Presidio’s adoption of Copilot streamlines operations, saving employees about 1,200 hours per month

Generative AI–based products are creating considerable excitement and interest, and digital services and solutions provider Presidio was eager to see how the technology could boost productivity. Presidio became an early adopter of Microsoft365 Copilot to help manage the flow of information and improve employees’ daily lives. The company rapidly realized dramatic productivity gains and time savings and is using its lessons learned to help its own customers accelerate their AI implementation. Presidio’s journey offers a blueprint for enterprise AI adoption, and the company is creating new opportunities for business growth as a pioneer in using generative AI in the workplace.

Enhancing customer engagement with custom solutions

Presidio, a longtime Microsoft partner, helps its clients accelerate their cloud and digital transformations. The company has been on a multiyear journey to move from being a traditional, product-based reseller to becoming an innovator that delivers outcome-based solutions that meet customers’ unique needs. Part of Presidio’s transformation required training employees to take a more consultative approach to sales, trying to understand customer problems and promote a custom, Presidio-based solution.

Presidio’s transformation accelerated its collaboration with Microsoft. “We are building the use cases so that it is our own offering and not the offering of someone else,” says Chris Cagnazzi, Chief Innovation Officer at Presidio. “The biggest shift in our business has been driving offerings that deliver an outcome and then using software and tools that Microsoft offers to help us drive that outcome.”

As Presidio’s employees transitioned to customer-centric offerings, they spent more and more of their time managing the volume of information from meetings, emails, and customer requests. The company recognized that it needed a solution to streamline operations and reduce the administrative burden on employees, thereby enhancing engagement with customers.

Prioritizing training to save six hours per week

With generative AI–powered products coming onto the market, Presidio employees were eager to test the new technology and anticipated high customer interest. The company’s familiarity with Microsoft365 made Copilot a natural choice to begin incorporating generative AI into the daily work routine. In December 2023, Presidio rolled out Copilot to 300 employees across the company, including those in sales, marketing, engineering, IT, executive, and project management roles. Initial adoption rates were only about 60%, and the company realized that it would need to offer employees training to maximize the value of Copilot.

“We rolled out a series of e-videos, which really helped people,” says Robert Phillips, Sales Director for Presidio’s Microsoft practice. “We had to double down and invest in the skills and resources for Copilot.” Presidio developed more than 60 video trainings that target skills such as developing good prompts and established a collaboration site where employees could share success stories or tips. Thus, the company increased the adoption rates to more than 90%.

As employees learned and developed best practices, Presidio began realizing impressive productivity gains from Copilot features, including email summaries, meeting recaps, and content creation. Employees can quickly catch up on emails, even after an extended leave. One employee cut a three-day task down to two hours with Copilot assistance. Sales and engineering teams can use Copilot to turn a technical Microsoft Word document into a customer-facing presentation in minutes instead of hours, and the time spent on customer requests for proposals was reduced by 90%.

Furthermore, project managers are saving an average of six hours per week with meeting recaps, which help them to connect authentically with customers during meetings. “With Microsoft 365 Copilot doing meeting transcriptions, our sellers can be more active in meetings versus trying to keep up with note-taking,” says Phillips. “It’s one small area that helps our salespeople and project management teams really understand our customers and drive value.”

Saving about 1,200 hours per month and creating 70 new business opportunities

Overall, Presidio calculates that Copilot users are saving about 1,200 hours per month on average. This dramatic productivity boost gives employees more time to focus on customers. With these rapid results, Presidio is sharing its journey and outcomes with current and potential clients, creating new opportunities for business growth. In February 2024, Presidio hosted a virtual webinar on Copilot that had 160 attendees. From there, the company transitioned to “road shows,” traveling to various cities to demonstrate firsthand how Copilot is enhancing business efficiency.

“In total, it’s a 12-city road show,” says Phillips. “We’re basically educating our customers on what Copilot does, and that really helps us tell our story. Every single location is typically at capacity, so there’s a lot of energy and a lot of customers that are very interested in generative AI.” From the road shows alone, Presidio has received 70 new opportunities to become a Copilot trusted ally of its customers.

Building trust through firsthand experience

Presidio is eager to capitalize on custom-built copilots, unique generative AI assistants that can work across third-party vendors and existing apps. Using Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Azure solution Azure OpenAI Service, Presidio’s engineers developed custom copilots that help employees incorporate data from disparate software, streamlining business operations such as help desk ticketing and expense reports.

The company believes that its Copilot adoption journey has helped it build an essential advantage in its market: trust. “When we can offer personal advice to customers, it builds trust,” says Phillips. “If a customer hears your story and knows that you’re trying to help them, it just builds a tremendous amount of trust.”

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