Reports of businesses preventing employees from using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools might seem like an anti-innovation stance.
Yet Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that 70% of people would delegate as much tasks as possible to AI if it could lessen their workloads.
But what is Generative AI?
Generative AI, or GenAI, uses machine learning models to generate new content and insights. GenAI can produce original text, code, visual assets, and more to augment human capabilities through technology like ChatGPT and Claude AI.
But, with privacy and data security risks, it’s no wonder that GenAI tools pose a concern for IT leaders. To protect data and organisational reputation, governance is needed to ensure compliance.
Adopting GenAI that is contained within your organisation is a safer starting point. That’s the critical message Microsoft is emphasising with its Copilot products.
For instance, Microsoft Copilot is an intelligent natural language interface to sales data. It integrates across Dynamics 365, Outlook and Teams, providing lead summaries, meeting prep information, email generation and real-time coaching to help sellers save time and work more efficiently.
Let’s examine how Sales Copilot helps sellers capitalise on AI productivity benefits and work safely.
Data Stays Within Your Systems
Copilot works exclusively within the boundaries of your existing systems.
To ensure it doesn’t open the door to new risks, Copilot is grounded in your data and trusted resources. Sales Copilot-specific data, including settings or generated insights, remain stored in your system.
By bringing AI directly into Outlook, Teams and Dynamics 365, Copilot assists sellers in real-time without persisting copies of data. This includes generating summaries of leads, opportunities and meetings on demand that help sellers interpret information, gain context, and reclaim time.
Aligned to Your Security Policies
Copilot doesn’t alter data governance policies. It follows your existing compliance, data retention and privacy policies across CRM and Microsoft 365 environments. This includes adhering to user roles, permissions and access controls configured in Dynamics 365 and M365.
Admins maintain control through the familiar D365 and M365 management tools. Copilot accesses CRM data within these pre-defined security policies and user permissions.
As a result, Copilot for Sales responses to an identical prompt may vary depending on individual user permission settings.
How Sales Copilot Security Works
The Copilot for Sales interface runs in Dynamics, Outlook and Teams, while the AI brainpower resides in Microsoft’s secure cloud.
Sales Copilot keeps your data contained within your systems. Behind the scenes it comprises:
- Large Language Model (LLM) hosted in Azure Open AI.
- Microsoft Graph containing user-level messages and meeting data.
- Experiences for Microsoft 365 apps including Outlook and Team.
- Connection with your sales CRM data in Dynamics 365 (Salesforce is also supported).
- External data sources can also be connected using Power Platform connectors.
From a natural language prompt, Copilot for Sales retrieves relevant information from Microsoft Graph, including emails and calendar information as appropriate. It also retrieves relevant details from the connected CRM, storing customer and opportunity information.
The combined information is assembled and presented to the LLM, which is granted temporary external knowledge to inform its response along with what it already knows.
Finally, post-processing is designed to remove any hallucinations to ensure accurate and appropriate responses.
This process does not store customer data in the LLM or train the model. In contrast to public GenAI tools, Sales Copilot doesn’t involve replicating customer data lakes or system modelling.
Insights generated are immediately served to sellers and stored within your environment.
The Outlook add-in and Teams app are designed to integrate seamlessly with these underlying services that power AI capabilities. None of the code runs directly on employee devices as it is cloud-hosted and managed by Microsoft.
By meeting sellers where they work, Copilot features feel like a natural part of workflows to minimise time spent moving between interfaces. Its architecture protects data while delivering AI-powered productivity features directly within the tools sellers use daily.
Encrypted In Transit and At Rest
Copilot for Sales secures data through proven encryption technologies. This includes TLS encryption that protects all customer data in transit between Copilot components and services.
Encryption at rest follows the native capabilities of Dynamics 365 and M365. Also, encryption schemes meet regional compliance requirements for handling regulated data, including GDPR.
Responsible and Secure AI
Sales Copilot conforms to Microsoft’s responsible AI practices and is designed to assist, not replace, human sellers.
For instance, Copilot will make recommendations, but it doesn’t automatically take action. Sellers remain in control throughout.
As we’ve highlighted, this is grounded in your organisation’s data to address risks of unsafe AI output. Part of the Azure ecosystem, Copilot inherits security, compliance, and privacy policies to enforce authentication and doesn’t use customer data to train AI models.
Next steps…
According to a report by Nucleus Research in April 2023, specialised AI technology is predicted to boost productivity by 10-35%.
Copilot aims to capitalise on these benefits by supporting sellers with automated tasks, auto-generated emails, meeting summaries, and other time-saving features. Utilising AI-powered real-time insights, sellers can experience a significant increase in productivity.
Designed for security and privacy, Copilot is GenAI built into your cloud environment that belongs exclusively to your organisation.
These clear distinctions separate Copilot from ChatGPT and other tools for the reassurance of embracing responsible AI that doesn’t compromise security and compliance.
Are you ready to harness Copilot for Sales while ensuring your data remains safe and compliant? ServerSys are here to help.
Contact us today for guidance on configuring Copilot for Sales to fit into your workflows. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to boost your sales team’s productivity while safeguarding your data.
Related:
- What Early Adopters Reveal About Copilot
- How Sales Copilot Improves Dynamics 365 and Outlook Integration to Boost Productivity
- Sales Copilot Architecture Overview
