Tom Arbuthnot: This year is all about driving Copilot for Microsoft, but what does that mean for partners? I talked to Wes Budd, who is a partner solutions architect at Microsoft around where are the opportunities for partners? Where can they add value to customers, and what is the actual work they'll be doing? Wes highlights three areas where partners can add value to that Copilot conversation.

Many thanks to Wes for jumping on the podcast and giving us a real, real world insight into where Copilot is and what customers are doing and where partners can add value. And many thanks to AudioCodes to are the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate their support of everything we're doing at Empowering.Cloud.

On with the show. Hi, welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. We're talking Copilot on this one. Uh, Wes this someone I've talked to a fair bit off the pod, but, uh, first time on the pod. He's at Microsoft helping partners kind of develop their Copilot teams, I guess, Copilot proposition. So we're gonna dive into the, the real world where the, where the partners add value, what are some of the kind of opportunities, some of the challenges.

So welcome to the pod Wes.. 

Wesley Budd: Cheers, Tom. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me on. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So long time. 

Wesley Budd: First time caller. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, yeah. Appreciate you coming on. Uh, so we're on the record this time, so yeah, maybe we could jump into a little bit about your, your background 'cause you've been partner side as well and your current role at Microsoft.

Wesley Budd: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So, uh, a little bit about me. I'm, Wes so, um, currently I'm working, uh, Microsoft, uh, as a partner solutions architect. And what that means is that I essentially, um, help, uh, am helping partners across, um, EMEA in, um, the Copilot. Um, jumpstart program essentially, so I'm sure many people would've heard of it.

There's fairly, uh, a, a decent amount of, uh, organizations and partners in it as well. Um, so what that means is that there's this sort of tiering, pro pro process, uh, in the program where you go from community tier, which is entry level to ready tier, and then to, uh, prioritized tier. And I help partners.

Move through those tiers and there's a whole bunch of things that need to be looked at, um, from skilling readiness and, and all of that. Um, and also consulting on their own practice as well. And just making sure that all the, all the um, uh, parts, you know, and the the are are there and, and present and, um, and just making sure that their practice, you know, they, they basically.

Do what they say, right. In that sense. And, and then also, um, there's this other part to the program which is helping partners, um, understand and build Copilot agents as well. So it's quite interesting 'cause you get partners that have, are really, um, well informed about agents. And then you've got other partners that are starting, uh, at the very beginning and probably have never really built anything, um, before as well.

So, so kind of that accessibility of, of. Building agents is touches on everyone. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's really interesting. Um, like obviously huge push this FY for Copilot, right? No surprise. It was big last year as well. But that means that all different types of partners are coming into this conversation. And if you look already a like, uh, like Power Platform focused type partner, then building comes very naturally to you.

Right? But if you were a classic pro services partner, then maybe there's different opportunities and, and, and different skilling you need. 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. Um, and it kind of allows you to bring the ideas that you've had in the past to life a little bit more. 'cause you've got access to be able to do it. And it's, again, more accessible to, to, to make those agents so you can have the idea and then you, then you can go and create the idea, you know?

So it's, it's quite nice. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So we talked about, uh, on the prep, there's kind of three major areas where. Partners can add value, have opportunity with customers. Um, first one, I don't think it'll be a surprise to, to anybody, but, um, adoption, change management, kind of helping the organization on that, on that journey.

Um, can, can you dig into what. What that really means, like, like what are the, what is the partner doing with or for the customer? 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. So I think, you know, when, when you, when you look at, uh, adoption change management, especially for Copilot, uh, it's, even though Copilot been out for what, couple, couple of years now I think it is.

Um, there's still like, we're on the adoption curve. You know, there's lots of organizations that, um, are still starting to explore Copilot and, and what it can do for their organization. And some customers may have purchased, um, uh, you know, a handful of licenses and kind of really not got too far with it.

