EPC Group FAQ
Common questions about EPC Group Microsoft consulting services, pricing, AI expertise, and enterprise solutions for Fortune 500 and federal agencies. Don't see your question? Contact us or call (888) 381-9725.
AI & Microsoft Copilot
What is a vCAIO (Virtual Chief AI Officer)?
A vCAIO (Virtual Chief AI Officer) is EPC Group's flagship strategic advisory service that provides organizations with executive-level AI leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time C-suite hire. The vCAIO delivers AI governance frameworks, ROI modeling, enterprise roadmap development, vendor evaluation, and hands-on implementation support for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure OpenAI, and custom AI agent development using Copilot Studio.
How does EPC Group handle Microsoft 365 Copilot Readiness?
EPC Group uses a proprietary 4-Pillar Copilot Readiness Methodology: (1) Data Governance — remediating over-shared files and folders; (2) Sensitivity Labeling — implementing Microsoft Purview labels; (3) Technical Configuration — configuring Copilot licensing and security policies; (4) End-User Adoption — training programs to drive ROI. This ensures your data is secure before AI is enabled, preventing the exposure of sensitive files.
What is EPC Group's "Multiple Models. One Truth." AI strategy?
"Multiple Models. One Truth." is EPC Group's signature framework for enterprise Generative AI. Rather than locking organizations into a single AI vendor, EPC Group integrates multiple frontier models — GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Google Gemini — into a unified, governed workflow. This routes tasks to the optimal model while maintaining a single source of truth through Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Studio.
Can EPC Group build custom AI Agents?
Yes. EPC Group builds production-ready custom AI agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure OpenAI Service, and semantic search over proprietary enterprise data. These agents connect to Dataverse, SQL Server, Microsoft Fabric, and third-party APIs to automate workflows in HR, Sales, Finance, and IT.
What is the 47-point Copilot Readiness Checklist?
EPC Group's 47-Question Copilot Readiness Checklist is a comprehensive pre-deployment assessment covering data governance, licensing, security, compliance, and adoption planning. Organizations that complete this checklist before enabling Copilot reduce security incidents by 80% and achieve 3x faster user adoption.
How long does a Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment take?
A full Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment with EPC Group typically takes 6-12 weeks, depending on tenant size and governance maturity. Phase 1 (Data Governance) takes 2-4 weeks; Phase 2 (Technical Configuration) takes 2-3 weeks; Phase 3 (User Training) takes 2-4 weeks.
What's the difference between Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Azure OpenAI?
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a SaaS AI assistant embedded in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams — requiring no coding. Azure OpenAI Service is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that allows developers to build custom AI applications using GPT-4o with full control over prompts, fine-tuning, and data integration.
Can you integrate Copilot with our legacy systems (SAP, Salesforce, Oracle)?
Yes. EPC Group specializes in integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI with legacy enterprise systems including SAP ERP, Salesforce CRM, Oracle Financials, and custom SQL databases using Microsoft Power Platform and API connectors.
Power BI, Fabric & Data Engineering
Does EPC Group offer same-day Power BI emergency support?
Yes. EPC Group provides Emergency Power BI Support for critical dashboard failures, gateway errors, dataset refresh issues, and performance degradation. Senior Power BI architects are available for immediate intervention with typical response times under 2 hours.
Can you migrate us from Tableau or Qlik to Power BI?
Absolutely. EPC Group specializes in Legacy BI Modernization, migrating organizations from Tableau, Qlik Sense, IBM Cognos, and SAP BusinessObjects to the Microsoft Power BI and Fabric ecosystem, including automated DAX conversion from Tableau Calculated Fields.
What is Microsoft Fabric and do I need it?
Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft's unified analytics platform that combines Power BI, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Data Lake into a single SaaS offering with a shared semantic layer called OneLake. EPC Group helps organizations evaluate whether migrating to Fabric will reduce Azure consumption costs and improve query performance.
What's the ROI timeline for a Power BI implementation?
Most EPC Group Power BI implementations deliver measurable ROI within 3-6 months through time savings (replacing manual Excel reporting), decision speed, cost avoidance (eliminating legacy BI licenses), and direct revenue impact via pipeline visibility.
Can you fix broken Power BI dashboards immediately?
Yes. EPC Group's Power BI Emergency Response Team diagnoses and fixes broken dashboards, failed gateway connections, dataset refresh errors, and security misconfigurations within hours.
What's included in Power BI managed services?
EPC Group's Power BI Managed Services includes: 24/7 Dataset Refresh Monitoring, monthly Performance Tuning (DAX optimization), User Support help desk, Security & Governance audits, License Optimization, and an ongoing allocation of hours for New Report Development.
