Webinar Preview: Microsoft 365 Copilot is in Flight: Are you prepared?

Microsoft 365’s Copilot generative AI tool is set to be released any day now to the excitement of enterprises across industries. In order to get the most out of Copilot’s machine learning and large language models (LLM) capabilities for Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams or PowerPoint, organizations need to have the right configuration and management expertise on hand.

In preparation to support our clients in the optimal implementation of Copilot, we’re pleased to an upcoming webinar Microsoft 365 Copilot is in Flight; Are You Prepared? on September 27th at 10am EDT. Join (Chief Innovation Officer Rich Itri and Lead Product Consultant Julius Damato for a dynamic discussion on how financial sector firms can tailor and implement Copilot for accelerated business processes and value generation. Let’s preview some of the considerations we’ll explore in the upcoming webinar.

Implementing Copilot Requires Proper Configuration

Microsoft Copilot holds tremendous promise for streamlining workflows and improving employee productivity. For instance, Copilot can work with Teams to automatically generate meeting notes, action items or flags where a particular person was mentioned. In Outlook, Copilot can set reminders and suggestions for replies based on relevant e-mail and other M365 content.

Particularly useful for financial sector firms is Copilot’s ability to compare multiple excel files and display drivers of change – all of which is great for managing budgets, developing trade models and assessing cost of capital and other advanced analysis. For example, a hedge fund manager conducting due diligence can ensure apples to apples comparison by training Copilot to automatically correct for differences in how companies report earnings, such as variations in EBITDA calculations.

But these use cases don’t come to life unless capabilities are aligned. And that doesn’t happen without adequate configuration and rules to manage issues such as data loss, ensuring proper access protocols and weeding out AI hallucinations and internet misinformation. The upcoming ECI webinar will demonstrate how this level of coordination is possible only by adopting a holistic, lifecycle approach to implementation and ongoing support for Copilot.

Charting the Road Map to Implementation

During the webinar, Chief Innovation Officer Rich Itri and Lead Product Consultant Julius Damato will map out the implementation journey for Copilot in four stages. This basic framework of Organize, Assess, Deploy and Manage represents the key steps clients should take to incorporate and manage Copilot in a collaborative, secure and compliant manner. For instance, the initial Organize phase consists of key activities like reviewing all policies, procedures and controls; and setting up working groups to monitor the functionality of Copilot and all relevant business impacts, security issues and compliance considerations.

From there, the Assess phase includes closer evaluation of access protocols, metadata and data loss prevention (DLP) measures to help shape project plans and remediation efforts aimed at tightening security and cleaning up access controls. Then comes the Deploy phase to apply these improvements to

the production environment – including updating permissions and access protocols, setting up compliance reporting and implementing new metadata tagging through Microsoft’s Purview solution for unified data governance.

Finally, the Manage phase is less a phase, but rather an iterative, continuous improvement loop to optimize Copilot’s operation on an ongoing basis. This includes monitoring usage for acceptable use and data loss; end user support; and adjusting policy and controls as needed. The webinar panelists will cover all this and more, including specific ways ECI is helping clients take advantage of our Microsoft Gold Partner status to get the most out of Copilot. We look forward to having you join us! Register here!