Rajesh Kumar’s prompts on Microsoft 365 Copilot have grown longer since he began using the AI assistant two years ago.
Then, he was posing one-liners like: “What is this email about?” and “Write a polite note declining this invitation.”
Now he drafts paragraphs of instructions on OneNote first, before handing them over to Copilot to work on.
“The prompts are becoming complex,” said Kumar, chief information officer at global technology services company LTM, previously known as LTIMindtree. “The collaboration has evolved to a different level.”
In the beginning, he marveled at how the AI assistant was woven into workflows via the Microsoft 365 suite of products, like Teams and Outlook. And he used it to cut through “the sea of emails and chats” so that he could focus on the issues that needed his attention.
“What struck me big time is the way Microsoft has embedded Copilot within the core tools that we use day in and day out. And there’s no need to copy and paste … it gets the context. So that is where I got into using it first and that excitement still follows,” he said, referring to Work IQ, the intelligence layer behind Copilot.
Soon however, these productivity gains became the new normal. Kumar explored further – shifting from using AI just for workflows to growing a culture of AI usage across the company.
For him, this meant turning to Researcher, the Copilot agent, for insight on what he calls “strategic topics.” These can range from evaluating which of LTM’s case studies would best showcase its talents for the particular audience at an industry summit to in-depth financial checks and market research on potential vendors for an employee productivity tool.
Not surprisingly, the prompts are extensive. To replace existing software, for example, he might prompt Copilot as follows:
“The platform is very expensive and complicated to implement. Create an exhaustive summary of alternatives available in the IT services industry, a comparison of all of these products and then provide what could be the risks and pitfalls. Generate a detailed report.”
Using Researcher also means Kumar no longer needs to lean heavily on his colleagues, who already have their hands full with their own projects.
“I used to go and ask them, ‘Share your perspective, research this, compile slides for me,’” he said. “I’m pretty sure those are disruptions and interruptions they never wanted. Now for any such work, I already have a great starting point. I just use the Researcher agent.”
As CIO, Kumar is also responsible for leading AI adoption across LTM. His team began conducting department-specific Copilot sessions and organized hackathons for functional users instead of software developers.
The purpose? To introduce users to the whole capability of the platform, including Microsoft Copilot Studio, a low‑code tool for building AI‑powered agents.
“The next phase of evolution really is introducing agent thinking,” said Kumar. “What can they create on their own?”
One outcome of these sessions is agents that match the availability and skills of LTM’s workers – via the enterprise resource planning system and their digital resumes – to a project.
“We have agents helping us to find the right talent for the right project which can be staffed the quickest,” he said.
Kumar also uses Copilot in his personal life, most recently on holiday. He had arrived in a European city at 7 p.m. and asked Copilot to suggest the best places to visit for the next three hours.
“It recommended just a couple of spots, and they turned out to be the best spots in the entire city at that time of night,” he said. “We had a beautiful time.”
Top image: Rajesh Kumar, CIO, LTM, Photo; LTM. Image background generated with Microsoft Copilot.
Lim Ai Leen reports on AI for Microsoft Source, focusing on how it’s improving lives in Asia. Ai Leen was formerly associate foreign editor at The Straits Times in Singapore and still pens an occasional weekend column. Contact her on LinkedIn.
