Month: May 2024

Successfully building a digital transformation strategy and implementing and executing it can get extremely challenging. Especially for organizations that have accumulated generations of technologies, the path to successful business transformation is laden with obstacles that hinder outcomes. If you want to set the right foot forward, you need to identify the right opportunities, develop the right strategies, and invest in the right tools. 

Learn how an implementation partner like InovarTech can build custom plugins for Copilot Teams and Copilot Studio, enabling your business to be more agile, responsive, and competitive.

Unleashing Productivity with Copilot

As advancements in artificial intelligence surge, tools like Copilot Teams and Copilot Studio are unleashing the next level of productivity. Built with large language models and armed with various automation capabilities, Copilot seamlessly works along several everyday tools to make humans more productive, efficient, and creative. 

From senior leaders to marketing professionals, frontline agents to shop floor workers, Copilot offers features that streamline tasks, automate workflows, and enhance collaboration. Employees across the organization can use Copilot to unlock productivity and creativity and adapt to the ever-changing business landscape. 

Here are some ways organizations can exploit the capabilities of Copilot: 

• Customer service agents can use Copilot to automate responses and provide instant and around-the-clock customer support. 
• Team leaders can use Copilot to summarize meeting discussion points and allocate responsibilities accordingly. 
• Sales teams can embrace Copilot to integrate sales insights into their workflow, personalize content, and close more deals. 

• Financial analysts can leverage the power of Copilot to automate data analysis and analyze critical market information in minutes. 
• Copilot can enable HR teams to streamline benefits and compensation or even gather and act on employee feedback and increase engagement
• Marketing teams can use Copilot to understand market sentiment and curate proposals catering to customers’ pulse. 

• Risk management teams can use Copilot to analyze large datasets, predict potential risks, and pivot as necessary. 
• Copilot can deliver much-needed coding assistance to programmers, reducing time spent on routine tasks and focusing on solving bigger problems and driving innovation. 

Tailoring Copilot Experiences with InovarTech

The right team of strategists, designers, and developers can enable organizations to transform business capabilities into consumable services and applications that users love to use. Such a team can help build and execute a digital-first strategy and enable organizations to implement and extend modern tools to accelerate your growth. 

When it comes to making the most of Copilot, the right partner can help customize features or tailor the overall experience using Copilot Studio. Built on the foundations of leading conversational AI technologies and interoperable with Azure AI Studio, the partner can customize Copilot by building custom plugins to tailor responses to common scenarios and enable greater control and efficiency. They can also help create your own Copilots and GPTs incorporating your data and enabling engaging interactions.

Here’s how a partner like InovarTech can enable business transformation with the power of Copilot Teams and Copilot Studio: 

• Automate Common Workflows: Using the power of Copilot Studio, InovarTech teams can help you navigate the intricacies of your day-to-day processes. We can streamline complex business tasks through intelligent automation, such as submitting expenses, onboarding employees, managing leaves, etc. 
• Tailor Conversations: For users who need to send out specific responses, a partner can help design tailored conversations. For instance, they can enable sales teams to send out the right response when they receive customer sales inquiries. 
• Summarize Meetings: The right partner can help unlock high workforce productivity levels with Copilot in Teams and enable teams to engage in effective meetings. Custom plugins can help you summarize key discussion points, suggest action items, and allocate the next steps to appropriate members. 
• Customize Prompts: Several important discussions happen during meetings that must be referred to for future steps. An expert implementation partner can help you get the insight you need from important discussions. From disagreements to follow-up questions, different perspectives, action items, and more. They can customize Teams prompts, allowing you to wrap up meetings with clear next steps. 
• Uncover Answers: Copilot doesn’t just help automate tasks or curate summaries. The right partner can help direct your Copilot to multiple data sources, including external websites and internal knowledge bases, so you can get answers to questions in minutes. For instance, customer service agents can enter questions on SharePoint and have Copilot generate instant answers, help, and guidance from different SharePoint sites. 
• Manage Integrations: A partner can help extend Copilot capabilities to other apps and systems within our business. Using plugins and custom extensions, they can enable your Copilot to access and use third-party data from apps such as Jira, Dynamics 365, Bing Web Search, SAP, ServiceNow, Box, and more. Based on your requirements, the partner can enable, disable, assign, block, or remove plugins for Copilot while ensuring the highest level of data privacy.

