Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, the next evolution of Microsoft Copilot

As businesses worldwide grapple with the immense potential AI can bring, Microsoft has once again positioned itself at the forefront of AI for enterprise with the introduction of ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’. You’ll be forgiven for thinking this is another name change for an already existing product when in reality, Microsoft has just enabled Copilot for everyone. Alongside a new twist that greatly reduces the initial investment organisations need to start accelerating their adoption of game-changing AI technology like Copilot.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat?

When Microsoft officially launched Copilot in 2023 (2 years ago) it introduced a ‘lite’ version of Copilot called ‘Bing Chat Enterprise’. This was added to most Microsoft 365 subscriptions, enabling many users to start utilising some of Copilot's advanced AI features. Unlike the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, which costs $30 per user/month, Bing Chat could only access web data and wasn’t present in core Microsoft applications, relying solely on the web app only. Despite these caveats, it was still an amazing tool that has greatly evolved over the past few years. Last year its name changed to ‘Microsoft Copilot’ to align with the expanding Copilot offerings. Jump to today and it has another new name, ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’. What has changed, besides the name?

The biggest news is that Microsoft has significantly expanded access to the new Copilot Chat. Instead of limiting it to a select number of Microsoft 365 subscriptions, anyone with an Entra ID (formally Azure AD) can use it. How democratic is that?

This means that every employee within your organisation who has a Microsoft Entra ID (in most cases, that will be everyone) can start using Copilot Chat. Here are a few examples:

• Stephanie in Finance used to spend hours searching for data on the public financials of competing organisations. Now she asks Copilot Chat to generate a list of the company’s 10 biggest competitors’ financial results from last year.
• Dave in Marketing has ADHD and struggles to stay focused in longer company Teams meetings, potentially missing important points. He used to take down his own notes or use the Teams transcription feature, but both take time. Now he can give the entire meeting transcription to Copilot Chat and ask it to give him all the key points he might have missed.
• Emma in the Warehouse team needs help writing an email to the rest of her team, telling them about a change in HR policy and how it will affect them. Instead of figuring out the best way to phrase the email, she asks Copilot Chat to help her draft it to ensure the changes are as clear as possible to everyone in her team.

Unlocking the power of AI tools such as Copilot for your employees can be transformative, especially in terms of time savings. That’s the key here – time. The more time Copilot can save your employees by handling mundane tasks, the more time they can devote to innovative ideas and projects that drive business growth.

Microsoft has released a very helpful graph that shows the key differences between ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’ and ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’:

Earlier, I mentioned a twist in this Copilot story that would reduce the costly initial investment usually needed. Please welcome our new best friend, Pay as you go ‘Copilot Agents’.

Meet your friendly, helpful PAYG Copilot Agent

For any fellow Copilot adoptees out there, you’ll know that Copilot Agents are not new, having been officially launched last October. Agents are a low-code way of building Copilots into your business that can perform a specific task or role such as an HR Agent that allows employees to ask specific questions about annual leave and dental plans, freeing up HR’s valuable time.

Constantly having to produce the same company financial report each week? Build an agent to collate all the latest data for you and provide it in the required format. Or perhaps you’d like to build your own agent – one that takes that mundane task you need to perform as part of your role, teaches it everything you need it to do and hey presto – you’re maximising your own ROI.

The reason ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’ could be a game changer is because, up to this point, the only way you could build and utilise Copilot Agents within your business was to roll out a $30/month ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’ licence to your entire organisation. As an avid Copilot user, I’m not saying that’s a bad idea.

For most organisations, some specific roles and departments will yield a better ROI on ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’ than others. Meanwhile, everyone else in the business can now leverage ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.’ Here’s the twist: with Microsoft introducing a pay-as-you-go model for Agents within Copilot Chat, the cost of entry for deploying these potentially game-changing Agents into your organisation has been significantly lowered.

An example

A business of 500 employees. It invested in ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’ licences for the Sales and Finance departments – 200 users. The rest of the employees utilise ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’ which is included in their current Microsoft 365 licencing.

The company wants to roll out an HR Copilot Agent to everyone in the business to book hotels and rail tickets for employees while following company policies on cost and carbon footprint.

This will, it is estimated, save approximately one hour a week of employees’ time across the business, giving an estimated ROI of $36,000 a month.

Original option: A ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’ licence for our remaining employees. At a current cost of $30/user/month, for 300 employees, that’s $9,000 a month in additional licence costs.

New option: Instead of purchasing additional ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot’ licences, the company utilises the new pay-as-you-go Copilot Agents. The usage of Agents is measured in “messages” and the total cost is calculated based on the sum of messages used.

We have estimated an average of 50 “messages” /user/month, resulting in an estimated Agent consumption cost of $200 per month.

Result: A saving of $8,800 a month on Copilot costs all the while being able to roll out the HR Copilot Agent and potentially create an estimated ROI of $36,000 a month.

I’m sold! What are the next steps?

Reach out to SoftwareOne - we are pros at understanding how organisations like yours can best utilise AI tools such as Copilot, no matter where you are on that journey. The best news is, Microsoft has funding and training programmes we can access on your behalf, to help you reduce those investments even further and get your employees utilising the power of Copilot. We can help you start running internal training sessions, assign Copilot Champions within your core departments. Start driving that key adoption and ROI – now is the perfect time to see what Copilot can do for your business.

What about Microsoft Partners?

Customers need your help, now more than ever. As Copilot's list of services grows and grow, the market is under threat of becoming complex and confusing with the options at hand. As a Microsoft partner, you need to help your customers navigate this new world of AI and its unlimited potential. Copilot Agents, for example, are low-code, not no-code, so they still require some expertise to get the most from them. Some organisations will have these skills already, others will need your help.

Are you already using ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat’ or even Copilot Agents within your business? If not, now is the time. Reach out and let’s have a chat.