Copilot for Microsoft 365 Deployment and Adoption Guide

Read our step-by-step guide on deploying Copilot for Microsoft 365 at your company. It’s based on our experience deploying it here at Microsoft:

• Full version
• eBook version
• Version for executives
• eBook version for executives

Join me, Lori Lamkin, and my esteemed colleague Nathalie D’Hers, as we take you on an extraordinary journey through the development, deployment, and continuous improvement of Microsoft Copilot for Sales. As the Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Dynamics 365 Customer Experiences, I bring extensive leadership experience and strategic vision to guide the product team responsible for Copilot for Sales. Copilot for Sales is a tool that maximizes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce seller teams’ productivity with AI-assisted experiences in Microsoft 365 apps.

Nathalie, another accomplished CVP and the leader of Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, leads the deployment efforts across Microsoft, positioning the Microsoft sales field as customer zero. Together, we bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to revolutionize the way sellers engage with customers through Copilot for Sales. In this Q&A session, we will share our insights, experiences, and the remarkable story of Microsoft’s journey in unlocking the full potential of Copilot for Sales. Get ready to be inspired!

[Learn about our strategy for deploying Microsoft Copilot for Sales internally at Microsoft and the progress we’ve made against our vision. Check out our full content suite on how we use Microsoft Viva internally at Microsoft. See how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva. Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero.]

Rapid deployment: Unleashing the potential of Microsoft Copilot for Sales

Lori: It’s been six months since you’ve deployed Copilot for Sales, what results are you seeing? What key considerations did you have when rolling out a generative AI tool like Copilot for Sales on a global scale?

Nathalie: Copilot for Sales is deployed across Microsoft. Being customer zero has been invaluable in this process. It has allowed us to confirm the product, learn important insights, and make improvements along the way. We’ve been focused on turning on Copilot features to enhance the seller experience, and the feedback we’ve received from our own teams has been instrumental in refining and perfecting the deployment. I’m so excited to partner with our teams to see the first commercial solution at Microsoft to combine Copilot and Copilot for Sales.

Since the launch of Copilot in March, we have seen incredible adoption with nearly 4,000 users taking advantage of its capabilities. The impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. It’s encouraging to see the positive response from our users and the value they are experiencing. In fact, during a recent customer conversation, the Senior VP of Sales expressed their enthusiasm to partner with us as early adopters, emphasizing their willingness to invest in any technology that enhances the productivity of their sellers. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Copilot and its ability to drive tangible benefits in the workplace.

Nathalie: It’s been quite the journey since we launched Microsoft Copilot for Sales to our Microsoft sellers. What were the main goals your team hoped to achieve with this product?

Lori: We’ve been focused on seller productivity gains through taking advantage of conversation intelligence, enabling Copilot features, and ultimately improving customer connection, job satisfaction, and revenue for our sellers. Microsoft being customer zero has provided us with a unique advantage. It has allowed us to test these features within our own organization, gather valuable feedback, and fine-tune the experiences before rolling them out to more customers.

In the new update, we are adding some exciting capabilities to Copilot for Sales that have been influenced by your team’s customer zero work. Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.

Nathalie: Speaking of Copilot, how does your organization ensure that the implementation of Copilot features align with Microsoft’s ethical and responsible AI principles?

Lori: Supporting ethical and responsible AI practices is of paramount importance to us and our customers. As we use generative AI, we are committed to helping our customers be transparent, fair, and accountable to their employees and their customers.

As you know, one of the ways we do this here is with our works councils, where a few of our colleagues volunteer to help us protect the privacy of all our employees when we deploy new technology like Copilot for Sales. More importantly, they make sure we follow privacy laws in each of the countries and regions where we operate. We roll the feedback that we get from them directly into our products, which helps our customers protect their own employees. It’s this kind of thinking—and these kinds of checks and balances—that helps with the ethical use of AI in Copilot for Sales.

Lori: We were so excited to be the first Microsoft product to bring Copilot to our users; the feedback we have received from sellers has been incredibly positive! How have our newest Copilot in Microsoft Copilot for Sales features influenced your thinking about supporting the employee experience?

Nathalie: It helped a lot! Seeing a tangible implementation of Copilot with real value opened our eyes to what was possible and is influencing ways that we’ll incorporate generative AI into our own employee experience. Kudos to you and your team for dreaming big and acting fast to bring that experience to the market!