Copilot Use Cases

Copilot can be used by different teams to meet different requirements; here are some popular use cases: 

• Use copilot as your personal assistant to create emails, summarize meetings, and generate a list of action items.  
• Have Copilot analyze a particular data set and build intuitive visualizations from the data via a simple prompt. 
• Leverage Copilot to find information from existing documents or the web and prepare a synopsis for quicker understanding. 
• Make Copilot your hub for all work by integrating it with existing tools and act on real-time data. 

As businesses look to better compete in a volatile and highly competitive world, Copilot paves the way for high levels of productivity and efficiency. Reimagine your current digital technology landscape with Copilot-enabled solutions that will take your business to the next level. Whether you’re looking for end-to-end Copilot implementation or a custom agile solution for a particular use case, our team of experts and long-standing experience in transforming businesses from legacy to modern can make you stay relevant for generations to come. 

Partner with us to: 

• Solve complex problems using the power of Copilot
• Integrate Copilot with the apps you use to run your business 
• Get a comprehensive view of data across the enterprise 
• Create a unified user experience and enable a single source of truth

Recent years have seen the complete digital transformation of the modern workplace. A Foundry study found that 93% of companies have (or planning to) adopt a digital-first business strategy. 

As more companies embrace hybrid working environments, they need innovative technology to align communication between in-office and remote workers.

A recent Microsoft study found that 43% of remote-working employees do not feel included in team meetings. In the ever-changing workplace landscape, organizations need a digital platform (or tool) for team collaboration, information sharing, and communication.

As Microsoft’s collaboration platform, SharePoint has a critical role to play in the modern workplace. What makes SharePoint unique is its ability to integrate different organizational activities. Using SharePoint, companies can easily integrate “traditional” applications like content management, process management, and business intelligence on a single platform.

Here’s a look at six ways SharePoint can prepare companies for the future of work:

1. Team Collaboration

As modern workplaces become distributed, effective team collaboration is a necessity. With the SharePoint Team Sites, SharePoint facilitates team collaboration by creating dedicated spaces for organizational teams. In this digital space, teams can share documents and collaborate for their next project from any location.

As part of the MS Office suite of products, SharePoint is integrated with Microsoft’s productivity tools like MS Word and Excel, thus delivering a consistent user experience.

SharePoint Online also allows project teams to brainstorm and share “great” ideas, or simply share the latest documents for immediate approval or review. SharePoint is also easily integrated with Microsoft Teams, thus enabling real-time collaboration.

2. Remote Access and Mobility

As a cloud-powered collaboration platform, SharePoint Online is a centralized hub where employees can add or access documents from any geographical location. With more employees opting for remote work, they require real-time access to business applications from any location and on any device.

Using SharePoint Mobile, remote users can access shared documents and stay connected using their mobile devices. They can also stay informed on the company’s latest updates (without being physically present on the office premises). SharePoint tools are available on all Android, Apple, and Windows devices.

3. Regulatory Compliance and Data Security

In the age of stringent industry regulations, businesses must reduce the risk of litigation by storing their sensitive data with maximum security and privacy. SharePoint provides compliant document management, thus ensuring that only authorized users have access to business and customer data. Besides, SharePoint enables administrators to configure access permissions for individual files, folders, websites, and web applications.

With functionalities like Data loss prevention (DLP) and eDiscovery, SharePoint also protects sensitive data, thus ensuring regulatory compliance.

4. AI capabilities using CoPilot

Thanks to its AI capabilities, SharePoint is redefining online content creation and optimization. With the AI-powered Copilot feature, SharePoint is simplifying the modern workplace by allowing users to create and modify SharePoint-powered websites and webpages. 

This level of AI-powered content creation goes much beyond checking for spelling and grammar. It can help generate high-quality content (through intelligent edits) and offer content recommendations and layout designs. This AI feature can also adapt to the organization’s brand voice and design style, thus providing consistent content.

