Earlier in the year, Microsoft unveiled its vision for Copilot, a digital companion that aims to provide a unified user experience across Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365, and Windows. This vision includes a consistent user experience. The rollout began with Windows in September and expanded to Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise customers this month.
Many organisations across Asia Pacific will soon face the question on whether to invest in Microsoft 365 Copilot – despite its current limitations in supporting all regional languages. Copilot is currently supported in English (US, GB, AU, CA, IN), Japanese, and Chinese Simplified. Microsoft plans to support more languages such as Arabic, Chinese Traditional, Korean and Thai over the first half of 2024. There are still several languages used across Asia Pacific that will not be supported until at least the second half of 2024 or later.
Access to Microsoft 365 Copilot comes with certain prerequisites. Organisations need to have either a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license and an Azure Active Directory account. F3 licenses do not currently have access to 365 Copilot. For E3 license holders the cost per user for adding Copilot would nearly double – so it is a significant extra spend and will need to deliver measurable and tangible benefits and a strong business case. It is doubtful whether most organisations will be able to justify this extra spend.
However, Copilot has the potential to significantly enhance the productivity of knowledge workers, saving them many hours each week, with hundreds of use cases already emerging for different industries and user profiles. Microsoft is offering a plethora of information on how to best adopt, deploy, and use Copilot. The key focus when building a business case should revolve around how knowledge workers will use this extra time.
Maximising Copilot Integration: Steps to Drive Adoption and Enhance Productivity
Identifying use cases, building the business proposal, and securing funding for Copilot is only half the battle. Driving the change and ensuring all relevant employees use the new processes will be significantly harder. Consider how employees currently use their productivity tools compared to 15 years ago, with many still relying on the same features and capabilities in their Office suites as they did in earlier versions. In cases where new features were embraced, it typically occurred because knowledge workers didn’t have to make any additional efforts to incorporate them, such as the auto-type ahead functions in email or the seamless integration of Teams calls.
The ability of your organisation to seamlessly integrate Copilot into daily workflows, optimising productivity and efficiency while harnessing AI-generated data and insights for decision-making will be of paramount importance. It will be equally important to be watchful to mitigate potential risks associated with an over-reliance on AI without sufficient oversight.
Implementing Copilot will require some essential steps:
- Training and onboarding. Provide comprehensive training to employees on how to use Copilot’s features within Microsoft 365 applications.
- Integration into daily tasks. Encourage employees to use Copilot for drafting emails, documents, and generating meeting notes to familiarise them with its capabilities.
- Customisation. Tailor Copilot’s settings and suggestions to align with company-specific needs and workflows.
- Automation. Create bots, templates, integrations, and other automation functions for multiple use cases. For example, when users first log onto their PC, they could get a summary of missed emails, chats – without the need to request it.
- Feedback loop. Implement a feedback mechanism to monitor how Copilot is used and to make adjustments based on user experiences.
- Evaluating effectiveness. Gauge how Copilot’s features are enhancing productivity regularly and adjust usage strategies accordingly. Focus on the increased productivity – what knowledge workers now achieve with the time made available by Copilot.
Changing the behaviours of knowledge workers can be challenging – particularly for basic processes that they have been using for years or even decades. Knowledge of use cases and opportunities for Copilot will not just filter across the organisation. Implementing formal training and educational programs and backing them up with refresher courses is important to ensure compliance and productivity gains.
Ecosystm research reveals a stark reality: 75% of technology leaders in Financial Services anticipate data breaches.
Given the sector’s regulatory environment, data breaches carry substantial financial implications, emphasising the critical importance of giving precedence to cybersecurity. This is compelling a fresh cyber strategy focused on early threat detection and reduction of attack impact.
Read on to find out how tech leaders are building a culture of cyber-resilience, re-evaluating their cyber policies, and adopting technologies that keep them one step ahead of their adversaries.