Um, and that's where the. Uh, opportunity for Partners comes in is to help them build that adoption and change program. And for, especially for like sort of smaller businesses, um, adoption and change isn't core to their, uh, business as well. So partners, um, are really needed within that space. Um, and you can see that as well with like the Jumpstart program, for instance, where in the Ready team you've got like these workshops.

Engagements that are funded by Microsoft, that partners can then go and deliver to, um, to customers, um, to, to support 'em, you know, so they've bought the licenses, great, but you know, they haven't necessarily flipped over to regular usage. Mm-hmm. So the partners come in and, and, and can really help and support the customer and build out that, that flow of work and that journey to, to become, um, uh excellent, if not competent with Copilot. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And it is quite a big thing for organizations in terms of adoption because it's. It's not like a software replacing a software. So, you know, a lot of what we did, going back to kind of the link and Skype days, like you had some way to meet and now you've got a new meeting platform, meetings are gonna happen, so you have to know how to use it.

We're replacing your phone so you are going to use it because you use a phone. Copilot is, I feel slightly different because it's not, it's, it's replacing some of the ways you work, uh, but not in a sort of direct sense. So you have to really. Proactively start to bring it into your workflow and experiment with it.

Wesley Budd: Yeah, it's completely new, you know, and yeah, there's some experts out there in the market now. There's been a couple of years of, of, of having that. But ultimately your, your, your average worker, um, will not have necessarily touched on it. So, so there's, there's still a very big gap here for adoption and change.

And that's, you know, an ongoing process as well because, you know, we've seen the rate of change of Copilot just, uh, just this year and what, you know, nine months in and yeah. And there'll be more changes coming as well. So it's, it's an ongoing process. So there's an opportunity there for partners.

Absolutely. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And how does that split between. M365 Copilot chat and M365 Copilot full license because everybody pretty much has access to M365 Copilot chat, and I feel like there's a lot of value in there in the box that's getting overlooked in a lot of cases. 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. Well, I think Copilot chat is, uh, essentially, uh, more usual to people, you know, because they're used to like kind of speaking to a website or an agent asking for information, and that's what it can do. The only change there obviously, is how you ask the question or prompt it, you know, which is something that we've, we've talked about a lot. Um, and so the, the, the coaching around that side of thing really is all about the prompting cause the u the user interface is straightforward and simple, you know? Mm-hmm. It's, you can't get it wrong, but it's just how you, uh, interact with it. So change around that, but then around like M365 Copilot, you know, the full version, it's integrated into all of your applications, you know, so like PowerPoint and Excel and all of those things.

And, um, and again, lots of, um, uh, change required within that to, to learn how to use it correctly to get the most out of it. Um, yeah. So, 

Tom Arbuthnot: and it, it feels like for partners, uh, if, if the customer's prepared to kind of fund it beyond the, the Microsoft funding it, it's an ongoing thing, right? Copilot in 2026 is gonna be pretty different and more advanced than Copilot is now. So it feels like certainly following the news and the features and the changes, that there's always more to educate users on and new capabilities. 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. And, and you know, that's a challenge for partners as well is staying on top of it, you know, 'cause it's, um, it's, it's moving so quickly.

So it, it, it's a really interesting space. I've never seen something move so quickly and change so much. So it is a real investment for partners to, to. Keep on top of things. Um, but then that investment makes its return when the customer goes right. Where is Copilot now? Like, what, what more can we be doing and what new features are out there?

So it's good to build in that cadence and actually building it, it helps us essentially build that relationship with, with the customers even further. Really. So like trusted advisor, you know? 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Okay. So that's, that's kind of your, like, I, I feel like a lot of people would guess, guess that there's adoption needed and the partners have classically played there, and I'm guessing that works particularly well if you are that type of business engaged partner that can have those conversations, do those workshops.

