Johannesburg, 03 Apr 2025
When organisations get Microsoft 365 Copilot, they aren’t just buying a software licence – they are initiating a change within the organisation.
This is according to speakers addressing a webinar by First Distribution and Microsoft, who outlined how to achieve maximum benefits from Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Polls of webinar participants revealed that as many as 70% of existing Copilot users are seeing a strong ROI within their organisations, with 61% expressing concerns about data security, 18% concerned about the risk of oversharing, 11% concerned about licence assignment and 9% having content management concerns.
Addressing these concerns, Kejendree Pillay, Microsoft Portfolio Manager at First Distribution, and Elaine Van Der Plank, Senior Partner Development Manager at Microsoft, elaborated on how to secure, onboard and deploy Copilot to deliver measurable impact and ROI.
Pillay outlined the four key phases of Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption – get ready, onboard and engage, deliver impact, and extend and optimise.
Impact and security
“Organisations will accelerate Copilot’s business impact by conducting a thorough analysis to determine where it can have the highest impact. You also need to define a clear path to secure your data,” she said. Pillay noted that the Microsoft 365 Copilot Optimisation Assessment offers a structured approach that identifies gaps and paves the way for a more successful implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot. “First Distribution can assist with this,” she said.
To address security concerns, Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Business Standard with the Copilot add-on offer several foundational security controls, including multifactor authentication for secure access to Microsoft 365 applications with Copilot; manual sensitivity and retention labels; and data loss prevention policies. Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes enterprise-grade security features.
To mitigate risks of oversharing, Pillay highlighted the Microsoft Copilot Deployment Blueprint, which provides an overview of the most common causes of oversharing in Microsoft SharePoint, a recommended, staged approach to avoid oversharing in a Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment, recommended actions specific to E3 or E5 licences at each stage and detailed guidance for using the tools in the SharePoint Admin Center, SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) and Microsoft Purview to identify and mitigate oversharing and ongoing governance concerns.
Optimise and extend
Van Der Plank noted that after deployment, it is critical to have an established service plan. “This includes a service health review to evaluate the current state of the environment and the future needs of the IT division,” she said. “Best practice includes having a success owner within the practice – someone who champions Copilot within the business. It is also good practice to have monthly and quarterly sessions looking at onboarding and expanding Copilot, and feeding information back into your AI council.
She said: “If you aren't using Copilot to its full potential, you’ve underserved the business. There are three essentials for user enablement: leadership, scenarios and enablement. Organisations must develop leadership capabilities to align AI to business strategy and provide clarity and prioritisation. Executive sponsorship and an AI council or steering committee are important.”
Van Der Plank highlighted the importance of communications and a community, skilling and training, and reviews of adoption. She said building a community of practice helped generate employee excitement and gave employees a place to share best practices, such as how to create better prompts.
“The next part of delivering impact relates to reports,” she said. “Organisations need to review reports on readiness and usage, and build out tables and dashboards where they can see the adoption by group, the trends and who is actively using it so you, as a business, are getting what you pay for. The Copilot dashboard helps you track and evaluate Copilot usage and achieve impact.”
The use of agents enables the extension and optimisation of Copilot, they noted. Out-of-the-box agents are available, and organisations can also build and deploy their own agents to achieve additional value using Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio.
There are countless ways to optimise and reinvent your business process with Copilot agents, they said. For example, agents that can be easily built using Agent Builder in BizChat include Onboarding Buddy, Resume Reviewer, Contract/Legal Review, Research Assistant and Policy Search.
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