Watch this video to hear from Microsoft Americas GTM VP Heather Deggans and Microsoft Americas GM of CSP Erwin Visser on the opportunity that Copilot brings for Cloud Solution Providers (CSP) in the Americas region.

Eighteen months ago, we wouldn’t have expected to be here today talking about generative AI. Whereas the internet took seven years to reach 100M users, it only took ChatGPT three months to reach 100M users.¹ Diffusion at this scale in the tech industry is unprecedented.

Now that we’re in the era of AI, the question leaders across every industry are asking right now is, How can I seize the full potential of AI, while safeguarding my employees, business, and data? 

Partner opportunity

Today, our partners have the unique opportunity to build value-added solutions that will have direct impact on the growth and success of their customers. Not just across IT, but across all lines of business. In fact, 87% of leaders believe AI will give their organization a competitive edge.²

As a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), you work with SMB customers every day. As your customers look for the tools and services that will help them compete through AI, you have a huge opportunity to:​

• • Transform the opportunity to sell new services.
  • Reach new customers.​
  • Migrate customers to the cloud.​
  • Accelerate your practice and grow revenue by helping these customers prepare their software, teams, and strategic approach. ​

Evidence of impact

Artificial Intelligence impacts the bottom line of many organizations. As the use of AI becomes more widespread, the opportunity lies not only in transforming individual productivity but also in the efficacy of the entire organization. Copilot sets a new baseline, wherein every employee has the capability to write, design, code, analyze data, and more. It also amplifies expertise, improving the quality of the work. Early in-depth research reveals:

• • 70% of Copilot users said they were more productive, and 68% said it improved the quality of their work.
  • Overall, users were 29% faster in a series of tasks (searching, writing, and summarizing). Users were able to get caught up on a missed meeting nearly 4x faster.
  • 77% of users said once they used Copilot, they didn’t want to give it up.

A recent global study provides additional insights into the business value of AI:

• • For every $1 companies invest in AI, they are realizing an average of $3.5 in return and 5% of organizations worldwide are realizing an average of $8 in return.
  • Organizations are realizing a return on their AI investments within 14 months of deployments on average.

As the pace of AI adoption accelerates, as a trusted partner you can help your customers understand the potential impact of AI on their business and the opportunities it can unlock.

What are the challenges?

Many organizations are just beginning their AI transformation journey and are not yet ready to implement. According to the same study cited above, 52% report that a lack of skilled workers is their biggest barrier to implement and scale AI. Early feedback from our partners showcases that a successful pilot is one that activates Copilot usage beyond IT professionals, but also the business opportunity across Finance, HR, Communications, and more!

Your customers also need to know that their data is secure. Security breaches and exposure of customer data are top concerns and implementing responsible AI policies are intended to protect against these risks.

“We’re delighted with the launch of Copilot for CSP. It means we can offer organizations across sectors and sizes additional services and end-to-end support to give them a more assured transition to AI. Companies will now be able to harness the power of Copilot to deliver incredible customer and people experiences, all while knowing that the right security and governance policies are in place. In this new chapter of a successful and longstanding partnership, we’re excited to be working with Microsoft to unleash the potential of our joint customers.”  

– Andrew Caprara, President & CEO of SoftChoice

What is the business opportunity with Copilot?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is designed to benefit everyone in an organization. From leaders to IT professional managers, Copilot offers features that streamline tasks, automate workflows, and enhance collaboration. Its adaptability means that it can be customized to meet the unique needs of any organization. The ability to extend its capabilities through plugins makes it a continually evolving asset that can adapt to the ever-changing landscape of business needs.

Next steps

• • Start harnessing the Power of AI. Learn how partners can adopt Copilot internally to drive success with your customers.
  • Get AI-ready. Attend the CSP Masters Copilot for Microsoft 365 Sales and Technical Bootcamps.
  • Build your practice. Build your practice and offerings to monetize the Copilot for Microsoft 365 opportunity.
  • Leverage Sales Advisor. Use Microsoft 365 Lighthouse Sales Advisor to identify customers that can purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 now and secure and upsell customers renewing in Q3, locking copilot sockets.
  • Leverage AI excitement. Leverage Secure Productivity Solution Play to acquire and upsell to BP, ME3 or ME5. Optimize customers for Copilot security, management, and data governance.

More partner resources

New: Get AI Ready partner data sheet
New: Get AI Ready to-partner email
New: Get AI Ready partner opportunity one-pager
Updated: Get AI Ready partner opportunity deck for CSP partners
Updated: Get AI Ready campaign messaging and positioning framework

Related posts

Copilot for Microsoft 365: expanded partner opportunity – Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

¹Microsoft Research
²MIT Sloan Management Review

Recognizing our sustainable partners

To celebrate Earth Day 2022, I’m excited to shine focus on Microsoft partners making a positive impact through the initiative. I’m proud of the way they’re building for a more sustainable future and how their innovative solutions are delivering impact to the business community while making the world a better place. Here is a brief list of a few partners deserving extra recognition:

Earth Knowledge: The Earth Knowledge Foresight Platform is a solution that brings full clarity to the economic risk of climate change and biodiversity loss and your associated investment decisions. Unique climate and biodiversity indicators simplify how institutions assess risk and identify opportunities at the physical asset level for the companies in which they invest.

