The world is changing fast with rapidly transforming industries, evolving economic drivers, and technology at a pivotal point. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining the way we conduct business. Twice as many leaders now believe that AI will increase productivity, not reduce headcount. Employees say they are 70% likely to “delegate” work to AI. 

Rather than fearing AI, more businesses can and should adopt, learn and leverage this robust and quickly advancing technology. 

AI can give organizations a competitive edge, with 87% of businesses surveyed by Microsoft affirming that generative AI’s capabilities will help move the needle for performance and profitability. Because 64% of employee respondents indicated a lack of time and energy to effectively perform their jobs, AI can provide a layer of support and even boost morale. AI tools can give team members the traction to perform at higher levels on targeted tasks while assigning mundane roles to AI.

Enter Microsoft 365’s Copilot, a business AI companion now available in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. Our experienced IT engineers and specialists believe that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an organizational transformation that can unlock productivity, foster creativity and integrate AI into daily workflows.  

Here, we’ll address how your business can capitalize on the technology and answer your questions Copilot for Microsoft 365:

• What is Copilot for Microsoft 365?
• What is the value of Microsoft Copilot for businesses? 
• How can different job functions in my business benefit from AI with Microsoft Copilot?
• How secure is Copilot for Microsoft 365?
• How do I prepare to integrate Copilot for Microsoft 365 AI companion? 

What Is Copilot for Microsoft 365? 

Think of Microsoft 365’s Copilot as your ultimate productivity tool that works across Microsoft applications to streamline communications, integrate data and provide real-time intelligence. The AI companion allows your people to enhance their creativity and skills. Here’s a snapshot of how Copilot for business functions in apps you use daily.

Copilot in Outlook: The AI tool helps clean up your inbox and messages, streamlining the amount of time dedicated to inbox management and email communications. For example, you can ask Copilot to summarize emails missed while you were on vacation. Or, request a thank-you draft response in a professional tone. You can also initiate emails, such as inviting everyone in a group to the conference room for a meeting. 

Copilot in Teams: Organize discussion points before a meeting and summarize action steps afterward. You can ask Copilot, “What decisions were made during the meeting and what are suggested next steps?” From creating pro-con lists to summarizing missed meetings, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is the sharp assistant you’ve been missing. 

Copilot in Word: Need to create a proposal for a vendor or client? Editing a document for a presentation? Seeking perspective for an outline so you can write a project draft? Copilot’s writing, editing and summarizing capabilities allow you to focus efforts on the creative side, which delivers more value to an organization. 

Copilot in PowerPoint: You have an idea, and you need a PowerPoint presentation. Copilot for Microsoft 365 allows you to automatically create a slide presentation based on content in a Word document and include stock images that align with each thought. You can ask the AI companion to consolidate a lengthy presentation and repurpose it for a different audience. 

The Bottom Line: Copilot works across Microsoft 365 business applications to save time, drive productivity, increase accuracy and improve systems. 

What is the Value of Microsoft Copilot for Businesses? 

Not sure if your business will benefit from Copilot for Microsoft 365? Let’s take a look at the potential time savings, workflow advantages, quality output, financial gains and employee well-being. 

We know that aside from talent, time is the most precious and finite asset a business has, and maximizing how time is spent directly impacts the bottom line and employee morale. So, how much time can people save with Copilot for Microsoft 365? According to Microsoft’s Early Access Program survey results, 67% of respondents said the AI tool, “Saves me time so I can focus on more important work.” Then, 77% said they would not want to give up Copilot after using it, and 30% noted that access to Copilot would influence their choice of employer. 

Every month on average, employees saved 10 hours of time using Copilot for Microsoft 365 because of its impact on workflow. That includes conducting more effective meetings, analyzing data, creating content and email processing. All of this improved productivity translates to financial gains, and employees are more satisfied at work because they can stay in the flow, spend less time on rote tasks like filtering email and searching for information, and simplify complex tasks. 

The bottom line: Time savings realized from implementing Copilot for Microsoft 365 weeds out waste and, as a result, improves quality and overall business outcomes. 

How Can Different Job Functions in My Business Benefit from AI with Microsoft Copilot?

