Customer Story: EPAM's Data-Driven Copilot Adoption Journey 

Customer Story: EPAM's Data-Driven Copilot Adoption Journey 

EPAM is a global engineering consulting organization with a deep technical foundation and a culture that embraces innovation. The organization was among the first in Europe to provision Copilot licenses through Microsoft’s Early Access Program, taking a proactive approach to AI enablement. 

EPAM’s commitment to AI fluency and Copilot adoption is driven by both internal innovation and client demand as a Microsoft partner. With clients demanding advanced AI capabilities, EPAM made Copilot adoption a strategic priority, positioning itself as an early adopter and innovator. 

“When we think about measuring Copilot usage and our goals and objectives around utilization, it’s really twofold: value realization and optimization,” said JT Sodano, EPAM’s Head of Digital Workplace. “We’re trying to identify what features people are using, make sure there’s engagement with the scenarios that deliver the most benefit, and use that information to target enablement efforts.” 

The Need for AI Fluency

EPAM’s clients increasingly expect AI fluency and the ability to leverage cutting-edge tools like Microsoft Copilot. This demand drove EPAM to accelerate its Copilot adoption program, ensuring that both technical teams and business users could maximize value from AI-powered workflows.

Copilot Adoption Program Structure

To drive internal adoption at scale, EPAM launched the Champions of Change program, enrolling 50 regional Copilot champions. The program is designed to unify fragmented adoption efforts across regions, ensuring a consistent and effective rollout. The identified champions receive ongoing training and early access to new Microsoft programs, enabling them to “create more awareness about these changes and adoption,” notes Miguel Osorio, EPAM’s Lead Business Analyst for Adoption & Change Management.

Miguel’s pivotal role consolidates data from multiple reporting sources — Microsoft 365 admin center, Copilot Dashboard, custom dashboards — across regions to identify best practices and guide champions in driving change and maximizing business impact.

“A key part of my role is to unify different teams around the world that are engaged in these adoption efforts, so we can have a unified vision of how to drive adoption internally.”

Measurement Journey: From Microsoft 365 admin center to Super User Reports

EPAM’s measurement journey evolved through several stages:

Stage 1: Operational reports for license management

• Microsoft 365 admin center reports: EPAM began by tracking usage of Copilot chat users in the Microsoft 365 admin center, ensuring users were engaged before requesting Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. Licenses were reclaimed if unused for 18 days, making them available for new users.

Stage 2: Adoption reports for leaders and champions

• Copilot Dashboard: With Microsoft’s Copilot Dashboard, EPAM gained a holistic view of adoption within apps, leveraging intensity reports that mirrored their original propensity scoring. The Copilot Dashboard provides a prebuilt, visual report for leaders and champions to analyze and drive adoption across their teams.

Stage 3: Custom reporting for deep insights

• Custom Power BI Dashboards: In addition to the out-of-the-box reports, EPAM developed custom dashboards to understand deeper adoption metrics aligned to their priorities and definitions, including tracking the last time users engaged with Copilot in Teams.
• Propensity Score: Miguel and the team created a scoring system to manage licenses and drive adoption, identifying high-intensity users and potential champions. “We wanted a perspective that was contemplating not just the last time that the user used the tool, but which tools they’re using -- assigning a score to those tools so we can check which users are more likely to convert into a champion.”
• Super User Report: EPAM also worked with Microsoft to run a custom "super user report" to understand detailed usage by department, helping EPAM maximize license allocation and replicate best practices from power users.

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