IT services provider Zones detailed its Microsoft Copilot project for a sales use case and presented its ROI analysis during the recent AI Copilot Digital Summit. The session featured a group discussion with:
- Dallas Burnworth, Manager of Digital Adoption at Zones
- Mark Sinnott, Director of Sales Operations and Enablement at Zones
- Geoff Ables, Microsoft MVP and Managing Partner with C5 Insights
- Prachi Mishra, Presales Solutions Engineer at Microsoft
- John Siefert, CEO of Dynamic Communities and Acceleration Economy
Zones Background
Historically, Zones has focused on hardware and software but has also added cloud and related services to its portfolio. Its flagship product is called Global Supply Chain as a Service.
Zones engaged Microsoft and C5 Insights to help deploy AI and Copilot to drive business outcomes. “Zones is always looking for ways to optimize sales productivity, gain efficiencies, and drive higher value…The timing of this particular project worked out great because we’re in the middle of a larger transformation, moving all of our business processes to Dynamics 365 CE for Sales, as well as other ERP changes,” Sinnott explained.
Zones constantly searches for ways to enhance the productivity of its sellers — how to best utilize their time, drive better outcomes, and impact the business.
Copilot has been central to this project. “What I really appreciate about the Zones team is they were also looking at the AI features that went beyond Copilot,” Microsoft’s Mishra said.
Further AI features include those directly within sales and CRM, such as predictive analytics, relationship analytics, notes analytics, and more. “C5 Insights did an excellent job showcasing the roadmap with not only the AI that’s embedded in sales and CRM, but also how Copilot for sales is that connective tissue,” Mishra noted. Ultimately, the project enabled them to learn how Zones could take full advantage of the AI platform from Microsoft.
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Building a Proof of Concept
When approaching this project, Zones wanted to move swiftly. C5 Insights implemented an accelerated, four-week proof-of-concept process consisting of six training sessions. Copilot was applied to analyze inputs from the review process.
Zones received considerable positive feedback about the utility of features available to sellers. Because the company mandates schedules for customer communication, customers benefit from responses to emails, meetings, recordings, and more.
Further, Zones applies Copilot data to create surveys and get feedback on new features. Survey respondents reported saving a minimum of 45 minutes of operational activity from the tested features alone. This “got us excited about seeing what the possibilities were with all the features,” Burnworth said.
The qualitative feedback around the experience of sellers and the improvement that the tools are creating in their work — interacting with customers, writing emails, taking notes and recordings, and providing insights — was that users wanted to expand the initiative. “We’ve made the decision to go to about 600 more users as an immediate next step,” Sinnott said.
“We feel really good about the potential of these tools,” Sinnott reported, referring to the experiences of both sellers and customers. They’re seeing more value-added interactions and having higher quality experiences with the integration of these tools, which will ultimately drive business impact.
Future Roadmap
Having a roadmap was integral in decision-making throughout this project. Implementing these evolving technologies brings a lot of value, but it requires considerable planning: How will you manage behavioral change? How will you plan for adoption?
“Their vision for the future revolves a lot around AI,” Ables noted. There are a number of valuable outcomes from this investment, “and tailoring their AI to make it a unique differentiator, not just what’s available out of the box, is an incredibly important area that they want to explore.”
Looking forward, Zones aims to put a roadmap in place for the next 18 to 36 months to ensure it continues to realize value from AI and its investment in the technology.