No matter your industry or job function, AI with Copilot for Microsoft 365 advances your competitive edge and performance. Let’s address various departments in a typical organization and how the AI companion for Microsoft can save time and drive more focused, effective work. 

HR: Job descriptions and employee manuals are ever-evolving documents that easily collect dust because of the time and effort required to update them. You can ask Copilot to write draft job responsibilities, create training materials or respond to job applicants’ emails. 

Marketing: What relevant market trends and segments should your business target? AI can help identify these “hot spots” so you can align marketing efforts with a warm audience. Copilot can summarize a marketing campaign’s results with visuals you can present to the team. Another opportunity: creating the first draft for a project, saving time and innovation for the final product. 

Sales: Looking for a conversation starter or need to develop a case for a potential customer to buy from your business? Copilot can research industries, providing key data and negotiation points to close more deals. Analyze sales data to track performance and set goals, and create proposals. AI from Microsoft 365 can help you finetune sales skills by assisting with time-consuming legwork, allowing sales professionals to focus on more relationship-centric activities. 

IT: From staying up to date on project calls to identifying data patterns, trouble-shooting and communications, IT professionals benefit from added support that Copilot for Microsoft 365 provides. 

Finance: Take the complexity out of financial reporting and planning, and ask Copilot to identify areas for improvement. Rather than spending time generating charts to communicate data, reassign this task to your AI “assistant.” 

The bottom line: Every aspect of your organization can benefit from implementing Copilot by Microsoft 365, freeing up your people to focus on what they do best. 

How Secure Is Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Our team at DMC Technology Group believes that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a transformative technology, and whenever implementing any IT tool, we focus on security first and foremost. Let’s evaluate how AI will impact your IT environment from a vulnerability perspective. Copilot’s best-in-class security controls provide tremendous peace of mind because of a few key features. Those include user/session risk and access controls, and automatic sensitivity labels for non-Microsoft products that mean your IT systems are “on alert” when operating apps and programs outside of the Microsoft 365 suite. 

Copilot allows your IT team or managed services provider like DMC to discover and evaluate the risk of more than 400 AI apps and implement controls so you can work securely. With Copilot, you can receive automated, ready-to-share reports on security investigations along with guidance to increase your IT security posture. You can also customize Microsoft 365 Copilot’s access and interactions with internal documents by assigning sensitivity labels. 

The bottom line: We appreciate how Copilot allows us to help you set the boundaries for the AI tool with settings controls that allow you to integrate the AI companion as you choose.

How Do I Prepare to Integrate Copilot AI for Microsoft 365?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is designed to work with commercial business and enterprise New Commerce Experience (NCE) subscriptions such as Microsoft Business Premium or Standard, Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, and Office 365 E3 or E5. DMC Technology Group can resell Copilot licenses for your organization because of our Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) status as a Solution Partner for Modern Work.

Ready to enter the AI revolution with a tool that will measurably impact the way your leadership and employees work? 

At DMC Technology Group, we are committed to doing the right thing for our clients and providing best-in-class IT solutions. We take pride in our talented staff of engineers and IT specialists with strong communication skills that allow us to develop long-term relationships with clients, who see us as a vested partner in their success. 

Let’s talk about how Copilot can add value to your organization. DMC’s expertise and industry knowledge can help your Toledo, Ohio-based organization develop and execute a robust IT strategy that drives growth and innovation.

Contact us to learn how.

Posted by Greg Gomach, Business Unit Manager at
DMC Technology Group

The post The AI Evolution: How Microsoft 365 Copilot is Transforming the Way We Work appeared first on DMC Technology Group.

We are deep into a new world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its capabilities are vast, evolving and soon to be ingrained in every business across industries. Chatbots are handling customer service requests. AI-powered machines are taking over low-skill manual labor jobs. AI can detect fraud for financial services firms, predict retail purchases and play a role in national defense, the list goes on. 

A Brookings Institute report illustrates how AI has escalated from unfamiliarity to dinner table conversation. When 1,500 U.S. senior business leaders were asked about AI in 2017, only about 17 percent knew what it was.

Fast forward to today – Accenture's "The Art of AI Maturity" report states that machine learning models suggest that the share of AI Achievers will increase rapidly and significantly, more than doubling from the current 12% to 27% by 2024.

