3 ways Copilots and Agents changed Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards in 2026
Years ago, Mercer-MacKay wrote the guide How to create a great Microsoft Partner of the Year Award submission. It’s a well-loved piece that still generates frequent traffic and ranks right under Microsoft’s own Partner of the Year Award resources in web searches. While our team still holds steadfastly to the guidance within, using it as a foundation to write hundreds of awards year after year, in 2026 something changed.
Copilots and Agents.
Suddenly they were everywhere, not only across every category, criteria, and proof point required in the submission guidelines, but in our customer’s feedback, and even our own processes.
Of course, Mercer-MacKay uses AI and Agents across our internal operations, saving time on information gathering and administration for both our company and our clients. It’s allowed us to reinvest that time where it matters most: strategy, storytelling, and the editorial expertise that helps our clients stand out in an increasingly competitive field.
So, before submission guidelines even dropped this year, we knew we’d be embedding Copilot into our awards process, but after more than 20 years of Microsoft awards, we never saw AI as a replacement for the writers that have helped our clients win year after year.
Instead, we found three areas where Copilot could support the award-writing process.
1. Finding critical metrics when time is limited
If you’ve ever written awards, you know this is one of the hardest parts of building a great submission.
Clients are usually down to the wire when it comes to gathering the metrics and proof points required for a strong story. This makes sense because Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that 53% of leaders say productivity must increase, while 80% of the global workforce says they lack the time or energy to do their work. When data is spread across customer references, project documentation, technical architects, Microsoft field teams, and internal reports, clients just don’t have the time to track it all down.
This year, Copilot dramatically accelerated that process.
Clients were able to prompt their systems to find a wealth of information, providing us with a clean list of metrics to sort through and apply where they fit best. We also saw organizations uncover statistics that previously would have taken days of manual effort to compile…or may have never surfaced at all.
2. Streamlining the review process and validating requirements
Microsoft’s submission guidelines are very specific, and as writers, our goal is to check all the requirement boxes without sacrificing a memorable, story-led submission.
Copilot helped us stay on track across dozens of awards this year. Without exposing any client submission data, we could cross-reference submission requirements against the information we already knew was available, quickly validating whether we:
- Would meet all the criteria listed
- Had the types of metrics required (ex: we could say we had an ROI without stating what it was)
- Had enough evidence to back up the story we wanted to tell
Copilot wasn’t replacing our review process, but it was helping identify opportunities for improvement before a submission landed in front of our editors and strategists. This is a common use case for Copilot and AI tools, as the same Work Trend Index states 46% of leaders say their organizations are already using agents to fully automate workflows or processes. Rather than spending valuable review time checking for missing metrics or basic requirements, our team could focus on higher-value work: strengthening narratives, improving positioning, and finding the story that would resonate most with judges.
3. Pressure testing stories before they reach the judge
Stripping away client names, customer names, and metrics, we asked Copilot whether the story still held up. Even without the specific details, was this a memorable narrative? Did it flow naturally while addressing the submission requirements? If you were a judge reading one story after another, would this one stand out?
46% of workers now see AI as a thought partner, and we were using it in the same way.
It could make recommendations about where a requirement appeared under-supported, or where judges may have questions based on the information presented. Sometimes those recommendations were useful. Sometimes we had already explored those avenues and simply didn’t have the data available.
What Copilot provided was another perspective. It gave us additional questions to consider and opportunities to pressure-test a submission before final review.
Why human-led writing will always stand out
The biggest takeaway from this year’s award season was that Copilot could help support writers without having to become one.
It wasn’t a foolproof system, and like many tools, it still required human oversight, context, and judgment.
We brought in Copilot to strategically streamline a repeatable process across dozens of submissions, but we maintained the uniquely human strengths of our writers:
- Prioritizing and combining customer stories into the strongest mix of customer metrics, industry impact, and innovation across the Microsoft ecosystem.
- Crafting the unique storytelling angle that brings out the best of our customers’ achievements, innovation, and business outcomes while resonating on a human level.
- Understanding the Microsoft audience and what separates a good submission from a winning one.
After more than 22 years of writing awards, we believe the organizations that will get the most value from Copilot won’t be using it to write their submissions. They’ll be using it to uncover information faster, pressure-test their approach, and create more time for the work that matters most. Besides, 75% of people prefer humans to create news and entertainment content, while almost 67% prefer humans to create marketing content.
Copilot helped make the process more efficient this year, but it was still our people behind the keyboard who shaped the story worth telling.