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Welcome back to Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot, your monthly resource for actionable insights to harness the power of AI at small and medium sized businesses.
In today’s fast-paced small business environment, staying competitive means embracing innovative solutions that drive efficiency and growth. Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed to meet these needs, offering businesses a powerful tool to enhance productivity and streamline operations. Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face challenges in managing their digital presence, customer interactions, and internal processes. These hurdles can impede growth and limit the ability to respond swiftly to market changes.
We spoke with John T. Battaglia from The Judge Group, a mid-sized global professional services firm specializing in business technology consulting, learning, staffing, and offshore solutions. Established in 1970, the company has grown into an international leader in their industry. With over 30 locations across the United States, Canada, and India, The Judge Group partners with some of the most prominent companies in the world, including over 60 of the Fortune 100. After encountering significant challenges with employees using their own AI tools, The Judge Group made a strategic decision to transition to Microsoft 365 Copilot for its security features, unmatched efficiency, and AI-driven insights. Since adopting Copilot, The Judge Group has become power users, fully integrating the tool into their daily operations.
In the following sections, we will explore some of the specific challenges The Judge Group faced and how Microsoft 365 Copilot helped them achieve better outcomes.
Managing complex projects with AI
One of the pain points The Judge Group faced was managing complex projects across multiple stakeholders. They often found it challenging to keep everyone on the same page and ensure timely completion of tasks. Copilot helped provide insights and simplified workflows to streamline project management. For example, during a presentation to a nonprofit company’s board, Copilot was used to gather key details of the meeting with ease such as generating real-time summaries, tracking action items, and providing instant access to relevant documents using Microsoft Teams with simple prompts. This technology superpower impressed the board, who initially thought Copilot’s capabilities were more similar to those of its competitors. They were amazed by the added bonus of AI-driven insights, which helped prioritize tasks and allocate resources more efficiently—far exceeding expectations.
Security and Compliance
The Judge Group experienced notable challenges early on in their AI journey, particularly in the areas of data security and compliance. Employees independently opted to use their own AI tools leading to substantial security concerns, especially for the legal team. The previous tool posed significant risks to sensitive information, making it challenging for The Judge Group to ensure their data was protected and adhering to the strict guidelines and regulations they have in place to safeguard their operations and instill confidence in their stakeholders.
“We realized that [employees independently opting to use their own AI tools] was a massive scare for our legal team. That’s when we decided to go on this AI journey with Copilot to protect our information and improve our processes.”
Switching to Microsoft 365 Copilot provided enhanced security features and compliance management. Not only did Microsoft 365 Copilot adopt established data privacy and security policies and configurations, but their compliance approach also ensured that all AI capabilities were developed, deployed, and evaluated in a compliant and ethical manner. This comprehensive strategy not only safeguarded their operations but also provided peace of mind across the organization.
Decisive steps were also taken to enhance their data security and privacy settings in SharePoint to mitigate “oversharing.” They implemented SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), to further simplify governing and protecting SharePoint data. This allowed them to control access to specific areas of their site or documents when collaborating with vendors, clients, or customers outside their organization. They emphasized the importance of knowing who they were sharing with, determining if the recipients could re-share the content, and whether they needed to protect the content to prevent re-use or re-sharing.
Management, Adoption, and Training
Another challenge was ensuring compliance with responsible AI policies. To address this, they adopted a phased rollout approach for Copilot, starting with a pilot group and gradually expanding while providing targeted training and support. This strategy ensured that all team members adhered to the guidelines, improving the organization’s workflow and productivity. The phased rollout allowed The Judge Group to identify and address any compliance issues early on, ensuring a smooth implementation of Copilot.
The rollout consisted of several training initiatives, including role-specific training sessions tailored to the unique responsibilities and workflows of different teams within the organization. This approach ensured that each team member received relevant and practical training that directly applied to their daily tasks and served as a collaborative space where team members could share their experiences, best practices, and learn from one another. The emphasis on social learning within teams helped accelerate the learning curve and adoption rate, creating a supportive environment that encouraged continuous improvement.
In the pilot phase, The Judge Group prioritized roles such as project managers, IT administrators, and customer service representatives. Each role faced unique challenges and required specific training to ensure success. Project managers focused on using Copilot for task management and resource allocation, while IT administrators concentrated on compliance and security aspects. Customer service representatives received training in leveraging Copilot for customer interactions and support.
