To be honest, thanking the government isn’t always on our to-do list. But when it comes to adopting Copilot – perhaps it should be!
That’s because the Australian Government’s Copilot trial uncovered some valuable lessons for all of us when it comes to introducing AI. Yes, even for small businesses in regional NSW.
When it comes to rolling out AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot, regardless of size and scale, the challenges are surprisingly similar – and in some cases, even more relevant to smaller teams.
Truth be told, the government probably hadn’t expected too many problems during their large-scale, real-world trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot across multiple public service agencies. After all, they had the luxury of dedicated IT teams, significant budgets, and months to prepare.
Yet, they still hit some big speed bumps. And if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.
To save you the trouble of reading the official report, here’s our speed bump summary:
Speed bump #1: Messy data is the real risk (not AI!)
If you’re speed-reading this blog – we suggest this is the one pointer you should definitely slow down and pay attention to. Because this is the big bump. And for small businesses, it’s often a far larger issue than people realise.
During the trial, participants pointed out that there were times when Copilot shared sensitive data that staff hadn’t classified, secured, or stored appropriately. All of which should have been done before adopting Copilot.
The report was clear: It wasn’t a problem with Copilot – it was a governance and data management issue.
Now, large government agencies tend to have an advantage over the rest of us. They have complex data classification systems and dedicated teams to manage them – whereas most small businesses don’t. (That’s just the reality of running a mean, lean operation where everyone’s wearing three hats.)
But it does mean that when you introduce a tool as powerful as Copilot – one that can reach into and rummage around your SharePoint, your emails, your documents – what it finds is only as safe as how you’ve stored it.
Think of Copilot as a keen new employee on their first day. They’ve been given open access to your entire office – every folder, every file, and every document left open on someone’s desk. If things are well organised and access is properly set up, brilliant. If not, that’s a problem.
“So, before you hand Copilot the keys, ask yourself: ‘If AI could see everything in our systems right now, would that be okay?’
If the honest answer is “umm, probably not!”, it’s worth sorting that before letting Copilot loose on your business. That’s exactly the kind of thing we help with.
Speed bump #2: Prompt engineering is a real skill – and most people don’t have it yet
This is the one that surprises people the most.
Most of us assume you just type a question and Copilot delivers the goods. But (just like a Google search) the quality of what you get back depends a lot on how well you ask.
The report found that prompt engineering (yes, that’s a thing) was viewed as one of the highest learning curves among trial participants. However, most noted it’s not a skill that many have – it takes time, training and consistent experimentation to develop.
They also found that tailoring your prompts to specify the style, tone or format of the content you want greatly improved how effective Copilot was at providing the right information, first time around. Those who gave no or few prompts had their lack of effort rewarded with generic, out-of-context responses that simply didn’t do the job.
The good news? Prompting is absolutely a learnable skill. Even a half-day of practical training makes a real difference to what your team gets out of Copilot day-to-day. And when you’re a small team, having a couple of people who are genuinely good at prompting will benefit all of you.
(By the way – we run those training sessions – at your place or via Teams.)
Speed bump #3: Don’t forget the people at the top
In a small business, this one hits differently.
Part of the report process was creating a survey asking managers if they were confident that they could consistently identify the difference between outputs produced with Copilot and those produced without.
Only around 36% of managers ticked the ‘yes’ box.
While managers may trust their staff to verify what they produce, the majority of managers couldn’t recognise Copilot outputs themselves. They had no idea whether it was AI-generated and trusted that if it was, a staff member had checked it before sharing it.
Now that may be ok in a larger organisation, where there are layers of review and sign-off between an AI output and something going out the door. But in a small business? Often, it’s the owner, a senior team member… or no one at all.
You can well imagine it. AI drafts something inaccurate – say a client email, a quote, a policy document, a test result – and no one catches it before it goes out. Yep, the impact on your reputation and relationships can be fast and hard to fix.
As a safeguard, training should include whoever is reviewing and approving work – not just the team members producing it.
Speed bump #4: Copilot works best inside the Microsoft world
This is another speed bump worth knowing before you start planning to connect Copilot to everything.
Copilot is available through apps within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem – think Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint. However, when you want to access data or applications that sit outside your Microsoft solutions, you need to use plugins or Microsoft Graph connectors. For the non-Microsoft business, this quickly limits the potential benefits of using Copilot.
If you’re a small-medium business already running on Microsoft 365, then Copilot will slot into your business without a lot of extra complexity.
But it’s trickier if your business relies heavily on industry-specific software or non-Microsoft tools. In that case, there’s still a path forward, but it may need a bit more setup. That’s the kind of conversation worth having before you buy licences and hit go.
How can you dodge the speed bumps?
No one likes hitting a speed bump. And when you’re a small or medium-sized business, you can’t afford to lose forward momentum or even bottom out.
The thing to remember is that the speed bumps in the government trial weren’t caused by the technology failing. They were caused by the same things that trip up businesses of any size: unclear processes, untrained people, and data that wasn’t ready.
So – let’s look at how you get the most from Copilot:
The great thing about being a small business is that you can move quickly when you get this stuff right. You don’t need months of change management or a steering committee. You just need a plan, the right tools, and a bit of support to get going.
Ready to give it a proper go?
We’ve been helping Central West businesses get more out of Microsoft 365 for years. We reckon Copilot is one of the most genuinely useful additions to that toolkit we’ve seen – and we’re keen to help you get it right from the start.
Whether you want to check that your data is in good shape, run a training session for your team, or just have a no-pressure chat about where to start – we’re here.
