Leveraging Microsoft Unified For Faster Adoption Of Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview 16 decision-makers across 12 organizations and survey 367 respondents to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with Microsoft 365 Copilot.¹ In parallel, Microsoft also commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a TEI study on Microsoft Unified by interviewing five decision-makers and surveying 321 respondents with experience using Microsoft Unified.

This abstract will focus on the three decision-makers from the Microsoft Unified study whose organizations found that deploying Microsoft Unified enabled faster adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot. While the TEI of Microsoft Unified addressed the benefits of deploying Unified across the Microsoft family of applications, this spotlight will address how organizations were specifically able to adopt Copilot faster because of their investment in Unified.

The three interviewees who discussed how their organizations derived value by utilizing Unified for a faster adoption of Copilot included:

• A chief legal and compliance officer for an electronics manufacturer in the US with 7,000 employees and $1.8 billion in annual revenue.
• A chief transformation officer for a financial services provider based out of Australia with $700 million in revenue and employing about 1,500 people.
• A head of digital acceleration for a healthcare company based in Japan with $26 billion in revenue and more than 50,000 global employees.

Additionally, five of the 16 decision-makers interviewed for the Copilot TEI shared that their organizations either faced challenges in Copilot adoption related to training or saw faster adoption where they had access to capabilities from an offering like Unified. This contrast highlighted how Unified could play a role in enabling smoother Copilot adoption across organizations. The interviewees referenced in this spotlight include:

• An IT executive for a global professional services provider that is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and has 60,000 employees and over $500 million in annual revenue.
• A head of marketing technology for a global financial services firm with over $25 billion in revenue and 75,000 employees.
• A strategy and consulting senior manager for a global professional services enterprise that generates more than $60 billion in sales and has more than 250,000 employees.
• A VP of infrastructure and cloud engineering for a global software vendor with 12,500 employees and about $5 billion in annual revenue.
• A senior product manager for a global financial services company headquartered in the UK that produces $65 billion in sales and employs more than 80,000 people.

Interviewees said that prior to using Unified, their organizations faced fragmented support systems and relied on a combination of multiple service providers, internal resources, and third-party resellers to manage Microsoft applications, including Copilot. However, prior attempts yielded limited success, leaving them with extended downtime, low productivity levels, and a reliance on costly ad hoc solutions.

By centralizing IT management and integrating support across all Microsoft investments, Unified enabled the interviewees’ organizations to shift to a proactive approach, which optimized resources and facilitated the scalability and flexibility needed for future business growth and innovation.

context for SPOTLIGHT

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies are constantly seeking ways to enhance productivity, streamline operations, and stay ahead of the competition by leveraging technology. Microsoft’s Unified and Copilot application can help achieve these goals. With the Unified offering, companies can drive faster adoption of 365 Copilot, enabling employees to work more efficiently and effectively. This spotlight explores how an organization can realize the benefits of using Unified to gain faster usage of Copilot for its employees.

Microsoft’s Unified consolidates various support services, licensing, and management tools into a single, cohesive system. According to the interviewees, this integration simplified IT management, enhanced security, and provided a centralized approach to handling software and services. Interviewees noted key features of the Unified offering, including:

• Centralized management. Unified offered the interviewees’ organizations a single point of contact for managing licenses, support, and services, reducing complexity and administrative overhead.
• Enhanced security. With built-in security features and compliance tools, Unified ensured that all applications and data were adequately protected.
• Proactive support. Unified provided the interviewees’ organizations with proactive monitoring and support, helping to identify and resolve issues before they impacted business operations.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered assistant integrated into Microsoft 365 applications. Interviewees noted it was designed to enhance productivity by automating routine tasks, providing intelligent insights, and facilitating collaboration. Interviewees noted key benefits of Copilot, including:

• Automated task management. Copilot automated repetitive tasks, such as scheduling meetings, summarizing emails, and generating reports.
• Intelligent insights. By proactively analyzing data and user behavior, Copilot provided the interviewees’ organizations with actionable insights to improve decision-making.
• Enhanced collaboration. Due to its inherent integration with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and other 365 applications, Copilot facilitated seamless collaboration for professional users at the interviewees’ organizations.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS TO LEVERAGE UNIFiED for ADOPTION of Copilot

Prior to investing in Microsoft Unified, interviewees’ organizations struggled with fragmented support ecosystems and relied on disparate service providers to manage their Microsoft applications, including Copilot. This patchwork approach — combined with dependence on internally managed support or third-party resellers — resulted in inconsistent service quality and reactive approaches to IT management.

