Case study
They rolled out Copilot to save time. It kept guessing wrong.
A professional-services firm asked us to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot. Speed was never the issue; knowledge was scattered and ungoverned, so Copilot grounded on the wrong sources and answered confidently from them.
- Reclaimed per person, per week
- 5 hrsReclaimed per person, per weekFrom drafting and searching
- Faster proposals and RFPs
- 30%Faster proposals and RFPs
- Less time hunting for documents
- 50%Less time hunting for documents
What they asked for
"Roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot so the team saves time on emails and documents."
Typing speed wasn't the bottleneck. Knowledge was scattered across drives and sites with messy permissions, so Copilot grounded on the wrong data: fast answers no one could trust.
The challenge
The firm bought Copilot expecting an instant productivity lift. Instead, lawyers and consultants got plausible-sounding answers drawn from outdated templates, superseded matters and the wrong client folders.
Knowledge scattered, not governed. Current and obsolete versions sat side by side across SharePoint, OneDrive and email; Copilot couldn't tell which to trust.
Permissions were a mess. Over-broad SharePoint permissions meant Copilot could surface, and pull from, things people shouldn't see.
No grounding, no adoption. Without governed sources or trained prompts, people tried Copilot once, got a wrong answer, and quietly stopped.
What we built
Govern the data first. A SharePoint permissions cleanup and oversharing fix, then a defined set of governed sources Copilot may ground on, so answers come from current, correct material.
Ground it, target the work. Copilot grounded on those trustworthy sources, with the highest-value use cases built out (proposals and RFPs, client and matter summaries) against a tested prompt library.
Drive adoption. A structured adoption programme (training, prompt patterns, champions) turned a tool people had abandoned into one they rely on.
The lift never comes from the licence. It comes from what the licence is allowed to read.
Recognise any of this in your own estate?
Start with the problem rather than the technology, and we will tell you honestly whether it is ours to solve.
A tier-2 automotive-components supplier feeding just-in-time under IATF 16949
The parts passed inspection. The defects shipped anyway.
A North American consumer-goods manufacturer with six plants and two distribution centres
The information existed. The floor couldn't reach it.
An illustrative engagement: a mid-sized manufacturer, with figures representative of comparable Fabric and Power BI deployments
By the time the report landed, the month was already lost.