Copilots for business are a game-changing innovation. People have already started asking questions like: “Will AI replace humans or business systems?“.According to our Co-Founder and dynamics 365 business central consultant Thomas, AI will not replace humans and systems; instead, AI will replace humans and systems not using AI.
Before Copilots and generative AI, chatbots on websites were used to service a limited set of support requests. Development teams build these chatbots with pre-written frequently asked questions and the answers, provided by the business.
These chatbots were limited in utility, responded to a fixed and narrow set of questions. These chatbots resembled ATM machines i-e fixed options to use fixed set of services. Today, generative AI empowers modern-day chatbots, now called Copilots. Copilots are more powerful, dynamic and useful for businesses and customers alike.
What is a Copilot?
Copilots are powerful modern-day chatbots which provide AI-powered assistance to your business, to better serve your employees and customers. Businesses leverage them to creatively solve their business and operational challenges. This results in better utilization of resources, leading to operational efficiency and business growth.
Copilots can empower all your business units such as manufacturing, finance, supply chain, product support, and essentially everything.
How does a copilot work?
In contrast to the traditional question-answer structure used by chatbots, Copilots use documents from your knowledge base. The document can be an onboarding manual or employee vacation policy. When a user types a question(prompt), Copilot uses generative AI to build an answer from the documents in real-time. Use of natural language instructions (prompts) is the biggest advantage of generative AI. Interacting with Copilot provides an experience similar to one with a support person. This flexibility and support saves time, effort, and costs by reducing frequent email transfers. Some of the common areas where copilots contribute to operational efficiency are manufacturing, finance, inventory management, and e-commerce.
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Applications of Copilot for Business
Copilots use natural language instructions(prompts) and reasoning built into LLMs(Large Language Models) to retrieve information residing in your knowledge base, to better service customers and employees. This also boosts business responsiveness to internal and external stakeholders.
Common scenarios are described below as Copilot use cases for business.
- Instead of spending time writing and revising similar information repeatedly. A manufacturing manager who needs to write a draft BOM for a manufacturing job, types his requirement as a natural language text to generate a draft BOM. Copilot builds a draft BOM using the knowledge base in split of a second. Now this draft BOM is used as is or tweaked if required. Saved time, effort, and hassle.
- Visualize a business central inventory management screen. The operator uses the following simple prompts to filter, sort or summarize the inventory information on the screen. Prompt “Show low-stock items by category”; Copilot lists items grouped by category closer to the low stock threshold. Before generative AI and Copilots this information required technical updates and custom views/reports, and now it all happens in real-time.
- Quickly bring new hires up to speed, with minimal disruption by providing them a Copilot to answer job-related queries.
- Copilots create draft proposals, quotes and business related documents based on previous work from your knowledge base. For example, a solar vendor uses a prompt like “draft a proposal for solar capacity of 5000 watts”. Copilot creates the proposal on the fly by using your previous work. Now you tweak or send it without any modifications. You have saved your time writing the same information that has been written, probably a hundred times.
- Modern-day ERP systems like Dynamics 365 Business Central are the biggest beneficiaries of Copilots because they connect your business units via a unified data source. This unified data source allows Copilots to pull insights across your business units using natural language statements.
