According to the most recent Salesforce State of IT Report, the average enterprise business uses more than 1000 applications in support of their organization. These digital tools provide capabilities and resources for everything from customer relationship management and supply chain optimization to enterprise service management. And for employees, managing these tools often means navigating disconnected systems, spending valuable time on repetitive tasks, struggling to locate essential information, and facing delays that hinder productivity. The solution is to give your employees an AI copilot.
Here, we explore how AI copilots are transforming the workplace through intelligent automation and guided support. Discover what copilots do, take a closer look at how they operate, and learn about the real-world use cases driving their adoption.
What does an AI copilot do?
At the most basic, a ‘copilot’ is an AI assistant; and it provides intelligent support via chat — and typically supports employees or customers. Leveraging AI/ML capabilities and generative AI, these copilots boost workplace productivity. They can answer questions directly, summarize content, offer references, and integrate with various enterprise applications to streamline search and productivity tasks. Imagine an experienced digital coworker who understands your organization's intricacies, applications, and systems. However, unlike human colleagues, AI copilots can be available whenever you need them, are multilingual, and capable of handling complex queries. Advanced agentic copilots can even automate actions and trigger workflows.
By combining intelligence with automation, AI copilots can address inefficiencies, accelerating productivity and engagement. For instance, a customer service copilot can quickly resolve routine inquiries, freeing human agents to focus on more complex issues. AI copilots offer immense potential, however it's also important to use careful consideration and strategic planning when selecting a copilot and introducing it to your organization. You’ll want to ensure your copilot can prioritize trustworthy conversational AI and take a comprehensive approach to security and data privacy.
This ability to blend intelligence with automation allows AI copilots to address the inefficiencies that slow down employees and organizations, setting the stage for greater productivity and engagement.
The need for AI copilots
Research suggests that the average employee spends as much as two hours every day just looking for information, solutions, or experts to help them fulfill tasks. Two hours might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but added up that equals 10 hours per 40-hour work week—and just imagine how much time can be lost across your entire organization!
Put another way, your employees may be applying 25% of their time towards hunting for answers. This isn’t just a problem for the individual; collectively speaking, when potentially thousands of employees across the enterprise find themselves mired in navigating difficult IT environments, the productivity cost becomes significant. It’s an inefficient use of everyone’s time, and it leads to frustrated, unsatisfied employees across the board. The right AI copilots bridge this gap, connecting users directly with the systems they need in the very instant they need them.
But the value of AI copilots extends far beyond streamlining search and retrieval. These systems also automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as resetting passwords, managing approvals, or processing routine forms. By taking these tasks off employees’ plates, AI copilots allow them to focus on higher-value work, reducing operational bottlenecks and improving overall efficiency.
At the same time, copilots enhance the impact and effectiveness of other tools. Enabling seamless interaction with backend systems and applications, they promote the increased use of available technologies—simplifying complex workflows and making advanced features more accessible. This ensures that organizations can fully leverage their investments in enterprise software to drive higher productivity and better outcomes.
How do AI copilots work?
AI copilots combine the power of natural language processing and machine learning to provide fast, accurate and scalable support to your organization. Using natural language processing (NLP) backed by machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLMs), the copilot interprets user requests in real time, pulling from relevant data sources to deliver precise responses.
Breaking down the process into its constituent steps, copilots typically function like this:
- Data ingestion: The copilot begins by processing vast amounts of data from diverse sources—documents, emails, databases, and other enterprise systems (to name a few). This data is consolidated and organized to create a unified knowledge base, with structured and unstructured data for a full spectrum of resources. This will form the foundation for accurate and informed responses.
- Understanding user intent: Using NLP, the copilot analyzes user requests, determining the context and intent behind each query. Whether it's a simple question or a more complex issue, the copilot is designed to accurately interpret the context and nuances of the input to identify the most relevant solution.
