The Judge Group’s AI Transformation with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Welcome back to Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot, your monthly resource for actionable insights to harness the power of AI in your small business.

Staying competitive in today’s fast-changing small business environment means embracing innovative solutions that drive efficiency and growth. Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed to meet these requirements, giving businesses powerful tools to increase productivity and streamline operations. Many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) struggle to manage their digital presence, customer interactions, and internal processes. These obstacles may hinder our growth and limit our ability to respond quickly to market changes.

We spoke with John T. Battaglia. judge groupis a mid-sized global professional services firm specializing in business technology consulting, learning, staffing and offshore solutions. Founded in 1970, the company has grown into an international leader in its industry. With more than 30 locations across the United States, Canada and India, The Judge Group partners with some of the world’s most prestigious companies, including more than 60 of the Fortune 100. After facing significant challenges with employees using its own AI tools, The Judge Group made the strategic decision to transition to Microsoft 365 Copilot for its security features, superior efficiency, and AI-driven insights. Since adopting Copilot, The Judge Group has become a power user and fully integrated the tool into their daily operations.

In the following sections, we’ll look at some of the specific challenges Judge Group faced and how Microsoft 365 Copilot helped them achieve better results.

Manage Complex Projects with AI

One of the challenges Judge Group faced was managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. They often found it difficult to get everyone on the same page and completing tasks in a timely manner. Copilot helped provide insights and simplified workflows to streamline project management. For example, while giving a presentation to the board of directors of a non-profit company, we used Copilot to easily collect key details of the meeting, including creating real-time summaries, tracking action items, and providing immediate access to relevant documents using Microsoft Teams with simple prompts. This technological superpower impressed the board, which initially thought Copilot’s capabilities were more similar to those of its competitors. They are amazed by the added bonus of AI-based insights that help them prioritize tasks and allocate resources more efficiently.

GIF showing how you can easily get Copilot to provide meeting insights

Security and Compliance

Judge Group experienced notable challenges early in its AI journey, particularly in the areas of data security and compliance. Employees independently chose to use their own AI tools, creating significant security challenges, especially for the legal team. The previous tools posed significant risks to sensitive information, making it difficult for The Judge Group to comply with the strict guidelines and regulations designed to protect its data, secure its operations, and instill confidence in its stakeholders.

“We realized that. [employees independently opting to use their own AI tools] It was a huge scare for our legal team. That’s when we decided to start our AI journey with Copilot to protect our information and improve our processes.”

Switching to Microsoft 365 Copilot provides enhanced security features and compliance management. Microsoft 365 Copilot has not only adopted established data privacy and security policies and configurations, but its compliance approach has ensured that all AI capabilities are developed, deployed, and evaluated in a compliant and ethical manner. This comprehensive strategy not only protected operations, but also provided peace of mind throughout the organization.

Decisive steps have also been taken to strengthen data security and privacy settings in SharePoint to mitigate “oversharing.” They implemented SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) to further simplify SharePoint data management and protection. This allowed you to control access to specific areas of your site or document when collaborating with vendors, clients, or customers outside your organization. They emphasized the importance of knowing who you are sharing with, making sure recipients can re-share the content, and determining whether the content needs to be protected to prevent re-use or re-sharing.

Management, adoption and training

Another challenge was adhering to responsible AI policies. To address this issue, we adopted Copilot’s phased rollout approach, starting with a pilot group and gradually expanding while providing targeted training and support. This strategy ensured that all team members adhered to guidelines, improving the organization’s workflow and productivity. The phased rollout enabled the judge group to identify and resolve any compliance issues early and ensured a smooth implementation of Copilot.

This launch consisted of several training initiatives, including role-specific training sessions tailored to the unique responsibilities and workflows of different teams within the organization. This approach ensured that each team member received relevant, practical training that could be directly applied to their daily work and served as a collaborative space where team members could share their experiences and best practices and learn from each other. The emphasis on social learning within the team has helped accelerate the learning curve and adoption rate and create a supportive environment that encourages continuous improvement.

