We Ask ChatGPT Everything. Why Don’t We Ask AI at Work?
We ask ChatGPT to help us draft emails, summarize articles, and explain complex topics — every single day. But inside our own companies, we still treat AI like it belongs somewhere else. The most valuable data we have? It's right here. And nobody's asking it anything.
Think about it. Your company runs on CRM for Microsoft 365 — SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, Excel, and a dozen other tools that already hold your most important business data. Meeting notes. Client histories. Deal updates. Internal know-how that only a handful of people carry in their heads.
The data isn't the problem. The problem is that no one's connecting the dots. People still search folders, ping colleagues on Teams, or wait for the next meeting to get context they could have in seconds.
What a Company AI Assistant Actually Looks Like
Forget the sci-fi version. A company AI assistant isn't a robot. It's more like a colleague who's been in every meeting, read every email, and actually remembers all of it. Here's the kind of questions it should handle:
- What's the current status of leads from last week's webinar?
- What did we promise this client at our last meeting?
- What's the marketing team working on right now?
What changed in this account over the past two weeks?
No "check the SharePoint." A clear answer — based on your actual company data. And ideally, it flags risks or suggests next steps before you even think to ask.
It's the habit. We learned to type queries into Google. We learned to have conversations with ChatGPT. But at work, we're still stuck in the old loop: "I'll find it in the folders." "I'll ask my colleague." "We'll sort it out at the meeting."
A company AI assistant won't be perfect on day one. It needs to be used. It needs questions. It needs corrections. That's exactly how ChatGPT worked — and look where that got us.
Microsoft 365 Is Your Head Start
If your company already runs on Microsoft 365, you're closer than you think. Most of the key data is already digitized and reasonably structured: documents on SharePoint, emails and calendars in Outlook, conversations in Teams, numbers in Excel — and often a CRM plugged into the same ecosystem.
The layer that ties it all together is Microsoft Graph — it reads relationships between people, documents, meetings, and data. That's exactly what powers Microsoft Copilot today. And it's exactly why Microsoft's AI agent roadmap for 2026 is worth paying close attention to — especially if you're running CRM inside that ecosystem.
How to Get Started
The biggest mistake? Starting with technology. The right approach is the opposite. Map the real questions: What does your team actually ask every week? What gets repeated at every meeting? Where does context get lost?
Pick one area to connect. You don't need everything wired up on day one. Meeting notes + CRM + calendars is a solid starting point. Pick wherever the AI can deliver the clearest value first.
Make it part of the workflow. A chat in Teams works. But so does a weekly video recap that summarizes what happened, who's working on what, and what matters. For most teams, that feels more natural than another dashboard.
A company AI assistant is about giving everyone — from the founder to the newest hire — a shared picture of what's actually happening. No more guessing. No more "I thought someone was handling that." The teams that build that habit early will move faster, stay calmer, and stay a lot more in sync.
