In today’s business world, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant trend. It is reality. In recent blog posts, we have already introduced Microsoft Copilot as the central tool of the modern working world. Nevertheless, many SME decision-makers have a specific question on their minds: “Why should we invest in expensive licenses when ChatGPT seems to offer the same thing for free or at a fraction of the cost?” Or “ChatGPT vs. Microsoft Copilot” – differences and advantages?
These questions are justified, but they fall short. Those who only look at the price tag today overlook the business-critical differences in the areas of liability, data security, and process integration. For a SME in 2026, choosing an AI solution is not purely a software decision. It is a decision about the company’s risk and efficiency strategy. In this article, Sarath Kochuparambil explains why Microsoft Copilot is worth the investment and why ChatGPT often reaches its limits in a professional environment.
Sarath Kochuparambil is a Junior Cloud Supporter at TwinCap First AG. In the TwinCapFirst blog, he shows how you can make your everyday work more efficient with Microsoft Copilot and is available for introductory workshops. Get in touch if you’re interested.
Data security is the foundation of any professional AI use. This is where the real difference shows. When your employees use AI, information flows. The question is: Where does it flow and who has access to it?
The risk with ChatGPT (Standard & Paid): Many users are unaware that the free version of ChatGPT uses the inputs (prompts) to train future models. Anyone who has sensitive calculations or customer data “checked” risks the outflow of company secrets.
But what about the paid versions (Plus, Team, or Enterprise)? OpenAI promises not to use the data for training. Nevertheless, there remains a serious disadvantage: You are creating a new data silo. Your information is stored in a separate infrastructure outside the controlled Microsoft ecosystem. In addition, private “Plus accounts” of employees can hardly be centrally managed or secured. This leads to dangerous shadow IT, which is hardly compatible with the strict compliance requirements of modern companies.
The solution from Microsoft Copilot: This is where the “enterprise-grade promise” comes in. Microsoft has designed Copilot so that company data remains within the so-called “tenant.” This is the private, protected company space in the cloud. Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI has access to this data.
The key advantage: Copilot uses the existing security and data protection configurations of your Microsoft 365 subscription. This means your trade secrets stay exactly where they belong. This is an absolute prerequisite for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the protection of your intellectual property in Switzerland.
We can help you set up Microsoft Copilot in your company.
Think of ChatGPT as a brilliant professor. He knows an incredible amount about the world, but he doesn’t know your company. He doesn’t know your customers or your current projects. That’s why you have to spend time explaining to him who you are and what you need every single time. This takes time and is frustrating.
Microsoft Copilot, on the other hand, acts as your digital assistant sitting right next door. It has full context thanks to Microsoft Graph. This system connects all the information within your company. Copilot “reads” your E-mails, scans your calendar, and understands the complex relationships in your SharePoint files.
When you ask Copilot to draft a response to a customer complaint, it doesn’t use standard text from the internet. It refers to the specific offer in your system, takes into account the latest minutes from the Teams meeting, and uses the tone of your previous correspondence. This contextual intelligence makes the difference between a nice gimmick and a real productivity boost.
An often underestimated cost factor in Swiss SMEs is the fragmentation of tools. Employees are constantly jumping back and forth between different applications.
When using ChatGPT, the daily work routine often looks like this: An employee copies data from an Excel spreadsheet, pastes it into the ChatGPT browser, generates the result, laboriously corrects it, and then copies it back into a Word document. This process is error-prone and inefficient. It interrupts the workflow and wastes valuable time.
Microsoft Copilot, on the other hand, is natively integrated into the applications your employees use every day anyway: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.
This seamless integration ensures significantly higher acceptance among the workforce. Employees don’t have to learn new tools. They simply use their familiar tools more efficiently. This leads to a quick return on the license costs.
In an SME, not all employees are allowed to see everything. The management’s payroll or confidential merger plans are strictly protected. A major risk with many AI implementations is that the AI suddenly gains access to data that is not intended for the respective user.
Microsoft Copilot uses the existing authorization management. It respects the security groups and access restrictions that your company has already configured in Microsoft 365. This means that a marketing employee cannot use Copilot to retrieve information from accounting that they do not have access to. ChatGPT does not offer this level of granular control at the enterprise level. With Microsoft Copilot, your company can safely implement AI without compromising its internal data structure.
Of course, the Copilot license costs money. But let’s look at the math realistically. If an experienced employee saves just 15 to 20 minutes a day with Copilot – whether writing E-mails, summarizing documents, or analyzing data – the license will pay for itself in just a few days each month.
In addition, Copilot reduces the error rate. It helps to ensure that no important details are overlooked in long E-mail threads. It supports compliance with corporate design guidelines in presentations. The true value therefore lies not only in the time saved, but also in the increased quality of work.
My conclusion for SME decision-makers is clear: ChatGPT remains an excellent tool for specific, creative tasks or complex logic checks by specialists. It is a digital sandbox for experimentation.
However, when it comes to enabling the entire workforce to work securely, legally compliant, and highly efficiently, Microsoft Copilot is the only scalable solution for businesses. It transforms AI from a “nice gadget” into an integral part of your value chain.
We support you in implementing this technology in your company. We show you how to prepare your data, train your employees, and exploit the full potential of Copilot. Don’t just invest in software – invest in the future viability of your company.
Are you ready for the next step? Contact us for a no-obligation consultation and let’s explore together how Microsoft Copilot can help your SME move forward.
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