Welcome to the AI Copilot Podcast, analyzing the latest AI Copilot and agent developments from Microsoft and its partners, delving into customer use cases, and exploring how AI plus the Cloud helps customers reimagine their business. In this episode, Nathan Bensch, vice president of Microsoft enterprise technology and services at enVista, discusses the upcoming AI Copilot Summit with Tom Smith. Bensch is on the event programming committee.
Highlights
Role in AI and the Microsoft Business Apps Community (01:01)
Bensch engages with clients around Microsoft apps and ecosystem. enVista does client work in supply chains as well as retail and manufacturing industries. enVista advises clients who are still using on-premises software that they need to go to the cloud to leverage AI. Once their Microsoft business apps are in the cloud, they need to ensure their data is secure and organized.
Most Compelling AI Projects (03:54)
One great project is around labor management, looking at Copilot to extract information and integrate and see if different data soruces can be pulled into a given component. Another is creating a Copilot to answer RFPs; this involves extracting all the needed information, answering questions in the RFP, and inserting references. This capability can go even further with the support of AI agents.
AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details.
Excitment Around AI Copilot Summit (07:10)
Bensch is looking forward to content about agents and experiences in different industries and how they’ve used copilots. That should get a lot of people’s creative juices going. And he’s looking forward to learning any new products or directions that will be shared by Microsoft.
Advice to Potential Speakers (09:13)
First: don’t be hesitant to submit your proposal. Two things Bensch always look for in speaker proposals: 1) is it well-targeted to the audience. If it’s a business audience, the material should be business-focused, for example. And 2) try to be creative: come up with a provocative title or focus that drives people into a session.
2025 Copilot/Agent Outlook and Predictions (12:05)
We’re seeing a lot of progress toward AI doing tasks for users. Thinking of Power Automate Desktop and a Robotic Process Automation (RPA)-type process. Bensch says he’ll be very interested to see Microsoft expanding agents and tying in to RPA so that commonly used forms be filled out automatically, for example. That’s expanding automations to execute items.
