From my perspective, Microsoft Copilot for Business is genuinely useful if you’re already deep in Microsoft 365 and your data-residency requirements are relaxed. For most UK SMEs I speak to, specially regulated practices, the gap opens on three questions. Where is client data physically processed. Who holds the keys. Can we prove to a regulator that Ai use is controlled.
I believe Copilot answers all three partially, and partial answers tend not to satisfy UK regulators. Here’s the honest comparison.
Data residency
Copilot for Microsoft 365 uses Azure OpenAI Service, which can be configured to process data in specific geographic boundaries. However, the default behaviour and the available region mix aren’t always UK-only — data may be processed in EU data centres, and in some Copilot workflows cross-region traffic occurs.
For most UK SMEs, “EU data centres” is legally workable. For regulated practices with clients who ask specifically about UK-only processing, it’s not a clean answer. Specially financial services, legal services, and healthcare clients are increasingly asking this question directly.
Governance + audit
Copilot has Microsoft Purview integration for audit — which is a real capability if you’re already running Purview. If you’re not, the audit footprint is limited. You can see who used Copilot and when, but reconstructing a specific Ai interaction end-to-end — which data it saw, which prompt produced which output, who signed off — requires significant Purview configuration and typically a dedicated IT admin.
For a 12-person accountancy practice, this overhead is unrealistic. Apart from this, the audit doesn’t natively include client-level scope — you can’t trivially filter “all Ai interactions on this client matter,” which is exactly what an ICAEW QAD reviewer will ask for.
Integrations outside Microsoft
Copilot’s value is strongest when you’re all-in on Microsoft — Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Excel, Dynamics. For UK SMEs, this isn’t the typical stack. Xero dominates accountancy, not Dynamics. HubSpot and Pipedrive are common in sales. Zoho Books is a growing alternative. The firms I work with live across Microsoft, Google Workspace, Xero, HubSpot, Jira, Notion and Airtable.
Copilot doesn’t natively integrate with most of these. You can chat about them, but you can’t give Copilot scope-locked access to your Xero file in a way that keeps client data governed. Specially for accountancy year-end work, this is the whole workflow that matters.
Pricing
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is around £30 per user per month, requiring an underlying Microsoft 365 subscription. For a 10-person firm that’s £300/month for Copilot alone. Other Me’s Small Medium Teams plan is £99 per month flat for the whole team — plus you get all Ai models, plus the non-Microsoft integrations, plus the audit chain designed for SME-scale.
When Copilot is the right answer
Specially in all-Microsoft shops with dedicated IT admin and Purview already running, Copilot is a sensible choice. For professional services SMEs with mixed stacks and no dedicated IT admin, the fit is weaker. I believe the question isn’t which tool is better in abstract — it’s which tool fits your specific practice.
Other Me’s position
Other Me is built for UK SME practices with mixed stacks. UK data residency by default, no Purview required. Per-client vaults at retrieval layer. Native integrations with Xero, Zoho Books, HubSpot, Jira, Notion, Airtable alongside Google Workspace and Office-compatible documents.
See the Built for UK SMEs page for the full framing, or the vertical-specific pages for your practice type. Free 7-day trial, no credit card lets you test against your real workflow before deciding.