Make Microsoft 365 Copilot Worth Every Penny

Trends | 03.10.2024 | By: KYP

By the end of 2024, about 8 million U.S. knowledge workers are expected to use Microsoft 365 Copilot. This tool is a Generative AI (GenAI) designed to help with personal and business productivity. Organizations are still trying to determine if Copilot is worth the investment. Can you guarantee Microsoft 365 Copilot ROI?

microsoft copilot roi playbook

This research explores essential points for people who have already adopted Copilot and those thinking about using it. By sharing successful customer stories and key lessons, you will learn practical steps to significantly improve your business.

This document highlights the need to measure the link between individual productivity and business results. It suggests using cycle time, transaction volume, and employee productivity metrics. If you are a leader planning an AI strategy or an executive wanting to make an impact, keep reading. You will see how AI can positively affect leaders.

Is Microsoft 365 Copilot Worth the Investment?

Are GenAI platforms transitioning into a freemium model?

In the rapidly evolving world of technology, Microsoft continuously positions itself at the forefront of GenAI (GenAI). Office 365 holds around 46 percent of the world’s market share for office suite technology. Google, Microsoft’s closest competitor, has around 48 percent of the office suite global market. Recently, Google shared that its GenAI platform Gemini will be free for many users. What does this mean for leaders in their AI strategies?

Forrester suggests that only 8 percent of all U.S. knowledge workers will use Microsoft 365 Copilot by the end of 2024. Thus far, Copilot remains a paid subscription through Microsoft. According to Forrester’s study, 92 percent of knowledge workers will not use Copilot this year.

Is there something the 8 million MS 365 Copilot knowledge worker community knows that the rest of us don’t?

Benefits (and Limitations) of Individual Productivity

Why do businesses use Microsoft?

According to Microsoft, Copilot provides real-time intelligence to help users complete tasks more efficiently. One of the primary promises of Microsoft 365 Copilot is its potential to significantly enhance productivity.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Copilot streamlines daily processes like drafting emails, managing schedules, and analyzing data. This aims to help employees focus on more critical activities and, in turn, increase their productivity.

The impact of individual productivity

Individual productivity is vital for an organization’s success. Put simply, productivity measures the efficiency of producing goods or services. Yet, often, companies have a gap between efficiency and quality. For leading organizations, increasing productivity means doing better rather than just doing more. This shift in perspective can significantly improve efficiency and effectiveness, ultimately contributing to the organization’s success.

In this sense, being better is synonymous with contributing to a positive business impact. Many people assume that boosting individual productivity guarantees a positive business impact. If people are doing more, bottom-line savings should increase.

Build business cases for Microsoft Copilot ROI

Copilot’s Build a Business Case feature promotes a method to gauge ‘business impact’ through assisted hours. Copilot’s ‘assisted hours’ estimate the total time Copilot assisted employees within a given period.

Specifically, Microsoft developed a composite score. This score “reflects Copilot telemetry data such as meeting hours summarized, chat searches, email summaries, content creation (documents, presentations, emails, etc.), and more.” 

If an employee completes her KPIs by Friday at 10:00 a.m., what does that mean for the business? Does she sit around the rest of the day, take on the work of her slower-working peers, or train on a new skill, as mentioned above?

KYP.ai highlights Microsoft Copilot ROI before, during, and after adoption.

Microsoft believes that more learning, training, or business impact could help your business reach new potential. While employee development certainly has value, the question remains: Will this training significantly impact business goals?

Digging deeper, it’s important to remember that productivity goes beyond time saved. It must extend into impactful business outcomes gained by the saved time. Currently, the composite score compares time spent in Microsoft as equivalent to saved employee time. This static calculation is not tailored to specific company results, though Microsoft uses it to determine ROI. A customized approach is essential to ensure the relevance of the training to your particular business needs.

The key to achieving business outcomes lies in the dynamic correlation between individual productivity and these outcomes. The details of this connection are essential. Everyone’s productivity is a crucial part of this process.

The business impact of dynamic productivity

What is dynamic correlation?

Dynamic correlation uses organizational and user context to understand different actions’ inputs, outputs, and outcomes. In simple terms, it is a multifactorial analysis that uses AI and ML. This analysis measures the impact of deliverables and the time saved.

For example, say an employee completes her 50 invoices ahead of schedule. Dynamic correlation would show other tasks the employee could do. It would track the quality of invoices. It would also find more ways to automate and improve the process. Finally, it would monitor the results of any changes made.

AI can relate productivity to business outcomes.

