How to Evaluate Whether Copilot Is Worth the Investment for Your Organisation

Forrester Research conducted a Total Economic Impact study of Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2023, interviewing companies that had deployed Copilot and modelling the financial impact of the benefits they reported. The study produced headline figures including an average 70-minute time saving per user per week and a 365% ROI over three years.

These figures are a useful starting point for building your own business case, not a conclusion. The Forrester study draws on a sample of organisations, most of which were early adopters with strong AI leadership and deployment quality. Organisations with lower adoption quality or less favourable use case mixes will see lower returns.

Use the Forrester study as: evidence that the productivity benefits are real and measurable by credible independent researchers; a source of benchmark ranges (time saving per user, cost avoidance categories) that you can adjust for your specific context; and a framework for the categories of benefit to include in your own assessment.

The categories of benefit to include in a Copilot ROI model:

Meeting administration time saving: estimate the average time per week each licence holder currently spends on meeting notes, action item capture, and post-meeting summaries. Apply a 50-70% reduction for Copilot-assisted meeting administration. Multiply by average fully-loaded hourly cost for your licence holder population.

Email management time saving: estimate the average time per week each licence holder spends on email processing, drafting, and summarising. Apply a 20-30% reduction for Copilot-assisted email management.

Document production time saving: identify the most common document types produced by your licence holders (strategy documents, board papers, proposals, reports). Estimate the time currently required for a first draft; estimate the reduction with Copilot assistance.

Knowledge search time saving: estimate the time currently spent finding specific information within internal documents and communications. Copilot's semantic search across Microsoft 365 content typically reduces this significantly.

The licence cost is the most visible cost but not the only one. Total cost of ownership for a Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment includes:

Licence cost: the per-seat per-month Copilot licence, multiplied by the number of users deployed, over the assessment period.

Deployment and change management cost: the IT resource to prepare the Microsoft 365 environment (SharePoint permissions, content governance), the training programme, and ongoing support. For a senior leadership team deployment, this is modest; for an enterprise-wide deployment, it is significant.

Data governance preparation: if SharePoint is poorly organised or permissions are not configured appropriately, significant IT investment may be required before Copilot can be deployed safely.

Ongoing maintenance: monthly cost of maintaining training materials, prompt libraries, governance documentation, and user support.

A credible Copilot business case includes: a specific licence deployment scope (which functions, which roles, how many users, at what pace); a benefit model drawn from the categories above with conservative assumptions; a total cost of ownership model including all cost categories; a measurement plan that specifies how benefits will be verified post-deployment; and a risk section that addresses the main reasons the benefits might not be achieved (poor adoption, insufficient Microsoft 365 environment quality, inadequate training).

The measurement plan is often the weakest part of technology business cases. Include pre-deployment baselines for the key benefit metrics so that post-deployment measurement is possible. Without baselines, you cannot demonstrate benefit realisation; without demonstrating benefit realisation, it is difficult to justify expansion and harder to learn what is working.

For boards approving a significant Copilot investment, ask for: a pilot data point from a small-scale deployment before full commitment, or Forrester benchmark evidence adjusted for your specific context; a measurement plan with defined milestones; and a governance plan covering data protection and AI policy.