Pricing & Commercial Terms
How does "Consulting Block" pricing work?
EPC Group's Consulting Blocks are pre-purchased blocks of 40 or 80 hours that never expire and can be used for any service — SharePoint, Power BI, Azure, Copilot, or emergency support. There are no rigid SOWs or scope creep penalties.
What are your standard hourly rates?
EPC Group's Consulting Block rates range from $175 to $185 per hour, providing access exclusively to Senior Architects and Principal Consultants.
What payment terms do you accept?
EPC Group accepts Net 30 payment terms for enterprise clients via credit card, ACH, or wire. We also support SAM.gov registration and DFARS compliance for government procurement.
Do you offer fixed-fee project pricing?
Yes. EPC Group offers fixed-fee project pricing for well-defined initiatives such as SharePoint migrations, Power BI dashboard development, and Copilot readiness assessments.
What's the minimum engagement size?
EPC Group's minimum engagement is a 40-hour Consulting Block to ensure sufficient time to deliver meaningful business outcomes, though we also offer 4-hour Discovery Workshops for roadmap planning.
Process, Support & Getting Started
How do I get started with EPC Group?
It is a simple 3-step process: (1) Schedule a 30-minute Discovery Call; (2) Receive a Tailored Proposal within 48 hours; (3) Kickoff & Delivery, typically beginning within 1-2 weeks.
What is your typical response time for new inquiries?
EPC Group responds to new inquiry submissions within 2-4 business hours. Urgent requests from existing clients receive prioritized emergency hotline access.
Do you offer 24/7 emergency support?
Yes. EPC Group offers 24/7 Emergency Support for critical outages including SharePoint site failures, Exchange Server downtime, Power BI failures, and Azure infrastructure issues.
What happens during the discovery phase?
The Discovery Phase is a 1-2 week engagement including Stakeholder Interviews, a Technical Architecture Assessment, Readiness Scoring (Governance/Security), and a Roadmap presentation with ROI projections.
Microsoft Fabric, Defender, Sentinel & Entra ID
What's the typical cost of an enterprise Microsoft Copilot rollout?
Enterprise Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts at EPC Group range from $200,000 to $1.5 million depending on tenant size, governance complexity, and regulated-industry requirements. Mid-market (500-2,000 users) typically lands at $200K-$400K covering readiness assessment, sensitivity label deployment, Copilot governance framework, pilot rollout, and end-user training. Fortune 500 deployments ($800K-$1.5M) add multi-tenant governance, Microsoft Purview integration, custom AI agents, and 12-18 month phased rollouts with executive change management. Microsoft licensing is separate ($30/user/month for Copilot for M365).
Does EPC Group provide ongoing managed services after project completion?
Yes. EPC Group offers three managed services tiers: Standard (business-hours support, monthly health checks, $5K-$15K/month), Premium (24/7 support, weekly optimization, $15K-$40K/month), and Mission-Critical (dedicated TAM, daily monitoring, named senior architect on retainer, $40K-$100K/month). Common engagements: Microsoft 365 tenant administration, Power BI workspace management, Azure FinOps, SharePoint governance enforcement, Copilot agent monitoring, and Microsoft Sentinel SOC operations.
How does EPC Group differ from larger consulting firms like Accenture or Deloitte?
EPC Group is Microsoft-platform-specialized rather than generalist. Three structural differences: (1) Senior-architect-led delivery — every engagement is led by a senior architect with 15+ years of Microsoft stack depth, not delegated to junior consultants. (2) Fixed-fee engagement model — scope, timeline, and cost are committed up-front; no T&M scope creep. (3) Bench depth at the platform level — 4x Microsoft Press author (Errin O'Connor), original SharePoint and Power BI beta team members, core Microsoft Solutions Partner designations. Larger firms compete on breadth across many platforms; EPC Group competes on depth in Microsoft 365, Copilot, Power BI, Fabric, Purview, Defender, Sentinel, and Azure.
Can EPC Group integrate AI agents with our existing Microsoft Teams environment?
Yes. EPC Group builds custom Microsoft Copilot agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio that surface in Microsoft Teams as either personal chatbots or channel-deployed assistants. Common patterns: HR onboarding agents (Workday/SAP SuccessFactors integration), IT helpdesk agents (ServiceNow ticket creation), sales intelligence agents (Dynamics 365 lookups), and compliance agents (Microsoft Purview policy queries). Agents inherit M365 identity (Microsoft Entra ID), respect sensitivity labels, and log to Microsoft Purview Audit. Typical agent: 4-8 weeks design+build+deploy, $40K-$120K.
