Softcat is the UK’s largest Microsoft partner and aims to lead the adoption of Microsoft technologies for the benefit of its customers.
Softcat began exploring the potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot in October 2023. It is now implementing an organisation-wide adoption.
Internal teams report great time savings and quality improvements. Their experiences are shaping the support and solutions offered to customers to guide their successful adoption.
There is real power in inviting people to use Copilot to figure out what they can gain from it in their own roles every day.
Amanda Valentine, Learning and Development Executive, Softcat
With a partnership strengthened over 30+ years, Softcat is the largest Microsoft Solutions Partner in the UK. In October 2023, Softcat began exploring the potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot for its internal teams and customers.
“Microsoft is our number one vendor,” explains Geraint Morgan, IT Director at Softcat. “It’s absolutely important to us that we’re at the forefront of using the Microsoft technology stack effectively. If our customers ask what we’re doing with generative AI, we need to be credible – and that means being ahead of the curve with these new technologies.”
Softcat began small, starting with ten licences so that a group of IT users could assess the data governance implications of using Copilot. Softcat’s IT team worked closely with its security team to ensure that users had the right levels of access to information.
Ian Southwell, Infrastructure Manager at Softcat, explains, “One of the great things about Copilot is that, if the data is there and you have access to it, you can search for it and report on it and use it. However, if you have access to information you shouldn’t have, that can be a big problem.”
A strategic data governance project was already underway at Softcat to lock down the information held in its SharePoint and Microsoft Teams sites, ensuring it is accessible only to authorised users. This meant the business was already in a great position.
“The support we had from Microsoft and the Microsoft FastTrack team were also a great help,” adds Ian Southwell. “It helped us align and ensure we followed best practice.”
Satisfied of the solution’s potential and its governance, within a week the team expanded the availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 70 IT and business users. They faced a familiar challenge: how to identify the best use cases?
“When selecting that early user group, we were very focused on the influential voices within the departments,” explains Bradley Howe, Microsoft Modern Work Technologist at Softcat. “Sales was heavily represented because they are very active on social media and with communications and are good advocates.”
It was also important that customer-facing teams would be well placed to speak with customers about the solution. Sales, business analysts and project managers were encouraged to explore how lessons learnt could be applied to benefit Softcat’s customers.
The experiences of early users highlighted exciting use cases in their roles and departments.
“One of our top sellers absolutely fell in love with Copilot,” reports Bradley Howe. “It has massively transformed the number of hours in a day he dedicates to admin. He is much quicker in his post-meeting engagements. He can interrogate the meeting transcripts to get the information he needs and list the actions. And it’s a better meeting experience for the customer because he no longer has his head down, taking notes. And they get the follow-up faster.”
Now the sales team can use that freed-up time to focus on deepening relationship with customers and on revenue-generating work.
Using Copilot to catch up on emails after a few days away from the office has been another compelling use case, delivering time savings. The reduced admin burden supports colleagues to do their best work while achieving a good work-life balance and reducing stress, strengthening Softcat’s already strong culture.
For the marketing team, big time savings are achieved by using Copilot to redraft bulleted information points into the right format and style for different marketing communications. Lauren Tiller, Senior Communications Manager at Softcat, explains, “Being able to use Copilot to switch tones, formats and document types so we can edit quickly is really helpful.”
By the spring of 2024, customer interest in Microsoft Copilot was surging.
Bradley Howe reports, “Copilot is a complete outlier. I’ve now personally given around 150 Copilot demos to customers. That’s around ten times the number I’ve given of the next most popular solution, Microsoft Viva. There’s huge interest in what Copilot can do.”
The Softcat team’s own experiences have shaped the support offered to customers.
“We’ve built out what the customer journey looks like,” continues Bradley Howe. “There are 14 steps which explore where they are today and what they need to do to get to point B.”
Data governance is a key focus. “We’ve added AI enhancements to our existing Microsoft Security Assessment and Security Implementation services,” says Bradley Howe. “When a customer says they are interested in Copilot, we cover off the four big topics: security, compliance, governance and risk.”
At the same time, interest within the business was also growing. The user group widened again to 1,500 people when Softcat decided to implement an organisation-wide rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot: the first UK partner to do so.
Bradley Howe says, “We knew quite early on this was the right investment to make and our future is with Copilot.”
Softcat has invested in dedicated learning and development resources to ensure users make a good start with Copilot. Dave Simmons, Senior IT Transformation and Change Manager at Softcat, explains, “We have a policy that everyone must watch the eleven-minute Copilot overview training video and review the AI policy before they are given a licence. There’s more than enough interest in Copilot to motivate everyone to do that.”
85% active regular use
Eighty-five percent of licenced Softcat users are using Microsoft 365 Copilot regularly. However, not everyone is using it in the same way or to the same degree.
Dave Simmons estimates that around a third of users absolutely love Copilot and are using it extensively. A third use Copilot daily for the obvious use cases – drafting and summarising emails, meeting summaries, etc. The rest use it occasionally.
For Softcat, the focus is now on encouraging everyone to get more from their use of Copilot. Change management and prompt engineering are key to successfully encouraging people to adapt the way they work, so Softcat offers learning and development support paired with regular internal communications and events to keep interest high.