Productivity metrics to measure

In addition to employee productivity, organizations should consider metrics that impact business outcomes. KPIs to consider are cycle time, transaction volume, and amount of rework. This adds dynamic layers to Microsoft 365 Copilot ROI.

With dynamic correlation, organizations can better resource their teams to ensure the ideal utilization rates. Better utilization improves productivity and contributes to organizational goals such as lower attrition, reduced waste, and profitability.

Dynamic correlation lets you understand which processes, tasks, and workforce elements can be improved. It can also track results. Employees feel motivated by positive changes, like more sales contacts, fewer invoice issues, or higher NPS scores. This motivation drives them to keep achieving good results.

How can you make Microsoft 365 Copilot work for you?

1. Capture operational and contextual data

Before any pilot, organizations should capture data on working methods. Copilot is a natural addition to Office 365. However, you likely also need to look at other tools outside of the Microsft suite, which Copilot does not support. This will help you find the best uses for GenAI, automation, and different ways to improve efficiency.

How is your workforce spending time? Where can processes and technology usage be optimized?

KYP.ai product with a chart showing how processes are distributed across the company.

Acquiring data with a leading Digital Interaction Intelligence solution like KYP.ai can drastically improve your time to value. KYP.ai helps organizations understand where there is potential for improvement and build the business case with actual employee data. Unlike Copilot, this data is customized for your organization. It understands how time is used and its business value. This applies to all applications, processes, and team collaborations.

With KYP.ai, you can quickly assess the ROI potential of Microsoft Copilot licenses (or other software). Productivity 360 from KYP.ai gives instant insights into expected ROI. This data-led decision-making increases efficiency and reduces risk. The platform also shows which business scenarios in your organization have the most potential for improvement.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Return on Investment: Prioritize GenAI by business impact

Business leaders share that Microsoft 365 Copilot’s ROI is their biggest adoption concern. It has many potential benefits that can enhance our work experience. However, some of these advantages may not be immediately clear.

Introducing enterprise applications can be a significant change and may take time to break even. The financial investment for 20,000 employees could range from $108k to $7.2 million annually. Many sources say the cost can be recovered. However, leaders want a way to ensure they get a return on their Copilot investment.

Pharmaceutical Use Case

Productivity 360 platform identifies use cases for Microsoft Copilot ROI and SAP Joule implementations.

A leading pharmaceutical company uses KYP.ai to collect and analyze data from 900 employees in the United States, Germany, and India. KYP.ai determined that employees allocate approximately 49 percent of their time to Microsoft-related apps. The expected increase in employee productivity after using Copilot ranged from 5 percent to 19 percent. This boost was the same in all countries.

KYP.ai is significant in providing instrumental insights into time spending and license prioritization. The visualization below shows which parts of the process can improve the most with SAP Joule’s Copilot.

These savings use operational data and AI-pattern recognition to determine a precise calculation. By understanding ways of working, your business case can be grounded in data, eliminating the need to justify ROI.

2. Identify potential improvement opportunities

Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a powerful tool for enhancing productivity. However, employees may need help understanding how to use GenAI. They might also struggle to see how it affects their daily productivity. They may worry that it will automate their work so much that their jobs will be replaced with AI. On the other hand, over-reliance on AI for tasks can diminish critical thinking and analytical skills. Organizations must invest time, training, and identifying use cases to utilize the tool best. By spending time and resources on training and finding use cases, employees are more likely to reach their full potential. This helps them grow personally and develop their skills.

Accounts Payable Use Case

They identified precisely where GenAI and automation could improve their processes. Their most significant opportunity is with their collections process. Integrating Copilot or SAP Joule can save companies on their active FTE count. Now, they have clear insights that show the savings. They also identify how and where to add automation in the process.

With the right balance between leveraging AI tools and maintaining their expertise, employees can lower their resistance to change.

KYP.ai customers use AI to quantify business cases and automatically track implementation results. Integrating Copilot can also foster a more collaborative work environment, simplifying document sharing and co-authoring. Additionally, its learning algorithms can adjust to the needs of each department. This provides tailored help that gets better over time.

3. Ongoing transformation with measurable impact

To see continued success, organizations can focus on tracking metrics such as productivity gains, error reduction, and time savings.

Collecting user feedback and success stories can help illustrate the practical value and encourage wider adoption. Ultimately, a structured approach to measuring outcomes can bridge the gap between the initial enthusiasm and the financial justification for technology investments.

Set clear metrics for success and regularly review Copilot’s impact on workflow and outcomes. This proactive approach will measure the benefits and address any challenges, ensuring the organization gets the most value from its investment in Copilot.

