Microsoft’s bet is that the best place for AI is inside the software where work already happens, and for most UK service firms that’s Microsoft 365. Copilot is that bet turned into a product: an assistant in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams that can read your mail, files and meetings because it sits inside the tenant that already holds them. Pew’s February 2026 survey put Copilot third among US adults at 17%, but consumer share undersells it, because it’s built for the workplace.
What you are buying
There are four Copilot products, and only the second is what most people mean:
- Copilot Chat with a work account: a general assistant with commercial data protection, included with Microsoft 365 business plans. It’s a reasonable free baseline, and it gives staff no reason to drift to personal accounts elsewhere.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot, the paid per-seat add-on: the version built into the Office apps, drawing on your organisation’s own content through Microsoft Graph. Draft this reply from the thread, summarise what I missed in Teams, write a first version of this document from these notes, tell me what changed in this spreadsheet. This is the product people mean when they say Copilot changed their week.
- Copilot Studio and Power Automate: Microsoft’s low-code route to custom assistants and automated workflows on the same platform. Useful for contained internal jobs, with the same limits as any low-code tool once workflows get complicated.
- Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Foundry: for custom builds, Microsoft sells frontier models inside Azure’s compliance setup, which is often the easiest procurement route for firms whose IT policies already trust Azure.
What it does well
Copilot does best wherever being inside your Microsoft tenant helps, and in a Microsoft firm that’s most places:
- Outlook. Mail triage, thread summaries and drafted replies, where most service-firm hours already go.
- Teams. Meeting recaps, actions, and the answer to “what did I miss”, based on the meetings you were in.
- Word and Excel. First drafts from your notes, and sense made of a spreadsheet without remembering formula syntax.
- Grounding in your own content. The real difference: answers drawn from your files and mail through Microsoft Graph, with links back to the sources, rather than only the model’s general knowledge.
It has two limits. For demanding writing, the long, judgement-heavy client documents, specialist tools like Claude tend to do better, though you should test with your own documents before assuming either way. And Copilot works best inside its own suite. Processes that span your CRM, your back office and the outside world usually need proper automation or a custom build around it.
Fix your file permissions before switch-on
Copilot can find anything the signed-in user already has permission to see, so your sharing settings need reviewing first.
In firms where sharing settings have drifted for years, the HR folder someone was accidentally given access to, or the fee model shared with “everyone”, becomes one question away. That isn’t a Copilot data leak. It’s your existing permissions, made searchable. Review sharing on sensitive libraries BEFORE switch-on, not after the awkward discovery.
The usual data protection paperwork applies too, and it’s easier than for most tools, since processing sits under your existing Microsoft 365 data protection terms. The UK governance guide covers the DPIA and accountability side.
The pilot that answers the cost question
A one-month pilot tells you which seats are worth paying for. Licensing everyone at once is how Copilot disappoints. The pilot looks like this:
- Pick five heavy users of email, documents and meetings, not five enthusiasts.
- List each person’s ten most repetitive weekly tasks before switch-on.
- Run the month, then score each task: faster, unchanged, or newly possible.
- License the roles the evidence supports, and skip the rest without apology.
An hour or two saved per seat per month usually covers the licence. The pilot tells you which seats get it.