For many people, AI is still stuck at the “this is interesting” phase.
They’ve tried an AI assistant, asked it a few questions and used it as a better search engine. Or perhaps they've had some fun seeing what it can do. This is very different to reaching the point where someone can say: “I use AI every day as part of my job.”
We see the same thing happening in businesses. Different members of staff are experimenting with different AI tools. There is often no joined-up approach. It has become so common that it even has a name now: shadow AI. This makes it difficult for a business to understand how AI is being used and puts company data and security at risk.
That’s exactly the gap our AI Kickstarter Package is designed to solve.
Our Kickstarter doesn't simply give people access to an AI tool and hope they find useful ways to use it. We integrate AI properly into the business. We bring together security, governance, technical preparation, training, practical use cases, cultural change and ROI measurement. We help move your business from staff experimenting with AI to using it confidently and effectively in their role.
And we know this approach works because, before offering it to our customers, we put Resolve through it ourselves.
What was happening at Resolve before the Kickstarter?
Like a lot of businesses, people across Resolve had different levels of experience with AI. Some were already exploring what it could do, some were at an earlier stage and some hadn’t used it at all.
We wanted AI to deliver real, tangible benefits for Resolve. That meant looking beyond just providing access to Microsoft Copilot. We needed to understand whether our systems and data were ready, give our team the confidence and skills to use AI effectively, identify genuinely useful AI applications for different roles and calculate the return on investment.
So, before launching our AI Kickstarter to customers, Resolve became Customer Zero.
How the AI Kickstarter worked
We wanted to trial our AI Kickstarter in the same way one of our customers would experience it. We deliberately chose a mix of people from across Resolve with different levels of technical knowledge and AI experience. This was to remove our advantage of being an IT support company.
Only one of the people selected works in an IT support role, while two hadn’t used AI at all. This gave us a much more realistic picture of how the programme could work across a typical business.
Before any training began, we assessed Resolve’s own Microsoft 365 environment, looking at areas including permissions, sensitivity labels, data tagging, stale access, data loss prevention and where our essential company data was stored.
We then analysed our findings and created a RAG report, highlighting issues and areas for improvement in red, amber and green. From this, we created our own roadmap and started addressing the preparation work needed before rolling AI out more widely.
We were putting our own business, data and people through the process first.
Preparing our team
We started with eight people deliberately chosen from different areas of Resolve, including our commercial director, solutions consultants, marketing, cyber security, professional services and HR.
The aim was simple: experience the Kickstarter exactly as our customers would, find any potential problems and measure the ROI for a real business.
During the programme, participants learnt how Copilot can support everyday work, including emails, meetings, documents, research, planning and repetitive tasks. We also began identifying opportunities where AI could support future automation and AI agents.
But training people to use Copilot was only part of the process. The Kickstarter was about building AI into everyday working habits.
Measuring the difference
Most businesses need measurable results and a clear return on investment. Each participant selected two or three regular tasks to focus on. They recorded how long those tasks took without AI, then measured the time required when using Copilot to support the same work.
After just three weeks, the results were significant.
Eight employees identified combined savings of 25.6 hours per week from just two or three tasks each.
And that’s an important distinction. We weren’t measuring every possible way those employees could use AI. We were measuring a small number of specific, repeatable tasks where we could clearly compare the difference.
Now, a month after the Kickstarter finished, 100% of the staff who took part use Copilot every day. They use it because they know how to get the most from it and enjoy using it. The combined time saving across those who took part is now around 60 hours a week.
That’s what successful AI adoption looks like to us.
Our Kickstarter did exactly what it was designed to do. It prepared our business for AI, helped our staff identify the right use cases, developed their skills, created new working habits and measured the difference.
