What’s the one piece of software almost everyone at work uses?

Before buying six AI tools for six departments, start with the inbox. Familiar work gives employees somewhere useful to begin—with Copilot or their approved workplace assistant.

If you answered Microsoft or email, you’re not wrong. Microsoft is the company, of course, but you know what we mean: Outlook, meetings, documents, and the everyday tools that connect the organization.

Lending has its systems. HR has its systems. Accounting has systems the rest of us are happy to leave to Accounting. But the inbox crosses all those boundaries.

So before you buy six different AI tools for six different departments, start there.

Your inbox already has a claim on your day

McKinsey estimated in 2012 that interaction workers—people whose jobs involve communication, judgment, and knowledge—spent 28 percent of their work time reading, writing, and responding to email. Its estimate was about 13 hours a week. This is an older benchmark, not a measurement of today’s workforce or your staff. It measures email work overall, not just clearing unread messages. McKinsey’s research

We’ve been discussing the inbox problem for more than a decade. Apparently it has excellent job security.

You don’t need to assume that exact number applies to your organization. Ask your staff where the time goes: catching up on a long thread, finding the decision buried halfway down it, working out who owes what, and drafting a reply that doesn’t accidentally restart the entire argument.

Those are recognizable jobs to build an AI introduction around. Start with an approved, ordinary email thread. Ask for the decisions, outstanding questions, and next actions. Check them against the original. Then draft a reply and review it before sending.

The employee already understands what a useful result looks like. That beats opening an empty prompt box and announcing, “It can do anything. Off you go.”

Use the tools your staff already knows

For a Microsoft 365 organization, look at Copilot in the tools people use. Check the actual licenses and configuration first: baseline Copilot Chat access does not mean everyone has every Outlook or document feature. Microsoft’s overview

If your organization runs on Google Workspace, fine. Start with Gemini in Gmail and the other Workspace tools your staff uses. Google describes email summarization and drafting in Gmail, alongside AI assistance in tools such as Docs and Meet. Confirm what your plan and administrator settings allow. Gemini in Gmail · Google Workspace AI

The point is to introduce AI through familiar work. For another platform, evaluate its approved integrated assistant against the same practical tasks. Don’t move company email into a personal AI account just to follow a demonstration.

Give discoveries somewhere to travel

Once someone finds a useful approach, give them a place to share the prompt, the setup, and an example of a good result. Another department can adapt it. Training starts building on what employees discover in their own work.

Specialist AI tools will still earn their place. Buy them for a clear need. Just don’t let your AI strategy become a record of which salesperson reached each department first.

Start with the inbox. It has been volunteering your staff’s time for years.