ICONICS: ICONICS solutions provide insight to ensure that all treatment and filtration happens as planned. Its key capabilities include native GIS mapping, mobile visualization, and real-time, distributed alarming. Customer benefits include energy and labor savings, leak detection, pollution reduction, government compliance, and sustainability improvement.

Uptake: By leveraging Uptake industrial AI software and solutions, companies can achieve transparency from sensor to boardroom. Uptake helps customers get more out of their digital investments to record, report, and reduce environmental impact while creating synergies across sustainability, ESG, energy innovation, and more.

Honeywell: Honeywell Forge Predictive Maintenance is a SaaS solution which continuously analyzes asset performance to identify issues before failures occur. It provides building owners and operators with guided real time performance insights and centralized expertise across their portfolio.

Discover more #BuildFor2030 partner solutions focused on sustainability. We’re proud to support Microsoft partners enabling solutions for a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable world.

Sustainability goals: from here to 2030

Organizations across industries are embracing the importance of sustainability, which says to me the appetite for these solutions is there. According to a Forrester report, the number of firms committing to The Climate Pledge around Carbon, Waste and Water will triple this year. A short list of Microsoft’s commitments to combat the climate crisis are:

Carbon

• By 2030, be carbon negative.
• By 2025, shift to 100 percent supply of renewable energy.
• By 2030, 100 percent of Microsoft energy supply, 100 percent of the time, will come from carbon free resources (100/100/0).
• By 2030, reduce third-party emissions (which represent more than 97 percent of our total emissions) by more than half.
• By 2030, eliminate our dependency on diesel fuel in our datacenters.
• By 2030, electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet.
• Deploy $1 billion of our own capital in a Climate Innovation Fund.
• By 2025, protect more land than we use.
• Build, deploy, and accelerate a Planetary Computer through our AI for Earth program.

Waste

• By 2025, achieve 90 percent reuse of servers and components.
• By 2025, eliminate single-use plastics in packaging.
• By 2030, achieve 100 percent recyclable Microsoft product packaging.
• By 2030, achieve 100 percent recyclable Surfacedevices and Xbox consoles and accessories.
• By 2030, divert at least 75 percent of construction and deconstruction waste for all projects from landfill and incineration.
• By 2030, divert at least 90 percent of solid waste from landfills and incinerators for our campuses and owned datacenters.

Water

• By 2030, become water positive in our direct operations, meaning we will replenish more water than we use.
• By 2030, ensure accessibility to clean drinking and sanitation water to more than 1.5 million people.

Check out our recently released Microsoft 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report for a deeper look at our commitments and progress.

Thinking big: our #BuildFor2030 focus

The #Buildfor2030 Initiative provides a roadmap to help partners apply skills and expertise to bring impact-focused solutions to market across areas aligned to five of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Their challenges are aligned around five #Buildfor2030 themes to create transformative solutions to global challenges. These are:

• Gender equality: Enable technology that creates equal participation, equitable economic access, and opportunities at all levels in work and life for women and girls.
• Climate action and sustainability: Build new solutions to help customers and industries across the globe transition to a net-zero carbon future.
• Digital inclusion and accessibility: Create accessible technology devices and applications with inclusive design for more than 1 billion people living with disabilities
• Enabling the nonprofit sector: Develop solutions to enable the nonprofit sector to achieve scalable and measurable mission impact.
• Empowering communities: Reimagine solutions that strengthen our institutions, build resilient infrastructure, and create equitable access to health, education and social services.

How can you get involved?

In a recent blog post, we focused on seven best practices for sustainability that we are using to set strategy and accountability, and measure progress drawn from the Sustainability Report.

1. Set ambitions based on the science
2. Scale strategy by using the “whole of the business”
3. Set the tone from the top
4. Make commitments relevant to business groups
5. Hold everyone accountable
6. Take steps to accelerate markets, ecosystems, and global progress
7. Report on everything, not just progress

For those who are trying to align with ecosystem goals, the climate action & sustainability goal an important way to align themselves with Microsoft to help the planet and empower a more sustainable ecosystem.

What do we mean? Learn more.

Get started

Building a sustainability solution

Together, we can accelerate solutions that are good for the planet and good for business. Discover how you can bring sustainability into your business.

Nominate Yourself

We know there’s room for growth from within Microsoft, as well as partners and consumes ready to make a difference. If you’re a partner going above and beyond, nominate your solution or service to be featured with added go-to-market benefits.

Other posts you may like

• Learn more about how we can save the planet while empowering others
• Read the full 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report
• Learn more about the Microsoft #Buildfor2030 Initiative
• Learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability