The MSP Success Thought Leaders Program invites leaders in the small business IT/MSP industry to share their insights and advice with MSP Success readers. This article was written by guest contributor Matt Katzer. Katzer is founder and CEO of KAMIND Cloud Solutions Advisors, based in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Every good business owner has two goals in common: to move forward with a competitive edge and to protect confidential business information (and, by extension, their company and workers).
Recent advances in AI integration support these two objectives; early adopters will have an enormous advantage over their competitors and be more ready to adapt to the constantly changing digital environment. Here’s why early, secure AI adoption is so important and how it will benefit your MSP business.
The Impact of Microsoft’s AI Announcement
Microsoft has announced that they will be shifting to AI throughout their ecosystem over the next three to five years. All their software languages and Surface laptops will adapt their applications to incorporate AI integration.
What Microsoft has done is create an environment where every Office 365 organization can build out a semantic engine or AI-learning model based on their private business data. Unlike other large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, it does so without exposing that data to the outside world.
Microsoft’s AI deployment is focused on securing the environment and improving productivity, all while protecting Office 365 and Azure data.
Increase Security
Many businesses have been reluctant to use AI tools like ChatGPT because they are concerned about data privacy. Microsoft addresses this issue with the Copilot model, which uses the LLM form of ChatGPT to access your company’s copy of the semantic index. (The semantic index is the combination of a company’s internal data and the learning algorithms that are trained when a Copilot deployment is made in an Office 365 tenant.)
The difference in this approach is that the data stays securely within your Office 365 environment, unlike many of the popular public AI models. This way, your organization maintains control of your digital assets.
Bolster Productivity
Microsoft’s Copilot AI tool helps you work more efficiently. For example, we use it to track our security alerts. Our marketing people use Copilot to update and manage customer-facing material. Finance people can analyze data trends and compare them to real-time client data to understand the reasons behind the purchases.
Copilot can also train your employees according to your needs. Be sure to set up the rules and permissions first—then you won’t have to monitor every step of training. You can eliminate hours of unnecessary work by integrating Copilot into your business, and that’s just scratching the surface of what this tool can do.
Improve Customer Service
Microsoft Copilot for sales and Copilot for service can make customer service more efficient and convenient. These programs can use your business’s internal knowledge base to train your version of the semantic index. This lets Copilot offer better, faster, and more-tailored answers and solutions to customers, while reducing the stress for your support team.
“It’s really getting [the support agents] sharply focused on the work they enjoy doing the most and where they have the most value,” said Bryan Belmont, corporate vice president for Microsoft Customer Service and Support. “It takes some of the drudgery out of their lives that no one enjoys, but is still really critical for doing a good job.”
Don’t Risk Waiting To Adopt AI
Copilot AI in Microsoft 365 is vital for MSP businesses in the digital age. It can improve your security, productivity, and customer service. Waiting to adopt copilot AI risks not only falling behind your competitors, but compromising your data, since your employees will have to use insecure web third-party tools instead. That’s why you should review the licensing changes and use AI integration, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, for your business as soon as possible.
Then, of course, you can help your MSP customers use it for their businesses. It’s another opportunity to offer a value-added service.
For more on AI, see 6 Essential Strategies to Prepare Your MSP Business For An AI-Driven Future.
