Microsoft Copilot for Business Proposals

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

Hi, Jason. Welcome back everybody. I’m joined here today again by Jason Anderson of
Expedience Software. Great to see everybody back. So Jason, let’s just jump right back
in. You know, there’s a lot of excitement around generative AI and Microsoft Copilot right
now. Obviously, copilot is a super powerful tool.

00:00:21 Speaker 1

And we’ve seen a lot of what it can do in all different kinds of industries. I imagine the
people who are creating proposals took one look at these technologies and said to
themselves, Oh my gosh, I like need to have this to make my proposals. So what are
you seeing right now in terms?

00:00:37 Speaker 1

Of are people using Microsoft Copilot for their business proposals? Are they not using
it? What are the details on that? We’d love to know.

00:00:46 Speaker 2

Great. Thank you. Hi, Meghan. I am. It’s a great question. I’m seeing a lot of all of that, a
lot of folks have immediate excitement around Jen AI and whether that was chat she PT
or now a lot of them are now moving over to the copilot as well as it’s directly within the
office suite. They may be using a mixed bag, though. Some folks have tried it a little,
and some people have played with it a lot.

00:01:06 Speaker 2

But I would say.

00:01:07 Speaker 2

It’s still very much an emerging technology and people are still getting their hands
around it. So many have investigated but few are really, really deploying the technology
like it will be more so deployed tomorrow.

00:01:18 Speaker 1

And though for those people who are using copilot in their proposals, what are you
seeing them use it for exactly?

00:01:25 Speaker 2

Most often it’s generative capability, right? It’s it’s they used ChatGPT at one time where
they brought a prompt out, they asked it to create something and it helped them make
content. That seems to be the bulk of the scope that I’ve seen proposal professionals
play with, with the copilot and creation of new propose.

00:01:43 Speaker 2

Feels that is changing though, and the opportunities to stretch beyond that, that use
case are are being explored right now by lots.

00:01:51 Speaker 1

Are you feeling like people are finding it in general? Really helpful. Is it more helpful
than, you know, frustrating. Like, what are people seeing when they go to implement it
into their proposals right now?

00:02:04 Speaker 2

It’s a great question. Most of the times this is a garbage in garbage out challenge where
folks have struggled with the output from copilot. Especially. I’ll just focus on copilot for a
moment and some of that has to do with the.

00:02:17 Speaker 2

Fact that Microsoft, when they approached waving out the solution the software came in
waves and waves of functionality to different users at different times and and it’s
evolved rapidly. So some people that played with it even just a few months ago or or
tested or or explored copilot and proposals a few months ago might have been very
frustrated with or.

00:02:38 Speaker 2

Were underwhelmed with the output that they were receiving, and that’s rapidly
changing that the outputs have gotten much more impactful, but also.

00:02:46 Speaker 2

So the approach that people have taken out of how to use it has really mitigated some
of the challenges that they had initially or they might have experienced initially with with
copilot.

00:02:55 Speaker 1

And what are those challenges specifically? Can you give any examples for people?

00:02:59 Speaker 2

Yeah, sure. Sure. So hallucinations or make him made-up content where we’re copilot
might have created something that was was inaccurate. Likewise unfocused output
where copilot has an amazing capability of looking throughout your your network
throughout SharePoint or other sources, meeting notes, other sources and.

00:03:18 Speaker 2

And gathering information, having an A poorly focused prompt, a poorly.

00:03:23 Speaker 2

Just a data set to use to retrieve information from. Have both reduced the the quality of
those outputs as the challenges people have have experienced, and that’s largely how
they’re being mitigated today as well. They’re taking a different approach to to to using
copilot and proposals.

00:03:40 Speaker 1

How exactly are people mitigating that?

00:03:43 Speaker 1

Seems like that would be. You know, there’s a. There’s a challenge in and of itself, and
any details you can provide to people, I’m sure they would love to hear how people are
going through that challenge.

00:03:51 Speaker 2

Absolutely prompted engineering is the is the phrase of the day right? But but the idea
of creating very well established prompts that have several methodologies that are now
emerging around establishing a prompt with the proper context and establishing a great
role for the AI tool to then understand how and what to produce.

00:04:11 Speaker 2

But more than anything, it’s sort of grounding. It’s grounding is is providing 2 copilot,
those source material documents.

00:04:20 Speaker 2

Information that you want it to use to gather and and produce for you the results. If
you’re not from with the term agents. Although many people are now, you can create
Microsoft Copilot agents in SharePoint and what that is is you can think of it like a folder

in SharePoint that has just the information you put in that folder, right? And so you can
focus copilot.

00:04:41 Speaker 2

To an agent and the agent.

00:04:43 Speaker 2

You know can have instructions and rules at the agent level, so it’s a great prompt and
then leveraging agents. So I’ll give you a quick example you as to how people are using
it and the bulk of people are using copilot now to just create new content, but there’s a
lot of strategic leveraging, a lot of exciting things that people are using.

00:05:03 Speaker 2

Copilot now to drive the strategy, so if you’re responding, for example, to an RFP where
customers issued you a request for proposal and you need to run a process, for
example, to decide whether or not you bid on the work.

00:05:15 Speaker 2

Or to potentially create instructions for your contributors. Maybe establishing wind
themes. These are things that you can have an agent that that has a source of specific
information, such as our differentiators, the way we win business, our strategic
alignment, the types of business we try to to focus on, the kinds of clients.

00:05:35 Speaker 2

We have today and copilot can use that information then to guide really awesome
results. So how are these challenges being mitigated? It’s through great prompts.

00:05:45 Speaker 2

And through use of agents that can then further refine and and really direct the results
out of copilot.

00:05:51 Speaker 1

Wow, that’s awesome. And it it sounds like the copilot of today is is not exactly the
copilot of even like a month ago. From what you’re describing. So.

00:05:52 Speaker 2

Long answer.

00:06:01 Speaker 2

Yeah, right.

00:06:02 Speaker 1

You know, to sum it all up, is there anything in particular you want to stress upon people
to take away from this topic? I’m so glad we’re talking about this today and it’s a big
topic and it’s nice to boil it down for people so.

00:06:13 Speaker 1

They have, you know, a good.

00:06:15 Speaker 1

You know, take away from today anything in particular.

00:06:18 Speaker 2

Absolutely. I’ll tell you first, if you’ve used copilot and found it to be less than helpful to
your point, making it’s a different tool today than it was just just days ago. It seems so.
So definitely return retry. Keep going back to that that well. And if you’ve not yet start to
explore the use of copilot. It’s a secure platform. A lot of misconceptions, and I’d like to
have another discussion.

00:06:40 Speaker 2

Maybe on that topic around misunderstandings of of the risks or the concerns or how.

00:06:42 Speaker 1

Definitely.

00:06:45 Speaker 2

To use so we can dig deeper into those topics. But if you’ve tried it before and we’re
underwhelmed or saw a flash of inspiration, but then once you started peeling back the
onion, you were disappointed. Go try it again. If you’ve not tried it, it’s absolutely time to
start exploring how copilot could be used in your proposal processes in really smart and
effective ways.

00:07:04 Speaker 1

Hmm.

00:07:07 Speaker 2

So that’d be my take away.

00:07:08 Speaker 1

Awesome. Yeah. So listen to everybody. He’s a he’s the expert on the topic. Try it again.
Use that technology for your proposals and guys, limit. Thank you so much, Jason. I

really appreciate your time. And we will definitely on that. We’ll have more conversations
about that in.

00:07:20 Speaker 2

Thanks, Meghan.

00:07:22 Speaker 1

The future? Thanks.