Wesley Budd: Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Uh, another one, kind of the second one is the, uh, readiness and, and, and security and advisory around deploying it and, and managing it. And, and that was touted a lot at the start of the Copilot journeys. You know, get your. Get your, your data in order, get your access in order. How has that panned out as a partner opportunity?

Wesley Budd: Yeah, so again, a, a very strong and compelling, uh, opportunity for, for partners is to, um, be that advisor and help the help your customers be ready for Copilot. So, you know, back in, back in the old days when you look at sort of business process automation, one of the things that kind of stopped the whole, um, program from continuing on was the sheer amount of data that you've got in the background, which needs, which needed sorting and um, and looking at, and that was a big investment.

But now with the, obviously, um, Copilot can pull in. All the information that you've got within your SharePoint and your, your file stores. So the, the important part here now is that yes, it, there still needs to be a requirement for making sure that the data is current and correct. Um, but you can pull information from like years and years previous, which could be information that's, that that was lost and knowledge that was lost.

That can now be resurfaced, but. With that, the caveat is security, of course, and that that is a very big, um, aspect to, uh, Copilot to make sure that you're not oversharing and making sure that, um, information isn't. Uh, information shouldn't, not everyone should have all of the information. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, you know, to, to go in and, and to make sure, so for partners as, as an opportunity is to go in and make sure that the security measures are set and SharePoint sites are, are secure, um, and people have the right access.

So, and that's still. A big piece of work, um, and a and a big opportunity for security partners. Definitely. Um, but the, 

Tom Arbuthnot: how are Microsoft kind of, uh, balance striking a balance with that? Because it's interesting because obviously Microsoft are driving adoption of Copilot. Yeah. They, they don't want customers to say, let's pause for 12 months.

And I think realistically, most customers don't want to pause for 12 months because they don't wanna be left behind in AI. Um, but equally, like not everybody's got a super tidy SharePoint if we're honest. 

Wesley Budd: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a balancing act, isn't it? You know, it's like what can we whi, which, which, um, business units do we think could benefit the most out of the information.

But ultimately, you know, as much as you've got various sellers pushing and driving the adoption of, uh, Copilot, I'd still advise that there's that real need to. Make sure you've got your security measures in place. Like, don't, don't skip on that, no matter. That's good to hear what anyone tells you. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's good to hear.

So we've got, uh, adoption change management. We've now got a kind of readiness and security and, and data stance. And the last one, um. Agents and building business kind of line of business agents and use cases. And it for all the kickoff stuff for this FY agents was like the most used word. Like it feels like, and not just in Microsoft, but kind of in the AI scenario, it feels like agentic and agents is really hot.

Mm-hmm. Um, like pretend we dunno what even agents are 'cause like there's about seven interpretations. What does that actually mean for a, for a customer? 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. Um, so agents, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's a huge topic and, you know, I'd, I'd say last year was all about M365 Copilot. This year it's really about agents and driving the, the partner network to, uh, use and, and start building agents and informing customers about agents and what that means and what does, what does agents mean in the Microsoft world.

Well, so, yeah. So you've got, um. Essentially two versions of a agents. You've got agents for individuals and you've got agents for the business. And I would say that, um, you know, your agents within M365. Co, uh, within M365 Copilot chat on the web version, and you can build them in Teams. And I, uh, well we call that the AI builder, and that is essentially for individuals.

So as an example, um, anyone can with an M365 Copilot license can go and build an agent, which can pull in information from. I dunno. You might be in marketing for instance, and you visit a whole bunch of different websites daily, on a daily basis to uh, pull out. Um, a really interesting LinkedIn post or build a, um, a thought leadership piece.

So with AI Builder, um, you can go ahead and, and build that agent by essentially just pulling in those, uh, websites and asking the agent a bunch of questions about it. You know, what's, what's the hot topic this week or this month? What are people, um, most interested in? And start to learn about that rather than scrolling through all of of the different websites.