Download ‘Cyber-Resilience in Finance: People, Policy & Technology’ as a PDF
The Manufacturing industry is at crossroads today. It faces challenges such as geopolitical risks, supply chain disruptions, changing regulatory environments, workforce shortages, and changing consumer demands. Overcoming these requires innovation, collaboration, and proactive adaptation.
Fortunately, many of these challenges can be mitigated by technology. The future of Manufacturing will be shaped by advanced technology, automation, and AI. We are seeing early evidence of how smart factories, robotics, and 3D printing are transforming production processes for increased efficiency and customisation.
Manufacturing is all set to become more agile, efficient, and sustainable.
Read on to find out the changing priorities and key trends in Manufacturing; about the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network initiative; and where Ecosystm advisor Kaushik Ghatak sees as the Future of Manufacturing.
Click here to download ‘The Future of Manufacturing’ as a PDF
Organisations are uncertain about how 2023 will shape up for them, amidst concerns about recessions, supply chain uncertainties, continued geopolitical volatility, energy crisis, and labour disruptions. At the same time, they have to continue to evolve their products and services, the customer experiences they deliver, and overall brand image.
If you are a tech leader, your first instinct would be to cut down on technology spend to align with your organisation’s cost optimisation strategy. And that is where you would make the first mistake – this is the time to invest in the right technologies to help your organisation face the uncertainties with agility.
Here are 5 things that you should keep in mind when shaping your organisation’s tech landscape in 2023.
- Focus on the shortest time to value. Choose a few smart digital improvements that are aligned with the strategic goals of the business and deliver value quickly.
- Drive better corporate outcomes through Sustainability programs. The transition to smart and sustainable digital assets and infrastructure should be a top priority for today’s technology leaders.
- Build resilience by improving value chain visibility. Digital technologies will continue to play an important role in providing visibility and insights across the value chains for risk management and resilience.
- Treat location data as a feedstock for AI & Automation. With the increasing importance of automation, especially to contemporary service models like digital twins and metaverse, incorporating spatial and location data into your strategy is essential for staying ahead of the competition and driving meaningful business outcomes.
- Find allies against cyber adversaries. Join the cybersecurity communities that exist in your geography and industry. Participate openly as possible so that lessons are shared quickly and widely. Don’t try to defeat the flood on your own.
Read on to find more.
Download Making the Right Tech Decisions for Better Value as a PDF
Customer experience (CX) is an integral part of a brand today – and excellence in CX is a moving target (think how tools such as ChatGPT can revolutionise communications and CX). Organisations will find themselves aiming for personalised CX across channels of preference, with convenience, empathy, and speed at the core.
Here are the top 5 trends for the Experience Economy for 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts Audrey William, Melanie Disse, and Tim Sheedy.
- Organisations Will Focus on Building a “One CX Workforce”
- AI Will Lead Voice of Customer Programs
- Metadata Will Become Important
- The Conversational AI Market Will Mature
- Organisations Will Go Back to Focusing on Web Experience
Read on for more details.
Download Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Trends for the Experience Economy in 2023 as a PDF
Organisations will continue their quest to become digital and data-first in 2023. Business process automation will be a priority for the majority; but many will look at their data strategically to derive better business value.
As per Ecosystm’s Digital Digital Enterprise Study 2022, organisations will focus equally on Automation and Strategic AI in 2023.
Here are the top 5 trends for the Intelligent Enterprise in 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts, Alan Hesketh, Peter Carr, Sash Mukherjee and Tim Sheedy.
- Cloud Will Be Replaced by AI as the Right Transformation Goal
- Adoption of Data Platform Architecture Will See an Uptick
- Tech Teams Will Finally Focus on Internal Efficiency
- Data Retention/Deletion and Records Management Will Be Top Priority
- AI Will Replace Entire Human Jobs
Read on for more details.
