Microsoft has recently introduced two powerful new features to Microsoft 365 Copilot: Researcher and Analyst. These tools are now generally available to Copilot users, helping teams work smarter by speeding up research, reporting, and data analysis, right within the apps they already use.
If your business is using Copilot or thinking about rolling it out, here’s what these updates mean—and how we can help you get the most from them.
What Are Researcher and Analyst?
These new additions to Copilot are built directly into familiar Microsoft 365 apps:
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Researcher works in Word to help you explore topics and find relevant content—either from trusted online sources or documents within your organisation. It can pull in key points and generate citations, making it much easier to draft proposals, reports, and client content without toggling between tabs.
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Analyst is designed for Excel users. It quickly surfaces insights from your data—spotting trends, building charts, and summarising what’s important. You can ask natural questions like, “What’s driving sales this quarter?” and get answers without needing to write complex formulas.
These tools remove common blockers—whether that’s writer’s block, research overload, or spreadsheet overwhelm.
Who Can Benefit from These Features?
While almost any business can benefit from Microsoft 365 Copilot, the new Researcher and Analyst tools offer particularly strong advantages in industries where time, insights, and clarity matter most.
Here are just a few examples:
🏢 Professional Services
Consultants, account managers, and business advisors can use Researcher to quickly pull together well-structured client reports, proposals, or presentations—without spending hours sourcing background info.
📊 Finance & Accounting
Analyst transforms how finance teams handle spreadsheets. From monthly reports to forecasting, users can extract patterns and build summaries without needing advanced Excel skills.
🏥 Healthcare & Life Sciences
Medical administrators and operations teams can surface insights from complex data, draft internal documents faster, and save time on compliance paperwork with built-in summarisation.
🏫 Education & Training Providers
Course creators, administrators, and support staff can use Researcher to develop learning materials, internal guides, and documentation more efficiently—saving hours of manual effort.
🛍️ Retail & E-commerce
From analysing sales performance to preparing product summaries or marketing collateral, these features help teams move faster while staying data-informed.
⚖️ Legal & Compliance
While Copilot doesn’t replace human judgement, it can support legal teams by drafting structured documents based on case notes, and helping summarise dense data or background info for internal use.
Why This Matters for Your Team
If you’re already using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Researcher and Analyst add even more day-to-day value. Instead of spending time trawling the web for sources or struggling to make sense of spreadsheets, your team can stay focused and move faster.
Here’s how that plays out:
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Sales teams can prepare client-ready proposals in half the time
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Finance or ops can get useful summaries from large datasets instantly
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Managers can focus on decision-making rather than data wrangling
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Everyone saves time by staying inside Word or Excel instead of jumping between tools
In short, these features help make Copilot not just smart—but genuinely useful.
Who Benefits and How We Support
As a Microsoft Partner, we support businesses at every stage of their journey, from choosing the right licences and preparing your Microsoft 365 environment and ensuring everything runs securely and smoothly. We can help you unlock real value from Copilot’s features like Researcher and Analyst, and offering ongoing support to keep things running at their best.We’d be happy to chat, answer questions, or help you get started with the latest features.
📞 Call our friendly UK team on 01925 818448
📧 Email us at sales@smsbusinesscloud.com
🛒 Buy online 24/7 at portal.smsbusinesscloud.com
🌐 Microsoft 365 Copilot
