Microsoft has rebuilt Copilot around three parts: Home with Chat, Cowork and Office, Code for building apps in plain English, and Autopilot, an always-on agent formerly called Scout. We explain what is in the new Copilot, when it arrives, how the licence and Copilot Credits pricing works, and what IT teams should set up first.
Microsoft Copilot and a custom AI assistant are not rivals for the same job — one is a £13.80-a-seat licence inside Office, the other is software built around your data, your customers and your process. This guide puts verified UK figures on both: Copilot’s real pricing and the measured government trial results, what a custom build actually costs at £1,100 a day, a 50-person worked example run down both routes over three years, the hybrid pattern that uses each for what it is best at, and a five-question decision framework that settles the choice for most businesses in an afternoon.
What a UK financial services firm actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: the Companies House register downloaded and analysed to show that 86.53% of the 64,708 operating UK financial services companies file as small companies and more than half the sector on paper is a holding shell, the FCA rulebook mapped obligation by obligation onto technology deliverables, PS26/2’s 24-hour incident clock and annual third party register explained before they bite in March 2027, the July 2026 Critical Third Party designations put in context, retention clocks from three years to seven set side by side, and Microsoft 365 priced at published UK list rates. Ends with a twelve-question provider test, a hundred-point scorecard and a 90-day plan.
What a UK school or multi-academy trust actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: the DfE’s Get Information About Schools register downloaded and analysed to show that 89.81% of multi-academy trusts run a separate web domain for every school and half of them cross a local authority boundary, the Cyber Security Breaches Survey education strand read properly so the primary-to-secondary gap is visible, the six core digital and technology standards and their 2030 deadline mapped to deliverables, retention clocks running from a six-month DBS record to a forty-year insurance certificate, Cyber Essentials costed trust-wide against school-by-school, and what the Academy Trust Handbook demands of trustees. Ends with a weighted hundred-point scorecard, indicative UK pricing and a 90-day plan.
What a UK charity actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: the Charity Commission register downloaded and analysed to show that 90.59% of charities sit under £500,000 of income and 37.04% still publish a free consumer webmail address as their official contact, the Microsoft 365 nonprofit grant costed three ways for a 68-account charity, the Cyber Security Breaches Survey read properly so the sector’s lower breach rate is understood as under-detection rather than safety, retention clocks running from a DBS certificate destroyed on decision to a seventy-five-year safeguarding horizon, and what the Charity Commission, the ICO and HMRC each demand of the IT estate. Ends with a weighted hundred-point buyer’s scorecard, indicative UK pricing and a 90-day plan.
What a UK dental practice actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: the practice management system and its vendor support boundary, the cone beam imaging curve sized against an eleven-year retention floor, the Data Security and Protection Toolkit broken down to the 45 mandatory evidence items a dentist carries against a GP practice’s 29, NHSmail and secure referral, backup and restore targets set per system, Microsoft 365 licensing costed three ways for a four-practice group, identity control in a room where four people share one screen, and what CQC Regulation 17, UK GDPR and IR(ME)R 2017 each demand of the IT estate. Ends with a weighted hundred-point buyer’s scorecard, a 90-day plan and a pass mark of 70.
What a UK recruitment or staffing business actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: three systems of record instead of one, the CRM and ATS integration surface nobody owns, Microsoft 365 licensing split between consultant desks and back office with the annual cost of each shape worked out, email deliverability treated as a revenue system including Microsoft’s tenant-wide external recipient ceiling, identity and export controls for the consultant who leaves with the database, pay-run continuity for a weekly deadline that cannot move, the five statutory clocks the software has to carry, candidate data retention and the DUAA line on automated screening, and the April 2026 umbrella PAYE liability. Ends with a weighted hundred-point buyer’s scorecard and a pass mark of 70.
What a UK contractor actually needs from an IT partner, counted rather than described: six computing environments instead of one office, cellular-first site connectivity measured against Ofcom’s real coverage figures, Microsoft 365 licensing split between office and site with the annual cost of each shape worked out, identity and Conditional Access for a workforce that changes weekly, the eight golden thread attributes the Building Safety Act now requires and the IT control that delivers each, the statutory payment and adjudication clocks that email has to carry, CIS deduction arithmetic, invoice fraud controls, and a fifteen-year retention floor that most backup policies quietly miss. Ends with a weighted hundred-point scorecard and a pass mark of 70.
Switching IT support providers goes wrong for administrative reasons, not technical ones — a licence that lapsed, a firewall nobody had the password for, a backup chain that ended with the old contract. This guide sets out the sequence that keeps a move invisible to the business: the contract clock and the cost of missing a notice date, the exact Microsoft CSP transfer rules (30-day request expiry, 72-hour completion, 25 line items per billing plan), what happens if the outgoing provider cancels instead of transferring, a 90-day phased plan with exit criteria, the cutover weekend hour by hour, and a modelled £17,500 switching cost for a 60-user firm that takes 3.04 years to pay back on price alone.
How a UK accountancy practice should design and secure client documents in SharePoint Online — the seven-site architecture that replaces one site per client, the metadata columns that replace folder trees, a group-based permission model with restricted access control on anti-money laundering evidence, the four external sharing settings and why Anyone links break your device policies, sensitivity labels and data loss prevention for client data, retention to Regulation 40 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, version limits and the 93-day recycle bin, Copilot oversharing controls, Microsoft’s own hard limits, UK licence costs with a worked forty-one person example, and a thirty-day build calendar.
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