It’s been just short of a year since the Microsoft 365 Copilot announcement — and hype has peaked. I knew we’d reached maximum hype when I saw the Super Bowl commercial for Microsoft Copilot. Then, just over a week later, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed “Early Adopters of Microsoft’s AI Bot Wonder if It’s Worth the Money” — a headline that many others have since echoed.
To Insight’s credit, we saw this coming and responded to the market with our own take. (If you need proof, this article compares Microsoft 365 Copilot to an astute nine-year-old.) I’ll admit that I was on the hype train for quite a while. Someone recently reminded me that I told them that the Copilot for Excel video was going to “blow their minds.” But then reality hit when we entered the Partner Early Access Program back in August 2023 and I got my hands on a license. Months ago, after my first interactions with Microsoft 365 Copilot, I would’ve said it’s not worth it. But time, experience with the product, and feedback from co-workers and clients have changed my mind.
Reason #1: Feature functionality is continuously improving.
First, we’ve seen exponential improvements in Microsoft 365 Copilot’s functionality over the last six months. I experienced issues with note taking in the early days of Copilot in Teams meetings. There were inaccuracies and fabricated assumptions. But within the last month, it’s been very accurate. It can even tell you the mood of the meeting with [creepy] precision.
Similar improvements have come to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Copilot in Outlook and Word (and to a certain extent PowerPoint), although its choices for design and graphics have room for improvement. Despite any shortcomings with Excel, given the weekly improvements that have been made to Copilot’s functionality, it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be writing another blog correcting my opinion of that too.
Reason #2: Real feedback across the org shows productivity gains with Copilot.
I’ve seen the impact that Microsoft 365 Copilot has had on our clients and people within Insight — much to the surprise of technical audiences. Many in IT (me included) are naturally tough technology critics, frequently focusing on everything a product doesn’t do rather than its possibilities because this is our job. We evaluate, sell, support, and deploy and are impacted by technology in ways that highlight its shortcomings.
Now let’s consider that in most organizations, it’s IT that is evaluating, making decisions and purchasing technology that impacts end users on every level. The opinions about Microsoft 365 Copilot are as lukewarm as they are in the WSJ article — technologists read it, formed a collective opinion and gravitated toward its shortcomings.