“Trust is one of the differentiators between success and failure for an AI or Gen AI initiative,” according to Birgi Tamersoy, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner.
Navigating the complexities of enterprise AI can feel like charting unknown territory, especially when you’re balancing data sovereignty, stringent regulations, and real business outcomes.
That’s why we’ve distilled the top ten Copilot questions and concerns raised by Canadian IT leaders into a single, easy-to-share reference. This blog includes clear answers on security, compliance, integration, ROI timelines, licensing, governance, training pathways, and more, all tailored to Canada’s unique privacy landscape and Azure Canada region requirements.
Whether you’re evaluating Copilot for the first time or preparing to scale across your organization, this guide will help you overcome the most common objections, arm your stakeholders with facts, and build confidence in your AI roadmap.
Microsoft Copilot Canada FAQ: 10 Common Questions & Concerns
1. How secure is Copilot with our sensitive data?
There are many safeguards in place to ensure your data stays secure. These include:
• Data residency: Copilot processing primarily occurs in your Azure Canada Central or Canada East regions, wherever possible, in accordance with Microsoft’s data residency commitments.
• Enterprise-grade protections: Inherits your existing Microsoft 365 encryption (at rest & in transit), Data Loss Prevention policies, and Azure Confidential Computing safeguards.
• Visibility & auditing: Every prompt and response is logged in Microsoft Purview and Azure Monitor, with customizable retention and alerting.
• Network isolation: You control network paths via ExpressRoute or VPN, preventing Copilot traffic from ever traversing the public internet.
2. What’s the real difference between Copilot and ChatGPT?
Copilot comes out on top in many ways, including customized data sources, security, and integration.
• Data access:
1. ChatGPT uses publicly available internet data, including web pages and forums, as part of its training corpus.
2.Unlike ChatGPT, which is trained on publicly available data, Microsoft Copilot is integrated into your Microsoft 365 environment (SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, Word, and Excel) meaning it leverages your organization’s data securely within your own tenant. While both use large language models, Copilot adds enterprise-grade governance, compliance, and SLAs.
• Governance & compliance:
1. ChatGPT offers limited enterprise controls.
2. Copilot enforces role-based access, tenant-wide DLP, sensitivity labels, and meets GDPR, CCPA, FedRAMP, HIPAA, plus Canadian standards.
• Integration & user experience:
1. ChatGPT lives in a separate web UI or API.
2. Copilot is embedded natively in Outlook, Teams, Word, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365, so users never leave their workflows.
• Support & SLAs:
1. ChatGPT community support only.
2. Copilot is backed by Microsoft 365 SLAs, 24/7 support, and guaranteed uptime.
3. How quickly will we see ROI?
According to the Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Microsoft titled “New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMB”, businesses can expect a projected ROI ranging from 132% to 353% over three years. We recommend:
• Pilot to Proof: Target a focused 4–8 week pilot, such as automating month-end closes or generating discharge summaries, to demonstrate value quickly.
• Baseline metrics: Track current hours spent, error rates, and cycle times. After the pilot, measure improvements in time savings, accuracy, and throughput.
• Reinvestment model: Use early savings to expand to additional teams, accelerating a self-funding rollout. Organizations often begin to see productivity gains within the first few months of adoption, and in some cases, they recover licensing costs within 3–6 months. Actual ROI depends on your size, industry, and use cases.
4. Will Copilot replace our people?
Copilot automates routine, predictable tasks so your team can focus on higher-value work. At the same time, organizations should plan for change management, training, and role adjustments to ensure employees are supported and empowered rather than displaced.
For example, a provincial health authority reduced discharge documentation time by 30 minutes per patient, redeploying clinical staff to patient care activities.
5. We have legacy on-premise systems. Can Copilot integrate with them as well?
Copilot can integrate with on-premise systems. There are a few ways to achieve this, depending on your systems and goals:
• Hybrid Connectivity: Deploy on-prem gateways (Power Platform, Azure API Management) or VPN/ExpressRoute for seamless, with only outbound to SQL, ERP, CRM, EHR, file shares, and custom apps.