Lori: Thank you. So, tell me more about this employee experience and how deploying Copilot for Sales in Microsoft has given your team insights and learnings that shaped your approach to using AI?

Nathalie: Just like Copilot for Sales provides conversation summaries and next actions for sales opportunities, we’re thinking through scenarios that will enable us to transform the way employees interact with our different services—like support and HR—to make them more personalized and efficient.

Broadly, our efforts fall into three categories—AI for IT, AI for the hybrid workplace, and AI for the employee experience. AI for IT includes investments to help us proactively detect and remediate issues in our employee services and IT infrastructure. AI for the hybrid workplace includes investments to help us perfect space planning and to enhance the experience when employees come into the office. Finally, AI for the employee experience is all about transforming the ways that Microsoft employees interact with our services and support. Across each of these investment areas, Copilot for Sales provided us with a great benchmark for how AI can really propel employee productivity.

Talking about works councils and deployment

Lori: Nathalie, as the leader responsible for deploying Copilot for Sales across Microsoft, I understand that your team has been actively engaging with works councils. Can you provide insights into the impact of working with works councils during the deployment process?

Nathalie: Absolutely, Lori. Works councils play a critical role in standing for the interests of employees within our organization, particularly in European countries where they are prevalent, and they make sure that whatever we deploy internally within the company protects the privacy of the employees who live in that region. Engaging with works councils ensures that we consider the perspectives and concerns of the workforce during the deployment of Copilot for Sales. Their input is valuable in addressing compliance, privacy, and employee relations matters, making our deployment process more robust and aligned with local regulations.

Lori: What have you found to be some of the challenges in managing a global-scale deployment of Copilot for Sales?

Nathalie: Deploying any new technology globally has challenges, but the speed and efficiency with which we were able to roll out this transformative product was truly remarkable. We are working on a brand-new solution that is revolutionizing the way generative AI changes the workplace, and being customer zero has given us some unique advantages. We’ve had to navigate compliance and obtain necessary approvals for deploying AI features on a global scale. Our active engagement process, which includes working closely with works councils, has been instrumental in streamlining the deployment process and ensuring that our global teams can receive help from Copilot for Sales. Despite the challenges, the feedback from sellers has been incredibly positive, especially with the AI-generated email content enhancements we’re introducing. The best part is how easy and painless it is to enable Copilot for Sales, allowing our teams to quickly harness its productivity-boosting capabilities and experience a seamless transition to a more efficient way of working.

Lori: It seems like building an effective approval process is crucial. How replicable has Microsoft made this process for other companies?

Nathalie: At Microsoft, we have developed a globally recognizable, efficient process for enabling Copilot scenarios. By supporting open dialogue, we can gather feedback, address emerging concerns, and align our deployment approach with evolving regulations. We recently set up a framework with European works councils to supply valuable insights into employee needs and expectations, enabling Microsoft to tailor the product and deployment process accordingly. We encourage all companies to get connected with their respective works counsels to achieve a balance between rapid implementation and compliance, ensuring that their employees are protected, and the organization meets regulatory requirements.

Lori: It’s truly exciting to see the transformative power of Copilot for Sales in action and see the positive impact it’s having on our organization!

To learn more about our internal deployment of Microsoft Copilot for Sales, read our “See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft Copilot for Sales” blog post. You can also read more about our internal deployment of Microsoft Viva at Microsoft by visiting our “Viva la vida! Work life is better at Microsoft with Viva” content suite. Learn more about other applications and capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Copilot for Sales using the links below:

• Learn more about tips Microsoft has for working with works counsels.
• Take a look at Dynamics 365 Sales and Copilot for Sales release wave documentation on Microsoft Learn.
• Watch the Copilot in Viva Sales demo.
• Stay up-to-date on Viva Sales features and updates on the Viva Sales Blog.

If you’re not yet a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.

We’re always looking for feedback and would like to hear from you. Please head to the Dynamics 365 Community to start a discussion, ask questions, and tell us what you think!

Click here to try or learn more about Microsoft Viva Sales.

Learn about our strategy for deploying Microsoft Viva Sales internally at Microsoft and the progress we’ve made against our vision.

• Check out our full content suite on how we use Microsoft Viva internally at Microsoft.
• See how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva.
• Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero.

