Forrester TEI Study: Quantifying Copilot's Value in Government

Overview

When evaluating enterprise technology investments, government organizations need more than vendor claims—they need independently verified, methodologically sound research that quantifies real-world impact. The Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study of Microsoft 365 Copilot provides exactly that: A rigorous analysis based on interviews with actual enterprise customers, modeling realistic scenarios, and calculating measurable returns.

For government decision-makers building business cases or evaluating Copilot against budget constraints, the Forrester TEI study offers critical data points grounded in enterprise reality, not theoretical projections.

This video breaks down the Forrester TEI findings, translates them into government context, and explains how to use this research to support your investment decisions.

What You’ll Learn

• Forrester TEI Methodology: How the study was conducted and why it’s credible
• Key Findings: Productivity gains, payback period, and total economic impact
• Government Translation: What enterprise data means for federal, state, and local agencies
• Building Your Business Case: Using Forrester data to justify Copilot investment

Script

Understanding the Forrester TEI Methodology

Before we dive into findings, let’s establish why this study matters. There’s no shortage of vendors claiming their products deliver amazing ROI. What makes the Forrester TEI study different?

Forrester Consulting conducted this research independently—Microsoft commissioned it, but Forrester controlled the methodology and analysis. They interviewed decision-makers and users at actual enterprise organizations already using Copilot. Not beta testers, not early adopters willing to tolerate problems—actual production deployments at scale.

Forrester used their Total Economic Impact framework, which examines benefits, costs, flexibility, and risk across a three-year timeline. They modeled a composite organization based on the interviewed companies: 250 knowledge workers deploying Copilot over three years.

Importantly, Forrester risk-adjusted all benefits downward to account for variation in results and implementation quality. These aren’t best-case scenarios—they’re conservative estimates designed to be achievable by typical organizations.

For government agencies evaluating Copilot, this methodology means the data is credible. It’s not marketing hype. It’s independently verified impact from real-world deployments.

The Core Findings: Productivity and Payback

So what did Forrester find? Let’s start with the headline numbers.

Average productivity gain: 11% for knowledge workers using Copilot. Some users reported higher gains for specific tasks—20-30% time savings on document creation, meeting summaries, and research tasks. But Forrester used 11% as the conservative, risk-adjusted average.

Think about what that means practically. An employee working an 8-hour day gains roughly 50 minutes of productive time by eliminating low-value work. That’s time shifted from searching for documents, formatting emails, coordinating meetings—to actual mission-critical work like analysis, decision-making, and constituent service.

Payback period: 2.9 months. This is the time required to recover the initial investment through productivity gains. Most enterprise software has payback periods measured in years. Copilot pays for itself in a single quarter.

Total three-year economic impact for the 250-person composite organization: $2.3 million in productivity value. That’s after subtracting all costs including licenses, implementation, training, and support.

Now, some of you are thinking: “That’s enterprise. What about government?” Excellent question—let’s translate these numbers.

Government Context: Why ROI May Be Higher

Here’s the counterintuitive reality: Government organizations may see even better ROI than private sector enterprises. Why? Because of how you calculate productivity value.

Productivity gains get valued based on fully-burdened employee costs—salary plus benefits, overhead, facilities, everything. Federal government has particularly high fully-burdened costs because of comprehensive benefits packages, retirement systems, and overhead allocation.

The average federal employee’s fully-burdened cost exceeds $120,000 annually. That’s about $60 per hour of work time. When Copilot saves 50 minutes per day for that employee, you’re reclaiming about $50 per day in productivity value—against a Copilot cost of roughly $1.50 per day.

The Forrester study was based on private sector enterprises with lower average fully-burdened costs. In government context, the same productivity gains translate to higher dollar value—which means faster payback and stronger ROI.

Let’s do the math for a government-specific scenario. Say you deploy Copilot to 100 federal employees averaging GS-13 level, with fully-burdened costs of $135,000 annually. That’s about $67 per hour.