Download Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Trends for the Intelligent Enterprise in 2023 as a PDF
In the rush towards digital transformation, individual lines of business in organisations, have built up collections of unconnected systems, each generating a diversity of data. While these systems are suitable for rapidly launching services and are aimed at solving individual challenges, digital enterprises will need to take a platform approach to unlock the full value of the data they generate.
Data-driven enterprises can increase revenue and shift to higher margin offerings through personalisation tools, such as recommendation engines and dynamic pricing. Cost cutting can be achieved with predictive maintenance that relies on streaming sensor data integrated with external data sources. Increasingly, advanced organisations will monetise their integrated data by providing insights as a service.
Digital enterprises face new challenges – growing complexity, data explosion, and skills gap.
Here are 5 ways in which IT teams can mitigate these challenges.
- Data & AI projects must focus on data access. When the organisation can unify data and transmit it securely wherever it needs to, it will be ready to begin developing applications that utilise machine learning, deep learning, and AI.
- Transformation requires a hybrid cloud platform. Hybrid cloud provides the ability to place each workload in an environment that makes the most sense for the business, while still reaping the benefits of a unified platform.
- Application modernisation unlocks future value. The importance of delivering better experiences to internal and external stakeholders has not gone down; new experiences need modern applications.
- Data management needs to be unified and automated. Digital transformation initiatives result in ever-expanding technology estates and growing volumes of data that cannot be managed with manual processes.
- Cyber strategy should be Zero Trust – backed by the right technologies. Organisations have to build Digital Trust with privacy, protection, and compliance at the core. The Zero Trust strategy should be backed by automated identity governance, robust access and management policies, and least privilege.
Read below to find out more.
Download The Future of Business: 5 Ways IT Teams Can Help Unlock the Value of Data as a PDF
In recent years, businesses have faced significant disruptions. Organisations are challenged on multiple fronts – such as the continuing supply chain disruptions; an ongoing energy crisis that has led to a strong focus on sustainability; economic uncertainty; skills shortage; and increased competition from digitally native businesses. The challenge today is to build intelligent, data-driven, and agile businesses that can respond to the many changes that lie ahead.
Leading organisations are evaluating ways to empower the entire business with data, machine learning, automation, and AI to build agile, innovative, and customer-focused businesses.
Here are 7 steps that will help you deliver business value with data and AI:
- Understand the problems that need solutions. Before an organisation sets out on its data, automation, and AI journey, it is important to evaluate what it wants to achieve. This requires an engagement with the Tech/Data Teams to discuss the challenges it is trying to resolve.
- Map out a data strategy framework. Perhaps the most important part of this strategy are the data governance principles – or a new automated governance to enforce policies and rules automatically and consistently across data on any cloud.
- Industrialise data management & AI technologies. The cumulation of many smart, data-driven initiatives will ultimately see the need for a unified enterprise approach to data management, AI, and automation.
- Recognise the skills gap – and start closing it today. There is a real skills gap when it comes to the ability to identify and solve data-centric issues. Many businesses today turn to technology and business consultants and system integrators to help them solve the skills challenge.
- Re-start the data journey with a pilot. Real-world pilots help generate data and insights to build a business case to scale capabilities.
- Automate the outcomes. Modern applications have made it easier to automate actions based on insights. APIs let systems integrate with each other, share data, and trigger processes; and RPA helps businesses automate across applications and platforms.
- Learn and improve. Intelligent automation tools and adaptive AI/machine learning solutions exist today. What organisations need to do is to apply the learnings for continuous improvements.
Find more insights below.
Download The Future of Business: 7 Steps to Delivering Business Value with Data & AI as a PDF
It is true that the Retail industry is being forced to evolve the experiences they deliver to their customers. However, if Retail organisations are only focused on creating digital experiences, they are not creating the differentiation that will be required to leap ahead of the competition.
It is time for Retail organisations to leverage data to empower multiple roles across the organisation to prepare for the different ways customers want to engage with their brands.
So what are the phases of customer engagement? How are companies such as Singapore Airlines and TikTok preparing for the future of Retail?