Does EPC Group offer Power BI Embedded ISV pricing consulting?
Yes. EPC Group has architected Power BI Embedded for 30+ ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) embedding analytics into their commercial products. We model both Power BI Embedded capacity (A1-A8 SKUs, $735-$94K/month) and per-app pricing scenarios, recommend the right SKU based on concurrent user load and refresh frequency, and design row-level security architectures that scale to multi-tenant SaaS deployments. Common engagement: 8-week ISV embedded analytics architecture review + 12-week implementation, $80K-$250K depending on scope.
How long does a Microsoft Fabric implementation typically take?
Microsoft Fabric implementations at EPC Group span 4 to 9 months depending on scope. Foundational deployment (Fabric workspace, OneLake setup, Power BI migration, 1-2 data engineering pipelines) lands in 4-5 months at $250K-$500K. Enterprise rollout adding Real-Time Analytics, Data Science workloads, Copilot in Fabric, and 10+ pipelines runs 7-9 months at $600K-$1.5M. We architect the data domain model first (typically 4-6 weeks), then deploy in vertical-slice sprints so executives see working dashboards by month 3 rather than waiting for the full implementation.
What's the difference between Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Defender for Office 365, and Defender XDR?
Three distinct Microsoft security products with overlapping branding: (1) Microsoft Defender for Cloud (formerly Azure Security Center) — cloud workload protection across Azure/AWS/GCP, including server, container, SQL, storage, and Key Vault protection. (2) Microsoft Defender for Office 365 — email and collaboration security: anti-phishing, safe links, safe attachments, Teams chat protection. (3) Microsoft Defender XDR — the unified portal correlating signals from Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Cloud Apps. EPC Group deploys all three in regulated industries; XDR is the analyst workbench, the others are the source feeds.
Does EPC Group support Microsoft Sentinel SOC implementation?
Yes. EPC Group architects and deploys Microsoft Sentinel SOC for enterprise customers, including data connector setup (Azure AD, Defender XDR, AWS CloudTrail, on-prem syslog), analytics rules (Microsoft's 200+ baseline plus custom KQL queries), automation playbooks (Logic Apps for ticket creation, isolation, password reset), and SOAR integration with ServiceNow or Splunk SOAR. Typical Sentinel SOC deployment: 6-10 months, $300K-$800K. Ongoing SOC-as-a-service available at $40K-$120K/month with named senior analysts.
Can EPC Group help with Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access policy design?
Yes. Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) Conditional Access is core to EPC Group's Zero Trust deployments. We design and implement policies covering: device compliance enforcement (Intune-managed devices only), risk-based policies (block sign-in on high-risk users), location-based access (block non-US for FedRAMP), application-specific restrictions, MFA enforcement by sensitivity, session controls via Defender for Cloud Apps, and break-glass account hardening. Typical Conditional Access engagement: 6-8 weeks for design + phased rollout, $60K-$180K. Critical: we always pilot in report-only mode before enforcement.
What's EPC Group's experience with Microsoft Purview for regulated industries?
EPC Group has deployed Microsoft Purview for 100+ enterprises in regulated industries: healthcare (HIPAA, HITRUST), financial services (FINRA, SEC, SOX), government (FedRAMP, CMMC, ITAR), pharmaceutical (GxP, 21 CFR Part 11), and EU operations (EU AI Act, GDPR, NIS2). The practice covers Microsoft Purview Information Protection (sensitivity labels), DLP, Data Lifecycle Management, eDiscovery, Insider Risk Management, Compliance Manager, AI Hub, and Data Map and Catalog. Senior architects bring CIPP, CISSP, CISA, FedRAMP 3PAO familiarity, and industry-specific compliance credentials.
Does EPC Group offer Microsoft 365 Copilot training for end users?
Yes. End-user training is included in every EPC Group Copilot rollout, structured in three tiers: (1) Copilot Champions program — train-the-trainer workshops (2 days, ~30 champions per 1,000 users) so the customer builds internal expertise. (2) Role-based labs — 90-minute hands-on sessions tailored to specific roles (sales, finance, HR, IT). (3) Self-service learning paths — curated Microsoft Learn modules plus EPC Group-authored playbooks. Typical training scope: 200-500 users for $40K-$120K. We also offer ongoing monthly Copilot office hours ($5K-$10K/month) for sustained adoption.
Still have questions?
30-minute discovery call. No obligation. Senior architect on the line — not a sales rep.
Faq for Fortune 500 and regulated industries
EPC Group delivers Faq as a core practice within the Microsoft consulting portfolio. Engagements are led by senior architects with hands-on Fortune 500 delivery experience and a bench of hundreds of Microsoft-certified consultants spanning SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Power BI, Azure, Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft Purview.