Tom Arbuthnot: Um, so rather than just going to Copilot generally and asking the question, you're kind of teeing it up to say, these are my preferred sources. Yeah. This is the way I work. This is what I'm looking for. So when you go and prompt it, it's got all that knowledge of like, oh, okay. I get the use case. I get the scenario, I get the sources.

Here's your answer. 

Wesley Budd: Yeah. And it's focusing only on. That, that information source that you're pulling in, and it could be from a SharePoint as well, for instance. Um, and then you've got, um, agents for what I, what I say, agents for business, which is, uh, M365, uh, which is, uh, Copilot studio. Okay. And, um, that is for essentially like.

Transforming business processes. So you know, if there's a, if there's a particular team or department that receives hundreds of emails every day. Um, you can go and build the agent to essentially be first line support for those, um, uh, for those questions that come in. And then if the user still has more questions, then you can create a task or an action, which will then, um, pass that information over to, uh, a dedicated person, an actual.

You know, human And, um, and what we see in that space is that, um, like SSE for instance, they've released, um, a case study, um, a couple of weeks ago about how they've used their agent to transform, uh, those types of queries coming in from customers. Um, and they've seen a huge, uh, decrease in, uh, number of queries coming through to agents, but those, uh, to human agents.

But those questions that do come into the human agents are the more, uh, technical and more time consuming sort of, that, that require more deeper technical knowledge to, to support those customers. So, you know, you are, you are, you've got, you've got those. Agents for individuals for you and I that can go and create, um, quite simply is a retrieval agent essentially retrieval by just retrieval.

Tom Arbuthnot: And, and so for a partner that might be training a whole bunch of people on what you can do, how to do it, and talking them through how to do it. But essentially it's supposed to be a kind of a pro user self-service type scenario. 

Wesley Budd: Yeah, absolutely. And then so, so you kind of bring back in adoption and change on that front and say, look, you know, this is what you can do with your own agents and you can create that agent for yourself, or you can, uh, then, um, uh.

Uh, publish it onto, onto Teams as well. So, um, your team members, uh, can, can access that, that agent if it, if it affects them, for instance, or helps them. Um, but then on the Copilot studio, that's where the real sort of deep work comes in and where the opportunity comes in for the partner because, um. The customer for the customer journey on this essentially is right.

What's your existing business process on this thing? Right? You know, on, on all of these emails that come in, what happens? Let's map that out, um, and then we'll go away, build a prototype. Bring it back to you and show you how it works and operates. And then you can have that, uh, engagement of, okay, yep, perfect.

This, this works great, but we need these tweaks and changes. Go back, change them up. Um, and then, uh, and that, and that's the value that the partners can bring because they will have the deep technical knowledge of, um. Of the Copilot studio, uh, and, and, you know, bringing in the different sources like Power Automate and, um, the autonomous side of things as well.

And it's not something that all customers really wanna get involved in, because again, it'll be a case of, Ooh, I don't wanna break it. I'm not an expert on it, so I need some, I want some help. And just to put my, put my mind at ease, at least. Um, yeah, so it's. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It's really exciting because you are working with the business rather than doing infrastructure type stuff.

So like it's a real, if you, if you get this right, there's a really measurable business impact and yeah, I feel like it's the, the kind of thing that certainly in bigger organizations I've worked with, you could just end up with a, a tiger team or a partner that spends. Forever jumping from BU to BU, Country to country, kind of, you know, yeah.

Well, uh, we've done this. How's this work? How's it integrated? Like there's a lot of, lots of values to unlock there. Um, yeah. But it is a specific skill set to be able to engage with the business and have those type of conversations. 

Wesley Budd: That's right. And that's like kind of real proper advisory and systems integration type.

Um. Business, if you like. Yeah. And uh, so the other thing with this as well is that on, on the agent side, you know, you, you can support a customer with one particular agent, but then, um. What we kind of advise is to host an agent-athon. Um, you might have heard of a prompter on, um, a year or so ago, uh, but now agent-athons as well.

