Insight Canada empowers clients to maximize Microsoft 365 Copilot value

With a robust readiness assessment and customizable adoption pilot program, Insight Canada teaches clients how to customize Copilot and create value—across industries.

April 17, 2025

When it comes to AI, early adoption isn’t just an advantage—it’s a multiplier. For every $1 invested in AI, businesses realize an average return of $3.5X. That kind of ROI underscores why forward-thinking organizations are prioritizing AI implementation now rather than playing catch-up later.

Insight Canada, a solutions and systems integrator and longtime Microsoft partner, knows the importance of early adoption better than most. Insight strives to help their clients understand and customize the technology that will help them streamline operations and create business value. Their goal: to help customers not just adopt but truly gain value from Microsoft technology—a pursuit reflected by their many specializations and awards, including the 2024 AI and Copilot Innovation Partner of the Year Award.

As one of the first Microsoft 365 Copilot adopters, Insight quickly realized the value of the always-evolving, integrated AI. Reem Gedeon, SVP and GM at Insight, said, “Being an early adopter of generative AI through Insight GPT—our internal GPT model that we developed collaboratively with Microsoft—was about more than just identifying its immense value. We put it in the hands of our teammates so they could learn the ins and outs before passing the benefits onto our clients. Our focus is always on meeting client needs as we deliver business outcomes—and empowering them to do the same for their customers.”

To help their customers stay ahead of the AI curve, they created a Copilot readiness evaluation offering, a discovery workshop, and an adoption pilot program—all built to walk customers along the funnel, show them how Copilot could work for their specific needs, and speed time-to-value.

Four icons representing Readiness Assessment Strategy Execution and Optimization

"We're not just a turn-it-on shop,” Mike Crampton, Manager and Practice Lead of the Modern Workforce Collaboration Team at Insight, explained. “We really drive the understanding of Microsoft technology and want to drive deep engagement. We’re not just coming in, turning on the tech, and leaving, but rather working with organizations to help them understand the value of what they’ve purchased—how they can customize it and really gain value.”

Evaluating how to maximize value of Copilot adoption

According to the Harvard Business Review, “tech adoption at an organizational level is often slow or even nonexistent” due to barriers such as cost, complexity, security, and skilling—so much so that it constitutes a “crisis” for many organizations.

Insight built their Copilot offerings to address these barriers and help organizations unlock value while still maintaining security. First, Insight developed a readiness assessment that focuses in large part on customers’ data estates. What Insight noticed was that, while many clients expressed interest in adopting Copilot, they were also concerned about their security posture. The readiness assessments backed up this concern, as they frequently found large gaps in customers’ security posture. To address these issues, Insight recommended built-in security in products such as Microsoft 365 E5, which has automatic data classification and protection capabilities. These initial assessments often end up becoming a springboard for larger recurring engagements, empowering Insight to dive deep into their clients’ needs and help them unlock the benefits of Microsoft technology beyond Copilot.

“Copilot is not just a technology product that you turn on and forget about. There’s a need for continual adoption and showing the value to drive usage of the product.”

—Mike Crampton, Manager and Practice Lead of the Modern Workforce Collaboration Team, Insight Canada

Empowering internal champions to drive lasting adoption

Instrumental to long-term success is Insight’s champions program, wherein departmental champions—internal employees working at their client organization—become internal subject matter experts on Copilot, supporting coworkers and continuing to innovate, test, and create new use cases.

A North American IT services and solutions provider initially engaged Insight to lead their Copilot adoption engagement. Through a series of persona sessions, Insight worked closely with the IT services provider to identify use cases and build a compelling business case for expanding adoption across the company.

One project manager quickly became a Copilot expert, developing sophisticated prompts that streamlined project workflows by generating templated meeting summaries that then seamlessly fed into clients’ weekly reports. She also used Copilot to create a structured risk register that outlined client issues, solutions, responsibilities, and follow-up actions in a clear, actionable format.

The impact of these efficiencies was so significant that the IT services provider’s project management office (PMO) lead recommended that the entire PMO team be equipped with Copilot licenses. By standardizing these AI-powered workflows, they were able to eliminate inconsistencies in their project management approach, helping deliver consistent, powerful, measurable results.

What started as a single champion experimenting with Copilot at the IT services provider turned into a full-scale transformation of their PMO, demonstrating the power of Insight’s approach to enabling long-term AI success.

Two people at a table discussing on a laptop

“When we come back to a client [after our Copilot adoption program], we typically see a license adoption increase between 120% and 400%.”

—Felicia Buckingham, Client Success Consultant, Insight Canada

Helping customers accelerate Copilot adoption

Insight’s adoption pilot program is similarly robust. Crampton said, “Copilot is not just a technology product that you turn on and forget about. There’s a need for continual adoption and showing the value to drive usage of the product.”

A leading Quebec-based law firm came to Insight after they recognized that leveraging Copilot could directly impact their ability to win new business. During a recent request for proposal process, for example, one of the key selection criteria was whether the firm actively used AI in its operations. Thanks to Insight’s structured adoption approach, the law firm was able to demonstrate Copilot’s role in enhancing their efficiency and reducing client costs, and ultimately, they won the contract.

The tangible benefits demonstrated during the pilot led the law firm to expand their investment, purchasing Copilot licenses firm-wide and working with Insight on broader technology upgrades, including a move to E5. They’re additionally interested in engaging Insight’s Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) service to improve their ability to detect and respond to threats surfaced through E5.

The law firm's experience underscores the real business impact of Insight’s structured, consistent adoption approach—helping organizations not just implement AI, but use it as a strategic advantage in competitive markets.

Shorter time to value and increased ROI across industries

“When we come back to a client, we typically see license adoption increase between 120% and 400%,” Felicia Buckingham, Client Success Consultant at Insight, said. “Not only are we getting their pilots kicked off, they're actually purchasing more licenses and deploying at a larger scale,” owing largely, she explained, to the careful onboarding Insight offers.

When a mid-sized global financial services firm engaged Insight to help with their Copilot adoption, the organization was considering cancelling their subscription, in large part due to a 70% adoption rate and employees who reported that they weren’t sure how to use the technology. Through their persona workshops, champion program, and consistent, tailored support, the financial services firm is now at a 96% adoption rate, and they’ve engaged Insight Canada for another adoption sprint to deepen their understanding of Copilot.

The financial services firm has also continued to scale its use of Copilot, tapping into additional Microsoft adoption funding and expanding deployment into the UK, while Insight remains a key partner in driving awareness and training employees on newly released Copilot capabilities. What started as a hesitant investment has turned into a full-scale success story, with the financial services firm’s leadership continually raising adoption benchmarks—and employees actively embracing AI to enhance productivity across the organization.

The power of strategic Copilot adoption

Insight’s approach to Copilot adoption isn’t just about rolling out new technology—it’s about making sure their clients see real, measurable value from their investment. And the results are clear: “We’ve tripled the number of our change management consultants since 2023, and over $1 million in Copilot services revenue in just a year and a half,” Crampton shared. “We see the demand, and we’re getting ahead of the market by building offerings that resonate with our customers.”

As businesses continue to navigate the evolving AI landscape, Insight remains a trusted partner, helping organizations not only implement Copilot but leverage it as a strategic advantage for long-term success.

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