant, it can handle a multitude of tasks that would otherwise require human intervention. This not only saves on hiring costs but also allows existing staff to be utilised in areas where they can add more value.

Copilot is more than just an AI assistant. It’s a tool that can support all businesses in the ever-lasting journey of digital transformation. By streamlining operations, improving productivity and optimising resources, Copilot can help businesses thrive in today’s competitive landscape.

Compare Copilot and M365 Copilot

That’s right, there’s something else out there, built by Microsoft called simply ‘Copilot’. This is different to M365 Copilot. It’s free for all Microsoft customers and appears in places like Bing, allowing you to search and generate content whilst surfing the web.

M365 Copilot is similar to that of Copilot but it is baked inside many of the products you’re likely already using, making it far more powerful.

Let’s take a look at a comparison.

	Copilot	Copilot for Microsoft 365
Answer questions
Create content
Reason over data
Copilot in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
Copilot in Teams
Customisation		Copilot Studio

Let’s focus now on some objectives that M365 Copilot can help you achieve.

Warning From here, I will simply refer to M365 Copilot as Copilot, don't get confused with the lesser equivalent!

Copilot in Outlook

Draft a reply.

Replying to emails can take up most of our day. Copilot can speed us up by drafting a reply for us. I often find myself prompting Copilot with:

Reply to this email. Acknowledge the problem raised and advise this is being investigated. Sound like me in your response.

Sound like me in your response.

Copilot knows how I choose to correspond over email. It understands the semantics of language, which words I often use and the tone and length of my responses as it has access to all my emails.

You can also prompt Copilot to respond in a friendly or informal tone. Conversely, you can have it respond in a different language, in short-form with a view to brevity and clarity or in a professional tone with verbosity.

In some instances, having Copilot read an attachment, or visit a pre-existing file may be necessary before responding. This is possible by prompting Copilot to review a document and provide insights on what it found before prompting to draft a reply. This provides further context to Copilot that will provide a deeper, more detailed response.

Copilot in Teams

Create an agenda for the next meeting.

Once a meeting has concluded, I like to use Copilot to build an agenda for the next meeting. I prompt Copilot in Teams to build the agenda, capture what questions to ask at the next meeting, identify the right people for each action item and schedule the next meeting in our diaries.

I like to prompt things like:

Did we leave any questions unanswered?
Did we miss any questions?
Do you have any ideas how we can improve the call?
Did anyone not get a chance to speak?

Copilot in Word

Analyse a document

It can’t hurt having another pair of….’eyes’?

I must review hundreds of documents every month. With Copilot, I’m doing this more effectively. If I have a technical document that requires my input, I will prompt Copilot to identify any key areas and ask it to provide any insights. I will task it to look for opportunities or look for other documents that may provide more information or follow a similar theme.

Editing files

Editing large portions of text to change context or language can be laboursome, yet critical to the target audience.

Copilot allows me to update information faster. I can have it review sections of text and provide optimisations or help elaborate key facts. I can have it also introduce new sections, extending the detail to provide deeper insights.

How you delegate these tasks to Copilot is the key to getting the most out of it.

So is it worth the £300 price tag, per user.

If you use Microsoft 365 and the above scenarios have you wondering why you or your teams still do everything manually when such a tool exists, then go for it.

I personally could do without it, but I don’t want to. It gives me back something that is more precious to me than anything, time. Give it a go and let me know what works, what doesn’t and any tips you might have to share with others on a similar journey.

I will cover soon how to implement M365 Copilot to get the best adoption and return.

Over and out.

Featured Post, M365 Copilot

Gary Blunden

Microsoft Solutions Expert

Welcome to my blog! I'm Gary, a Microsoft solutions expert specialising in Microsoft business applications, data and artificial intelligence - working with Microsoft tech for over 15 years. Here, I share tutorials, case studies, best practices and industry trends to help the community harness the power of these technologies. Join me in exploring the transformative potential of Microsoft products and services.