By Dave Perske, RES. Business IT 

Most businesses we speak to are in the same place right now. 

AI is clearly going to be part of how work gets done. Teams are already experimenting, but many businesses are still trying to work out what’s safe, what’s useful, and what’s just noise. 

That uncertainty often leads to two responses: some businesses freeze, while others look the other way and hope it doesn’t become their problem. 
 
AI will get used whether a business “allows it” or not. What changes the outcome is whether it’s adopted deliberately, with a sensible approach the team can follow, or whether it spreads quietly through unsanctioned tools and habits as shadow IT. 
 
The opportunity is there, and you don’t need a huge transformation program to get started. 

What’s holding businesses back

In recent conversations, a few common themes have started to emerge.  
 
Businesses want to move but don’t know what the first step should be, so it stays stuck in discussion. Leaders worry about risk, uncontrolled use is already a concern, and policy doesn’t change behaviour if people aren’t given a safe option. Some teams are moving early to get an edge, while others avoid it because they assume they can’t use AI at all, even though there’s usually still value in the right scenarios. 
 

This matters because AI affects productivity, process, and quality. With more customers and partners asking direct questions about data, privacy, and what tools are in play, a clear starting point now makes those conversations easier later. 

The misconception we still hear is “My people know they aren’t allowed to use AI, so they don’t.” In reality, people are often just trying to get work done, and leaders may not have visibility of which tools are being used or what information is being entered. 

A simple way to start: Write, meet, process, decide, share and scale

1. Write better: Everyday writing help with Copilot

Early exploration often starts here because it’s immediate and low friction. Copilot can turn rough notes into a clearer email, sharpen a customer letter, summarise a long document, or improve tone. 

Try prompts like:

• “Rewrite this email to be clearer and more confident, but still friendly.” 
• “Summarise this document into 5 key points and 3 recommended actions.” 
• “Tighten this proposal section and make the value clearer.” 

Keep in mind: Treat outputs as drafts and avoid pasting sensitive client information into non-sanctioned tools.

2. Meet better: Easy recaps and action tracking in Teams

For organisations working in Teams, meeting recap and action tracking is often the quickest way to see real value. People spend less time taking notes, and follow-ups get sharper. 

Try prompts like:

• “Summarise this meeting for someone who wasn’t there.” 
• “List decisions made, risks raised, and actions with owners.” 
• “Draft the follow-up email with next steps.” 

Keep in mind: Be deliberate about which meetings are recorded or transcribed and set expectations with staff and customers. 

3. Process better: Turning repetitive work into a streamlined workflow

This is where AI starts moving from personal productivity into process improvement. We often see jobs like converting supplier quotes into a client-facing format, where traditional automation can struggle because the inputs are not always consistent. 

With curated prompts and clear business rules, teams can extract key fields, apply rules, and produce a consistent output that still gets reviewed before it’s sent. 

Try prompts like:

• “Extract line items, quantities, pricing, and assumptions into a clean table.” 
• “Map this supplier format to our standard quote template.” 
• “Highlight anomalies: missing SKUs, unusual pricing, inconsistent units.” 

Keep in mind: Maintain explicit business rules, don’t let AI guess, and validate outputs before sending. 

4. Decide better: Research and analysis using business information

Once team gets comfortable, AI can help make sense of information spread across files, emails, meeting notes, and spreadsheets. Done well, it’s like giving your team a first-pass analyst that summarises themes and highlights where to look deeper. 

Try prompts like:

• “Summarise themes and open issues from the last 30 days of client meeting notes.” 
• “Review this Excel file and highlight clients with margin anomalies or unusual discounts.” 
• “Based on these incident reports, list recurring root causes and suggested fixes.” 

Keep in mind: This only works safely if SharePoint and Teams permissions are in good shape, because AI will amplify messy access. 

5. Share and scale better: Turn individual wins into repeatable capability

This is the step most businesses miss. Adoption usually moves from individual tips to shared patterns and reusable assets, then into deeper integration.  

If a prompt helps one person turn meeting notes into a useful customer summary, turn it into a shared template. If a process keeps repeating, document the rules and make it easier for the team to follow the same approach. 

Keep in mind: Don’t roll this out wider until it’s well understood and you’ree confident with the results. Standardise what repeats and only integrate deeper once data access and controls are in good shape.

A simple starting point we recommend

Before you invest in more tools or write a long policy, these three moves tend to do the most work when you’re first starting off: 

• Understand what’s already happening: Where is AI being used today, and what problems are people trying to solve? A curious approach works best. 
• Choose a sanctioned starting point: Give staff a safe option to start working with AI (eg, Copilot Chat), with clear guidance on what should never go into prompts. 
• Run a short pilot: Pick one or two scenarios above, like meeting recap and follow-ups in Teams or drafting and summarising documents. Then observe the impact and feedback. Time saved and consistency are usually the easiest to track. 

Where RES can help you get started

Most organisations don’t need an “AI program” to begin. What they need is a sensible starting point, a small number of use cases that map to real work, and the basics in place, so the rollout doesn’t create new risk. 

This is where RES can help. We support organisations to make practical use of Microsoft Copilot, focus on repeatable tasks that genuinely save time, and strengthen the foundations around SharePoint, Teams, permissions and data handling. 

The aim is to get value early, learn quickly, and build confidence without turning AI into a compliance headache. 

If you want help choosing a sensible first step, or you’d like someone to sense-check what’s safe in your environment, we’re happy to talk it through.