The post The power of AI in Microsoft Copilot for Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

There’s no doubt that modern salespeople need to rely on too many tools and services to get their jobs done. We in Microsoft’s IT organization see firsthand the stress this puts on our sales teams.

We’ve had a great Customer Zero experience with Copilot for Sales. We’ve been very pleased with how much it has simplified the lives of our sellers and enabled them to focus more on selling.

—Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

“We wanted to alleviate as much of that pain as we could,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, our IT organization. “We realized that the AI and automation that comes baked into Copilot for Sales could make the lives of our sellers much better.”

Microsoft is Customer Zero for our own products, which means we typically try them first, put them through their paces, and send our feedback to the product group. Microsoft deployed Microsoft Copilot for Sales internally six months ago and has seen adoption and usage steadily increase.

“We’ve had a great Customer Zero experience with Copilot for Sales,” D’Hers says. “We’ve been very pleased with how much it has simplified the lives of our sellers and enabled them to focus more on selling.”

[Get insights from our leaders on our internal deployment of Microsoft Copilot for Sales. Check out our full content suite on how we use Microsoft Viva internally at Microsoft. See how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva. Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero.]

Unlocking human potential with AI and automation

It’s hard to overstate how complicated selling is—there seems to be no end to the countless small tasks that sellers need to accomplish to keep their day-to-day moving. From managing communications to pulling in relevant stakeholders to inputting information into customer relationship management (CRM) software, sales professionals are constantly allocating and reallocating their attention across different apps and work modes.

Sixty-eight percent of sellers’ time gets spent on critical but tedious sales tasks. If we can identify what they’re doing in this non-selling space and recover time from that, they can spend more of their day where humans excel.

—Cory Newton-Smith, head of product management, Microsoft Copilot for Sales

During internal simplification research at Microsoft, we discovered that our sellers were using as many as 40 tools per day. Flipping back and forth between those different workspaces results in a lot of wasted time.

“Sixty-eight percent of sellers’ time gets spent on critical but tedious sales tasks,” says Cory Newton-Smith, head of product management for Microsoft Copilot for Sales. “If we can identify what they’re doing in this non-selling space and recover time from that, they can spend more of their day where humans excel.”

We wanted to design a way for salespeople to keep essential tasks within the flow of work, then introduce powerful features to speed up their efforts. It’s especially important to minimize the time they spend in CRM programs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. Although those solutions are essential to modern sales and contain many powerful features, they add steps into a seller’s workflow.

“You have the CRM space and then you have the productivity space,” says Smita Shrivastava, product strategy and growth lead for Microsoft Copilot for Sales. “Sellers mostly work in Microsoft Outlook and Teams, so juggling apps to work within the CRM is a constant drain on productivity.”

Microsoft Copilot for Sales maximizes sales teams’ productivity with AI-assisted content creation and meeting summaries across Microsoft 365 apps. It seamlessly connects data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce CRMs from the apps where salespeople get their work done—within Microsoft Outlook and Teams.

Microsoft Copilot for Sales saves sellers time through three main functionalities:

• Automating and simplifying tasks with AI-generated emails, meeting summaries, data collection, and data entry
• Getting actionable insights in the flow of work by bringing together data from Microsoft 365 apps and CRM systems
• Maintaining momentum with AI-powered analytics that provide recommendations and reminders

“It’s really all about seller productivity,” says Peter Macy, technical specialist within our SaaS organization and pilot program participant for Microsoft Copilot for Sales. “It helps maintain that focus and streamlines your work so you don’t have to jump back and forth and lose attention.”

Getting the most from Microsoft Copilot for Sales

To deploy Microsoft Copilot for Sales thoughtfully internally here at Microsoft, we engaged our team of change management professionals, product specialists, and internal early adopters to make sure the tool landed just right. Fortunately, we’ve built out a robust deployment and adoption framework that we’ve iterated over several large-scale product rollouts.

“We have a repeatable process for landing changes,” says Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “We can take advantage of a framework that’s already in place, including local adoption teams in each subsidiary and well-structured pilot programs.”

The second I put out a post asking who wanted to be involved in a pilot, I had virtual hands up all over the world.

—Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Through conversations with salespeople across Microsoft, our change management team focused on identifying how the tool would interact with different roles, then built communications around value propositions for each of those use cases. That helped produce readiness toolkits that demonstrated the value of Microsoft Copilot for Sales.