5. Business Intelligence

SharePoint’s integration with business intelligence (BI) enables employees to act upon relevant information collected from disparate sources. SharePoint’s BI functionality displays valuable information in the form of “visual” dashboards and graphs, which can simplify decision-making.

Besides, SharePoint allows business users to personalize their views according to their requirements. With its integration with Microsoft’s Power BI tool, SharePoint users can generate and share data-driven reports. They can also embed interactive Power BI reports into online web pages.

6. Customization

Customization is one capability necessary in the modern workplace. With SharePoint Online, enterprises can customize this tool to suit their business needs. For instance, they can deploy or use SharePoint as a document management tool or as a centralized digital platform to maintain employee engagement.

Additional customization features include the ability for end-users to create, modify, and design SharePoint projects according to their specific requirements. Further, SharePoint is easy to integrate with Office 365 applications including MS Teams, OneDrive, and MS Outlook. With this integration, organizations can create a cohesive workplace, thus facilitating communication and collaboration.

Leveraging the Power of SharePoint 

As organizations adapt to the new “normal” mode of working, the SharePoint tool is now an indispensable part of the modern digital workplace. Besides document management, this platform facilitates collaboration and automation.

With its role as a SharePoint consulting company, InovarTech can help you fully leverage the capabilities of this innovative Microsoft platform. Our team of experienced SharePoint professionals can assist you with designing, development, migration, and configuration.

Download our SharePoint migration and modernization whitepaper for free today. Book a free SharePoint consultation with our team today.

Businesses across sectors have long been leveraging technologies like automation to enhance workforce productivity, improve system efficiency, and drive better business results. Yet, when it comes to accelerating the decision-making process, many hit a roadblock. Given the sheer pace of change, making quick and effective decisions requires organizations to look beyond automation and open doors to the world of intelligent automation. 

Read on to explore the need for and benefits of intelligent automation and the steps you must take to orchestrate a seamless transition to intelligent automation. 

The Need for Intelligent Automation

Intelligent automation, also called cognitive automation, leverages automation technologies such as business process management (BPM) and robotic process automation (RPA), along with artificial intelligence (AI), to accelerate and scale decision-making across the organization. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, rapidly processing information, and quickly identifying patterns in data, human resources can focus more time on strategic tasks at hand. 

Through automated analysis of large volumes of data, intelligent automation simplifies processes, leading to: 

• Improved productivity: Intelligent automation reduces the cognitive load on humans, leading to better productivity and quicker decision-making. For instance, manufacturing firms facing challenges in managing purchase requisitions can leverage intelligent automation to automate the approval process. This can help minimize the number of people required for the process while also automating the tracking of different requests – thus improving productivity and accelerating operations. 
• Continuous improvement: With intelligent automation, humans can cut down on the many steps needed to accomplish certain tasks. Completing mundane and error-prone tasks for people and providing valuable insights to decision-makers, can help kick-start a continuous improvement cycle. For example, while onboarding new customers, teams can get intelligent insights on how they can speed up the onboarding process, thereby reducing the turnaround time. For example, healthcare organizations struggling to conduct health assessments and maintain accurate records of patients can embrace intelligent automation to expedite manual tasks, eliminate multiple steps involved in data management, and generate comprehensive medical reports. 
• Reduced errors: Manually going through forms and entering data into systems is a highly time-consuming and error-prone process. Through the intelligent automation of data entry efforts that are most frequently erroneous, teams can prevent miscalculations and ensure the efficiency of processes. For example, HR teams dealing with goal management can use intelligent automation to overcome errors associated with manual goal-setting and tracking, address inconsistencies in operations, and receive automated notifications and reminders for goal updates. 
• Optimized costs: Intelligent automation offers the ability to deal with exceptions and anomalies that might emerge in day-to-day operations – thus minimizing the impact and cost of damage. For instance, large MNCs can exploit the capabilities of intelligent automation to streamline license and compliance management, thus improving compliance with evolving regulations and curtailing the costs of non-compliance. 
• Better customer satisfaction: Intelligent automation can also allow for better customer satisfaction.  For example, suppliers dealing with assets via work order management can use intelligent automation to streamline workflows to reduce errors and manage work orders from creation to completion – leading to better customer satisfaction. 
• Easier scalability: Using intelligent automation, manufacturers can more effectively predict and adjust production to respond to changes in supply and demand. For example, startups looking to enable peer-to-peer lending can use intelligent automation to automate the document validation process, pick the right investors based on their risk appetite, and seamlessly onboard more vendors as the business grows. 

