Foundational Microsoft Copilot practice builds expertise, pipeline

Crayon has been a Microsoft Modern Work advisory and consultancy partner for more than 20 years, providing end-to-end services around identifying and implementing the right digital strategy to increase workplace productivity, collaboration, and security. When Microsoft 365 Copilot was announced, Crayon immediately recognized the power of using generative AI to revolutionize the workplace. The partner developed a Copilot practice with advisory services for understanding the Microsoft 365 Copilot opportunity and the workplace scenarios where it can drive value, technical services for helping organizations prepare their environments to implement it, and adoption and change management services to enable employees across customer organizations. “We also offer Copilot extensibility services, using Copilot Studio to increase the breadth and depth of Copilot capabilities with custom workflows and connectivity to new data sources,” said Alexander Waldhaus, VP of Cloud Services at Crayon.

As a participant in the Jumpstart program for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Crayon was able to launch its services in step with Microsoft 365 Copilot general availability. The new practice deployed 10,000 Copilot seats at a large multinational pharmaceutical company on day one. And after Microsoft 365 Copilot became available through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, the Crayon team only saw customers’ interest grow. “Copilot is a major force in supporting businesses who are looking to take proactive steps to digitally transform their organizations. If you want to implement AI into your day-to-day work, then Copilot is your logical choice – there is nothing even close available from competitors,” said Alexander. “We’ve already conducted hundreds of Copilot workshops around the world and only see it growing from here.”

Spirax Group sees surprising Copilot-driven productivity gains

One of the companies that Crayon has helped to adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot is Spirax Group, a global leader in industrial engineering focused on thermal energy and fluid technology solutions. The Group has a presence in 66 countries worldwide and is headquarted in Cheltenham, in the United Kingdom. The firm wanted to explore how generative AI features available in Microsoft 365 Copilot could help improve employee experience by streamlining certain tasks such as using summary reports to increase meeting efficiency and finding information and documents saved across Microsoft SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook faster, creating more time for value-adding activities.

The Spirax Group team reached out to Microsoft to start a pilot for 300 users, then engaged Crayon for its adoption and change management expertise. “We worked with the pilot users on identifying what use cases in daily life resonated with different roles across the company, and then built guidance to help them in these concrete scenarios,” said Alexandra Micheelsen, Team Lead, Digital Strategy Advisory at Crayon. “This adoption work was key to give the business an accurate understanding of how well Copilot could meet organizational goals.”

The pilot ran for a total of four months, and the impact was measured through surveys. Overall, Spirax Group found that, regardless of role, every member of the pilot saved a minimum of 20-30 minutes per week by using Microsoft 365 Copilot. The survey also indicated differences between different departments and that those in senior roles saved less time on average than more junior roles, given that senior staff were already quite efficient in their workday routines. Results also showed that a subset of users who actively embraced Copilot as part of their daily processes were able to save between 4 and 11 hours a week. “We had great collaboration from the Spirax Group team, and the extent of time savings these ‘power users’ were able to generate was impressive. There were definitely users who took the pilot very seriously and their effort showed how quickly Copilot can make a significant impact,” said Alexandra. “Because of these results, Spirax Group has already purchased an additional 500 licenses and will be continuing to build on this initial success across more roles and departments.”

Copilot unlocks new doors

While Crayon is just at the beginning of its practice journey with Microsoft 365 Copilot, the partner is excited to continue driving customer success with Copilot in such significant ways. “Copilot is becoming the connective tissue between a lot of our different service areas. It is helping us influence other projects with both new and existing customers,” said Alexander.

Crayon is also seeing Copilot open conversations with stakeholders that have previously been less accessible. “CEOs are receiving orders from their boards to investigate AI, so Copilot is enabling partners like us to be invited into those C-level meetings,” continued Alexander. “Copilot is helping us unlock closed doors and positioning us as an even more valuable resource to our clients.”

“Copilot is helping us unlock closed doors and positioning us as an even more valuable resource to our clients.”

— Alexander Waldhaus, VP of Cloud Services, Crayon

Crayon helps Spirax Group foster worker productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot