As a technology company, Talan viewed AI as a business priority to increase internal productivity and advise its clients on AI adoption.
Talan deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot to its client-facing professional services and business support professionals, with training and collaboration from Microsoft to support successful adoption.
Copilot has significantly increased productivity and engagement across its HR, marketing, and consulting teams, and the company is now exploring further AI adoption.
Talan aims to be the positive innovation for its clients. The international technology and consulting group recognizes there will be an increasingly important role for AI-augmented processes for both its internal teams and its clients. It was, therefore, a business priority to be amongst the first to adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot.
“We must become an AI-augmented company,” says Xavier Raymond, Director of Microsoft Global Offer at Talan. “There were two main drivers for our adoption of Copilot. First, it’s our job to support our clients in the adoption of new technologies—so it is important to us to be able to support and advise our clients about their own adoption of Copilot. Second, as an international group we face the same challenges as our clients—so we, too, can benefit from Copilot.”
Talan took a targeted approach to its Copilot rollout by tailoring deployment to the specific needs of each business function. HR, recruitment, sales, marketing, and other business support teams were considered separately to identify, explore, and share the use cases unique to each. This segmentation enabled Copilot to be precisely aligned with the operational realities and expectations of every role.
“It’s really important that our operational teams can transform their way of working and use the power of AI to be even more efficient and effective in their daily work,” continues Xavier Raymond. For Talan’s consultants, an early and obvious use case was using Copilot to take meeting notes and provide meeting summaries. Xavier Raymond says, “The great strength of Copilot is you don’t need to demonstrate it for long for people to want to appropriate it.”
“It is very important to equip our consultants with solutions that simply make their daily consulting work easier,” he adds. “With Copilot, our consultants are able to focus on the exchanges with the client rather than taking meeting notes. They are able to draw out more value from this type of meeting.”
Indeed, Talan’s consulting teams quickly progressed, moving on from using Copilot to summarize meetings to exploring more role-specific use cases.
“We explored how Copilot can help streamline information overload,” recalls Philippe Lerique, Strategy and Management Consultant at Talan. “Now, I use Copilot to summarize key emails at the end of the day or provide an overview of an entire inbox because, let’s face it, we don’t always have time to go through everything.”
Maureen Bloquet, PMSI Digital Workplace & AI at Talan, reports, “Some major trends for our consultants center on productivity use cases; using Copilot to support document creation, writing tenders, presales responses, training, and information search.”
She explains, “They can interact with Copilot during a meeting to, for example, increase participation and engagement. Copilot can generate questions to prompt more passive meeting participants. Or you can use Copilot to help understand interactions between people during an exchange. This is the part that stands out.”
“The great strength of Copilot is you don’t need to demonstrate it for long for people to want to appropriate it.”
Xavier Raymond, Director of Microsoft Global Offer, Talan
Recruitment is frequently the first interaction someone has with a brand, so it was a priority area for Talan. It wanted to understand how Copilot could help to ensure a positive first encounter.
“We identified more than fifty quick wins,” Maureen Bloquet enthuses. Recruitment use cases include writing job descriptions to post on LinkedIn, research, ideation, and text generation as well as using Copilot to generate interview questions.
“Copilot can develop questions that are very specific to the candidates,” continues Maureen Bloquet. “By using Copilot to optimize targeted messages on LinkedIn, our recruiters see 10 to 20 percent more responses from the right candidates – turning outreach into real connections.”, notes Florence Réal, Head of Recruiting.
She adds, “We also decided to use Copilot to record and notate our Microsoft Teams meetings because our recruiters want their attention to be 100% dedicated on the candidate. It also makes it easier to subsequently share findings with managers conducting second-stage interviews. In this, Copilot delivers a gain in value.”
However, recording conversations with external candidates brought new concerns around data governance to the fore. Here, Copilot’s close integration with Microsoft Teams and the broader Microsoft Security suite helps to reduce the compliance burden. Maureen Bloquet explains, “Because we are recording meetings with external candidates, we use Microsoft Purview to help us to comply with regulations like GDPR and manage the data lifecycle.”
The marketing team is increasingly using Copilot to generate content. Copilot is especially helpful when optimizing webpage content for search engine referencing.
“We were a bit hesitant at first but, now we have the hang of it, we are enjoying using Copilot more and more,” says Gaëlle Germe, Head of Brand Content and Sponsoring at Talan. “There are multiple use cases, including keyword research and content writing.”
“One advantage, especially for people like me who sometimes struggle with blank page syndrome, is how incredibly reassuring Copilot can be in these moments,” agrees Julie Babec, Change Consultant at Talan. “We have the ideas, we know exactly what we want to build, but getting started can be tough—especially when overloaded with work. Asking Copilot to draft a plan helps to validate that I am on the right track and, sometimes, it even suggests an extra idea or two. Copilot is a real gamechanger for creative flow.”
Berenice Chassagne, Deputy Chief Operating Officer at Talan, agrees, “Copilot has had wide-ranging impact. Using Copilot has significantly strengthened our strategic preparations, budgetary planning, and presentations to clients, boards, and internal teams.”
“By using Copilot to optimize targeted messages on LinkedIn, our recruiters see 10 to 20% more responses from the right candidates.”