Roadblocks to Adopting Intelligent Automation 

Despite the disruptive benefits of intelligent automation, enterprise-wide adoption comes with several challenges: 

• Privacy concerns: One of the biggest roadblocks to intelligent automation adoption is around data privacy. Since intelligent automation algorithms often collect and analyze personal, financial, and demographic data, they raise several privacy concerns among individuals and regulatory bodies. 
• Data quality issues: Intelligent automation solutions need highly accurate, consistent, and constantly updated data to work their charm. Poor data quality often dilutes intelligent automation efforts while leading to inaccurate and unfavorable results. 
• Poor data governance: The lack of proper data governance also impedes intelligent automation while raising several ethical concerns. In the absence of a robust strategy, intelligent automation systems can act on inaccurate or biased data, snowballing to unfavorable and erroneous outcomes. 
• Lack of skillsets: Successfully transitioning to intelligent automation requires the knowledge and efforts of skilled resources. Lack of appropriate talent often makes it difficult to maximize the ROI of intelligent automation. 
• Workforce resistance: The adoption of intelligent automation is also often met with widespread employee resistance. The fear that AI technologies might displace human workers leads to limited acceptance and hence, restricted benefits.  
• Change management: Bringing intelligent automation into the organization demands several changes to be made to existing processes. This requires strong change management policies to make changes to critical systems, maintain employee experiences, and minimize disruptions to ongoing operations, 

Best Practices for Success

If you want to successfully transition from simple automation to intelligent automation, here are some things to keep in mind: 

• Have clarity on intelligent automation objectives: Intelligent automation isn’t just about implementing a system and expecting transformative results. You must first have clarity on the goals you are trying to achieve through implementation. It can be anything from improving productivity to reducing errors, lowering costs, or more. 
• Build a robust strategy: Once you know the goals you want to achieve, you must build your intelligent automation strategy. Make sure to link your strategy with larger business goals and get the necessary leadership support and funding for your project. Build a robust implementation roadmap and document important milestones, critical challenges, and expected results. 
• Invest in the right skill sets: Investing in the right skill sets is a critical aspect of intelligent automation. You can either upskill your existing workforce on technologies like AI, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, etc., hire new resources with these skills, or engage with qualified vendors who can provide access to required talent on demand. 
• Eliminate barriers to scalability: Eliminating roadblocks and inefficiencies that eat into profits is extremely important for intelligent automation success. Such elimination can help your intelligent automation project scale more efficiently.
• Reengineer existing processes: Integrating intelligent automation into the existing technology landscape requires sufficient reengineering and revamping of processes. Low-code and no-code solutions are great options to tweak current tools and processes or create new ones, thus ensuring a strong foundation for successful intelligent automation. 
• Prepare and cleanse data: Intelligent automation systems need to be fed accurate and clean data, so they can make the right decisions. To ensure this, it is important to identify the most valuable data sources, aggregate, clean, and analyze various types of information, and feed them into automation models for improved analytics and maximum effectiveness.
• Ensure data governance: For intelligent automation systems to drive accurate, ethical, and unbiased decisions, a proper data governance strategy is extremely essential. Make sure to build a high-level governance plan and define goals to improve data quality, guide resource allocation, and enable greater return on investment. 
• Train and educate: If you want to ensure your intelligent automation systems are used to their maximum efficiency, you must train and educate your employees. Training employees on how best to utilize these systems and addressing their concerns periodically is sure to enable long-term business benefits. 

As artificial intelligence continues to seep across the business world, its significance in the realm of automation cannot be understated. Automation technologies like BPA and RPA, when combined with the power of AI, open doors to several transformative benefits. From improved productivity to quicker and more accurate decision-making, reduced errors to minimized costs, better customer experience to strong brand reputation and more – intelligent automation is the only way forward. 

Create long-term business value and ensure symphony with InovarTech. Contact us to know more!