How to Use AI Agents for Small Businesses

Small businesses are under increasing pressure to do more with less; less time, fewer resources, and leaner teams. That’s where Microsoft 365 Copilot agents come in handy.

Think of them as your smart digital teammates, ones that reduce cognitive load by combining skills, reasoning, and action, so you can focus on growing your business, not chasing down data or writing reports.

Researcher and Analyst are prebuilt agents that were created to help you save time, work smarter, and make better decisions. These agents are currently available as part of the Frontier program, a new way customers with Copilot licenses can try out the latest agent innovations and provide feedback before these experiences are made generally available.

Let’s take a look at a few ways you can tap the expertise of these agents to quickly provide valuable insights that can truly propel your business.

1 - Let Researcher do the heavy lifting

Researcher is like having a full-time assistant who’s great at digging up the information you need. Researcher helps you tackle complex, multi-step research at work—delivering insights with greater quality and accuracy than previously possible. 

Whether you’re checking out a new market, looking into competitors, or preparing for a big pitch, this agent can:

Search your files and online sources to find insights that matter.
Summarize what it finds in plain, easy-to-read language.
Spot trends and opportunities that could make a difference for you.

Instead of spending hours trying to gather this information yourself, you’ll get a tailored summary that’s ready to roll. For example, you need new ideas to promote your new product line, but you don’t know where to begin. Simply lean on Researcher to highlight the biggest trends currently in online marketing for small businesses. Easy enough, right?

Use Researcher to provide deep and well-sourced summaries on topics that can fuel your business.

Before it begins, Researcher as a few clarifying questions to help narrow and refine the direction of my original prompt. Great thinking, Researcher.

After I add some additional guidance, away Researcher goes…

Researcher returns with a high-level description of the key digital marketing trends and changes from last year to this year.

Researcher returns a summary showing a progression of trends including AI & Automation, Short-Form Video,

and Personalization & Data that gained momentum in 2024 that have become even more influential in 2025. In a matter of moments, I’ve got a great foundation to further build out my plans.

2 - Turn raw data into decisions with Analyst

If spreadsheets make your head spin, Analyst is here to help. This powerful agent is great at digging into your data and making sense of it all, going from raw data to insights in no time. Analyst thinks like a skilled data scientist, taking as many steps as necessary to refine its reasoning and provide a high-quality answer. Here’s a sample of what it can do:

Analyze sales, customer, or financial data to find what’s working and what’s not.
Spot patterns or problems you might have missed.
Create simple charts and summaries that explain the story behind the numbers.
Even suggest what you should do next based on the trends it finds.

For instance, you could ask it for insights on spreadsheets containing inventory, sales, customer data and reviews to determine which products were performing well and which weren’t. Analyst can provide clear answers, saving time AND headaches.

Upload or point Analyst to data such as Excel files and ask it to pull together insights you should know.

Analyst lets you in on its thinking and processes, letting you know step-by-step how it’s approaching the task.

Analyst also returns insights on our eBikes, featuring call-outs for inventory, pricing, top sellers, and customer data. Analyst also asks if I’d like any charts or graphs of the data to accompany the analysis. That’s a great suggestion, Analyst.

Even for those that are skilled with numbers, Analyst can save so much time, standardizing data, identifying outliers, and performing a wide range of computations to get to insights you can use to make informed decisions.

3 - Combine both agents for big results

The best part? These agents can team up to tackle even bigger challenges. Picture this:

Researcher gathers customer feedback from reviews and surveys.
Analyst looks at that feedback alongside your sales data.
You get clear suggestions for improving your product or service, all based on solid data.

This type of teamwork used to take expensive tools or specialists. Now, you just need a few clicks (or prompts!).

Why agents are perfect for growing businesses

Microsoft has designed prebuilt agents specifically to make work easier for growing businesses. They’re simple to use, work with the tools you already have, and don’t require advanced setup. Agents can help your team move faster, think bigger, and stay focused on delivering value.

Take a moment to discover innovative and surprisingly easy ways to streamline your operations and focus on growth.

To access Researcher, Analyst, and other prebuilt Copilot agents in the Agent Store, click “All agents” within the Microsoft 365 Copilot app or at https://m365copilot.com.