This includes using machine learning for cyber security. And there is good reason why. 

First, there is a demand for skilled cybersecurity experts and a growing talent gap across the globe. We need more security support and intelligence than the industry can currently fulfill. Also, a surge of cyber threats and increasingly sophisticated attacks are increasing organizations’ vulnerability. 

Generative AI, when deployed by an experienced IT managed services provider, can empower cyber security teams. AI can improve an existing end-to-end security system and fast-forward the response time should an incident occur.

The bottom line: AI can help detect, prevent and respond to cyber threats before they cause irreversible reputational and financial damage. 

Let’s explore how AI can elevate IT security services. 

Harnessing Generative AI to Enhance End-to-End Cyber Security 

As a longtime IT managed services provider, we know that anticipating cyber security threats and staying ahead of market evolution is essential. What works today could be improved for tomorrow, and what you expect for tomorrow could change the day after that. 

Our approach is beyond proactive. It’s operational preparedness. 

The leading business partners and vendors we align with share this philosophy and are invested in AI-powered tools to bolster cyber security, as well. For example, in March 2023, Microsoft introduced Security Copilot, the first generative AI security product. It is a ready assistant that builds on the latest in large language models and 65 trillion daily signals to inform security teams so they can outpace today’s sophisticated cybercriminals. 

By working with a managed-services security provider (MSSP) or IT managed services provider such as DMC, security experts can support your team with the latest, transformative technology designed for high-level threat intelligence. (Microsoft offers a “Bring Your Own MSSP” option.) 

Artificial intelligence in cyber security can perform a number of mission-critical tasks to protect an organization, including: 

• Threat detection and analysis — AI systems learn network and user behavior, so they can identify deviations and anomalies that could indicate a cyberattack. The sooner you know, the faster you can respond. 
• Intrusion detection — Every minute of every day, increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals find new ways to breach even the tightest security systems. AI can detect and respond to unauthorized access and suspicious activities in real time, which prevents data breaches and helps ensure “always on” security. 
• Social media monitoring — Through national language processing (NLP), AI can analyze text and speech sentiment for monitoring social media and other sources for potential threats. 
• Email monitoring and filtering — AI-based systems can identify phishing attempts and malicious emails before they damage an organization. 
• Automating security tasks — Routine patching and security updates are essential, and security breaches occur during lapse times before an organization realizes it. While working with an MSP for end-to-end cyber security like DMC lifts this burden, a security expert who deploys AI-powered tools adds one more layer of protection for improving response times. 

AI Is A Cyber Security Support, Not an MSP Replacement 

AI will augment security, whether your organization has an in-house IT professional, a team that is supported by an MSO, or you rely on an IT managed services provider as a turn-key cyber security arm of your business. But cyber security intelligence requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. 

Because AI can help automate repetitive tasks and analyze large volumes of data from IT infrastructure, MSPs can more efficiently gather this information to help inform business decisions. Predictive maintenance can decrease downtime, giving managed IT services advanced notice for upgrades, repairs and updates so they can respond immediately. 

MSPs also can leverage AI-driven analytics to optimize resources and aid in IT planning and strategic budgeting, as well. Along those lines, AI-generated reports can provide real-time status updates on system performance and other key metrics. 

Not sure how artificial intelligence in cyber security could benefit your organization? A knowledgeable MSP can identify cases where AI could enhance your offerings, along with implementing trusted AI cyber security tools that elevate your security posture. Keep in mind, involving an MSP in AI-security-related tools is critical because machine learning models can also be susceptible to cyber-attacks. They must be skillfully deployed and protected. 

Safely Deploying AI Cyber Security Tools 

Position your business for success by staying on top of the latest artificial intelligence cyber security tools that are enhancing the way we monitor, detect and respond to adversarial attacks. At DMC, we are invested in and committed to continuous learning so we can offer clients advanced solutions, including AI cyber security tools, to futureproof their organizations. 

How could AI improve your cybersecurity posture? Let’s talk. DMC’s expertise and industry knowledge can help your organization develop and execute a robust IT strategy that drives growth and innovation. Contact us to learn how.

The post Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security appeared first on DMC Technology Group.