How to Make the Most of AI in Your Organisation: A Practical Guide

Artificial intelligence and generative AI may be the most important technology of any lifetime - Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. That is a bold claim, but the evidence is hard to ignore. Microsoft's research into CoPilot adoption found that 70% of users reported being more productive, 77% said they did not want to give it up, and sales teams using CoPilot for Sales saved an average of 90 minutes per week. The question for most London businesses is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to do it safely and strategically.

This guide summarises the key findings from the Wavex AI Whitepaper 2025, covering the AI tools available today, the roles that benefit most, the six-step deployment process Wavex uses with clients, and the risks every organisation needs to manage before switching anything on.

What do staff actually think about AI?

Before any technology decision, it helps to understand where your people stand. Microsoft's CoPilot research paints a clear picture: staff who use AI tools regularly report significant productivity gains and are reluctant to give them up once they have experienced the difference. The headline figures are striking - 70% of users reported increased productivity, 77% said they did not want to give CoPilot up, and 71% reported saving time on mundane tasks. Users were 29% faster across a series of tasks, 4x faster catching up on a missed meeting, and emails written with CoPilot were 18% more clear and 19% more concise. CoPilot for Sales users saved 90 minutes per week, and agents using Dynamics 365 with CoPilot saw a 12% reduction in case resolution time.

These are not marginal gains. For a 50-person organisation, a 29% productivity improvement across knowledge workers represents a significant competitive advantage - and a risk if competitors adopt AI while you do not.

Which AI tools are available in 2025?

The AI market has matured rapidly. As of early 2025, there are six major AI platforms that London businesses are evaluating. Each has different strengths, pricing, and suitability depending on your existing technology stack.

For most London businesses already using Microsoft 365, CoPilot is the natural starting point. Its integration with Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint means it works within tools your staff already use every day, and it draws on your own organisational data - emails, documents, calendars - to provide contextually relevant assistance. If you are evaluating Microsoft 365 licensing or considering an upgrade to Business Premium or E3, our Microsoft 365 and Azure services team can help you understand what is included and what CoPilot adds on top.

Which roles benefit most from AI?

AI is not a tool for one department. Based on CoPilot's capabilities and Microsoft 365 integration, the following roles see the most tangible productivity gains.

The common thread across all these roles is that AI is most valuable where tasks are repetitive, involve pulling together information from multiple sources, or require drafting content that then needs human review and refinement. AI is an assistant, not a replacement - and the content it produces always needs oversight from someone more experienced.

Chatbots vs Agents: understanding the two flavours of AI

One of the most common sources of confusion when businesses start exploring AI is the difference between chatbots and agents. Both are available within the Microsoft CoPilot ecosystem, and they serve very different purposes.

Microsoft 365 CoPilot is a chatbot. It is integrated into the familiar suite of M365 applications and assists users in creating, analysing, and managing content within those tools. It pulls context from your organisation's SharePoint data - emails, documents, calendars - and makes the tools you already use smarter and more efficient. It is ideal for general knowledge workers: marketers, administrators, executives, and anyone who spends significant time in Outlook, Teams, Word, or Excel.

CoPilot Agents, built using Microsoft CoPilot Studio, are a different proposition. They operate more autonomously and are designed to handle complex, domain-specific business processes by connecting to organisational data sources - SharePoint, external APIs, the internet, or CRM systems - and performing actions autonomously or semi-autonomously. A Customer Support AI Agent, for example, could create customer tickets and provide real-time order updates by integrating directly with your CRM platform. Agents need to be purpose-built for specific scenarios and require more investment in design and governance.

For most organisations starting their AI journey, the chatbot (M365 CoPilot) is the right first step. Agents become relevant once you have established the foundations: clean data, appropriate permissions, and a workforce that understands how to use AI effectively.

The six-step AI deployment process

The flexibility of AI systems contributes to the confusion created within businesses as to the best AI strategy. Many organisations simply turn it on or, worse, have no controls over how staff are using it - and they will be using it. The best AI strategy is delivered in phases, with each stage delivering value and providing feedback into the next. Wavex deploys Microsoft CoPilot for clients using the following six-step process.

1. Organisation Readiness / Workshop

The first step is evaluating your current Microsoft 365 environment to ensure compatibility with M365 CoPilot. This includes checking that your tenant is on a supported version and that the necessary subscriptions are available. Critically, it also involves reviewing data governance policies. CoPilot relies on Microsoft Graph to access organisational data - emails, files, and chats. If data in SharePoint is disorganised, irrelevant data is not archived, or permissions are too broad, CoPilot will surface those problems. This needs to be corrected before deployment.

2. Configuration / Licenses

Once readiness is confirmed, the next step is purchasing the required M365 CoPilot licenses for the users who will access CoPilot Chat. These are typically add-ons to existing M365 plans such as Business Premium, E3, or E5. A test group is defined - individuals who can run through a set of scenarios and provide feedback - and CoPilot is configured for that group before a wider rollout.

