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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving how small businesses of all sizes work. It's helping people become more creative, efficient and productive in their work.
And we're just at the beginning.
Over time, it will change every aspect of work.
According to Microsoft:
As employees struggle to keep up with the pace and volume of digital work, they have resorted to bringing their own AI to work.
This has caused the use of generative AI to nearly doubled in the last six months, with 75% of global knowledge workers using it.
Many leaders lack a plan and a vision to having a cohesive AI strategy, even though they understand it's a business imperative.
They have yet to build a framework to transfer individual productivity gains into bottom line ROI and profitability.
"There's a common struggle of not knowing how to get started because they don't have expertise in AI and new technologies.
- Denise Pickett, Visa's President of Global Business Solutions
In 2024, small businesses, especially the 190 million using Microsoft Office products, should consider leveraging Mircorost Copilot to reshape workflows, streamline operations, optimize productivity, enrich customer interactions, and gain a competitive advantage over competition.
Microsoft Copilot seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft 365 suite.
When used correctly, this enables small businesses to automate routine tasks and focus on strategic initiatives.
What makes it revolutionary is that it integrates advanced language models with your organization's data within the Microsoft Graph.
This includes documents, presentations, emails, files, meetings, and chats, providing intelligent, context-aware assistance. It supercharges productivity across familiar applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It aids in drafting documents, analyzing data, creating presentations, managing emails, and facilitating more effective meetings.
Copilot's ability to comprehend your work context and offer relevant, actionable insights makes it an invaluable asset for businesses aiming to streamline operations and enhance decision-making.
Importantly, Microsoft has crafted Copilot with enterprise needs at the forefront, ensuring it meets the highest standards of security, compliance, and privacy.
It adheres to your existing Microsoft 365 security policies, keeping your data securely isolated within your tenant and never using it to train foundation models.
We've partnered with dozens of organizations to help them confidently embrace Copilot's AI-powered productivity without compromising data protection or intellectual property rights.
Microsoft Copilot acts as a powerful productivity multiplier for your team.
By automating routine tasks and providing intelligent assistance across Microsoft 365 applications, Copilot allows your teams to focus on high-value activities that drive business growth.
From drafting emails and creating presentations to analyzing data and managing projects, Copilot streamlines workflows, enabling small businesses to accomplish more with limited resources.
Small businesses can play bigger with Copilot. The other added benefit is that is helps you Maximize Your Microsoft 365 Investment.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 isn’t just abetter way of doing the same things. It’s an entirely new way of working.
Copilot transforms raw data into actionable insights, empowering small business owners and managers to make informed decisions quickly.
Most people don't know this, but one of the most powerful things you can do with Copilot is to simply ask it questions about our data.
Copilot can uncover trends, identify opportunities, and highlight potential risks across various business operations.
In today's hybrid work environments and progressively remote world, effective collaboration is crucial.
Copilot enhances team synergy by facilitating seamless communication and information sharing across Microsoft 365 apps.
One of the things I love is that it can summarize lengthy email threads, generate meeting notes, and even suggest action items, ensuring that all team members stay aligned and informed.
We solve problems faster and get rid of small tasks like following up on key action items after meetings.
Copilot helps teams amplify human ingenuity and innovation.
By handling routine tasks and providing creative suggestions, Copilot frees up time and mental space for small business for your teams to innovate.
Whether it's brainstorming new product ideas, crafting marketing strategies, or solving complex business problems, Copilot serves as an intelligent partner that can spark creativity and help bring ideas to life.
You should consider speaking with an expert to incorporate Copilot into your business.
Here are some stats from Microsoft that we can share as Microsoft Partners.
Schedule a Free Consultation With Our Team to assess your Copilot Readiness today.
Even with the promising prospects, many small businesses face significant hurdles in truly integrating AI into their operations.
The initial cost, perceived complexity, and a lack of a strategic roadmap can deter businesses from taking the leap.
In my experience, I've found that you need to face these challenges head on to truly get the full benefits of AI transformation.
There are three critical things you will need to successfully implement Copilot or any AI into your business:
In order to have success with the implementation of any major initiative in your business you will need executive leadership and buy in.
