Copilot in action: a Softchoice success story

It’s one thing to hear about the speeds and feeds of a technology – and quite another to get a real human voice, to shine a light on the real value these tools can offer us. 

In this episode, host Heather Haskin delves into the practical applications of Microsoft Copilot with Cole Pascua, Senior Microsoft Modern Work Specialist at SoftChoice.  

Cole provides a firsthand account of Softchoice's Copilot journey, sharing both their successes and challenges in implementing and integrating this transformative AI tool. He discusses how Copilot has impacted workflows, boosted creativity, empowered decision-making, and streamlined operations. 

This episode is brought to you by Microsoft. Unlock the potential of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and transform your operations with a Copilot Readiness Assessment from Softchoice.  

Visit softchoice.com/copilot to learn more.

Featuring: Cole Pasqua, Senior Microsoft Modern Work Specialist, SoftChoice 

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

Transcript

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This episode is brought to you by Microsoft. Unlock the potential of Copilot for Microsoft 365. And see how it can transform your operations with a co pilot readiness assessment from Soft Choice. Visit softchoice. com slash co pilot to learn more. You're listening to The Catalyst by Soft Choice, a podcast about unleashing the full potential in people and technology. I'm your host, Heather Haskin. A few weeks ago, we had Microsoft's Rekha Narain on the show to talk about the transformative potential of its popular new solution, Microsoft CoPilot. She discussed how Copilot is changing the way teams work, how decisions are made, and the experience it delivers to users. Today we're talking with one of those users. Over the last year, Cole Pasqua, Senior Microsoft Modern Work Specialist at SoftChoice, has been tasked with the adoption and integration of Copilot. He's also responsible for helping SoftChoice customers use Copilot to boost creativity, empower decision making, and streamline workflows so employees can focus on more strategic activities. Cole will also share his co pilot customer success stories, challenges he encountered on SoftChoice's AI adoption journey, and insights into how it changed the businesses he works with. It's one thing to hear about the speeds and feeds of a technology, and quite another to get a human voice to shine a light on the real value these tools can offer us. Cole, welcome to The Catalyst. Hey, Heather. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Yes, I'm very excited to talk with you today. Uh, we don't get a chance to really dive into the nitty gritty here, and I really think that's great. what we have the opportunity to do today. On The Catalyst, we always start by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about their purpose at work, the things that drive them. I'd love to hear from you, Cole, what drives you as a leader at SoftChoice. Now, I wanted to say that this is actually one of the things that I asked Copowd for help with, because it's been so many years of working with Microsoft, and of course, now with SoftChoice, and I don't have a purpose statement. I did about 45 minutes with Copilot on writing this purpose statement, and it was amazing. So here it is. My purpose is to research and simplify complex information, coach and mentor colleagues, empower others with knowledge and tools, and ensure sustainable, inclusive, and accessible practices so that others can achieve their goals and succeed. Everyone feels empowered and valued. And complex challenges are understood and resolved. And that really just highlights, wow, this is why I exist. Not just as a leader at Softchoice, but this is why I exist. You know, Cole, that is an amazing statement and there's a lot to unpack there. It sounds like you put a lot of time and thought into it and you were able to utilize a tool that helped really take what you were thinking about and put it into the words that you were hopeful to show that true meaning. So I'd love to hear a little bit more backstory, um, about the year of your co pilot journey at SoftChoice and maybe some major developments for co pilots evolution and its adoption in your workplace. Thanks. I think in the past year, I have seen Copilot go from that beta phase, because again, at SoftChoice, we were actually a part of what Microsoft called the Early Adoption Program, or the EAP. In just a span of one year, Heather, we've transitioned to using Copilot just to research. information from the web, but now we're able to ask Copilot, what happened to this meeting? What was the sentiment during this meeting? Was the customer angry? Was I able to answer all of the questions from that customer? And now we are building documents and presentations. We are reducing the amount of time that our users are creating documents from sometimes even five hours to now just five minutes, and that's an amazing tool, right? And so over the span of that one year, It's all about giving feedback to Microsoft, like hey, here's what's working, here's what's not working. And Microsoft did a lot of amazing improvements with Copilot and it's an amazing journey. Very exciting. I can't wait to get my hands more into it. What would you say were some of the unexpected challenges you ran into along this process? One of the unexpected challenges that I had was actually on my own behavior. I have had a copilot license, I think at this time, for nine months now. It's in my Edge browser, it's in Teams, it's everywhere. Now, I was trying to find a file, and I was looking everywhere, I was looking, I was like, ugh, it's been 45 minutes, I cannot find this, where, where is this, where's this Excel sheet? Come on! I remembered! After 45 minutes. Oh! Wait a minute, I have Copilot. So I went to Microsoft Teams, I clicked on Copilot, and I was like, I need this CSP Excel sheet created by this person. And then I entered it. Voila, it was right there on my face. Oh my goodness. Under one minute, Heather. Now that's where the challenge is because my behavior is still to go to Outlook, I've got to go to Teams. Oh, where's the file