3. Set Up Security and Compliance Controls

Before any users access CoPilot, security and compliance controls need to be in place. This includes using Microsoft Purview to apply sensitivity labels and data loss prevention (DLP) policies to protect sensitive information, configuring enterprise data protection (EDP) settings, and deciding whether to allow web grounding - which gives CoPilot access to Bing search for information beyond your organisational data. For organisations in regulated industries such as financial services or healthcare, this step is particularly important. Our cybersecurity and compliance team can help you assess what controls are required.

4. Test and Pilot Deployment

A pilot with a small group of users tests functionality, gathers feedback, and identifies potential issues - data access errors, performance lags, or erroneous answers. The pilot verifies that CoPilot Chat integrates correctly with Teams, Outlook, and the Microsoft 365 app, and that it meets user expectations for tasks like summarising emails, answering questions, or drafting content.

5. Train Users and Drive Adoption

Training sessions using resources such as Microsoft's CoPilot Success Kit educate users on how to use CoPilot effectively, including how to craft good prompts. The focus at this stage is on slowly changing behaviours so that staff actively leverage the value of these tools within their daily workflows. Highlighting specific use cases - catching up on chats, drafting messages, accessing work data - accelerates adoption.

6. Monitor and Optimise

After deployment, analytics track usage and performance. User feedback is collected to refine the deployment and address concerns. Configurations are adjusted as needed - expanding licenses, broadening learning sources, or tweaking permissions based on pilot results. A successful AI strategy is never-ending; it is a cycle of continuous improvement.

What are the risks of AI - and how do you manage them?

Without focusing on apocalyptic scenarios, there are tangible risks that every organisation must consider before deploying AI. The good news is that most of these risks are manageable with the right preparation.

Data exposure and oversharing

Microsoft 365 CoPilot pulls data based on a user's existing permissions. If permissions are too broad - for example, a user has access to sensitive HR files they should not - CoPilot can surface that data in responses, exposing it to unauthorised eyes. Many organisations have messy access controls, and CoPilot amplifies this weakness. The solution is to audit and tighten permissions before deployment, applying the least privilege principle: users should only have access to the data they genuinely need.

Privacy and prompt history

Microsoft states that CoPilot does not use your data to train its foundational language models and encrypts data in transit and at rest. However, prompts and responses are stored as part of your CoPilot activity history. If sensitive information - personal data, financial details - is included in prompts, it could be accessed by administrators or leaked in a breach if governance is not tight. Training users to avoid including sensitive information in prompts is an important part of the adoption programme.

Security vulnerabilities

CoPilot's deep integration with M365 apps means it inherits any vulnerabilities in those services. A compromised user account with high privileges - such as a SharePoint administrator - could allow an attacker to use CoPilot to extract sensitive data quickly. Good security measures, including multi-factor authentication and privileged access management, must be in place before deployment. Our managed security services include these controls as standard.

Compliance in regulated industries

In regulated industries - healthcare under HIPAA, financial services under FCA and PCI-DSS - CoPilot's outputs might not align with strict data-handling rules. If it generates a report from mislabelled or unprotected files, you could inadvertently violate GDPR or other regulations. CoPilot's dynamic nature also makes it harder to audit compared to traditional workflows. Organisations in regulated sectors should work with a compliance-aware IT partner to assess the implications before deployment.

Over-reliance and skill degradation

Employees who lean too heavily on CoPilot for tasks like writing emails or analysing data may reduce their critical thinking over time. Inaccurate summaries or errors can go unnoticed if staff stop reviewing AI output carefully. The solution is to frame AI as an assistant that requires human oversight, not a replacement for human judgment. This should be embedded in training from day one.

Cost and governance overhead

AI tools are marketed as productivity boosters, but they require setup, data classification, permission tightening, and ongoing monitoring to avoid pitfalls. This can inflate total costs beyond the license fee. A realistic business case should account for the time and resource required to deploy AI properly, not just the headline cost per user per month.

Every organisation needs an AI strategy

It is vital that all organisations have an AI strategy with appropriate policies, even if that strategy states 'do nothing'. AI is an invasive technology which many of your staff are currently using without controls or policies - and your competitors will be using or planning its use to empower their teams and reduce operating costs.

At the very least, Wavex recommends an initial AI workshop, which provides the Board with a business case covering potential options and costs, allowing the organisation to decide on its future AI strategy from an informed position. As John Buyers of Osborne Clark has noted: 'AI regulation is inevitable, whether through unitary measures like the EU AI Act or the sector-based approach advocated by the UK. Now is the time to think responsibly about getting your own house in order and proactively managing your own enterprise AI.'

If you are ready to explore what AI could do for your organisation, our team can guide you through every step - from the initial readiness assessment and data governance review, through to deployment, training, and ongoing optimisation. Contact us to book an AI workshop, or explore our managed IT services and Microsoft 365 and Azure pages to understand the broader technology foundation that makes AI deployment successful.