What Copilot for Business Is
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is an add-on that places a generative AI assistant inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Microsoft sells it as a paid add-on to a business plan. In a 20,000-person UK government trial, users reported saving an average of 26 minutes a day.
Those savings were self-reported rather than measured. Every study on this page covers government departments, large firms, or consultants. None measured small businesses.
What the Government Trials Found
Government evaluations give the most independent view. The UK Government Digital Service figure of 26 minutes is self-reported, drawn from 7,115 survey responses. The Department for Business and Trade ran a smaller pilot with 1,000 licenses from October to December 2024.
Of its respondents, 72% were satisfied, yet the evaluation found no evidence that time savings improved productivity. The Australian Digital Transformation Agency trial ran from January to June 2024 across more than 50 agencies. Of the Australian respondents, 69% said Copilot sped up tasks, but only one in three participants used it daily.
What Controlled Studies Show
Microsoft published early-access research, which is vendor research. It found 70% of 297 surveyed users felt more productive, and a lab group finished three tasks 29% faster. Independent studies test generative AI broadly rather than Copilot itself.
Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond found a 14% rise in issues resolved per hour across 5,179 support agents, and 34% for novices. Dell'Acqua and colleagues found BCG consultants using GPT-4 finished 12.2% more tasks and worked 25.1% faster. On a task outside the model's frontier, the same consultants were 19 percentage points less likely to be correct.
Sources: UK Government Digital Service 2025, UK Department for Business and Trade 2025, Australian Digital Transformation Agency, Microsoft Work Trend Index 2023, NBER, Harvard Business School
