Can we use ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot on our company data?

Three ways an assistant reaches your figures

You hand it a file

All three take an uploaded spreadsheet or export and answer questions about it: totals, trends, outliers, a formula, a chart. Each can also work inside Excel: Copilot depending on your Microsoft 365 licence, ChatGPT through its Excel extension, and Claude through Claude for Excel on its paid plans.

Good for a one-off question on one file. Watch for the file itself: a copy taken at one moment, so the answer is only as current and complete as that copy.

It searches your documents

Connected to your files and mail, it finds and summarises what each person may open. Microsoft Copilot does this across Microsoft 365 mail, files and meetings with its add-on licence; ChatGPT reaches SharePoint, Google Drive and similar services through plugins, and Claude through connectors.

Good for policies, contracts, last month's board pack. Watch for totals: search finds documents, it does not add up a ledger.

It queries a system directly

A connector can let the assistant look something up in a business system as you ask, such as what a customer owes. Claude connects to any service that supports MCP (Model Context Protocol); ChatGPT can add custom plugins that link a company's internal tools and data; Microsoft's federated connectors use MCP to fetch live data into Copilot.

Good for a quick lookup in one system. Watch for who builds and looks after the connector, and what it is allowed to change.

What to check before anyone connects anything

1. Business accounts, not personal ones. On their business plans, OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft each say company content is not used to train their models by default. On ChatGPT's and Claude's personal plans, whether conversations train the models is a setting each person controls, and Microsoft's protections apply when staff sign in with their work account. An early risk is a figure pasted into someone's own account.
2. Permissions, and how wide they are. All three follow the access each person already has in the connected service. Microsoft asks companies to get permissions right in SharePoint and elsewhere first, since Copilot can surface anything a user is allowed to view. A connector that uses one shared login reaches whatever that login can, Anthropic notes, and Microsoft's synced connectors are open to the whole company unless their item security is restricted. A payroll file shared too widely becomes one question away.
3. Read only, or allowed to act. Connectors can create and update records as well as read them. Claude's Team and Enterprise owners can allow reading and block changes for everyone; ChatGPT's plugins disclose their actions, admins manage which are available, and on Enterprise which actions are allowed; Microsoft admins decide which agents run in the organisation. For questions about figures, start read only.
4. Where the data is processed. Microsoft says EU users' Copilot traffic stays within its EU Data Boundary, though the Anthropic models that admins can choose inside Copilot are currently outside it. OpenAI lists data residency in several regions, the EU among them, on ChatGPT Enterprise. Anthropic says data from its business plans is stored in the US and may be processed in the US, Europe, Asia or Australia unless agreed otherwise. Plugins and connectors from other companies run under their own terms, so read those and each vendor's data processing terms before personal data goes in.
5. What each licence includes. Microsoft's Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 plans and works mainly from the web, using company content a user uploads, selects or has open in Outlook or Teams, or reaches through a pay-as-you-go agent. Reading mail, files and meetings automatically takes the Microsoft Copilot add-on (Microsoft 365 Copilot on some Microsoft pages), sold as Microsoft Copilot Business to smaller organisations. ChatGPT Business and Claude's Team plan sell standard and premium seats that differ mainly in usage, with more admin and security controls on Enterprise plans.

Where they stop

Even then, an assistant answers from what it can reach, as it finds it.

• It cannot see what was never connected: a till system nobody linked, a price agreed over the phone, the payroll bureau's file on someone's desktop.
• It does not know which definition your company agreed. If two teams count revenue differently, it reports whichever version sits in the system it read, and can sound just as sure either way.
• It reads entries as they stand. Till sales posted once a week, an order half filled in, one customer under two names: the answer inherits each of them.
• Its working needs checking. The method can change with the wording of the question, so test it on questions whose answers you already know.

They are most useful on a question about one file, one system or a set of documents. A figure the whole company will act on, such as margin by customer or cash across every account, needs the systems joined, checked and defined once before any assistant reads it. Where to start with AI sets out a first step, and our Copilot Studio guide covers agents you build yourself.

Where 110 comes in

We build the AI tech your business runs on. When the questions reach across systems, we connect the systems you already run into one warehouse in your own cloud account, agree with the team what each number means, and put AI to work on that data: it checks every entry against those rules, flags what's missing and answers questions in plain language, showing which systems each figure came from. The AI layer that answers questions is the last thing we switch on, not the first.

The 110 Command Centre then puts the whole company on one screen: where you're growing, what to cut, who's late paying, and what needs you today. Your systems stay where they are; AI on your own data explains how it works.

Common questions

Read next

• AI on your own data: checked entries, answers from your own figures
• What Copilot Studio can and cannot see in your business
• Where to start with AI in a company of 50 people

Vendor facts checked against OpenAI's, Anthropic's, Microsoft's and Odoo's own pages on 11 November 2026. All three change their plans, product names and terms often, so check them on the day you decide.