During the pilot phase, The Judge Group prioritized roles such as project managers, IT managers, and customer service representatives. Each role faced unique challenges and required specific training to ensure success. Project managers focused on using Copilot for task management and resource allocation, while IT managers focused on compliance and security aspects. Customer service representatives are trained on how to utilize Copilot for customer interaction and support.

Key takeaways were the importance of role-relevant training, ongoing support, and creating a culture of collaboration and learning.

Approach to adoption

Judge Group meticulously created a strategic adoption plan using fun and engaging campaign materials. They equipped the adoption team with all the necessary skills, including “train the trainer” sessions, to effectively support the campaign for a successful launch.

Executive sponsors and champions were also actively engaged and educated within the priority persona groups. Consistent and proactive communication was maintained across these groups to keep everyone informed and energized. By capturing and tracking adoption and utilization metrics for campaign-targeted users, The Judge Group was able to use Copilot dashboards to measure the impact of adoption campaigns to make informed, data-driven optimization decisions. The Copilot dashboard was used to track various adoption metrics such as “Total actions performed,” “Copilot support hours,” “Total number of actions,” “Total active Copilot users,” and “Meetings summarized in Copilot.” This allowed The Judge Group to effectively monitor the progress and impact of its AI initiatives.

Our continuing education series serves as a collaborative venue where team members can share their experiences and best practices and learn from each other. The emphasis on social learning within the team has accelerated the learning curve and adoption rate, creating a supportive environment that encourages continuous improvement.

Join us next month for another inspiring story about how Copilot is driving growth and creating opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses. Have you experienced growth with Microsoft 365 Copilot? We’d love to hear your story! Express your interest by leaving a comment below and a member of the team will contact you.

Angela Byers

microsoft

SMB Co-Pilot and Senior Director of Growth Marketing
Let’s connect on LinkedIn

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here latest news Learn how Microsoft 365 Copilot accelerates your business.

The new Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, just released, recently released:

September was a huge month for Copilot. wave 2 Presented by Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro. Below is a summary of all the additional features announced for SMBs not covered in last month’s blog.

• Expanding use of the co-pilot academy: Microsoft Co-Pilot Academy Now available to anyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can increase your Copilot proficiency without a paid Viva license.
• New administration and management features: We’ve introduced expanded controls to manage the availability of Copilot in Teams meetings. IT administrators and meeting hosts can now select the ‘Off’ value for Copilot, providing more flexibility in managing Copilot usage.
• Copilot in Word enhancements: From Blank Documents Copilot in Word now provides one-click examples of prompts to help users quickly start a new document. This feature is coming to desktop and Mac in October.
• Copilot User Activation Toolkit: A new toolkit has been developed to help users quickly realize the full benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot. It includes communication templates and resources designed to drive better Copilot engagement, along with role-specific prompt examples and use cases.
• Check out the full story. presentation and launch event.

Self-service purchases: Did you know that? More than 80% of information workers Are small businesses already putting their own AI tools to work? Users with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, or Premium licenses can now purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot directly. To purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot for use directly at work, click “Add Copilot to your Microsoft plan.” Copilot for Microsoft 365 or Compare all Microsoft 365 plans Product page.

Meet the Team

Microsoft’s SMB Copilot marketing team brings you a monthly series: Grow your business with Copilot for Microsoft 365. From entrepreneurs to coffee connoisseurs, they work passionately behind the scenes to share the magic of Copilot products with small businesses everywhere. Always ready with a smile, a helping hand and a clever campaign, they are passionate about helping your business grow!

Microsoft SMB Copilot Product Marketing Team
From left: Image of Microsoft’s SMB Copilot team, including Angela Byers, Mariana Prudencio, Elif Algedik, Kayla Patterson, Briana Taylor, and Gabe Ho.

Blog Information

“Welcome to.Grow your business with Microsoft 365 Copilot“We aim to inspire and entertain you with insights and stories about how AI is changing the game of business. This monthly series is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses leverage the power of AI in the workplace. Each month, we feature scenarios for SMBs to innovate, scale, and grow using AI.