Florence Réal, Head of Recruiting, Talan
The team at Talan has achieved a great active user rate, with more than 80% of those given a Copilot license using the tool every day. More than half are using Copilot across the Microsoft stack, not just in the obvious use cases like Microsoft Outlook.
“The real impact of Copilot comes from equipping operational teams,” emphasizes Xavier Raymond. “That’s why we’ve integrated this insight into our adoption strategy: to be truly effective, Copilot must be in the hands of those who need it most.”
The most popular use cases include document creation and editing; nearly 60% of users leverage Copilot for this. A similar number use Copilot for research and information gathering, while more than half use Copilot for email management.
User satisfaction rates are high: over 70% say they are satisfied or very satisfied with Copilot. Plus, more than three quarters of users would recommend Copilot to colleagues and clients.
Further, nearly three quarters of users say that Copilot has had a positive impact on their productivity, with nearly half of users report time savings of between one and two hours per week. An extra fifth of users report time savings of more than two hours per week.
Talan’s wholehearted commitment to the change management program around Copilot adoption has been critical to the high adoption rates, successful use cases and business impact. “From the start, we had a representative panel of employees and we started to train Copilot ambassadors at all levels of the organization,” recalls Maureen Bloquet. “We built a user community that helped us identify key use cases. We shared these use cases every week in themed internal posts on our Viva Engage Community. We also ran weekly webinars on Microsoft Teams in English, French, and Spanish to support Copilot adoption. Participants loved it—they left with concrete use cases which they could immediately apply to their daily work.”
Xavier Raymond confirms, “Our goal is to ensure the ‘wow’ effect doesn’t fade over time. This way, we have kept engagement high so that Copilot has become a daily habit.”
Other novel initiatives included a “hackathon prompt” initiative from which ideas were used to create a custom prompt library, accessible to all employees. Maureen Bloquet explains, “Users contributed to and enriched the library themselves, making it a dynamic and evolving resource. Today, anyone can quickly find the right prompt using filters per tool or job function. We’ve unlocked significant value across the organization.”
“Training on Copilot isn’t enough,” emphasizes Xavier Raymond. “What truly matters is embedding its use into daily workflows and making Copilot an integral part of how we work. It is about embracing a new way of working. For many it is a complex shift—almost like learning a new language alongside their daily tasks. Change management was crucial in this cultural shift, ensuring smooth and meaningful adoption.”
“The real impact of Copilot comes from equipping operational teams.”
Xavier Raymond, Director of Microsoft Global Offer, Talan
Talan is eager to explore new potential from its use of Copilot. It is leaning into the support of Microsoft and its partner network to accelerate the pace of transformation. “The power of collaborative innovation cannot be overstated,” says Berenice Chassagne. “Microsoft has supported us with training and we continue to harness their expertise through Microsoft-certified programs. Our deeply integrated partnering sparked new ideas, accelerated progress, and unlocked efficiencies that would have been difficult to achieve alone.”
Maureen Bloquet agrees, “We’ve built a strong, trust-based relationship with the Microsoft teams. We collaborate closely with them every week, benefiting from their hands-on expertise. What sets Microsoft apart is its ability to truly listen to its clients while leveraging deep, internal expertise to tackle even the most complex challenges.”
She adds, “As a Microsoft partner and having first-hand experience in having deployed Copilot internally, we have the credibility and expertise to lead the conversation around Copilot.”
Now that Copilot has been successfully integrated into so many of Talan’s workstreams, it is hard for users to imagine going back to working life without Copilot. “For me, it’s simple. If I were to change companies tomorrow and there was no Copilot, I’d think twice,” says Julie Babec. “In a world where more is constantly expected of us, having Copilot to support productivity isn’t a luxury—it’s becoming essential.”
“Copilot has become an indispensable tool for recruiters,” says Florence Réal, Head of Recruiting. “Once they experience its impact, they simply can’t go back. Our goal is to equip every recruiter with a Copilot license by 2025, empowering them to work smarter and hire better.”
Xavier Raymond proposes, “The observation we make today is that if a consultant isn’t using Copilot to produce his commercial proposals, technical documentation, or reports, he will not do his job properly.”
“As a Microsoft partner and having first-hand experience in having deployed Copilot internally, we have the credibility and expertise to lead the conversation around Copilot.”
Maureen Bloquet, PMSI Digital Workplace & AI, Talan
Talan now plans to take a similarly strategic approach to the wider rollout of Copilot across the business, focused on equipping users who need Copilot the most.
“We are going beyond the notion of productivity gain. That argument has been won—we no longer need to demonstrate that,” emphasizes Xavier Raymond. “It’s no longer about minutes per day; it’s about what we’ve gained, it’s about what our use of Copilot has added to our earnings or EBITDA.”
New initiatives include exploring how Copilot will support Talan to operate a business process almost autonomously, while keeping its strong focus on responsible AI use. In addition, Talan is exploring how Copilot Agents and virtual assistants developed using Copilot Studio might further advance its successful transformation path.
“I firmly believe in the evolving potential of this tool,” emphasizes Julie Babec. “The pace of new features proves it. Functionality is advancing rapidly. In the long run, Copilot will become indispensable, and its use will only continue to grow.”
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