How can businesses harness Copilot to drive growth and innovation?

For too long, businesses have been fed the narrative that artificial intelligence is a job-stealing enigma to be feared. But the fact is that AI is not new, and it’s not going anywhere. Increasingly, strategists and operations managers are finding ways to make AI work for them, rather than the other way around. Treating AI as a teammate rather than a competitor opens up an entire universe of opportunities for growth, efficiency and innovation.

Businesses across a vast range of industries are embracing AI for business growth, using the technology to help them transform operations and elevate their business to new heights.

Understanding the importance of AI in business strategy

Artificial intelligence innovation has advanced in leaps and bounds in recent years. Although the terminology has existed since the 1950s, the last few years have seen unprecedented levels of progress for the technology. Its use is now so widespread that we would be hard pressed to find an industry that hasn’t yet adopted it. But adoption is only the first step—adapting AI to your business’s growth strategy is what really matters. 

Of course, AI can never completely replace human thinking when it comes to business strategy. However, its ability to analyse and automate is invaluable for driving growth and transformation. While AI can’t think exactly like an executive or an operations manager to design and choose an entire business strategy, it can nevertheless provide useful insights and foundations to build upon. AI can analyse, decipher, and detect things that human error may miss, and has diagnostic capabilities that real people simply may not possess. On a day-to-day basis, AI can also free up employees from time-consuming tasks and create more space for creativity and innovation to thrive.

How to implement AI for business growth

AI business solutions are not one-size-fits-all. AI is a powerful tool for scaling up and driving innovation; however, integrating AI for business transformation can feel complex and time-consuming. There are a few key steps to implement AI that will ensure its sustainable integration for long term growth.

Consider your organisation’s objectives and goals

One of the most important aspects of implementing AI is the why. No matter where you want to take your organisation, AI can help you get there—but only if you’re clear about your goals and trajectory. Outlining your organisation’s goals and objectives will help you choose the right AI tools and platforms.

Scale up slowly and steadily

Revolutionising your business and driving major growth can’t happen overnight. The most sustainable way to adopt AI is by starting small and scaling up. Rolling out new AI platforms within certain departments or in small stages allows your organisation and its people to adjust to the new technology, gaining confidence and understanding before expanding your AI strategy.

Invest in training

AI is constantly evolving—when implementing an AI strategy in your organisation, it’s imperative you give your people time to learn and adjust to the new ways of working. Investing time and resources into training and educating your organisation on the benefits of AI could be the difference between a simple, sustainable implementation and a complicated one.

Partner with a trusted AI expert

AI is a huge undertaking and going at it alone can be a daunting task. Partnering with an expert in AI and business transformation, like Xpedition, gives you access to reliable solutions from a single source of truth. An AI expert can cut through the complexity of AI business solutions and provide you with a clear path forward to transform your organisation.

The role of Copilot in driving innovation

Copilot AI is Microsoft’s answer to the call for simpler, better ways of working with artificial intelligence innovation. Copilot works alongside users as a companion, assisting with everyday tasks, but it also has the capability to provide robust data insights while maintaining high levels of privacy and compliance. It has been revolutionary in changing the way businesses interact with AI. 

Seamless integration and simplified tasks

Copilot makes it as simple as possible to adopt AI into your organisation. It assimilates smoothly with existing Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Teams. This helps users streamline their workflow processes and get simple tasks done quicker and more efficiently, allowing your people to get back to focusing on the projects that really drive growth.

Cleaning up inbox clutter

Emails can often be the most time-consuming task of the day. Copilot integrates with Outlook to summarise email threads and suggest replies.

Empowering the writing process

In Word, Copilot AI can draft documents, which the user can then edit and expand upon. Copilot can also suggest improvements or edits in real time as an author writes. 

Simplifying Teams meetings

Copilot can even attend meetings with you, providing actionable, insightful summaries of what’s being discussed. 

Data analysis and deep insights

Copilot AI’s data capabilities mean it can effortlessly comb through large sets of data and extract actionable insights that may not be readily apparent to a human. It can recognise patterns and identify anomalies, helping users to predict future trends, better understand previous insights and make sense of the data at hand. 

This allows strategists and executives to make more informed decisions regarding the business and can even open up new ways of thinking. 

Overcoming the challenges of AI implementation

The major challenge executives face when adopting AI into their organisation is the lack of education or strategy surrounding the implementation. Partnering with an AI expert is a great starting point, but the people within an organisation need to know how to utilise the technology or it will never work. Investing in education and training is imperative—and so is temperature-checking the general attitudes towards AI. As it stands, AI is still relatively new to business transformation, and many people are wary of it. Making people fully aware of the benefits of AI through training and ensuring them that it’s a safe, compliant way of working is key to having your organisation embrace AI rather than fear it.

What does successful AI adoption look like?

The financial services sector has had immense success in integrating AI into business operations and offerings. Financial technologies (fintechs) have revolutionised the financial services landscape and pushed it to entirely new heights by removing human error from data processing and reimagining the customer service experience. 

This has allowed the entire financial services industry to completely transform beyond expectations. As the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, financial services providers are already equipped to scale up at pace alongside the machine learning models they have implemented. 

As already proven by financial services, successful AI adoption not only makes day-to-day operations simpler, but gives organisations the tools they need to keep expanding and thriving into the future as AI becomes the norm across industries.

The future of AI in business innovation

Undertaking an AI transformation in your organisation means embarking on a journey of immense growth. AI is not going anywhere, and the earlier it’s adopted, the more impact it can have on the growth of your business. Adopting an AI business growth strategy now means scaling up your organisation alongside the evolution of AI. 

AI can, of course, be hugely, immediately helpful for your business. But adopting AI also means that previously unpredictable issues can be forecast and save you from business hiccups in the future. As AI grows with you and learns more about your business, it will be able to more accurately predict future problems before they arise, giving executives the chance to cut down the problem at its root—or in any case, better prepare for the inevitable. When harnessed to its full capacity, AI can be your companion in the day-to-day and your guardian well into the future.

How Xpedition can help

Helping organisations discover AI business solutions that suit their needs is what we do. We’ve undertaken over 1,300 successful transformation projects and have 25 years of experience as a Microsoft Solutions partner. This has given us deep sector expertise and incredible insights into Copilot AI as it has evolved and matured over the years.

Our team will help you streamline your processes and find AI solutions that work for your organisation and your people. We can empower you to seamlessly break up with your legacy systems while adopting new ways of working with Copilot.

Make your technology work for you with an AI business growth strategy

We can help you drive growth and innovation within your organisation using the power of AI. Integrating Copilot into your operations gives you and your people the power to thrive and evolve without the restraints of legacy systems and time-consuming tasks.

As a Microsoft 365 partner, we know the ins and outs of Copilot AI and can help you understand it, too. Our team of Copilot experts can analyse your business objectives and goals to find the right AI strategy that suits your needs and work alongside you as you implement it into your business.

Get in touch with the Xpedition team today to learn more about how we can help you leverage AI for business growth.

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