Exercise 1, Task 3: Use Copilot Chat to analyze a potential acquisition

Fabrikam’s executive team is evaluating the potential acquisition of Relecloud, Ltd. Robin Kline, Fabrikam’s Finance Manager, sent you a detailed business perspective on Relecloud. It provides an overview of the company’s market position and industry analysis, financial performance, customer and sales insights, operations and capabilities, intellectual property, product roadmap, risks and challenges, and future outlook.

Robin tasked you with analyzing and summarizing the document into three concise areas:

  • Relecloud’s financial data. Summarize the key financial figures and trends.

  • Operations analysis of Relecloud. Highlight efficiency, scalability, and organizational structure.

  • Integration plan for the acquisition. Identify main steps and dependencies for merging Relecloud into Fabrikam’s structure.

This exercise demonstrates how Copilot Chat can extract, categorize, and structure complex financial information into actionable summaries, helping analysts prepare polished insights faster. It also shows how detailed prompts can produce much more satisfactory results than less detailed, high-level prompts.

Using Copilot Chat

In Copilot Chat on the web, the response mode selector lets you control how much time and reasoning Copilot uses when answering your prompt. You can leave it set to Auto (the default option) so Copilot balances speed and depth for you, or choose a faster or more in-depth response style depending on the task. The response mode selector is available whether Work IQ is turned on or off.

As you saw in the earlier task that used Copilot in Excel, Copilot also includes a response control selector. However, its options differ from the Chat selector. In Copilot Chat, the selector controls how deeply Copilot reasons about your request. In Excel, the selector controls which AI model performs the work. Although these selectors may look similar, they control different aspects of Copilot and aren’t the same setting.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

  1. Select the following link to download the Relecloud Business Perspective.docx file. Store it in your OneDrive account for use by Copilot in your tenant.

  2. In your web browser, go to the Microsoft Copilot home page. Since this task involves reviewing a file uploaded to OneDrive and generating insights from that internal document, turn on Work IQ. When Work IQ is turned off, Web mode is active and searches external sources such as public websites and blogs, so it doesn’t apply to this task.

  3. In the Copilot prompt field, attach the Relecloud Business Perspective.docx file that you downloaded in step 1. Based on Robin Kline’s request, ask Copilot to review the attached document and create a business perspective summary that contains the following three sections: Relecloud’s financial data, operations analysis of Relecloud, and integration plan for the acquisition.

  4. Upon reviewing the results, you feel that Copilot’s summary was a good start, but it didn’t provide the level of detail necessary for a comprehensive analysis of Relecloud’s business. In reviewing your previous prompt, you notice that you asked for a summary containing three sections but didn’t provide any details about what you wanted Copilot to include in those sections. When you leave those types of decisions to Copilot, its results might not always meet your expectations.

    This time, ask Copilot to create an expanded version of the previous report. Tell it to retain all the information from the previous summary and add the following details:

    • In the Financial analysis section, include:
      • Valuation and deal structure, including valuation multiples and deal structure implications
      • Financial health and ratios, including liquidity and solvency, profitability trends, gross-to-net retention by cohort, regional annual recurring revenue (ARR) dynamics, and cash flow analysis
      • Revenue and customer concentration, including revenue breakdown, customer concentration risk, customer concentration by sector/vertical, and churn and retention drivers
      • The following visual:
        • Line or Bar Charts: Revenue, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), and net income trends over time, plus gross margin and operating margin trends.
    • In the Operations analysis section, include:
      • Cost structure and efficiency, including COGS and operating expenses (OpEx) analysis, efficiency metrics, and scalability assessment
      • Competitive positioning, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and peer benchmarking
      • The following visuals:
        • SWOT Matrix: Visual grid summarizing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
        • Scalability Assessment Diagram: Illustrates development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) practices, infrastructure, and organizational scalability.
    • In the Integration Planning section, include:
      • Synergy and integration modeling, including synergy realization, integration risks, and a post-merger integration plan
      • Leadership and organizational review, including management track record and organizational structure
      • The following visual:
        • Integration Timeline (Gantt Chart): Visualizes the phases and milestones of the post-merger integration plan.

  5. Review the results. Note the difference between Copilot’s first summary report, which was based on a high-level prompt, and the second summary report, which was based on a much more detailed request. This exercise shows the importance of a detailed prompt that includes the four key elements of an effective prompt.

  6. Feel free to select any of Copilot’s suggested prompts if you want to update the summary further. When you’re ready, ask Copilot to compile this information into a single downloadable document. Download the file once it’s generated and store it in your OneDrive account.