- Contextual response generation: Once the copilot understands the request, it employs LLMs and enterprise-specific data to generate contextually relevant responses. Advanced copilots reference prior interactions and relevant enterprise information, enabling responses to be more updated, accurate and offer applicable solutions.
- Task automation: Beyond just answering questions, agentic AI copilots also excel at performing tasks autonomously. From the relatively simple action of resetting passwords to the more complex process of processing expense reports, the copilot can handle these responsibilities directly, eliminating the need for employees to navigate multiple applications or invest more of their valuable time.
- Continuous learning and adaptation: ML algorithms analyze interactions to identify patterns and improve future responses. This adaptive learning process makes copilots more efficient and effective over time.
Common use cases for AI copilots
Traditional information retrieval and employee support tools can be limited—they don’t do much more than the specific tasks they were programmed to do. AI copilots are not these traditional tools.
Demonstrating human-like intelligence and initiative, advanced copilots use reasoning and agentic capabilities to fill the role of a proactive problem solver, anticipating needs, learning from interactions, and adapting to new challenges. And they do all of this while effortlessly integrating across complex business systems to help to deliver solutions in real time.
AI copilots can act as a solutionists, and as such, more organizations are turning to copilots to help employees cut through the noise of disconnected systems and focus on the work that matters. Here’s how:
Resolving IT issues without human intervention
Too many support tickets? It’s a common problem for IT help desks, and it has a tendency to keep an organization’s IT experts too busy with mundane tasks to accomplish their strategic goals. AI copilots step in to resolve routine issues instantly, typically with the need for minimal human intervention.
For example, when an employee is locked out of their account, the copilot can guide them through a secure reset process and regain access without IT ever needing to get involved. Consider how Webflow was able to resolve 50% of IT issues with an AI copilot. These capacities cut down on response times and reduce ticket volumes, helping to give the IT department more breathing room to tackle higher-value tasks.
Improving customer support with faster resolutions
Copilots shine in their capacity to assist internal users, but what about those essential users from outside the organization? Customer service teams spend a significant amount of time handling common queries—providing shipping updates, sharing product information, or troubleshooting possible issues.
AI copilots process these requests instantly, delivering detailed, context-rich responses that are as personalized as they are accurate. And, for those times when human agents need to become involved, AI copilots can escalate the conversation to dedicated experts, providing all the relevant context and data to create a seamless transition.
Enhancing employee onboarding experiences
It takes time for new hires to get up to speed. Unfortunately, for both employees and employers, this is time that may not be available. When onboarding processes are complicated, disjointed journeys, it can lead to a disengaging first impression that sets a sour tone right from the start. AI copilots streamline onboarding by guiding employees through each stage of the process, telling them exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it, and how it should be done.
Consider how Palo Alto Networks was able to use a copilot to support its hybrid workforce at scale and save 351,000 hours. With a copilot, you can help to ensure new hires complete required forms, gain the right system access, and understand company policies. A copilot moves them quickly through onboarding and into a better situation for fulfilling their roles within the company.
Orchestrating cross-departmental workflows
One of the greatest challenges enterprises face is managing workflows that span multiple departments and systems. Advanced copliots excel at helping to orchestrate these processes, by integrating across departments and applications to help to automate complex workflows and business processes. Consider a scenario where an IT professional needs to provision software for a new employee. The copilot can ensure all the necessary approvals are obtained, notify relevant stakeholders, and update all connected systems once provisioning is complete.
What does a Copilot do? Empower every employee to work smarter
Sometimes, the right partner can make all the difference—and Moveworks’ AI Copilot is designed to be that partner. Moveworks Copilot goes beyond basic assistance, navigating complex enterprise systems, providing accurate and context aware solutions, and responding to user queries immediately as they arise.
By unifying disparate tools, automating workflows, and delivering intelligent responses, Moveworks Copilot helps to remove friction and accelerate employee productivity.
Learn more about how Moveworks Copilot unlocks employee productivity. Demo Moveworks and see our Copilot in action!
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