The Brady Brief
Monthly Industry Trends & Insights from Colligo CEO Tim Brady
Many of our clients are either in the midst of, or preparing for, Microsoft Copilot rollouts of varying sizes. What we’re seeing is that the quality of the results is directly tied to the information governance foundation already in place.
Success with Copilot comes down to context, access and permissions, data quality, and the effectiveness of an organization’s content management practices. In many ways, these are the pillars of information governance, and they play a critical role in determining the value AI can deliver.
While many organizations are racing to deploy Copilot, far fewer are truly ready. We saw this reflected in a recent Colligo webinar, Unlocking Better Copilot Results With Organized Content & Email, where 50% of respondents indicated that their organizations had rolled out Copilot broadly. At the same time, respondents in another webinar overwhelmingly reported minimal, limited, or siloed use of metadata.
This presents a significant challenge. Metadata provides the context that Copilot relies on to deliver accurate, relevant results. Rolling out AI without first establishing that context will often lead to poorer outcomes, lower confidence in the results, and ultimately reduced adoption of these powerful tools.
The broader market data supports what we’re seeing. According to Collibra, 72% of AI decision-makers have linked failed AI initiatives to poor data foundations. AI may be accelerating the conversation, but even without AI, establishing a strong information foundation has always been critical. With Copilot and similar technologies, that foundation becomes even more important.
In fact, just last week I was speaking with a law firm client that had effectively decommissioned Copilot because of poor-quality results. The technology wasn’t the issue. The underlying information was. That’s why, when working with many of our clients, we insist on capturing emails with well-structured metadata. Once information is properly classified and contextualized, organizations begin to see the real value AI can provide.
As Copilot and other AI solutions continue to proliferate, more organizations will recognize the value of the work they do today to properly manage and govern information. Equally important will be ensuring that new informationentering the organization is consistently captured, classified, and governed so it can contribute to future AI initiatives.
Over the next 12 months, this may become one of the defining factors separating organizations that excel from those that fall behind.
This is where Colligo can help. We help organizations not only manage incoming emails through consistent capture and tagging, but also address historical content by properly filing and classifying legacy email records. This ensures both new and existing information can serve as valuable organizational knowledge and trusted input for AI systems.
SharePoint remains an ideal repository for that content and one of the best places to ground information for Microsoft Copilot.
Information governance has always mattered. Today, however, successful AI outcomes may be the strongest business case yet for investing in it. If Copilot becomes the catalyst that encourages organizations to finally tackle governance, that may prove to be one of AI’s most valuable contributions.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Colligo. Think of them as ‘strong opinions, loosely held.’ Proceed with curiosity and a sense of humour!