Before adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot, interviewees’ organizations relied on manual processes and traditional tools for managing meetings, documents, data analysis, and communications. These methods were often time-consuming, prone to errors, and lacked the efficiency and consistency needed to meet organizational goals.

The interviewees for this spotlight noted their organizations derived value from the deployment of Microsoft Unified, which enabled them to more easily adopt Copilot. These organizations struggled with several challenges in their legacy environments, including:

• Time needed for adoption and training. Interviewees across these organizations noted there was a significant challenge in training employees to effectively use Copilot. Employees lacked the fundamental training and needed time to understand how Copilot fit into their workflows. The chief transformation officer for a financial services provider said: “Copilot is a good example of the training challenges we faced. We ran a number of workshops supported by Microsoft before we used Unified, which also might have added to the overall cost of adoption.” The IT executive from a global professional services provider noted: “[Copilot] is well priced. But if it doesn’t come with the support in terms of the time, the attention, and the priority from your leaders, then that $30 is not going to be well used.”
• Struggles with prompt engineering. Employees at the interviewees’ organizations struggled to learn how to create effective prompts so as to best utilize the broader benefits of Copilot. This prompt engineering required a shift in mindset and workflow-specific guidance. The IT executive from a global professional services provider observed, “If people do not get proficient and comfortable with prompting, they are not going to get value out of Copilot.”
• Constrained knowledge sharing. Sharing knowledge and best practices across teams was difficult without a centralized and efficient system for synthesizing information from various sources. The VP of infrastructure and cloud engineering at the software vendor explained how retrieving documents and synthesizing information from various sources was challenging and time-consuming in their organization’s prior state. The IT executive from a global professional services provider noted that sharing knowledge and best practices across teams was difficult without a centralized and efficient system.
• Navigating change management. Ensuring that employees were comfortable with the new technology and could see its benefits was crucial for the interviewees’ organizations. Integrating data from various sources to create meaningful insights required a change in thinking. Collectively, this created a need for a structured approach to change management. The strategy and consulting senior manager for a global professional services enterprise stated: “A couple of years from now, we will be getting custom Copilots in place. To understand the extensibility features and use cases, you will really need good training and change management capabilities.”

Unified Features enabling faster adoption of copilot

The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Microsoft Unified for the following reasons:

• Comprehensive training and upskilling. Interviewees noted that Unified provided extensive training resources and upskilling opportunities, ensuring that employees are well-prepared to use new technologies like Copilot. This included structured training programs and access to learning offerings, which helped employees quickly become proficient in new tools and applications. The chief legal and compliance officer for the electronics manufacturer explained, “Through the services provided by Unified, we trained our employees to be better equipped to collaborate with business teams and identify the right use cases for AI.”
• Proactive guidance services. Interviewees said that Unified offered proactive services, including expert guidance and advisory support. This helped their organizations plan and implement new technologies more effectively by leveraging best practices and insights from Microsoft’s experts. The chief transformation officer for a financial services provider stated, “Microsoft has been really good at providing resources and the right people through Unified to help us with ideation and other elements related to ramping on Copilot.”
• Accelerated deployment and adoption. With Unified, the interviewees’ organizations were able to deploy new solutions like Copilot more quickly and efficiently. This offering provided the necessary tools, training, and support to reduce the time required for deployment and adoption, enabling faster realization of benefits. The chief legal and compliance officer for an electronics manufacturer noted, “Having Unified has made it easier and faster to identify use cases and allowed us to deploy Copilot sooner than we otherwise could have accomplished on our own.”
• Enhanced collaboration and integration. Interviewees noted that Unified enhanced collaboration and integration across various Microsoft tools and applications. By providing a cohesive and well-integrated suite of products, it facilitated communication and collaboration, which was crucial for the successful adoption of new technologies like Copilot. The chief transformation officer for a financial services provider said: “We use the Microsoft Suite pretty significantly across the business. Everything is very much coordinated and integrated through Copilot.”
• Centralized and efficient support. The Unified offering consolidated multiple support services into a single, streamlined point of contact for the interviewees’ organizations. This centralization simplified communication, tracking, and feedback processes, making it easier and faster to resolve issues and get necessary support.

Key Results

The first three benefits cited below come from the study that Forrester conducted of the overall value of Microsoft Unified and are the modeled benefits most applicable for this spotlight. The two additional benefits cited below are applicable for the spotlight’s focus but were not modeled. To better understand the overall value of Unified without focusing on the faster adoption of Copilot, please see the TEI of Microsoft Unified.

