By Insight Editor / 12 Jan 2024 / Topics: Data and AI Generative AI
Within business, the use of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot has taken off. "It is critical for businesses to ensure that their underlying IT environment can support these technologies to reduce risk and improve time-to-value," said Nanda Heijnen, Change & Adoption consultant at Solutions Integrator Insight.
The increase in interest from the business community is mainly driven by employees within these organisations. As a result, companies are increasingly looking for ways to implement the promised benefits of generative AI tools faster.
"Initially, business use of generative AI solutions was still limited. Companies still could not always implement or get these solutions working properly. Nowadays, however, we see that things are moving very quickly. Generative AI is more easily accepted. Especially because of the new technology and the new ways of working that companies want to adopt," says Nanda Heijnen, Change & Adoption consultant at Insight.
Insight is a leading Solutions Integrator for the enterprise market and the upper SME segment that provides clients not only with various IT products, but also with services, support and Managed Services.
Nanda Heijnen has been working at the Dutch branch of the global Solutions Integrator and IT consultancy specialist for quite some time in various positions, including Microsoft licensing specialist and as a Solution Salesspecialist for the Microsoft Power Platform.
"In the past, when it came to new technology, companies would often wait and see. Now you see that this is changing especially around generative AI and an acceleration is taking place," says Nanda Heijnen.
"The enterprise market is seeing the benefits of using generative AI. Mainly because it applies well to their own business model, makes employees more productive, reduces costs and makes both employees, and customers, happy faster. They see that it really works."
"Nobody wants to be left behind; generative AI has become a must for companies to implement and drive competitive advantage. If you don't use it as a company yourself, your competitors will."
"One example Nanda Heijnen gives of interesting generative AI for businesses is Microsoft 365 Copilot.
"Microsoft Copilot is a solution that provides generative AI functionality for a number of applications (Windows 11, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and GitHub). Using Microsoft Copilot within Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Stream) and Microsoft Teams helps employees work more productively within these applications. Think of setting up and summarising documents and automatically generating transcripts or summaries and actions from Teams conversations."
"In addition, 'prompts' also allow users to create things themselves. Think of setting up e-mails or documents, yes even entire PowerPoint presentations. Here, however, it is important that the tool gets the right input to work with. Microsoft Copilot can become a real co-pilot supporting you to reduce the time needed to complete your tasks."
When implementing generative AI, such as Microsoft Copilot, in an enterprise environment, Heijnen says it is very important for companies to have their IT environment in order for this. "Just like with cloud solutions, before deploying a generative AI solution like Microsoft Copilot, a company needs to have the underlying foundation in place."
"Generative AI like Copilot runs on top of companies' own data and this data must be in order. After all, as in the cloud world, 'garbage-in, garbarge-out' applies. The underlying IT infrastructure must also be properly set up and secured, and the queried data must be accessible to the right target groups. If these are all met, then you can properly and securely deploy generative AI like Copilot."
Insight naturally provides the necessary solutions and services for this. Heijnen: "Originally, we are a licence specialist, so companies can also come to us for a Copilot licence. If required, we help them purchase and integrate it into their Microsoft 365 environment. But then it doesn't work yet, and our teams can do a lot there too."
"We offer our customers a 'journey' or a 'holistic' approach that allows them to get all the added value from Copilot. First and foremost, this is a piece of 'envisioning.' Here we look at what the solution can do for customers. What business cases do they have for which they can use Copilot?"
"Then we look at whether the customer environment, in this case the Microsoft 365 environment, is ready enough and secure enough to use Copilot. Are all the applications in the base layer set up properly and is the usage and adoption of these applications at the right level? You may have activated Teams or SharePoint via the cloud, but if adoption by employees lags, what is the added value of Copilot? This is done with a 'technical readiness assessment'."
"Then we help our customers get it all done technically. For example, activating unused security features or making data more accessible. These are really valuable technical services," says Nanda Heijnen.
In the fourth step of the integration process for Copilot, Insight provides their customers with a number of usage scenarios and tangible ROI analyses. This includes who within organisations would benefit the most, which tasks can be improved per functional areas and what is the tangible ROI expected when using Microsoft Copilot.
"To this you can also add pieces of 'adoption planning'," Heijnen continues. "This is often done from adoption management."
Last and certainly not least is the 'continuous adoption' phase. "This is where we ensure that when new features come to market, they are efficiently understood, implemented and applied by employees, thus realising the full potential of the investment."
"We can help customers continuously monitor their adoption and usage rates of Copilot and - in consultation - intervene to accelerate the desired results. This will always be an 'ongoing process', as the solution is always getting new features or the customer may change direction. We ensure that Copilot continuously delivers the intended value.
The introduction of Microsoft Copilot marks another important step in the use of generative AI within enterprise environments. For 2024, Heijnen therefore expects this trend to continue even further. "I predict an acceleration in the use of generative AI tools like Copilot. Companies are not taking a pass."
"In addition, there is an increasing need for links to business applications. On the one hand, these will start to be offered by Microsoft itself; on the other hand, these also need to be developed or customised. It is an important part within our role as Solution Integrator and for this we work closely with our Data & AI and our App Practice colleagues.
"According to Insight's Change & Adoption consultant, more and more companies are starting to think about how best to deploy Copilot or similar tooling. As a result, the demand for these solutions will only increase.
According to Nanda Heijnen, it is important for companies and their partners, integrators or resellers to start the conversation about generative AI. What are your user groups and what can generative AI contribute to business operations? But also who should use these solutions and who has access to data and how?
"Everyone should keep in mind that Copilot, as indicated earlier, is a true 'co-pilot'. Companies and their employees remain at the helm of the solution and not everything is determined by it."
"Furthermore, it is important, I reiterate, that companies that want to start using generative AI like Copilot must first get their other IT basics in order to do so. Here too, we at Insight can be of service to our clients, " concludes Nanda Heijnen.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is being rolled out to all channels from today, including CSP. How you can benefit from this?
Nanda Heijnen, Adoption & Change consultant at Insight.