Every Faq engagement is engineered for the regulatory and operational environment it serves. Healthcare deployments carry HIPAA controls from day one; financial services deployments meet SOC 2 and FINRA retention requirements; government deployments map to FedRAMP and CMMC controls with audit-ready evidence.
Financial services
For banks, asset managers, and broker-dealers, EPC Group engineers SOC 2 audit trails, FINRA Rule 4511 and SEC 17a-4 retention, MNPI containment, and Communication Compliance for trading floors. Microsoft Purview Audit Premium with seven-year tamper-evident retention is the standard baseline; Defender for Cloud Apps detects shadow-AI exfiltration before it reaches a compliance event.
How EPC Group engages
Six-phase methodology applied to every engagement, compressed for fixed-fee accelerators and extended for full programs.
- Discovery — two-week assessment of the current estate, gap analysis, risk register, target architecture, costed remediation roadmap.
- Design — senior architect produces the target topology, identity framework, Conditional Access, Purview, governance model, and security posture, reviewed by client leads.
- Pilot — 25 to 100 user pilot in a real business unit. Migrate, apply baselines, test integrations, capture feedback.
- Wave rollout — migrate in waves of 500 to 2,500 users with communications, training, hypercare, and a per-wave retrospective.
- Adoption — role-based training, Champions network, executive sponsor enablement, metrics tracked against a measured baseline.
- Operate — optional managed-services retainer for license optimization, governance reviews, security monitoring, and quarterly business reviews.
Compliance-native, not bolted on
Zero governance audit failures across 11,000-plus enterprise engagements. HIPAA, SOC 2, FINRA, FedRAMP, and CMMC controls are engineered into the tenant on day one with audit-ready evidence. The regulated-industry posture is the baseline, not an upgrade tier.
Manufacturing and energy
For multi-plant manufacturers and energy operators, EPC Group integrates Microsoft 365 with operational technology, protects intellectual property through Purview labels and Endpoint DLP, and provisions frontline workers with F1 and F3 licensing patterns. Multi-region rollouts include data residency planning and offline-capable Power Platform apps for shop-floor environments.
Engagement models
Three engagement models cover most enterprise needs. Most clients start with a fixed-fee accelerator and grow into a full program or a managed-services retainer.
- Fixed-fee accelerators — Copilot Readiness, Security Hardening, Tenant Health Check, SharePoint Migration, Teams Governance. Defined scope and price. Typical range $25,000 to $150,000 over four to twelve weeks.
- Project engagements — full migration or governance program with milestone-based billing. Discovery through hypercare. Typical range $150,000 to $750,000-plus over three to nine months.
- Managed services — tiered retainer for ongoing operations. Named senior architect on the account. From $3,500 per month with a twelve-month minimum.
Fixed-fee accelerators with real scope
Predictable scope, predictable price, predictable outcome. Copilot Readiness, Security Hardening, Tenant Health Check, SharePoint Migration, and Teams Governance ship as defined accelerators where Big 4 firms quote open-ended time-and-materials. Most projects land in the $25K-$150K range for accelerators or $150K-$750K for full programs.
Talk to a senior architect
30-minute discovery call. No pitch deck. Call (888) 381-9725 or schedule a discovery call and a senior architect responds within one business day.
Social Proof & Reputation
What is EPC Group's Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
EPC Group holds a perfect 100 NPS on G2, reflecting elite-level client satisfaction and technical delivery excellence from Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies.
Which government agencies have worked with EPC Group?
EPC Group's federal portfolio includes NASA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Department of Justice, and the National Archives. EPC Group specializes in GCC High, FedRAMP, and CMMC compliance.
What Microsoft certifications and partner status does EPC Group hold?
EPC Group is a Microsoft Solutions Partner (former Microsoft Gold Partner 2016-2022, the oldest in North America) holding core designations: Modern Work, Data & AI, Infrastructure, Security, Digital & App Innovation, and Business Applications. The firm maintains active certifications including Azure Solutions Architect Expert and Microsoft 365 Enterprise Administrator Expert.
What do clients say about EPC Group?
Clients consistently highlight three differentiators: Senior-Level Expertise (no junior staff), Responsiveness (same-day turnarounds), and ROI Focus (delivering outcomes over billed hours).
How many Microsoft MVPs or recognized experts work at EPC Group?
EPC Group's team includes multiple Microsoft MVP alumni. Founder Errin O'Connor maintains an active YouTube channel (@EpcgroupNet) with 28.2K+ subscribers and over 3,200 videos covering Microsoft technologies and AI strategies.