The Befuddled Role of Consultants in a Post-Copilot World
In the past few months, we have seen Copilots released throughout the Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. With each new Copilot, we are able to become more efficient, faster and potentially better by leveraging the technology of AI. Tasks that were mundane and took up our precious time can now be simply done using a Copilot. They are amazing! They make us more productive! Things that used to take hours now take minutes to set up and configure.
So, what’s a consultant to do? Now that the tooling has allowed us to save SO MUCH time in system configuration – where do we fit in? Where is our value?
The way I see it, there are a few options to implementation partners out there:
- You bill the same effort you used to. Damn the time savings provided by Copilot! RESIST Technology advancements! KEEP DOING IT THE WAY WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT!!
- They’ve moved the cheese: let’s embrace it and pivot as well. Learn everything we can about copilots throughout the platform. Embrace AI and use it to speed through things that used to take a long time. Spend more time on other things that AI can’t do (yet). Roadmapping, project planning, change management, training, UAT, advanced integrations, among others.
- Dive in. Think about how you can reinvent yourselves. Are billable hours still the way to go? Maybe it’s time to use AI to de-risk your work. Perhaps we look at how we can offer fixed-fee prices for things we’ll use AI to help with. It’s a brave new world out there!
Now, you may have laughed at option #1. But I assure you there are partners there who do just this and are continuing to operate that way.
What should we do? I have no idea. But I’m ready to pivot and learn what it looks like in the future!
For organizations who may have been operating under the assumptions of #1 above, I’ll leave you with this quote from Who Moved My Cheese:
“What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.”
– Spencer Johnson
For organizations and consultants who resonate more with the second option outlined above, here’s a Who Moved My Cheese quote for you:
– Spencer Johnson
“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.”
And those of us investigating #3, well we already believe in this one:
“Movement in new direction helps find new cheese.”
– Spencer Johnson
Time to try to keep up and find the new cheese!
This article was originally written for www.dynamicscommunities.com.