button? But then the challenge there is how do I make sure I think about Copilot first? That's really thinking about that adoption process. So when we're looking at a whole user base adopting Copilot, it is a change of habit. But I think that that change of habit might speed up just by the sheer savings of time that you experience that one minute. I'm sure the next time you go look for a document, you might, because of that almost 45 minute punishment, you might remember that you have this incredible tool at your fingertips. Yes, exactly. So what would you say was your aha moment then when you realized the powerful potential of this AI tool? I think there was one time where we were in a customer meeting and the customer, we're based somewhere in Europe. I'm also from the Philippines, so talking to someone in the Philippines, I know how they feel. But then this person was from somewhere in Europe and I was like, okay, are they happy or are they, are they sarcastic? Let me think about that. Now I ask a part. What is the sentiment of this and have I not answered any questions so far on this meeting? The co pilot said that so far the customer looks to be happy but you forgot to answer one question. Now, of course, I tried to find a segue to loop back to that question and I told the customer, All right, now I have your answer and thanks for your patience on that. Of course, wink, wink. I didn't tell them at the time that I just looked at Copilot, but at the time it really helped me in the background. And so I feel like if I did not ask Copilot if there were any questions missing, that customer would have just felt lost. But now, because Copilot caught that, I was able to answer that question properly during that same meeting. People remember how you feel, or how you made them feel. So hopefully they felt like we were the right partner because we make sure that all of their questions were answered. That's a really great story because it addresses the language barrier that we can all encounter, whether we're all in the same state or different countries. Um, so that's, I think that's pretty great that you're able to use that tool to gain insight and valuable insight that would help you connect better with your customer. The other thing to note is that you were doing that while you were in that call. So that just speaks to many different aspects of the world we're in today, the remote world, the virtual world. And all of these AI tools that we can utilize. As we look at the first 12 months of SoftChoice's journey, I'd also love to look at the first 12 months of our CoPilot journey for SoftChoice customers. So if we think about maybe the approach that we see them take when integrating CoPilot, have they had different challenges or maybe similar but different challenges that they've encountered in those first few months as well? I would say that We did share some challenges, especially in terms of user adoption. Now, with our customers, especially with most of our small and medium business customers, our SMBs, I think the common challenge that they have had is they did not think that they would need to implement security protocols because they thought, okay, we're implementing all of these protocols ourselves already. So it's fine, but I tell my customers every single day about this in every meeting that Copilot does not create new security risks. What it does is it exposes the current security risks that you currently have in your environment. And so if you were a customer and you don't have all the security rails, the safeguards set up, then Copilot uses the permissions that the user prompting has. So if, for example, I am in HR, but I'm not in finance. But then I ask Copilot, OK, can you please give me all of the financial statements that you can see I have access to? Even if the finance department has it on a Teams channel that is hidden, that nobody can see, if that Teams channel is public, then Copilot will see that. Because all the information there is public with the organization. But if you have the proper safeguards, and then you also have the proper labeling, the data loss prevention policies that you have in those files, then if I'm from HR, and I say, show me all the financial statements that you can find. Copilot will be like, I don't know, I can't see anything. Based on your permissions, I cannot see anything at all. But if I'm from finance, on that same organization, if I type, show me all financial statements, it's all gonna collect because whatever I have access to, my Copilot also has access to that. If I don't have access to that, Copilot will not. And so the biggest challenge for organizations when they're starting with Copilot is how do we actually implement the security and compliance protocols that maybe we should have implemented some years ago when we started, right? That's interesting because those are security, um, Gaps, regardless of co pilot or an external user breaking in and accessing. It's interesting to think about all of those permissions and what's involved in our environments. Do you have a specific customer co pilot aha moment where you saw the customer really see the advantages of this incredible AI tool? I think law firms is a good industry. A lot of these law firms really had some challenges in terms of the admin tasks that they do. If I need to read a 400 page document, I just need to find this one single information in that 400 page document, we can actually let Copowd digest the information, upload that PDF, and then Copowd will tell you, okay, here's the exact information that you want, the page number is this, if you want to take a look at it. So that has been really helpful for our law firms. Going through 300 plus pages of legal verbiage does not sound like a task that I would want to take on without an AI tool. So it's, it's a great use case, I would say, for many customers in the law industry. When we look at maybe the business changes with our customers, how has their team or business changed because of Copilot? How has maybe their work life improved? I would think of it in two parts. There's the productivity part, and there's also the life part. We've seen a lot of increases in terms of productivity for our customers, and even here