A great partner like BlackInk will help you:
You should identify four key stakeholders to ensure your Copilot implementation is as successful as possible.
Preferably, you would have an IT Enablement Team, an Executive Sponsor, A Change Management Team, and a Risk Management Team.
BlackInk is a roughly a 40 person company, and like your company, many of these people will be wearing multiple hats.
That's ok.
But the roles you can't handle by yourself, consider leveraging a partner to help you fill in the gaps.
If you need help trying to come up with use cases for implementing Copilot to drive functional value across your business, we can help you align Copilot with Business Outcomes.
Speak with a member of our sales team to schedule a discovery call.
The success of your technology investment depends solely on people.
It is maximized by the number of people who adopt it multiplied by the level at which your people can leverage it.
In order to get the maximum value from Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft recommends a 12 step plan that is implemented in 4 phases:
If a 12 step plan seems overwhelming, schedule a meeting with our team.
We'd be happy to help you figure this out.
Speak with a member of our sales team to schedule a discovery call.
Step 1 in the process would be to ensure you're reviewing your data and privacy settings.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is built on a comprehensive approach to enterprise-gradesecurity, compliance, privacy, identity, and responsible AI.
Because Copilot inherits your existing Microsoft 365 data and security permissions, it makes setup straight forward.
But there's never a bad time to review these things again. It doesn't hurt to have good content management and data governance practices and checklists before rollouts begin.
For maximum impact, and to have the desired impact, its best that you choose a path of how you pick, which humans.
When deciding how to implement Copilot, you should consider identifying the business issues that need to be solved and then apply AI to the challenge.
Here are examples of how Copilot can be used across, HR, IT, Sales, Marketing and Finance.
Each team should have a clearly defined goal or specific use case for how they will implement Copilot. This extra layer of specificity ensures the technology is effectively integrated into workflows across roles and levels.
It also helps you to map which people are involved at which points.
This will help you to save money on seat assignments when rolling out the technology.
You don't want to roll it out to everyone at first.
You also want to ensure you have a plan of not only who you will roll it out to, but attainable success metrics for the specific use cases you lay out.
Here is an example 0 to 12 month Copilot Rollout Roadmap.
To ensure maximum success, you want to involve your champions. Your collectors and community builders to be the ones leading and driving the change.
Leadership is crucial as we shared earlier, but the involvement of the team is the most effective way to get mass adoption.
Once you've done the work of trying to address the human side, now we must bridge the gap and begin doing the technical work.
We've found that teaching the skills is much easier than the human elements.
It does require a humility, a willingness to change, and a curiousity to learn new things.
Without that foundational mindset, your Copilot implementation will be doomed from the start.
Step 1 in entering the Technical Readiness phase is to Perform the
Microsoft 365 Copilot Optimization Assessment.
As a partner, we can help you get deep insights from this assessment and review the findings with you.
We’ve arrived at a pivotal moment for AI at work.
I've been surprised at just how fast AI has gone from an idea to a full blown force impacting businesses large and small globally.
As a 30 year old small business serving customers across the United States, we've seen first hand how AI has improved our business and the businesses of our customers when leveraged.
AI is helping BlackInk punch above our weight class, and helping our employees become more creative and productive.
So like we're encouraging our customers, we're facing the challenge head-on and we want to help you do the same.
Speak with a member of our sales team to schedule a discovery call.
The assessment is designed to help you:
This will help you identify a clear path to deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot.
The assessment is 26 questions long and takes about 30 minutes to complete on average.
Adopting AI solutions like Microsoft Copilot requires commitment from leaders, clear objectives, and a strategic roadmap.
In order to have success, you need to engage employees, promote an ownership culture by incorporating feedback and aligning AI initiatives with business goals.
Training and mentorship programs are critical steps in nurturing an AI-fluent workforce.
Start small—begin with pilot projects—and expand as confidence builds in AI’s transformational potential.
Cultivating a proactive AI culture begins with empowering your workforce to embrace AI-driven solutions in their daily tasks.
A proactive AI culture necessitates clear communication and robust support systems to ensure employee engagement.
Transformation takes root when employees are invested and see AI as an ally rather than a competitor.
Schedule time to connect with our team.
We want to speak with you to help you maximize Microsoft Copilot in your business.
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