Copilot costs $30 per user per month, so $36,000 annually for 100 users. Using Forrester’s conservative 11% productivity gain, you’re reclaiming $1.485 million in workforce capacity annually against $36,000 in costs. That’s a 41-to-1 return—even better than Forrester’s enterprise composite.

Breaking Down the Benefits

Forrester identified specific categories of productivity benefits. Let’s examine each one in government context.

First, time savings on document creation and editing. Government employees draft everything: policy memos, briefings, grant proposals, reports to Congress, constituent communications. Forrester found users saved 15-25% of time on these tasks by having Copilot generate first drafts, reorganize content, and format documents.

For a policy analyst who spends 20 hours per week writing, that’s 3-4 hours reclaimed. Over a year, that’s 150-200 hours—nearly a full month of additional capacity.

Second, meeting productivity. Copilot can summarize meetings you missed, identify action items from discussions, and catch you up on threaded conversations in Teams. Forrester found this saved 4-5 hours per week for managers and senior staff who attend many meetings.

In government, where coordination meetings often consume entire days, this is particularly valuable. Instead of spending your afternoon trying to remember what was decided in this morning’s meetings, you get instant, accurate summaries and can focus on implementation.

Third, information finding and synthesis. Government employees work with massive amounts of information scattered across SharePoint sites, shared drives, email chains, and legacy systems. Finding the right document or piece of information can take hours.

Copilot searches across all your Microsoft 365 content using natural language queries. Instead of guessing which SharePoint site has the document you need, you ask: “Find the latest version of the acquisition policy memo.” Forrester found this saved 2-3 hours per week per employee.

Fourth, email and communication management. The average knowledge worker spends 28% of their workday on email. Copilot can summarize long email threads, draft responses based on your instructions, and prioritize what needs attention. Forrester found this saved 1-2 hours per day for employees managing high email volumes.

These aren’t separate benefits you add together—there’s overlap. But across all these categories, Forrester’s 11% average productivity gain is conservative and achievable.

Using Forrester Data in Your Business Case

So how do you use this research when building your Copilot business case for leadership?

First, cite the methodology. Forrester’s independence and rigorous approach address the credibility question immediately. You’re not relying on Microsoft’s marketing claims—you’re using third-party verified data.

Second, use the 11% productivity gain as your conservative baseline. Even if you’re skeptical about AI hype, Forrester’s risk-adjusted numbers are defensible. You can build your business case around this figure with confidence.

Third, translate the dollar value using your organization’s actual fully-burdened employee costs. Don’t use Forrester’s composite organization numbers—use your own budget data. This makes the case specific and real for your decision-makers.

Fourth, address the payback period. The 2.9-month finding is powerful because it eliminates the “long-term investment” argument. This isn’t a multi-year bet on future value—it’s a near-term return.

Fifth, use the specific task-level benefits to tell the story. Productivity percentages are abstract. “Cutting briefing document prep time in half” or “Reclaiming 4 hours per week from meeting follow-up” is concrete and relatable.

The Bottom Line on TEI

The Forrester Total Economic Impact study provides government organizations with exactly what they need: Credible, independently verified data on Copilot’s real-world impact based on actual enterprise deployments.

The findings—11% productivity gains, 2.9-month payback, substantial three-year value—aren’t best-case scenarios. They’re conservative, risk-adjusted estimates that typical organizations can achieve.

For government, where fully-burdened employee costs are high and productivity gains translate directly to mission capacity, the ROI case may be even stronger than Forrester’s enterprise composite.

When you’re building your business case, standing in front of budget officers, or answering skeptical questions from leadership, the Forrester TEI study gives you independently verified ammunition. The question isn’t whether Copilot delivers productivity value—the research proves it does. The question is whether your organization is ready to capture that value.

Sources & References

Internal Knowledge Base

• Forrester Total Economic Impact Study - Complete TEI findings and methodology
• Copilot Research & Data Compilation - Supporting productivity research
• Copilot Pricing & Licensing - Cost data for ROI calculations

External Resources

• Forrester TEI Study: Microsoft 365 Copilot - Full study report
• OPM Salary Tables - Federal employee compensation data