at SoftChoice. If you look at our latest case study that was done by Microsoft on our own copilot adoption, you will see that there was a lot of improvements in our productivity. They work at the same eight hours per day. But they were able to do more. And that is also what we're seeing with our customers, in terms of the productivity side. Now, on the side of our customers, they actually realize a lot of value with Copilot, because it saves them a lot of time. Now, it's affordable for enterprise customers, but for SMBs, it's a significant amount. And of course, at first, SMBs are like, why would I spend this amount of money for Copilot? I can do these myself. But then, when they start using Copilot, and they let Copilot at least do their drafts, or even automate some stuff that they have been doing manually for years, there's like, wow, for this price, it does so many things for me. And so whether you're an enterprise or an SMB, you really get a lot out of Copilot. That's an interesting perspective because if you think about all of the ways that that tool might speed up your day and allow you to have increased productivity in the same nine to five that you are already working, what is the monetary value of that? And if you think of it that way. You might be realizing that these organizations might highly benefit from having it in house to increase their productivity in the same amount of time, um, regardless of what that price point is. Ready to unlock the full potential of Microsoft Copilot? The Copilot from Microsoft 365 Readiness Assessment can help you get results faster. Learn which teams in your organization will benefit most from early adoption, and how to ensure a smooth deployment. Softchoice will provide you with a map of high value use cases, an understanding of responsible AI practices, and a plan to address any licensing, governance, and technical readiness gaps. Discover how Microsoft Copilot can create an outsized impact on your operations with a detailed plan tailored to your needs. To get started on your Copilot journey, get in touch with a Softchoice representative today about our Copilot Readiness Assessment or visit softchoice. com slash copilot to learn more. We've talked about some of the things that have changed at our customers and how we've seen them improve. You've already mentioned how SoftChoice has improved a little bit and the productivity you've seen in efficiency, but how can we empower our employees? And how are we realizing that success in the departments that have this tool at SoftChoice? I think the first thing that we do is of course build a champion program. I think it's really all about sharing. your successes with Copilot with each other. That's the first thing. Because whether you're a champion or not, if you share it with your co workers, they're going to also realize that success too. It's not good that I'm the only one realizing this success. I also want to share it to other people. So that's one key thing. The second, of course, is having a good structure with your champion program or adoption and change management program with your organization, right? And so that really sets you up for success because You have people who are power users, for example, that's, that's gonna be me at Softchoice. And then you have people who want a license, who want that same experience, but they don't necessarily have the time to explore, or they don't have the time to experiment. Because again, they have a lot of work to do. And so, with a good champion program, Those champions, those power users, will share to other users who just got their license, Hey, here are the amazing things you can do with this license with Copilot. Here are the amazing things that I have done so far. And this is why I have all of these successes. And so they will try to mimic all of the things that they have done. And now what you're doing is you're not only teaching, but in the future, maybe in one or two months or in three months or six months, they're the ones that are going to tell other people. This license is amazing. You cannot take it away from me anymore. When I'm in random meetings at Softchoice, I just tell them, okay, I'm going to transcribe the meeting. I'm going to show you what Copilot has summarized for us later. The meeting ends. I copy the summary that Copilot created for us, send it to them. And they're like, what? How? I'm probably one of the people that sends a lot of people to service desks at Softchoice, spreading the word, right? That's great. That's the adoption that we need. So Cole, what are some key success metrics for how Copilot has benefited soft choice? You mentioned before a study that Microsoft did, and I'm really just curious about some of those things that that study was covering as far as key success metrics. Yeah, now I don't have the exact percentages or exact times, but I would say that based on that study, there was a lot of information in terms of the time that was saved by our people, especially, for example, with our journey architects. Because with Darjeeling Architects, they write SALs every single day for customers, write proposals for multiple customers every single day, and spend a lot of time even just drafting the proposal. Sometimes it would take them 2, 3, 4, or even 5 hours to draft one single proposal for a customer. Now with Copilot, what they can do is just ask Copilot, here's my timeline that I need for this SAL, here's the cost that we need, Here's the budget of the customer. Here are the things that we need to do on our part. Here's the things that the customer needs to do on their part. Based on the hundreds of proposals I have access to on OneDrive and SharePoint, could you please create a draft of a proposal? Again, one minute is a draft of a proposal. And so there's a lot of time that was saved just by making CoPilot draft that proposal for, for them instead of them literally write things that they have written multiple times every single day. Well, when we think about monotonous tasks and things that we're doing, they're just repetitious. That really does improve work life balance as well. That's something to note. Were there any comments on that as well during the time this has been implemented this