For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and survey respondents and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a global, billion-dollar enterprise operating in a highly regulated industry. The composite has 10,000 employees and delivers services and products to customers worldwide.

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organization include:

End-user productivity gains from faster adoption of Microsoft capabilities/solutions totaling $290,000 over three years. The composite organization uses Unified expert guidance and proactive support to reduce the time required to implement new Microsoft solutions by up to 60% over three years. This efficiency enables its end users to adopt new tools and capabilities sooner, leading to enhanced productivity across the organization.

• Productivity improvement. The VP of infrastructure and cloud engineering for a software vendor outlined the productivity benefits for project management, stating, “Preliminary data shows that people with project management responsibilities who are embedding Copilot into their daily routine report a higher productivity gain compared to their peers.” The chief transformation officer for a financial services provider mentioned that Copilot saved their senior leaders an average of 1 hour per week. They attributed this productivity gain to the integration provided by Unified.
• Time savings. The head of marketing technology for a global financial services firm explained the time savings benefit in the context of contracts and requests for proposals (RFPs), stating, “Copilot can reduce the amount of time it takes us to review contracts and to get RFP responses, cycle through and reviewed, which potentially increases our throughput.” The IT executive for a global professional services provider noted that 43% of their users estimated that they were saving 30 minutes to an hour per day using Copilot.

Training cost savings worth $846,000 over three years. The composite organization eliminates training costs worth $2,000 per user by replacing outsourced courses with on-demand training resources offered through Unified that help employees become more proficient in Microsoft tools and boost their productivity.

• Higher training efficiency. The head of digital acceleration for a healthcare company estimated: “In the past, it might have taken one quarter to train our employees on Copilot. With Unified, we spent maybe a little bit longer than one month on the training.” The chief legal and compliance officer for an electronics manufacturer mentioned that Unified allowed their organization to leverage training resources for deploying Copilot. They went on to elaborate that both IT teams and users were able to learn how to build queries and use Copilot more effectively.
• Eliminating outsourced courses. The chief legal and compliance officer for an electronics manufacturer explained how they utilized Unified training to eliminate alternative training options: “We were able to leverage the training that we had access to through our Unified agreement rather than having to go out and find third-party platforms, third-party training. We generally found the training to be quite on point, detailed, and accurate and of pretty consistent quality as we would expect coming direct from Microsoft.”

End-user productivity gains from reduced downtime for internally facing applications worth $470,000. With improved system reliability and faster issue resolution through Unified, the composite organization experiences fewer disruptions to internally facing Microsoft applications. The composite organization realizes a 50% reduction in downtime events and a 70% decrease in downtime duration per incident, which translates to 24,000 hours of end-user downtime avoided annually for incidents related to internally facing Microsoft applications. There is applicability of this benefit as many organizations have an internal version of Copilot for data protection purposes.

• Reduced downtime frequency. The chief transformation officer for a financial services provider noted their experience: “In the prior environment, we had an outage every of couple of months for maybe a few hours that affected 100 people. Since we’ve been on Unified, we have not had any such outages.”

Faster adoption and rollout of Copilot. Unified would enable the composite organization to identify use cases more easily and faster and thus accelerate the time to adoption for Copilot.

• Faster time to adoption. The chief legal and compliance officer for an electronics manufacturer stated: “The ability to access training, to understand the scope of capabilities, to easily deploy Copilot in different places in the organization, especially early on as we were kind of experimenting and investigating through Unified, was definitely an advantage.”
• Enhanced rollout efficiency. The VP of infrastructure and cloud engineering for a software vendor relayed their pilot rollout: “We were one of the first pilot companies that Microsoft chose to engage with. We had 300 licenses originally allocated to us that we started leveraging internally. We quickly saw the value in terms of how Copilot could help on a day-to-day basis with many of the personas that we wanted to try it out with.”

Improved operational efficiencies and quality of work. Using Copilot in conjunction with Unified would streamline data collection, drive actionable insights, and automate reporting for the composite organization, resulting in operational efficiency and improved work quality.

• Improved operational efficiencies. The senior product manager for a global financial services company provided the following example: “We deployed Copilot to summarize customer feedback on our credit card application journey. We monitor our NPS [Net Promoter Score] monthly. With Copilot, we got actionable insights that helped us improve customer experience and reduce negative NPS by 30 basis points.”
• Higher quality of work. The IT executive for a global professional services provider shared user data from their pilot program of CoPilot: “As we analyzed data from our users, 55% felt Copilot for 365 had a positive impact on the quality of their work. So a little more than half felt like it was improving the quality of their output.”

Appendix A: Endnotes