• Enterprise ETL & Virtualization: Use Azure Data Factory (or third-party tools like Informatica) to build governed pipelines or data virtualization layers that stage and normalize on-prem data into Azure SQL, Data Lake, or Dataverse.
• API-First Architecture: Wrap legacy services in secure RESTful APIs (via Azure API Management) so Copilot – whether in Teams, Dynamics 365, or a custom web app – can query data in real time.
• Secure Networking & Secrets Management: Route all traffic through ExpressRoute/VPN, enforce Network Security Groups and Azure Firewall, and store connection secrets in Azure Key Vault with managed identities.
• Semantic Modelling: Create a unified business layer (Dataverse, Synapse views, or Power BI semantic models) so Copilot prompts reference familiar entities (e.g. “invoice,” “patient record”) instead of raw tables.
• Governance & Monitoring: Implement policy gates in Power Automate or Azure Logic Apps, audit every query in Azure Monitor/Purview, and set up alerting to detect anomalies or unauthorized access.
This end-to-end approach ensures Copilot can securely and reliably leverage your legacy data – across any system – while maintaining compliance, performance, and a true “single source of truth.”
6. How do we govern AI to prevent bias or hallucinations?
Copilot includes safeguards such as diverse training data, human oversight, and continuous monitoring. Organizations can further reduce risk by setting clear prompt guidelines, applying explainable AI techniques, and requiring human review for high-impact decisions. Here are some governance strategies:
• AI Governance Blueprint: An AI Governance Blueprint is a structured framework that ensures responsible AI deployment. It incorporates prompt auditing, human-in-the-loop review gates for high-risk outputs, and automated bias detection routines.
• Continuous validation: Continuous validation ensures that AI systems remain accurate and reliable over time. Regular model accuracy checks against source data, with alerts for drift or anomalous behaviour, allow you to investigate and recalibrate as needed
• Alignment with Canadian best practices: Create frameworks that map to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security baseline controls and NIST AI RMF guidelines.
7. What about licensing and cost?
Copilot is available as a per-user add-on to Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Business Premium. Typical ROI models show license costs fully offset by productivity gains in 12 weeks or less.
Elantis can help you model your specific usage patterns, team size, and workflow efficiencies to deliver a tailored cost vs ROI analysis, so you can see exactly when and how your Copilot investment pays off.
8. We need training. How do we upskill our teams?
Training is key to getting the most from Microsoft Copilot. We recommend creating a prompt playbook and role-based labs that empower Finance, HR, Customer Service and Healthcare teams to build effective prompts. Check out the Microsoft 365 Copilot Prompting Playbook for Power Platform to help you get started.
To maintain momentum, assign internal champions to sustain adoption, share best practices, and manage governance locally.
9. How do we measure adoption and drive ongoing use?
Microsoft provides built-in dashboards for this very purpose. The Copilot Usage Dashboard in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center tracks usage by user, department, and scenario, so you can see how people are using the tool and how frequently.
You can also build custom dashboards correlating prompt volume, time saved, and business KPIs (e.g. cost avoidance, revenue acceleration) to really showcase the ROI you are achieving. Tie Copilot metrics back to your strategic objectives, ensuring continuous improvement and funding renewal.
10. Who do we call when we hit a snag?
Elantis provides Canadian-based enterprise support across the Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 platforms, including support for Copilot. Our managed services are backed by SLAs, so you can rest assured that support is there when you need it.
If you’d rather handle things internally, we recommend quarterly health checks, best practice updates, and proactive governance reviews to keep your Copilot deployment secure, compliant, and high-performing.
Ready to address your team’s toughest Copilot questions?
Contact Elantis for a personalized consultation to design a Copilot adoption strategy that meets Canada-specific compliance and delivers tangible ROI.
