Less hype, more hours back
Most businesses do not need an "AI strategy". They need three or four repetitive jobs done faster, staff who know what the tools can and cannot be trusted with, and someone to make sure company data is not leaking into a chatbot.
BDL IT helps you find the handful of tasks where AI genuinely saves time - drafting, summarising, searching your own documents, triaging email, filling in forms - and sets the tools up properly inside the Microsoft 365 environment you already pay for. Then we train your people, write the rules, and stay on hand as the tools change, which they do every few months.
What we do
Use-case discovery
A half-day with your team to list where time goes, then pick the two or three jobs AI can take on first. You get a short written plan with expected time savings and what it will cost to run.
Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio
Licensing, rollout, and configuration so Copilot sees the right data and nothing it should not. Custom agents built in Copilot Studio for jobs like answering staff questions from your own policies or drafting quotes from your price list.
Other AI tools, chosen deliberately
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini business plans, and industry tools for accounting, legal, trades and health. We help you compare, pick one, and configure it with the privacy and data-retention settings turned the right way.
Governance and data safety
A one-page AI use policy your staff will actually read, permissions tidied so Copilot cannot surface the payroll folder, and monitoring so you know which tools are in use and where data goes.
Education
Hands-on workshops at your office, tailored to the job people do: prompting that works, checking outputs, what never to paste in, and worked examples from your own documents. Short refreshers as the tools change.
Ongoing support
AI questions go to the same Christchurch helpdesk as everything else. Under a managed agreement it is part of the fee; otherwise it can be a block of hours.
Where customers start
- Meeting notes and follow-ups - Teams meetings transcribed, summarised and turned into actions automatically
- Searching your own documents - "what did we quote that customer last year" answered from SharePoint, not from memory
- Email and inbox triage - drafts, summaries of long threads, and routing to the right person
- Quotes, proposals and reports - first drafts from templates and past work, checked by a human before they go out
- Customer enquiries - a bot that answers the questions your phone team is sick of, and hands the rest to a person
- Data entry between systems - invoices, forms and orders read and keyed automatically (see workflow automation)
Good fit if...
- You already use Microsoft 365
- Staff are using ChatGPT on their phones anyway
- You have repetitive admin nobody enjoys
- You want a clear policy before something goes wrong
- You would rather learn than outsource everything
Pairs well with
Common questions
Is our data used to train the AI?
Not on the business plans we set up. Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT Team and Enterprise, Claude for Work and Gemini for Workspace all contract not to train on customer data. The free consumer versions are a different story, which is exactly why staff should not be using them for work. We configure the settings and put it in writing in your policy.
Do we need Copilot licences for everyone?
Rarely. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is licensed per user and priced accordingly, so most customers start with the people who write, read and meet the most, measure the difference, and expand from there. Many jobs are covered by the AI features already included in your existing Microsoft 365 plan.
Will AI replace jobs in our office?
In our experience it removes the parts of jobs people complain about - retyping, chasing, summarising - rather than the jobs themselves. The businesses getting the most from it are the ones that trained their people early, not the ones that tried to cut headcount.
How do we stop staff pasting confidential information into chatbots?
Three things together: give them an approved tool that is actually good so they have no reason to go elsewhere, block or flag the consumer sites on company devices, and train them on what is and is not safe. Technology alone does not fix it; neither does a policy nobody reads.
Can you build us a custom AI tool?
Yes, and usually without writing much code. Copilot Studio, Power Automate and the vendors' own APIs cover most needs: a bot trained on your documents, an agent that processes inbound forms, or an integration into your line-of-business system. For anything larger, see software development.
Start with a discovery session
Half a day with your team, a short written plan, and an honest view of what AI will and will not do for your business. No licences to buy first.