Sanabil Investments boosts productivity by adopting AI at work, through Microsoft 365 Copilot

Identifying recurring bottlenecks

This idea stemmed from a few recurring bottlenecks in employee productivity and creativity. For instance, crafting announcement emails to external parties was time-consuming. “The team had to ensure the language and structure were perfect. This often diverted time and resources from more valuable work,” shares Megren Alshaiq, Head of IT Solutions at Sanabil Investments.

Another area that the company wanted to improve was creating presentations to introduce new technology or processes. “Making sure we use branded templates, creating engaging content with relevant information takes time," Alshaiqnotes.

Finally, Sanabil wanted to improve the meeting experience for everyone. “Usually, one person was assigned to take minutes, which meant they had to focus on notetaking instead of actively participating in the meeting," he explains.

In the highly regulated, competitive sector, Sanabil had to choose an AI solution that would securely and seamlessly integrate with its existing enterprise environment. “Microsoft 365 Copilot addressed our concerns, ensuring compliance and enterprise-grade security,” adds Alshaiq. “For example, Microsoft guarantees that prompts and data are not used for machine learning and can be deleted entirely.”

Sanabil Investments decided to collaborate with Netways,a Regional Managed Partner to Microsoft, to ensure a smooth and secure Copilot integration into its workflow.

Implementing a tailored adoption strategy

To get employees on board, Sanabil worked with Netways and managed change using the ADKAR model. "ADKAR stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement,” remarks Alshaiq. For Awareness, the company crafted a slogan—AI @ Work. “We created snackable content and displayed engaging videos across screens on every floor at Sanabil,” shares Alshaiq.

Once enough people were interested, Sanabil moved on to building Desire, showing employees the value they could gain by using Copilot. To impart Knowledge, Sanabil worked closely with Netways to craft detailed presentations and training materials tailored to the business. “We held sessions, provided content with specific use cases, and gathered feedback to identify areas for further improvement,” Alshaiq explains. Sanabil utilized Microsoft Forms for registration to the early access program, session registrations and feedback collection, ensuring continuous improvement and participant satisfaction.

The fourth phase was Ability. “As they began using Copilot, employees started talking about it everywhere,” highlights Alshaiq. “This excitement spread very quickly too: in just a matter of weeks, adoption jumped by 50%.” The company developed a dedicated website in SharePoint, offering further tips and resources to empower employees to take advantage of Copilot. Sanabil also established a quick support team called Copilot Help to assist employees outside of the general IT queue. And the very last step, Reinforcement, involved standardizing the use of the latest tools across the organization.

Enhancing productivity and creativity with AI

With Netway’s strategic support, Sanabil employees adoption rates grew significantly. "Approximately 70% of our employees use Copilot for Word, PowerPoint, Teams, and Forms regularly," remarks Alshaiq. The change streamlined their daily tasks and reduced manual efforts across the organization. Notable improvements in productivity and creativity soon followed.

With Copilot, employees can quickly summarize lengthy content, generate email drafts from scratch, and even enrich their existing documents with content suggestions and relevant data. “We can now create and summarize documents faster,” highlights Megren. "With Microsoft 365 Copilot streamlining writing and editing processes, we observed the impact on employee's productivity, and now focus on work quality, rather than fetching information or checking grammar.”

Employees can now create visually appealing presentations with speaker notesautomatically generated by Copilot. Customer templates and Copilot’s design suggestions help improve the document quality. “This not only ensures that our presentations are comprehensive and refined but the overall process is 50% faster than doing everything manually," Alshaiq adds.

Copilot also enhanced Microsoft Teams meeting management by offering clear recaps and chat summaries, highlighting key speakers, organizing discussions into chapters, and documenting action items. “Copilot also translates notes from Arabic to English during, making it easier for multilingual teams to communicate,” says Alshaiq.

“The feedback from our staff has been overwhelmingly positive,” adds Alshaiq. “It is truly gratifying to see technology making such a substantial impact on our daily operations and overall success."

For Sanabil, introducing generative AI into daily tasks has been quite transformative. “Implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot represents a pivotal step in enabling our employees to harness the power of AI to enhance their work processes, make informed decisions, and collaborate more effectively," shares Al Kahtani.

Looking back at the implementation, Alshaiq appreciates the role its partners played. “Microsoft's team of experts guided us through best practices, ensuring that the solution was precisely tailored to meet our specific requirements and operational goals,” he shares.

Meanwhile, Netways provided critical support with skilled speakers, tailored training content, and brainstorming sessions. “From a technical perspective, enabling Copilot is as easy as clicking a button. Adoption is the challenging part. Netways did an excellent job supporting us through it,” Alshaiq adds.

Expanding AI applications

Building on these successes, Sanabil Investments plans to further integrate AI into its operations. "One of the things we've started exploring is the idea of using Copilot Labs to create a chatbot embedded within our Teams or SharePoint," says Alshaiq. The company aims to integrate its IT help desk with Copilot through Copilot Labs, enabling employees to get immediate assistance with basic IT queries, like how to reset passwords.

Finally, Sanabil is looking at integrating Copilot with its enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems to aggregate data and create further efficiencies. "I’m sure this experience will be the foundation for many more successful AI applications," Alshaiq concludes.