From there, it was time to begin a phased deployment—starting with a pilot. Generative AI drove a lot of uptake thanks to its popularity in the public imagination.

“The second I put out a post asking who wanted to be involved in a pilot, I had virtual hands up all over the world,” Jones says.

The moment sellers launch Copilot for Sales, they see CRM data infused into emails and Teams conversations. They can see the power of Copilot for Sales very quickly.

—Smita Shrivastava, product strategy and growth lead, Microsoft Copilot for Sales

Real-world usage by our early adopters in the pilot helped guide the wider deployment of Microsoft Copilot for Sales. One thing we determined was that as a companion app designed to function intuitively, the training burden for Copilot for Sales was much lower than for standalone programs. As a result, change managers simply dropped into existing monthly team trainings and town halls to get the message out.

The value of Microsoft Copilot for Sales was immediately apparent. That helped drive adoption across Microsoft.

“The moment sellers launch Copilot for Sales, they see CRM data infused into emails and Teams conversations,” Shrivastava says. “They can see the power of Copilot for Sales very quickly.”

Clearly, Microsoft Copilot for Sales has struck a chord with our sellers. Since general availability in October 2022, we’re now at 85 percent deployment across Microsoft. For the final 15 percent, we’re working with regulatory teams like European works councils to ensure compliance with local policies designed to protect our employees.

For now, we’ve moved on to listening and gathering customer feedback. That feedback helps inform both our future deployment efforts and the month-over-month rollouts for new Microsoft Copilot for Sales features. In the meantime, sellers are saving time every day.

Putting time back in salespeople’s days

For sellers like Macy, the most substantial benefit of Microsoft Copilot for Sales is the newfound efficiency that comes from automation. It’s the result of powerful features like the sales pane in Microsoft Outlook, ChatGPT responses, and automated data connections that pull information out of CRMs and prompt you to input new contacts and opportunities.

Research has shown that sellers spend upwards of 60 percent of their time managing their inbox. Microsoft Copilot for Sales helps lighten some of this burden through AI-generated email summaries and responses. According to Macy, this tool can help sellers recapture 20-30 percent of their time.

But it’s more than just time savings. Those co-pilot features help sellers reclaim cognitive space that’s better spent on building relationships.

“What I find is that it frees you up to be present in the conversation,” Macy says. “There’s no more going silent or pausing to take hurried notes in the midst of a chat because the technology captures that value for you.”

And perhaps most powerfully, there’s no more broken focus or juggling apps from jumping between Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and CRM systems. Contact and opportunity management happen within the flow of work, where sellers spend their time.

The tool isn’t there to do your job. It’s there to learn how to work alongside you and accelerate your productivity.

—Peter Macy, technical specialist, SaaS organization

As Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to evolve, our product team has its eye on features that extend its value even further across the Microsoft 365 productivity suite. Those features include intelligent contract authoring in Microsoft Word and automated collaboration space creation with partner channels in Microsoft Teams.

“Our productivity suite is so powerful, but up until now it’s remained relatively generic to suit many different tasks,” Newton-Smith says. “Our new concept is that apps like Copilot for Sales can show up and make these tools more powerful because they’re more contextually relevant to specific jobs.”

For our sellers, the bottom line is that Microsoft Copilot for Sales is saving time and cognitive effort to help them be their fullest selves at work.

“The tool isn’t there to do your job,” Macy says. “It’s there to learn how to work alongside you and accelerate your productivity.”

• Leverage the easiest-to-use features first: email summary and conversation intelligence.
• Start with adding new contacts from Outlook to gain easy wins as you familiarize your team with the app.
• Use Microsoft Copilot for Sales as an introduction to generative AI and intelligent co-pilots.
• Get your CRM admins, senior decision makers, and core IT onboard by demonstrating the most useful features.
• Pilot with your all-stars to gain insights and build groundswell for your deployment.
• Connect with your users to see where they’re finding value, then promote those features.
• Sellers like to hear from their peers: Be sure to leverage the champions that develop out of your pilots.

Click here to try or learn more about Microsoft Copilot for Sales.

• Get insights from our leaders on our internal deployment of Microsoft Copilot for Sales.
• Check out our full content suite on how we use Microsoft Viva internally at Microsoft.
• See how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva.
• Learn about our journey as Microsoft’s Customer Zero.

The post See how we’re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft Copilot for Sales appeared first on Inside Track Blog.