PA Consulting trials Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot for Sales as 'customer zero' with 300 early-access users

Overview

From September 2023, 300 PA Consulting people had access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Copilot for Sales through Microsoft's Early Access Program. Users reported an average of three hours saved each week, and PA says it could save over 45,000 hours per year across the 300-person cohort. PA then defined five priority sales use cases with Copilot for Sales and Dynamics 365 Sales, including pre-qualifying requests for proposals, and was testing them before wider rollout.

The challenge

PA Consulting wanted to understand how Copilot can benefit businesses and drive tangible returns by treating itself as "customer zero", and how time saved could be repurposed. Before Copilot, pre-qualifying a request for proposals could take hours of consolidating information from proposal documents and previous submissions.

The solution

PA gave 300 people access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Copilot for Sales, then focused on five priority sales use cases using Copilot for Sales and Dynamics 365 Sales. One use case pre-qualifies requests for proposals based on PA's capabilities, previous win rates and client relationships, and Copilot can compile information from Dynamics 365 and meeting summaries from a single prompt.

Reported business value

Early users reported time savings of an average of three hours each week, including through note taking, meeting summarization and agenda drafting. PA says that from early trials it could save over 45,000 hours per year across a cohort of 300 people, while noting that time saved is not a benefit in itself and that it cannot be confident in any benefits case until user adoption is fully embedded. Pre-qualifying an RFP, which could take hours, could soon be completed in 30 seconds.