So create an agent-athon uh, going into your customer, uh, and inviting all different business units to join that session and then let the ideas, um, commence. Basically it's a case of, okay, we've built this one agent for, um. For this team in this business, this is what we can do now, like. What are the problems and challenges that you are facing across different business units that we can, um, that we can improve and change with, um, with agents.

Um, and then, you know, you get the experts within the business units coming up with really good ideas and, uh, that that change, the change the organization and the time to market of, of a business process, you know, is a lot shorter because of agents now. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And so what's available to partners to kind of skill up on that capability and, and in terms of engaging with customers, I, I know there are different programs and funding and workshop templates and stuff.

Wesley Budd: Yeah. So, um, Microsoft, uh, released recently the Skilling Hub, um, which essentially has all of the, you know, training that, that you could ever want really on, on, on Copilot and, and loads of other things as well. So, uh, code for, uh, you know, M365 Copilot and also for agents, and it's all in the Skilling hub.

And, um, it's all self-paced learning as well. Um, and the skill, the skilling part of it is. An essential piece for, um, uh, the ready tier partners in, in the Jumpstart program as well. And not to forget, you know, we've got the, um, M365 Copilot specialization, um, that's now available within partner center that, um, partners can go to.

Go and, um, work towards achieving. Um, that obviously puts you in real good stead as well. So, but yeah, you used to, obviously there was Microsoft University and uh, Microsoft Learn, but the skilling hub at Microsoft Skilling Hub is the place to go. I think if you Google it, you'll find it fairly easily.

That's awesome. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Let's hope so. Awesome. So really interesting to hear though, kind of three areas. Wes like, like if you, if I forced you and you had to pick one, what, what would you say is the, the best opportunity out there currently with customers? Is it the, is it the readiness? Is it adoption programs?

Is it building agent and kind of agent scenarios? 

Wesley Budd: Well, I'm gonna say it's agents. Yeah. Like the, this is, it is trans transformational. Absolutely. And it just. There, there is a lot of what I see, a lot of demand for it and 'cause customers see the opportunity, um, available to, to the business, right? So M365 Copilot is the opportunity for all individuals, you know, so to be more productive with less.

Um, but then the agent side of things is complete business transformation. Like we've had an, an organization may well have had this ongoing issue for many, many years, but they've just not had resources or time to really go and, um, change it. And, but now they can. Um, it's like I said, the time to market of, of the idea to creating the agent to then rolling it out is so much shorter.

Um, and, you know, business process automation and change has been a very difficult thing. Forever. Um, but now it's less difficult. It just takes some thinking. So, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah. And I also feel like the organization, obviously AI is the talk of every, everybody everywhere at the moment as well. So it's kinda like the business is open to the conversation because I'm certainly hearing things like, you know, we can't get left behind compared to our peers and we wanna drive value out of this investment.

So I feel like it's a great opportunity to have a conversation with the actual business side about how you can. You know, save them time, save them money, make things more efficient. And unfortunately with AI and this kind of stuff, it's not see you in 12 months with this massive project. Actually it can be weeks and you're showing some kind of result.

Wesley Budd: Yeah. Yeah. And um, you know, something, I dunno if you've come across as well, is Microsoft talking about the Frontier Firm, you know, being an AI first firm, um, you know, and organizations and, um, that sparked a lot of interest in the market and it's like essentially looking at how AI can, um, improve the organization from, you know, front to back.

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Wes, thanks for breaking that down for us. Really interesting to understand, uh, where the opportunities are. If you're a partner, we'll share some links below on kind of some of those, uh, training opportunities to bits and pieces. Um, and if you're a customer who's been listening in, that's a good opportunity to have a conversation with your partners about where they might add value on your Copilot journey.

Yeah. 

Wesley Budd: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me, Tom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, no, thanks a lot. Nice to catch up on the record and, uh, talk you soon. 

Wesley Budd: All cheers.