It's astonishing to consider the rapid advent of generative AI in our working lives. ChatGPT, the first large language model (LLM), was launched in November of 2022, and was quickly followed by competitors like Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. Now, in the U.S. alone, there are tens of millions of users. 

But it’s also given rise to confusion. In our own case, we’ve seen that some are unsure of the key differences between Stravito and Copilot in terms of market insights and knowledge management. Given the ubiquity and ease-of-use of Copilot, people are asking why they need a specialized solution like Stravito.

So which one is the better enterprise solution for market insights—Stravito or Copilot?

First, let’s delve into Copilot to figure it out.

“Copilot” can mean a lot of things

There seems to be some brand confusion in distinguishing between Microsoft’s AI products. People use the term “Copilot” interchangeably for two quite different iterations—Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio.
 
The former, as its name suggests, integrates AI directly into Microsoft 365 applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. It can boost productivity by automating tasks such as drafting emails, generating content, and summarizing email threads. What sets it apart from other generative AI tools is its deep integration into Microsoft services, so it goes beyond other general AI assistants or chatbots.
 
Microsoft Copilot Studio, in contrast, is for businesses and developers looking for custom AI solutions. IT professionals with enough Microsoft 365 know-how can set up bespoke copilots to solve for very specific business problems, including serving as a means of answering questions by leveraging company data like PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and Word files. In short, Copilot Studio is about creating specialized AI tools to meet business needs.

Where Stravito goes further

Like Copilot Studio, Stravito can access company files for research, and Stravito Assistant is a user-friendly, conversational GenAI tool.
 
Stravito goes much further though in that it creates a single place to store, search, and share insights. It helps companies collect, organize, and access various forms of data, such as reports and presentations, making it easier to retrieve the information necessary to make informed decisions. In other words, Stravito functions as a centralized knowledge repository—a central hub for information that makes it easy to work across data silos, solving a common problem for enterprises.
 
Stravito also has flexibility in how the information is stored and accessed. Its taxonomy can be tailored to the specific needs of the business, so that information is organized in the most useful, efficient way.
 
Stravito Assistant is like any GenAI tool in that it accesses large volumes of data to provide conversational responses. But context is critical. Simply drawing on vast pools of data that may or may not be accurate tends to generate generic responses that can’t always be trusted. And refining the context upon which results are generated, requires custom development work. Stravito Assistant differentiates itself by drawing upon company knowledge, so that it provides answers contextualized to your business, and the insights are more trustworthy as a result.
 
Stravito Assistant also has research tools that Copilot Studio can’t match. You get direct links to sources for easy fact-checking, as well as relevant, helpful follow-up prompts if further research is needed, making the whole process more focused and efficient. For those newer to the conversational interface of these tools, Assistant offers ‘Conversation Starters’ with various prompts to help users get started. 

All things considered, Stravito goes much further than being a simple generative AI tool. It can help draft a survey or research brief, run a SWOT analysis, list Pros and Cons or fact-check a claim; but the quality of the output is far superior to a generic tool, powered by a LLM. And Stravito’s powerful collaboration tools make it easy for users to collectively develop and share these insights, regardless of what team they’re in or where they are in the world. 

Stravito is more accurate

The marketplace doesn’t lie. Clearly Microsoft 365 Copilot is helpful for individual users, and Copilot Studio helps to automate complex processes. However, neither version seems to be the best choice if you’re looking to delve into complex questions with accuracy and insight.
 
Stravito recently ran an experiment*: the same set of research questions was posed to both Stravito Assistant and Copilot Studio connected to a Sharepoint site. In both cases, the AI drew upon the same data to provide answers.

In the test, Copilot Studio was slow—it took up to 30 seconds to provide a response to a simple query. It was also surprisingly inaccurate, providing correct answers only 15% of the time. Many of the responses were simply, “I don’t know.” And when it did respond to a query, it drew information from only one research report at a time, providing an inadequate, partial response. It also hallucinated at times (meaning it provided an unfactual response), and many answers were vague. This is partially due to how different systems search. Stravito Assistant uses semantic search which means it is not limited to keywords, but understands for example that a search for ‘Sparkling water trends’ should include information about ‘soda waters’ and ‘seltzers’ for a holistic response. 

Stravito’s responses were swifter and 98% accurate. Additionally, Stravito Assistant’s ability to pinpoint the sources down to a specific paragraph was instrumental in quickly verifying the accuracy for the user, and the suggestions for further research provided helpful guidance to further exploring the topic. 

Copilot provided no follow-up suggestions.
 
It's possible that Copilot Studio’s accuracy will improve in time. Or if an enterprise already has very strong Microsoft architects in-house, they could conceivably build a Copilot that answers natural language questions, draws insights from vast sets of market research, assists with research planning and desk research, and does all these tasks with accuracy and insight. But it will certainly be a costly and time-consuming exercise, with no guarantee of success—whereas Stravito provides all these features out of the box.

As a “buy-vs.-build” issue, Stravito already provides a much better way of storing and organizing data as well as a more nuanced and comprehensive research process.

So which one is better?

To some extent, it’s an apples-and-oranges thing. It’s challenging to compare Stravito with Microsoft Copilot, because while there is some overlap, they are designed for different tasks.
 
Copilot is a more general-purpose tool that helps individuals and teams boost productivity within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It works well for streamlining everyday tasks like writing and data analysis. Copilot Studio is great for automating workflows and assisting with use cases where the human in the loop is relatively important, like customer service. 
 
Stravito is a solution specifically designed for companies that need to manage and share large amounts of market research and business knowledge. It’s particularly beneficial for businesses that require the ability to rapidly extract insights and apply them to critical decisions whilst at the same time improving collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
 
Ultimately, Stravito is the better choice for businesses that require a robust system for managing and utilizing market insights. Thus, if your focus is knowledge management, an accurate research process, and market insights, Stravito is clearly the better tool. 

Copilot, of course, can be helpful in other ways—365 Copilot can even be complementary to Assistant. One example might be to use Assistant for insights generation and 365 Copilot as a productivity tool for speeding up the creation of decks and documents.
 
Stravito also distinguishes itself in data privacy. We never share data with third-party providers, and we have the latest ISO 27001 certification, so clients have peace of mind.
 
If you’d like to find out more about Stravito, you can see how we helped Delta Airlines streamline its market research, or Heineken build a best-in-class insights ecosystem, or Burberry mix creativity with design for better market insights.

*Methodology: This experiment, conducted in February 2024, compared the capabilities of Stravito Assistant and Microsoft Copilot Studio in question-answering and insights exploration tasks. The evaluation involved a set of 40 questions with expected answers, applied to a dataset of 130 documents in both Stravito and SharePoint to ensure a fair comparison.