The key takeaways were the importance of making the training relevant to the role, continuous support, and fostering a culture of collaboration and learning.
Approach to Adoption
The Judge Group meticulously crafted a strategic adoption plan, with fun engaging campaign materials. They equipped the adoption team with all the necessary skills including “Train the Trainer” sessions to ensure they could effectively support the campaign for a successful launch.
Executive sponsors and champions were also actively engaged and trained within priority persona groups. Consistent and active communication was maintained across these groups to keep everyone informed and energized. By capturing and tracking adoption and utilization metrics for campaign target users, The Judge Group was then able to measure the impact of the adoption campaign using the Copilot Dashboard to help make informed data-driven decisions for optimization. The Copilot Dashboard was used to track various adoption metrics, such as “Total actions taken,” “Copilot assisted hours,” “Total actions count,” “Total active Copilot users,” and “meetings summarized by Copilot.” This allowed The Judge Group to monitor the progress and impact of their AI initiatives effectively.
The ongoing training series serve as a collaborative place where team members could share their experiences, best practices, and learn from one another. This emphasis on social learning within teams accelerated the learning curve and adoption rate, fostering a supportive environment that encouraged continuous improvement.
Join us next month for another inspiring story on how Copilot is driving growth and creating opportunities for small to mid-sized businesses. Have you experienced growth with Microsoft 365 Copilot? We’d love to hear your story! Comment below to express your interest, and a team member will reach out to you.
Angela Byers
Microsoft
Senior Director, Copilot & Growth Marketing for SMB
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Try out some of the ways The Judge Group used Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Maximize the full power of Copilot in Teams
- Learn more about the Copilot Dashboard for adoption and measurement
Become a Copilot power user!
- (New every week) Try a new proven Copilot productivity tip to get time back for more important work
- (New) Get your one-stop guide to successfully deploy Copilot with the Copilot Success Kit
- See the Mechanics video that goes over simple steps to check your data permissions are in place
- Join the SMB Copilot Community to learn directly from Microsoft experts and your peers
Here’s the latest news on how Microsoft 365 Copilot can accelerate your business
Just announced, a new Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study was just published, examining the impact
September was an epic month for Copilot with the Wave Two announcement made by Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro. Here is a rundown of additional features announced for every SMB not covered in last month’s blog:
- Expanded Copilot Academy Access: Microsoft Copilot Academy is now available to all users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, enabling them to upskill their Copilot proficiency without needing a paid Viva license.
- New Admin and Management Capabilities: Expanded controls for managing the availability of Copilot in Teams meetings have been introduced. IT admins and meeting organizers can now select an ‘Off’ value for Copilot, providing more flexibility in managing Copilot usage.
- Copilot in Word Enhancements: On blank documents, Copilot in Word will now provide one-click examples of prompts that quickly help users get started on a new document. This feature is rolling out in October for desktop and Mac.
- Copilot User Enablement Toolkit: To help users quickly realize the full benefit of Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new toolkit has been developed. It includes communication templates and resources designed to inspire better Copilot engagement, with role-specific prompt examples and use cases.
- Check out the full details of the announcement and launch event.
Self-Service Purchase: Did you know that over 80% of information workers in small and medium-sized businesses already bring their own AI tools to work? Microsoft 365 Copilot can now be purchased directly by users who have a Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, or Premium license. If you’d like to purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot for yourself to use at work, click “Add Copilot to your Microsoft plan” on the Copilot for Microsoft 365 or Compare All Microsoft 365 Plans product pages.
Meet the team
The monthly series, Grow Your Business with Copilot for Microsoft 365, is brought to you by the SMB Copilot marketing team at Microsoft. From entrepreneurs to coffee connoisseurs, they work passionately behind the scenes, sharing the magic of Copilot products with small and medium businesses everywhere. Always ready with a smile, a helping hand, and a clever campaign, they’re passionate about helping YOUR business grow!
From left to right: An image of the SMB Copilot team at Microsoft, with Angela Byers, Mariana Prudencio, Elif Algedik, Kayla Patterson, Briana Taylor, and Gabe Ho.
About the blog
Welcome to “Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot,” where we aim to inspire and delight you with insights and stories on how AI is changing the game for business. This monthly series is designed to empower small and mid-sized businesses to harness the power of AI at work. Each month, we feature scenarios where an SMB is using AI to transform, scale, and grow.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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