Copilot for Microsoft 365: Conversation with Stephan Kuhnert

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       Stephan Kuhnert is a seasoned tech entrepreneur and Microsoft Office expert with a proven track record in the software industry. Passionate about intelligent business software and aesthetic design, he founded empower® as Co-CEO in 2005. Together with his team, he helps companies to increase productivity through the use of Microsoft Office and to ensure brand-compliant external communication.

In this conversation, Stephan discusses Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Geetesh: Stephan, tell us more about empower®, what you do, and what Microsoft’s Copilot initiatives mean to you?

Stephan: Every day, a wide range of people rely on Microsoft 365 for their productivity needs. Whether it’s creating presentations, organizing data in spreadsheets, or writing business documents, users in a variety of settings – from college to the office to the home – take advantage of its capabilities. Microsoft deliberately designed its suite to serve a diverse audience, free from the constraints of a single brand.

But the reality for many users, especially non-designers, is a struggle to balance productivity with adherence to corporate design standards. Deadline pressures often prioritize output over brand compliance, resulting in a disconnect between the organization’s identity and its outward-facing materials.

Yet these corporate documents wield considerable influence, serving as linchpins for garnering support, closing deals, and shaping first impressions. As the volume of communications increases, maintaining brand consistency becomes more challenging. Alarmingly, statistics show that half of all documents fall short of brand guidelines, highlighting the critical need for solutions.

That’s why we created empower® – a transformative software suite designed to unify workflows within Microsoft 365, globally. Our mission? To give users the tool they need to reach their full potential and reclaim valuable time for meaningful work. Seamlessly integrated with PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and Excel, empower® simplifies brand compliance while ensuring fast access to the most current and accurate content. Our latest innovation, empower® AI Assistant, advances this mission by embedding AI directly into every Microsoft Office application. As a result, our customers can optimize text, improve translations, and take advantage of many other features that make their workflows more efficient.

As Microsoft enthusiasts, we were eager to try out Microsoft 365 Copilot. Depending on the application, Microsoft 365 Copilot promises a wide range of functions, such as creating documents and presentations with a single click, summarizing meeting notes or performing analyses. A real innovation that we put through its paces for a month. We wanted to see how well Copilot responds to our commands, how well it executes them and, of course, how well it integrates with our corporate design.

Geetesh: What are your first impressions about Copilot? Also, empower created a white paper on using Copilot. Can you tell us more about this white paper, and how readers can download a copy?

Stephan: Our exploration of Microsoft 365 Copilot provided deep insights and a glimpse into its potential for future enhancements. Initially captivated by Microsoft’s compelling promotional materials, we had high expectations for Copilot. However, our evaluation provides a more nuanced perspective.

Without a doubt, Microsoft 365 Copilot has notable strengths, particularly in streamlining the creation of basic presentations in PowerPoint. It also provides handy tools for basic analysis and reporting in Excel, and excels at editing text in Word, Outlook and Teams, whether for research, summarizing, condensing, or rephrasing. These features can significantly streamline tasks for a wide range of users.

However, several of the use cases presented by Microsoft and their results did not match our testing experience. This discrepancy was particularly evident in more complex efforts such as intricate formatting in PowerPoint, complex Excel modeling and advanced analytics, nuanced style customization in Word, corporate language, translation tasks, and the development of professional business presentations. In particular, consistency in corporate branding was often lacking, raising concerns about adherence to key brand guidelines.

In summary, Microsoft 365 Copilot is helpful in scenarios where the focus is on text rather than corporate identity. It excels at creating simple documents and presentations from scratch, leveraging Internet resources, and seamlessly integrating text and stock images. Its accessibility makes it useful for beginners and casual users alike. However, the lack of robust corporate design elements and specialized language capabilities are limitations. There is room for improvement to ensure compliance with corporate standards and to meet diverse business needs. After testing the very first version of Copilot, we are excited to see what happens with the next updates.

A detailed analysis of our experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook and Teams is available in our free report.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.