Insight Enterprises achieves 93% Microsoft Copilot use rate, streamlining business operations to pave the way for customer success

Global solutions integrator Insight Enterprises (Insight) is fueled by a passion for serving its clients first, prioritizing technology innovation to boost its productivity and client success. The company has long been at the forefront of exploring and incorporating AI into the workplace. As an early adopter of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Insight is transforming its organization by incorporating features such as meeting summaries, content creation, and standardization into its daily workflow. The company’s investment in educating and empowering its Copilot users has created a cadre of experienced teammates delivering value internally and facilitating Copilot adoption for its clients.

Pioneering generative AI in the modern workplace

With its broad footprint and customer-centric approach, Insight has prioritized being at the forefront of exploring AI for business operations. Employees were early users of ChatGPT, and the company collaborated with Microsoft to create an internal AI service called Insight GPT using Microsoft Azure solution Azure OpenAI Service. As generative AI–powered tools began entering the market around 2023, the company was eager to incorporate them into its daily workflow to boost business productivity.

“We believe in the transformative power of AI and the importance of our partnership with Microsoft,” says Joyce Mullen, President and CEO of Insight. “Insight was one of the first organizations to access Azure OpenAI Service, and we built our internally protected GPT model and rolled it out to our teammates in under five weeks. We encountered unexpected use cases and problems. And that’s a good thing. Our early adoption of generative AI and hands-on experience with Microsoft tools allowed us to better understand the technology, identify best practices, and develop expertise our clients need to succeed—long before they even knew they’d need our help.”

A longtime Microsoft partner, Insight uses Microsoft products and services throughout its business, making Copilot for Microsoft 365 a natural choice. The company participated in the Early Access Program (EAP) for Copilot, which uses generative AI to work across Microsoft 365 applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. “The EAP was really impactful for us because we could actually see what Copilot looked like in the wild,” says Ryan Schellenberg, Senior Manager, Modern Work, at Insight Canada, a subsidiary of Insight. 

Offering a unique combination of hardware, software, and services solutions at scale to its clients worldwide, Insight wanted to translate its own experiences to accelerate its clients’ AI journeys. “Because of our synergy and being so tightly aligned with Microsoft, we can benefit ourselves in the daily workflow while building the technical muscles that we can then take to our clients in the market,” says Mike Crampton, Collaboration Practice Manager at Insight Canada.

Maximizing value through collaboration and education

Insight quickly realized that collaboration and sharing use cases across the business would maximize the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365. The company expanded its base of users, adding personnel from sales, finance, and human resources (HR) to incorporate Copilot into their daily routines. Insight developed internal trainings for employees to learn how to use Copilot, and the company began weekly “office hours” for users to share practical tips.

“The internal adoption journey and cross-collaboration between our teams were important to our overall success,” says Crampton. “A valuable lesson that we continue to share is that you can’t just turn this type of technology on and go. You have to continually enable your organization and help them shift the way they think about their tools.”

Support from Insight’s senior leadership also played a critical role in prioritizing Copilot, giving teammates the time and resources to learn the new technology. “Our leadership team is fully bought into this and helping to support the adoption, which is huge,” says Reem Gedeon, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Insight Canada.

Achieving a 93% use rate and customer outreach gains

With employees learning more about the capabilities of Copilot, user engagement increased substantially within three months. In March 2024, Insight’s employees who had access to Copilot had a use rate of 43%. By June, the rate had risen to 93%, and staff members were finding new efficiencies in multiple business operations. “We were the first Microsoft partner to deliver a Copilot readiness assessment in Canada, and we established ourselves as the go-to for all things Copilot,” says Schellenberg.

Globally speaking, of the 4,600 Insight teammates with access to Copilot, 85% are regular users. Teammates in Canada specifically valued the Copilot-generated meeting summaries, and one team restructured the flow of its meetings, specifying topics and key points to make the summaries more effective. The HR and finance departments are using Copilot to streamline content creation and standardize their approach to internal business documents.

Insight is also using Copilot to better serve its clients. The company can respond to customer requests for proposals (RFPs) about 50% more quickly with Copilot compiling information about industry and market trends to generate rough drafts. “Responding to an RFP can be a beast,” says Schellenberg. “We were able to get one in and out in only two days, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that without Copilot.”

The company capitalized on its early access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 to prepare clients for their own generative AI journeys, offering free demonstrations to its clients while Copilot was still in the early stages and developing a robust readiness assessment resource. The company also evaluated and developed expertise on security and governance issues that might arise for clients. 

Digging deeper to accelerate future AI business use

As Insight has begun incorporating generative AI into its workplace and having earned the Microsoft AI and Copilot Partner of the Year award in 2024, the company is excited to dig deeper into how to use it internally and for clients. “As someone who’s been in technology for many years, I can say this is a technology to get excited about,” says Trish O’Keefe, Director, Microsoft Alliance, at Insight Canada. 

Insight considers its ability to anticipate future innovation as a critical aspect of serving its current and potential client base. “It’s good to be looking ahead and trying to predict what’s coming,” says Crampton. “You’re not always going to get it right, but we benefited from speculating around Copilot and how our customers would want to use it. We were able to get ahead of the curve for our customers.”