Boosting Productivity with Copilot for Microsoft 365: How Transparity is Leading the Way

READING, England, July 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- At Transparity, our mission is to empower our employees and customers through innovative AI solutions, enabling them to achieve more in less time and with less effort. The introduction of Copilot for Microsoft 365 has been a game-changer in this pursuit.

By integrating Copilot into our operations, we've significantly enhanced employee productivity. Our team now works smarter and more seamlessly, giving us first-hand experience of how to help our customers reap these benefits.

"I'm thrilled with the productivity and well-being impact we've seen. Our approach has empowered employees to fully utilise Copilot and now we're excited to support our customers on their own adoption journey."

Jodie Rodgers, Transparity Chief AI Officer

How We Did It

Empowering Our People

We identified key user groups that would benefit most from Copilot and tailored training to maximise their productivity. This training was delivered through ongoing sessions and reinforced through communications, storytelling and reporting, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Three-Phase Rollout

1. Excitement and Training: We launched Copilot with targeted training, prioritising team leaders and managers to support their colleagues. We leveraged Microsoft's Copilot guidance, combined with our own insights and support to make the experience more personal for Transparity employees: the right help, at the right time. For example, user licences were assigned in a way that each individual had enough time to familiarise themselves with Copilot prior to user training – but not so much time that they developed bad habits.
2. Cultural and Operational Changes: We facilitated knowledge building and practical application, allowing employees to experience Copilot's benefits firsthand.
3. Ongoing Use and Support: We continue to reinforce new working practices, document success stories, and provide coaching to keep everyone on track.

"Copilot has enhanced my daily work efficiency and quality. I'm more present in meetings, trust Copilot's notes and actions, and use its content creation to speed up and improve proposals and sales materials."

Tom Lloyd, Transparity Azure Pre-Sales Consultant

Steps for a Successful Rollout

• Stimulating Activities: We created channels for employees to exchange best practices and share their learnings.
• Continuous Updates: We kept everyone informed about the latest Copilot innovations and capabilities.
• Personalised Support: We combined Microsoft's guidance with our insights to provide tailored support.
• Dedicated Channels: Communication, Technology, Enablement, and Operations were our four pillars for a successful rollout.
  - Communication – informing and educating people about what was changing and what they needed to do next, from receiving their licence to familiarising themselves with features.
  - Technology – due diligence and licence allocation as required.
  - Enablement – comprehensive training and development, including face to face learning, online courses, accessible resources and user stories.
  - Operations – regular monitoring and reporting to assess performance and gather feedback.

Creating Behavioural Change, Across the Board

We fostered a Copilot for Microsoft 365 Teams community with a Resource Hub and weekly tips to encourage self-learning. We also ran 'office hours' clinics twice a week for users to ask experts about Copilot.

This strategic programme has led to Copilot licences being assigned to 60% of our employees, of which there are over 90% active users' month-on-month (vs. an original target of 40%). This has been achieved in fewer than 100 days, a considerable feat and even more impressive when compared with Microsoft's benchmark. Two-thirds of our employees report improved work quality and productivity, while almost three-quarters spend less time on repetitive tasks.

"Copilot is your ultimate meeting sidekick! It highlights key info and details post-meeting actions for each participant, ensuring clarity and accountability. It's like having a personal assistant who never misses a beat!"

Alison Evershed, Transparity Senior Leadership Team Business Partner

Encouraged by this success, we are planning more activities to boost engagement with Copilot. If you're looking to embrace the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365, here are a few steps to help you get started!

Copilot for Microsoft 365 leverages large language models that interact with your organisation's data using Microsoft Graph to generate personalised experiences with related context, reducing the steps to find the information you need and generate content. Take these five steps to make sure your organisation is ready:

1. Understand your data: Gather insights into your data estate, discover stale, sensitive or high-profile data that may need additional protections in place. Microsoft Purview can assist with inbuilt classifiers that it may already have discovered within your cloud environment.
2. Manage your data: Armed with the insights gathered in step one, you can ensure data is stored in appropriate cloud locations and protected with the right permissions to keep the content safe. Stale data can be archived or removed to be out of scope of Copilot.
3. Classify your data: Tools like Microsoft Purview Information Protection can be used to apply labels to the most sensitive data and use encryption to restrict access to files in case they are moved or shared incorrectly.
4. Protect your data: Stop oversharing of sensitive information being surfaced within prompts, or classified information being copied to external AI assistants with Microsoft Data Loss Prevention (DLP). 
5. Retain and Audit Copilot Activities: Using Data Lifecycle Management and Communication Compliance you can ensure Copilot prompt information is retained, and interactions reviewed in an instance of inappropriate use. 

About Transparity

A 100% pureplay Microsoft partner with comprehensive expertise and experience across the length and breadth of the Microsoft stack, Transparity is the UK's most accredited Microsoft partner*, holding all six of Microsoft's Partner Designations, 14 Advanced MS Specialisations, and an MXDR certified cyber offering, as well as the vendor's much prized and sought after Azure Expert MSP status.

Backed by Beech Tree Private Equity, and employing more than 250 staff around the UK, Transparity specialises in providing consultancy, development, and managed services spanning Microsoft's entire technology offering.

With its unique and independently recognised working culture, Transparity consistently attracts and retains the UK's top talent, all ensuring it can deliver against its aim of always providing the very best in advice, collaboration, working practices, and Microsoft Cloud technologies for each and every one of its customers.

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*Correct at the time of this document's release

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