Today’s competitive businesses are constantly figuring out how to do more with less—something that seems easier for enterprises with expendable cash to throw at digital solutions like automation. But small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) need to prioritize efficiency just as much, if not more. Luckily, there are plenty of tools to help, although determining which emerging technologies are right for your business—especially ones with newer capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning—is the challenge.
SMBs should start by considering Microsoft Copilot—the tech giant’s next-generation AI solution. Copilot can alleviate your SMB from the mundane tasks that hold you back from doing the high-level work that makes a difference in your business. Embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day like Teams and Outlook, Copilot uses large language models (LLM)—combined with your business’s data—to allow you to prompt it with natural language to complete a staggering range of tasks.
As Microsoft put it, “You experience Microsoft 365 Copilot in two ways: in-app assistance and cross-app intelligence to unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills.”
How does that turn into real productivity boosts for your business? Read on to learn about three concrete ways.
Get More out of Meetings
Ever spent too much time after a day of meetings trying to parse through what happened, what you need to do next, and who to share information with? Copilot takes all those tasks off your plate. The solution can summarize any number of meetings, emphasize what the most important points were during each of them, itemize action items, and share relevant information with the right parties. Attendees—and especially people who couldn’t make the meetings—will efficiently get up to speed without needing a human to do all that wrap-up work.
Upskill Where You Need It the Most
Let’s say presenting sales materials and pitching to prospective customers is your bread and butter, but creating PowerPoint presentations is not. Copilot can take your emails, documents, and tons of other data points and create a pitch deck for you.
It can also draft emails for you, allowing your sales teams to spend time actually communicating with prospects instead of writing. Microsoft launched Copilot in Viva Sales in February 2023, taking the integration of AI-powered experiences into sales a step further. The platform is the “world’s-first AI copilot in both customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and finance applications enterprise resource planning (ERP)” according to the company. It integrates AI across Microsoft 365 and Viva Sales, and offers a new way to engage prospects while freeing up sales experts.
Spur—and Speed up—Innovation
Sometimes getting started on a project is the toughest part. Working on anything from scratch requires an immense amount of brain power and information gathering that can hold up the production process. Copilot can produce ideas for a writing project or a speech—or it can even produce multiple versions of one item so you can refine the results into the ideal final form. In this way, you’ll gain efficiency avoiding wasting time on the hard part, yet you can still apply your unique human skills—such as intuition and judgment—to the final product.
Take Productivity up a Notch with Microsoft Copilot
It can be difficult to truly grasp how you can use something like generative AI in your business, even with examples of how others are doing it. We’d be happy to share more about Microsoft Copilot and how it can specifically benefit SMBs. As Microsoft experts specializing in helping SMBs leverage digital technologies for growth, Point Alliance is your resource for any questions. Reach out anytime.
