Based on the Forrester New Technology Total Economic Impact study (commissioned by Microsoft in October 2024), small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) using Microsoft 365 Copilot can expect a mix of revenue growth, cost savings, and people-related benefits.

1. Go-to-market and revenue impact

• Faster time to market and better customer service contribute to topline revenue increases of up to 6% for the composite SMB (200 employees, $35M in annual revenue).
• After applying a 10% net margin, this translates into a projected increase in net income of $97,000 to $446,000 over three years.
• Key drivers include quicker creation of sales proposals and more responsive client follow-up, which free sales teams to spend more time actually selling.

2. Operational efficiency and cost reduction

• Copilot helps streamline work across marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, IT, and supply chain.
• The composite organization sees a projected reduction in total expenditures of $473,000 to $656,000 over three years, equal to up to 0.85% of total spend.
• These savings come from higher worker productivity, reduced contractor spend, and retiring overlapping tools that Copilot replaces.
• As a result, net margin improves from a baseline of 10% to as high as 10.77%.

3. People, culture, and talent outcomes

• By offloading repetitive tasks and making information easier to find, Copilot helps reduce burnout and frustration.
• Forrester projects that employee attrition can decrease by up to 20%, and new-hire onboarding time can improve by up to 25%.
• Combined, these people-related benefits are worth an estimated $59,000 to $124,000 over three years for the composite SMB.

4. Overall financial picture

• Forrester modeled three scenarios for the composite SMB over three years:
• High impact: NPV of $955,000 and projected ROI of 353%.
• Medium impact: NPV of $658,000 and projected ROI of 243%.
• Low impact: NPV of $358,000 and projected ROI of 132%.

In short, SMBs that actively integrate Copilot into everyday workflows can reimagine how they go to market, run operations, and support their people, with measurable financial upside over a three-year horizon.

The Forrester study breaks down the projected three-year, risk-adjusted costs for a 200-person SMB already using Microsoft 365. You can use these components as a planning checklist.

1. Licensing costs

• Copilot is priced at $30 per user per month.
• For the composite SMB, total licensing cost over three years is modeled at $42,000 (assuming a phased rollout to knowledge workers rather than all employees at once).
• This assumes you already have the required Microsoft 365 licenses in place.

2. Implementation and ongoing management

• Implementation typically involves a small cross-functional team: a business leader, an IT professional, and at least one test user.
• Ongoing management is modeled as one full-time equivalent (FTE) responsible for:
• Integration and configuration.
• Setting and maintaining permissions.
• Building knowledge sources.
• Cleaning and organizing data.
• Forrester estimates the total implementation and management cost at about $130,000 over three years for the composite organization.

3. Training and user discovery time

• Interviewed organizations generally felt they underinvested in training and would have gained more value with a stronger enablement plan.
• The model assumes:
• 10 hours of training per new Copilot user.
• 15 hours per user per year spent on discovery and experimentation.
• The total cost of training and discovery is projected at $98,000 over three years for the composite SMB.

4. Total cost view

• When you combine licensing, implementation/management, and training/discovery, you get a clear picture of the investment required to embed Copilot into daily work.
• Forrester then compares these costs against the projected benefits to calculate NPV and ROI under low, medium, and high impact scenarios.

For your own planning, you can adapt these numbers by adjusting user counts, rollout pace, internal labor rates, and how much time you want employees to spend learning and experimenting with Copilot.

The organizations interviewed by Forrester evaluated multiple AI tools before selecting Microsoft 365 Copilot. Their reasons cluster around security, integration, and practicality for SMBs.

1. Stronger alignment with security and compliance needs

• Several SMBs were concerned about employees using “shadow IT” AI tools that could expose sensitive data or create compliance issues.
• Leaders highlighted risks such as:
• Potential breaches of confidential or regulated data.
• Copyright and hiring-regulation issues when staff paste external content into open AI tools.
• Developers entering client code into public models, which could undermine clients’ intellectual property rights.
• Survey respondents expect greater data security and better protection of intellectual property with Microsoft 365 Copilot compared to generic AI tools.

2. Native integration with Microsoft 365

• Copilot works directly inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 apps that employees already use every day.
• This allows SMBs to reimagine workflows without introducing a completely separate toolset.
• Interviewees specifically wanted a solution that:
• Seamlessly integrates with their existing Microsoft ecosystem and information repositories.
• Requires minimal extra IT overhead to manage.

3. Practical fit for SMB resources

• One organization compared “five or six different AI tools” and concluded that Copilot was a better fit because they wanted an industry-level solution, not a heavily custom system that would come with “custom problems.”
• They valued having Microsoft’s scale and investment behind the product to address issues and deliver updates, rather than relying on smaller vendors.
• For SMBs with lean IT teams, this reduces the burden of building and maintaining bespoke AI solutions.

4. Employee experience and productivity

• Before Copilot, teams spent significant time:
• Searching for information.
• Drafting emails, proposals, and presentations.
• Trying to catch up on meetings they missed.
• With Copilot, interviewees reported:
• Easier content creation and collaboration.
• AI-generated meeting recaps that help busy staff stay aligned even when they cannot attend every meeting.
• Higher employee satisfaction, which contributes to lower attrition and faster onboarding (up to 20% lower attrition and 25% faster onboarding in the composite model).

For SMBs, the combination of built-in security, tight integration with existing Microsoft 365 tools, and a manageable implementation footprint makes Copilot a practical way to rethink how work gets done without overextending internal teams.