“Our learning and development approach is focused on learning by doing,” explains Amanda Valentine, Learning and Development Manager at Softcat. “That is very much our approach with Copilot. For example, I spent an hour on Teams with one of our sales managers working on using Copilot in Excel. I think the way Copilot suggests other columns and data you might want to add is really great. It was a very rewarding experience to be able to work with that manager on an existing spreadsheet and see him immediately use prompts that he will find useful moving forward.”
This learning by doing philosophy has also inspired Softcat’s use of “promptathons” – team prompt-writing sessions with a hackathon format. They work best when positioned as a day of fun and friendly competition.
“The promptathons we’ve held for our customers in conjunction with Microsoft have worked really well, so we decided to try them for our internal teams,” explains Amanda Valentine. “We begin the day with a session by one of our Copilot advocates about how they use Copilot every day in their job. I run a session on perfect prompting. Then the group split into teams and by the end of the day we have around 15 prompts that solve specific business problems.”
The prompts are immediately shared to the entire business via Softcat’s prompt library.
“I’ve already had emails from people saying they are using the prompts we created during the promptathons,” reports Amanda Valentine. “There is real power in inviting people to use Copilot to figure out what they can gain from it in their own roles every day.”
Softcat is very aware that Copilot isn’t a “one and done” solution. Benefits are personalised for users. There are almost limitless possibilities to derive benefit.
For example, Softcat’s marketing team is now working on tools and prompts to help the rest of the business realise the benefits it has seen. Nav Thaliwal, Communications Manager at Softcat, explains, “We’ve been working on helping people within the business to use Copilot effectively with our branded PowerPoint slides and other branded content. People across the business are putting presentations together, for internal and external audiences, so we can save time and improve quality at the same time as helping people stay fully aligned with our branding.”
Elsewhere, the business has also had incredible success using Copilot to assist with RFP review and vendor assessments. The team estimates it has taken around 45 hours out of each of those tasks through their use of Copilot.
“I don’t have a lot of repeatable tasks,” says Richard Wynn Griffith, Chief Commercial Officer at Softcat. “So, for me, it’s about recognising that I could use Copilot to help me with a piece of work; to have Copilot in the front of my mind and prompt myself to use a prompt.”
“For me the ‘aha!’ moment came when I realised that, while I could save myself two or three minutes when using Copilot to help me with an Internet search using Edge – and of course, those two or three minutes add up – if I were to spend five, ten, twenty minutes on a prompt in Word, for example, I could save myself a lot more time.”
This realisation was inspired during a senior leadership team meeting when the team discussed the need to read ten different emailed reports about the different business locations.
“We were probably going to read those emails and all come to the same conclusions,” Richard Wynn Griffith recalls. “There was a look of collective dread around the room when we realised that we all would need to read those ten reports before the next meeting. I saw that, rather than all of us reading those 12 pages, we could ask Copilot to summarise them and we could have a discussion about the summary. It took me about half an hour to run and check that piece of work, so I probably saved myself a few hours. But I also saved everyone in the rest of the team several hours too, and we’re not the cheapest people in the business!”
“We’re really proud of how fast the adoption was,” states Dave Simmons. “And that means not just rolling it out but actually using Copilot well.”
“Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” agrees Bradley Howe. “We’ve got a lot of great voices sharing their experiences in our Teams chats. It’s a very open-minded group and it has captured a lot of use cases that drive engagement.”
“It’s testimony to many people’s amazing work that we’ve been able to rollout Copilot so quickly and get such effective use from it,” confirms Geraint Morgan. “And, as we give every member of staff access to Copilot, we want to ensure we continue to have best practice in mind.”
For organisations looking to replicate Softcat’s success, Bradley Howe recommends, “If you haven’t started building out your user team yet, think about who are going to be your prominent voices? Does it mean everyone? Where are your use cases? Start working on it. You can do it today. Build up your team of stakeholders internally – whether it’s marketing, sales, HR. It’s those pockets of interest and influence within your organisation. There may be other parts who are more reluctant to get started with AI but don’t let them slow down the people who want to benefit today.”
When it comes to identifying use cases and encouraging use, Dave Simmons advises, “We’ve all got those tasks that we dread or we want to put off. Nine times out of ten, Copilot can do it for you or make it easier. My advice? If you’re dreading a task, see if Copilot can take it on first.”
“Copilot still has a buzz and excitement around it, which we love,” says Dave Simmons. “But the reality is it’s going to become just another part of our daily lives. We need to encourage people to use it and to share their learning. I think it will be a constant part of our ongoing narrative to keep Copilot at the forefront of everyone’s minds.”
“I’m sure our Copilot use cases will continue to grow,” agrees Geraint Morgan. “Alongside that, we’ll keep our eye on those foundational pieces of work around data architecture and data governance so that we get the best results out of Copilot as we move forward. Our vision is very much to continue to grow and evolve.”
One of our top sellers absolutely fell in love with Copilot. It has massively transformed the number of hours in a day he dedicates to admin.
Bradley Howe, Microsoft Modern Work Technologist, Softcat
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