RSMUS.comWith all the buzz about what AI can do for people, organizations, and the world, there is a lot of noise. How can an organization whose goal is not to generate profit but instead drive their mission benefit from tools like these? How do we ensure the technology is working for our organization and not making serving our constituents more complex? How can we achieve the most value without diverting scarce resources from our core mission? In this blog post, we will answer these questions and more.
What is Copilot, and what can I actually use it for? Copilot is best used as a tool to increase productivity, not as a 1-size-fits-all solution to completely automate a business process. It is an AI tool that can be used to summarize large datasets, such as long constituent case histories, or to pull information from SOP repositories to help organizations provide responses efficiently. It is also a tool for documentation, creating knowledge articles, Dataverse records, and external communications based on conversations organizations have with their constituents. The important piece to remember here is that all of these use cases help your organization serve your constituents better rather than completing your mission for you.
All of this information sounds great in practice, but how do we make sure we don’t overdo it? The advantage of using a tool like Copilot is that it already understands the Microsoft platform. It understands records (Accounts, Contacts, Activities, Emails). It uses your existing security governance structure to ensure that members of an organization have access only to the information they need to help drive the mission forward. Because of this, many features in Dataverse are available out of the box that organizations can use without a developer.
A recent client was interested in reducing the time their call center staff spent answering questions about order status. Because Copilot already understands Dataverse, the client created a Copilot Studio chat experience for their website that pulls order and tracking information for customers. This led to a 15% reduction in calls, allowing staff to spend time answering constituent questions about the organization’s products and services, thereby increasing the footprint of their mission. And none of this needed a developer or code!
This example shows that it is best to start small, use the information you already collect in your system, and let Copilot surface it to the right person at the right time. This will ensure your organization is using Copilot’s capabilities without diverting significant capital into development.
Kevin Barrett
Experienced Dynamics 365 CE consultant with a demonstrated history of successful Customer Service and Field Service implementations. Primarily focused in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry.