Microsoft 365 Copilot drove up to 353% ROI for small and medium businesses—new study

As a small or medium-sized business (SMB) leader, you’ve likely heard a lot about generative AI and how it’s transforming businesses of all sizes. To better understand how AI is helping businesses grow and compete, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to study the potential return on investment (ROI) of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMBs.

The results of the study are eye-opening. Forrester’s New Technology: Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMB¹ projects that over a three-year period, businesses can experience a return on investment (ROI) ranging from 132% to 353%.²

Moreover, the study reports that businesses are already experiencing the transformational impact of AI for their organizations in the following areas:

• Faster time to market
• Increased productivity
• Improved employee satisfaction

Let’s take a closer look at how early adopters of Copilot have used the power of AI to transform their businesses, while keeping their data secure with enterprise data protection.

Investing in Copilot delivers substantial returns for SMBs

The Forrester study demonstrates the transformative results that AI can help bring to businesses—making Copilot not just a productivity tool but a strategic investment for long-term growth:

• 6% increase in net revenue
• 20% reduction in operating costs
• 25% acceleration in new-hire onboarding

“Upskilling on AI now is absolutely critical to being prepared for its capabilities in a few years. In five years, running a business without Copilot would be like trying to run a company today using typewriters instead of computers.”

—Forrester Study: Head Vice President of Technology Services, IT Services and Business Consulting

Turning innovation into action with faster time to market

Bringing new products to market faster and promptly meeting customer demands are critical for business success. Forrester’s study highlights how Copilot can help accelerate revenue growth and open doors to additional business opportunities.

The study found that 24% of businesses experienced a 16% to 20% reduction in time to market for new products, and 27% of businesses saw improvements in time to market ranging from 11% to 15%. These improvements can help you enhance your agility and increase competitiveness in the market.

“With Copilot, we have faster turnarounds…with the ability to turn things around more quickly, clients can come to us with more work. It can be 15% more business.”

—Forrester Study: Head Vice President of Technology Services, Managed Technology Solutions

You can optimize your business processes by working with Copilot to map out your workflow and ask Copilot for recommendations to eliminate inefficiencies. Then you can share the list of recommendations with your team for feedback before deciding how to move forward. Copilot can help ensure projects move forward without delays—ask Copilot to provide updates on your team’s progress to quickly identify where support is needed.

Increasing productivity across your business

Employees at small and medium-sized businesses often wear multiple hats, doing jobs across different departments, and sometimes having less time to spend on their own projects. Copilot can help address this challenge by taking on routine, repetitive tasks, helping teams to focus on more strategic work.

Forrester’s study shows that 51% of businesses using Copilot reported a 1% to 10% reduction in supply chain costs, while 59% saw operating costs decrease by 1% to 20%. This can help you to shift resources toward growth-focused initiatives without overwhelming your team.

“In terms of getting the information to the various departments and having my legal assistants then redo it, so they can enter that data and answer questions from other departments more easily. My guess is on contract review we’ll save at least 50% of time in the coming years.” 

—Forrester study: General Counsel, Chief Diversity Officer at the Staffing, IT, and Business Solutions Firm

With Copilot, your team can quickly find critical details from client contracts or vendor agreements and have emails from key clients prioritized, helping to ensure that the most urgent emails are addressed first. Copilot can also gather data from spreadsheets and text documents, analyze it, and create easy-to-understand charts and tables for faster decision-making.

Enhancing employee satisfaction and retention

The study also highlights Copilot’s impact on employee satisfaction. By freeing up time for employees to collaborate more effectively and take on more fulfilling tasks, SMBs have experienced or anticipated, on average, an 18% increase in employee satisfaction, with a corresponding 11% to 20% reduction in employee churn.

“People have a lot of anxiety [about going] on vacation because of what they’re going to miss. Well, the ability to ramp up fast with summarization on a lot of those key meetings doesn’t just save the person the time, but it also is going to save the other leaders in the organization the time to have to ramp them up.”
—Forrester study: President, Staffing, IT, and Business Solutions

Use Copilot to help pull together training materials and build presentations so you quickly bring new team members up to speed. Copilot’s meeting and email summaries also allow your employees to stay on top of work, even when they miss a meeting. This can help reduce stress and help create smoother transitions between projects, fostering a more inclusive and productive work environment.

Now is the right time to invest in AI. We are here to help.

With potential benefits like increased revenue, faster time to market, and significant ROI, Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a valuable investment for SMBs looking to thrive in a competitive market.

To find out more about the Forrester findings and learn how you can best implement Copilot for your business, please join our webinar on October 31, 2024, 9 AM PST to 10 AM PST.

To use Copilot across all your Microsoft 365 apps and work data, you can purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot as an add-on to your Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Standard, or Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscriptions. If you do not already have these core productivity offerings, you can purchase them now.

Find out more about Microsoft 365 Copilot or reach out to a Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner to learn more.

You can also learn how to make Copilot part of your everyday business activities by exploring the new Copilot Success Kit for Small and Medium-Sized Business, which provides resources on licensing, technical requirements, and AI capabilities.

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Sources:

1. “New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™: Of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMB,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft. Results are based on Microsoft 365 Copilot customer interviews and surveys of over 200 companies with up to 300 employees across various industries, from retail to financial services.
2. Forrester modeled a range of projected low-, medium-, and high-impact outcomes based on evaluated risk. This financial analysis projects that the composite organization accrues the following three-year net present value (NPV) for each scenario by enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot: 
   • Projected high impact of a $955,000 NPV and projected ROI of 353%. 
   • Projected medium impact of a $658,000 NPV and projected ROI of 243%. 
   • Projected low impact of a $358,000 NPV and projected ROI of 132%.