year? I've received a lot of comments in terms of how people felt. And for us, it really made people feel more empowered because they don't spend time on the nitty gritty details, or spend time just trying to write something that they have written multiple times. So all those repetitive tasks are now, I would say, delegated to Copilot. And the only thing that they need to do is make sure that the information is accurate, that whatever the customer needs is actually there. And of course, I would say that last year it was 80 percent accurate. Copilot's 80 percent accurate last year. Based on my own personal experience right now, Copilot is about 95 percent accurate. Like, it's amazing how Copilot has improved in just one year. It helps them. feel empowered, especially once we remove those repetitive admin tasks from them, because they're able to help each other better if they delegate that to Copilot. And they're also able to help our customers more. And of course, everyone is happy when we're able to help our own people. Again, Softshare's values. We take care of each other. We are then able to take care of our own people and of course, take care of our customers. That's awesome to hear. And you've also mentioned some changes that you foresee coming with Copilot, but I'd really love to hear from you. What are. our predictions for the next 12 months of the Copilot era. Maybe new use cases or applications, or maybe even some functionality changes. Oh, okay. Very excited for this, Heather. So, with the future of Copilot, we're already seeing, with Copilot Wave 2, how Copilot is becoming more of an active helper than a passive helper for you. Passive helper, again, you will need to click on the Copilot icon, dictate something or write a prompt and then Copilot will show you results. But right now, even with Copilot for Outlook, you can see that there's a lot of features coming up this year or even early next year where if I came from vacation and I have 250 emails to digest, before what I would do is I would say, Copilot, could you please summarize all of my emails in the past two weeks? Please tell me which emails I need to respond and what I need to do. And of course, that's more of an active prompt, right? But again, it's still very helpful. With Copilot Wave 2, Copilot actually lives inside your inbox, where Copilot sees that, okay, you've been out of office for one week, or maybe just one day. You return to the office with 250 emails. Now what happens there is it's right on your inbox. Just click on one icon that says prioritize with Copilot. All of your emails are going to be prioritized right there on your inbox. It will tell you in line on the same part where you have that message. This is an important email because this is from one of your customers. Copilot knows that this is a customer, you need to prioritize it. And then this is one of your team members asking for help. This is the second priority. And so on. And those are all right inside your inbox. And so for me, how I foresee the future with Copilot is that it is just integrated with the tools that we use. For example, in Microsoft 365, it's just going to be everywhere. So for example, if you were writing a document and, Ugh, my grammar, I don't know how my grammar is working right now, Copod will just be there and pop up like, Hey, you can improve your grammar by saying this. And we're saying that right now with Microsoft Editor. Although I would say that Microsoft Editor is already an amazing tool, but then when Copilot comes in there, you may have even improved grammar on suggestions on, okay, how do I apply a better sentiment on this document? Or how do I make sure the sentiment is cohesive but still has all the details that I need without me writing a 400 page document? And so that is really where Copilot feature comes in is it's going to be integrated with the tools that we use right now. We can still use it on a passive basis, but I would say that in the future it might actually transition to a more active role in our productivity tools. That's wonderful. We've learned so much great information about Copilot from you, Cole, today. Where can listeners find you and learn more about Copilot? Well, of course, you can hopefully connect with me on LinkedIn. You can follow me or connect with me there. I would recommend users go to copod. microsoft. com, of course. It's all about trying it yourself. Go to copod. microsoft. com, whether you have a license or not. Try some prompts there. Hey, do some research first. Try to find a document. Try to summarize a meeting. Try to create an image. Now, the other resource that I would like to share is what we call the Copilot Lab. So with Copilot Lab, Microsoft actually shows you all of the use cases that you can have with Copilot. Do you want to create? Do you want to edit something? Do you want to summarize? That Copilot Lab is a really amazing tool, especially if you're starting with Copilot. Thank you so much for sharing, Cole. Copilot is empowering teams at SoftChoice and many other businesses across different industries. Like any new technology, there are always bumps and hurdles during adoption. But CoPilot has realized its promise to empower employees and boost productivity. It's changing the way we work and serve our customers, and it looks like the year ahead promises to further transform AI powered companies. A huge thank you to Cole Pasqua for joining us and sharing his insights on how Microsoft CoPilot is transforming teams and businesses. For more on Microsoft CoPilot, Check out the links in the episode description and if you're as excited as we are about the future of AI driven solutions, be sure to follow The Catalyst or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you again in two weeks. The Catalyst is brought to you by SoftChoice, a leading North American technology solutions provider. It is written and produced by Angela Cope, Philippe Dimas, and Brayden Banks in partnership with Pilgrim Content Marketing. This episode is brought to you by Microsoft. Unlock the potential of CoPilot for Microsoft 365 and see how it can transform your operations with a CoPilot Readiness Assessment from SoftChoice. Visit softchoice. com slash copilot to learn more.