Measure the adoption

The work doesn’t end after the initial rollout. Provide ongoing support to address any challenges or questions that arise. Encourage user feedback to identify areas for improvement and ensure that Copilot evolves to meet your organization’s needs. And see what KPIs are moving from Copilot.

KYP.ai captures adoption patterns across technology, processes, and employees. It shows where additional training is needed and where Copilot has the most impact. Now, leaders have the complete picture they need to improve results. By clearly stating the goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), employees will better understand the business cases. For example, do you want to reduce time on routine tasks, improve teamwork, or enhance decision-making? Let employees understand why, how, and when to use Copilot to increase productivity.

Analytics tools like KYP.ai monitor how frequently and effectively Copilot is being used. It autonomously tracks metrics such as the number of tasks completed, time saved, and user engagement levels. These insights will show Copilot’s effectiveness and areas where additional training might be needed. It also pinpoints additional business use cases across the organization.

Compare productivity levels before and after Copilot implementation. Look for improvements in task completion times, the number of projects completed, and overall efficiency. Quantifying these gains will help justify the investment in Copilot.

Ultimately, most investments aim to achieve a positive financial impact. Use ready-made calculations and visuals to show the economic benefits of Microsoft Copilot. Compare the money saved from higher efficiency and productivity to the investment made. These analytics will provide a clear picture of Copilot’s ROI. If ROI is an essential organizational metric, this tracking is automated in KYP.ai.

Ensure adoption: Identify business cases with the most significant business impact

KYP.ai’s analysis highlights the importance of customizing Copilot deployment for different regions and employee costs. It also emphasizes using data to decide where to apply the copilot licenses first. You have changed the focus from who should get the Microsoft 365 Copilot license to how we should prioritize them. We must consider savings, time to ROI, and other essential data insights across the organization.

Manufacturing Use Case:

The finance team at a large CPG company wanted to implement KYP.ai to help automate their end-of-month financial reporting. The finance team dreaded end-of-month reporting because something always seemed to go wrong. 

As a publicly traded company, financial reports must be timely and error-free. Yet, with more than 200 employees collaborating on these efforts, they faced continuous technology-centered frustrations. Employee morale waned each month as reports approached their due date. Priorities were postponed, and bottlenecks increased across the organization. 

GenAI process automation identifies where Microsoft Copilot ROI potential is found.

The company believed it could find ways to improve its processes or clarify roles. KYP.ai helped it gather the data needed to understand why capturing reports was frustrating. 

First, their data showed that applications slowed in performance as user load increased toward the end of the month. It lets them establish a manageable baseline, including dynamic desktop notifications for better machine health/performance and employee efficiency. 

In addition, slow application performance and reboots caused unnecessary delays and hours of overtime each month. After implementing KYP.ai, the platform identified the hardware and software friction points and reduced their IT tickets by 67 percent. In addition, their employee NPS increased, and they had fewer complaints about unmet demands. 

Data Privacy

There are inherent privacy concerns because Microsoft Copilot uses AI to analyze data. Users are often wary of sharing sensitive information with an AI tool, fearing data breaches or misuse. However, the benefits of optimization usually outweigh the drawbacks. This is especially true because Microsoft has strong data protection policies, which help reduce data security risks.

Conclusion: Ensure Your Investment

Microsoft Copilot promises to revolutionize organizations’ operations by boosting productivity, enhancing collaboration, improving decision-making, and ensuring security. Microsoft continues to innovate through product features, new pricing models, and massive deals.

You need to identify, measure, and improve the rollout plan. This should be done at scale and across all data sources.

By ensuring successful adoption and tracking its ROI, businesses can maximize the benefits of Copilot and justify their investment. Real-world examples show that Microsoft Copilot has many advantages. Copilot can be a valuable tool for any organization that wants to succeed in the digital age and is diligent in its usage.

While the tool promises remarkable improvements in employee productivity, the investment must be a priority for an organization to become a ‘Focused Champion,’ knowing where to maximize the outcomes. Unclear measurement or business value is precisely the problem that KYP.ai helps customers worldwide resolve.

For example, studies will show how Copilot can measure the time spent writing meeting summaries. This includes using Copilot to create a summary, list action items, and generate insightful questions after a meeting. Copilot is reported to be 4X faster in summarizing a meeting than manual effort.

However, these data points use agnostic, not dynamic, outcomes. Instead, KYP.ai builds accurate company data to identify improvement potential.

Can Copilot be worth the investment? Absolutely. KYP.ai can help you understand where Copilot will have the biggest impact, which is a game-changer for those interested in ROI.

Will you be part of the elite 8 percent knowledge workers embracing GenAI via Copilot?