Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Business
There are numerous compelling reasons to start integrating AI into your business.
AI technology can streamline daily processes, analyse trends, forecast growth, and predict outcomes. It enables businesses to automate routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on tasks that require human abilities. AI can quickly process large datasets, extracting relevant data for analysis. Additionally, AI helps gather reliable and valuable insights at a fast pace, enabling quick decision-making.
However, there are also some risks associated with allowing your staff to use AI tools (especially free ones) without proper oversight.
Data Privacy: Free AI tools might not have robust data protection measures, potentially exposing sensitive business information.
Quality Control: Without guidelines, the output from AI tools can vary in quality, leading to inconsistent results.
Security Risks: Free tools might be more vulnerable to cyber threats, posing a risk to your business’s security.
When selecting an AI tool for your business, it’s crucial to review and determine the most suitable for your business and how they align to your organisation values, mission, IT policies and objectives. It is important to establish clear and robust policies, implement oversight mechanisms and provide training on the responsible use of these tools. By proactively addressing potential risks, you can leverage the benefits of AI while minimizing the risks. Paid AI subscriptions offer more control and protection compared to free subscriptions.
Microsoft AI Tools
There is an explosion of vendor offerings, each with different strengths and focus. They should be tested carefully. Read the fine print about how your data is treated.
Microsoft’s offerings under the name ‘Copilot’ are simply one of many but have the advantage of bringing together the market development power of two industry leaders-Microsoft and Open AI. Because Microsoft apps are so widely used in everyday business tasks, it’s well placed for AI to amplify user productivity. By integrating Copilot and Office 365, Microsoft has reduced risks by leveraging your existing Office 365 security settings.
Microsoft Copilot Versions
Business ‘free’ version – Copilot for Microsoft 365 is free with some Microsoft subscriptions.
Business paid version – Copilot for Microsoft 365 – an annual add-on subscription that enhances specific business plans and is embedded directly into your familiar Office desktop applications.
Microsoft Business Copilot offers enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance, ensuring all data processing occurs within Microsoft 365. It’s tailored for business customers. Copilot for Microsoft 365 scans all your data (emails, meetings, chats, documents, and more, plus the internet) to help you solve work problems. It respects the security groups and controls you have in place in SharePoint, Exchange, OneNote, Excel, and other Microsoft 365 services.
The paid premium version of Copilot for Microsoft 365 is integrated into Microsoft 365 Apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote, making it easy to use for day-to-day tasks in the place where you work anyway. Copilot uses the same underlying technology as ChatGPT but adapts it to be secure for business use, and data is not shared to the outside world.
If your business uses Microsoft, you may already have access to it as part of your commercial Microsoft licenses. This is a more controlled AI option that staff can use, compared to the free versions that might pose business risks, especially when using internal or sensitive data.
Want to start using Copilot?
Give us a call and we can assist you in integrating AI into your business safely and seamlessly.