Succeeding with AI means succeeding with adoption

Photographer Kurt Hoppe and Realdania By & Byg

How Implement Consulting Group has championed Copilot for M365 adoption, enhancing AI-driven efficiency and quality in daily work

Today, generative AI is not just knocking at the door; it has already taken center stage, reshaping industries, and altering the approaches to problem-solving and innovation.
Global consultancy company Implement Consulting Group is living this transformation, witnessing firsthand its power to spark creativity, increase quality, and enhance efficiency to ultimately elevate customer satisfaction.

With an ambition to harness this breakthrough technology in ways that are fit for humans and fit for the future, Implement is a leader in envisioning, designing, and advising how to efficiently use AI, maximizing value for its own consultants and clients.

While there is a growing consensus among business leaders that generative AI is a pivotal opportunity for their companies, many organizations are still lagging in adopting the technology, often hindered more by behavioral barriers than technical ones. As the consultancy industry evolves, Implement is taking a strong position within AI and is passing its experience onto its clients. Central to this mission, Implement has effectively pioneered the introduction of Copilot for Microsoft 365 as part of its consultants’ available AI tools.

The company recognizes its huge potential to increase efficiency in organizations and believes that integrating it seamlessly into daily work life must happen in a calculated way. As a matter of fact, Implement’s journey with Copilot is a testament to the idea that succeeding with AI means succeeding with adoption.

“We want every consultant using AI tools to maximize impact for our clients”

–  Niels Ahrengot – Founder, Implement Consulting Group

Founded in Denmark in 1996, Implement Consulting Group has a bold mission: to be the global transformation partner of choice.
The company’s commitment to impactful change is evident in its rapid expansion to over 1,500 consultants worldwide. With a philosophy that champions human-centric solutions and organizational change, Implement is ideally positioned to be leading the AI transformation within organizations, ensuring technology adoption happens in harmony with business strategy and human behavior.

What has Implement done?

When faced with new AI tools, it is easy to get lost in the hype curve and make rushed decisions. Despite the huge potential promised by integrating Copilot into everyday work, the first step for Implement was conducting a thorough business case. The focus was put on two important aspects: the breakeven point where licensing costs and realized value overlap – based on adoption enablers – and the confidence in the upward potential of Copilot features and capabilities.

Once the green light was secured, the roll-out unfolded in planned phases:

• “Small” pilot program: About 50 licenses were initially distributed among a broad group of interested consultants, AI SMEs, and the IT team. These early adopters mainly tested the system’s safety and performance, verifying confidentiality and breach security, and preliminary assessed speed and LLM performance. They also evaluated the tool’s usefulness, identified strengths, and use cases for consulting-specific tasks. To decide on the relevance of use cases, the 6:60 principle was generally applied: which functionality, tips or tricks that require 6 minutes of explanation can potentially save people 60 minutes per month?
• Roll-out communication: Communicating the benefits and potential of Copilot was crucial. The communication strategy struck a balance between showcasing useful functionalities and at the same time setting realistic expectations. Excitement and anticipation were generated through engaging emails and attention-grabbing posters, accelerating the demand for licenses.
• Launch and training: A first batch of 750 licenses was released and was coupled with a robust support system (communication channels for errors, questions, etc.). Implement also launched 2 AI- and Copilot-related training courses conducted by expert AI internal heads. These courses not only enhanced internal capabilities but also paved the way for new commercial opportunities by up-skilling AI thoughts.

After the launch, the highest priority became change management and adoption efforts. While intangible at first, the participation and strong position taken by top management was a key driver for continuous efforts. Today, that mission continues with more colleagues being onboarded and efforts anchored to solidify the tool’s use and impact.

Reflections on effects and impact

Succeeding with AI means succeeding in adopting the technology broadly into organizations. Getting an AI tool is not a key metric, people using one is. At Implement, defining goals for the short- and long-term adoption was a key priority to kick-start adoption, build competencies, anchor tool utilization in daily work, and bring confidence to its consultants leveraging AI daily.

While consultants at Implement recognized some efficiencies in writing reports, logically structuring ideas and content, working smarter in meetings and performing knowledge management work, there were also caveats. Copilot was not at the expected maturity level when it was implemented in the organization, making it an even bigger change management exercise. But Implement sees adoption as a journey, and that can start early – maturing consultants while the tool itself matured, which Implement believed it would. While users noticed significant improvements in the quality of their work outputs driven by training and the tool maturing, the cultural efforts by AI leaders were crucial for successful adoption. These leaders encouraged colleagues to experiment with the tool, included ‘AI warnings’ in their emails, and provided feedback on AI usage. This approach addressed key concerns of change managers and trainers, considering questions on “How is the technology being used?”, “How do we give the right feedback?” and critically, “what shouldn’t we use AI for?”

The achieved benefits are a direct consequence of the deployment strategy in Implement, and a key part of this has been the positive impact of trainings. So far, Implement has trained 1,200+ consultants across +30 training sessions on generative AI and Copilot for M365, with sessions still ongoing. Implement is now following and tracking the adoption numbers (number of e-mails summarized, meetings recapped, documents created, prompts sent), and are using these to assess the effectiveness of change management efforts.

Where is Implement heading with generative AI?

Implement’s experience with Copilot has so far been a positive and insightful journey. While it is evident that some apps are in a pre-mature stage, certain functionalities show surprising effects on efficiency and quality. The staged launch and the high focus on trainings and change are already paying off and pose good premises for even larger benefits in the medium- to long-term, as investments in AI increase and tools mature together with the user base. Implement is now assessing how to move beyond the initial rollout of 750 licenses as well as how to deploy other AI tools in the organization – and is committed to providing every consultant with AI tools such as Copilot, while fostering a culture where AI tools are an integral, celebrated part of daily work.

The approach forward is centered on five guiding principles that shape Implement’s anchoring efforts: establishing a versatile AI learning ecosystem, empowering AI champions throughout the organization, nurturing an AI-friendly mindset, enhancing data and graph governance, and committing to continuous learning for timely updates and support.

Implement’s considerations on how to move forward with their Copilot adoption journey align very closely with the work Implement has been and still is advising its clients on – giving guidance on some of the same questions that Implement itself was faced with:

· What is our AI strategy?

· Which AI tools do we bring to our employees?

· How do we implement the right tools – and in the right way?

· Which AI use cases should we be building to enhance business processes?

· Which competencies are needed to sustain long-term efforts?

Implement strives to be the right transformation partner in that regard; a partner that is daring to dream – and ready to implement. Across great projects with its partners and clients, Implement has helped figure out starting steps, aligned strategic imperatives, discussed operationalization, and has helped build and implement state-of-the-art AI solutions.

A truly transformative journey with AI takes time and continuity, but most importantly it requires a deep understanding of change and what it means to the individuals living it. Implement’s journey with Copilot is a story of success with adoption and change management, and an invitation for organizations to embrace the generative AI transformation.