As part of our ongoing commitment to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we’ve recently launched a new program called Microsoft Change Agents (#MSFTChangeAgents).

The Microsoft Change Agents program engages a set of individuals accomplishing incredible things and helping to move the needle in technology. A Change Agent is an individual who promotes and supports a new way of doing something. They assume responsibility for promoting the value of the transformation, formulating and influencing how the transformation will happen and then guiding and supporting others through that transformation.

In today’s fast paced, digital world, it’s tough to find time to make a difference. But there are certain individuals that make the time, and are passionate above driving real change, in our communities, in our workplace and in our society. We can all stand to learn from these Change Agents, who through authenticity and a desire to make a difference, continue to make a positive impact.

Working closely with community members, we hope to drive meaningful change.

Maayan Ziv

Maayan is the Founder & CEO of AccessNow, an app that uses crowdsourcing to collect and share accessibility information on places around the world. From a young age, Maayan challenged norms and worked within her community to increase awareness of disability issues and improve accessibility.

What are some of the things you’re working on, that you’re really excited about?

I’ve been at AccessNow for three years. We’re kind of getting into some exciting new developments. What we’re doing is focusing on creating a more accessible world, we started in Toronto, but it’s really kind of exploded. We’re in thirty-six countries now and it’s all about community engagement. People connecting, sharing information about the places that they go to, what they experience, whether it’s accessible or not, and providing that information to the community. So that everybody engages with AccessNow, whether on their mobile app or the website, can actually figure out what’s accessible in their lifestyle and where they can go do the things that they want to do, with no barriers.

What excites you most about the future?

For me, what’s exciting is even just within the three years we’ve started this process, seeing the conversation change from being one of, “what is accessibility?” to “how can I be involved in this movement?”, bringing people together from all different areas and perspectives, and seeing that change actually happen. That’s the most exciting part for me.

Ami Shah

Ami is the CEO & Co-Founder of Peekapak, an award-winning social and emotional learning (SEL) platform designed for the classroom and the home. Peekapak aims to make SEL learning resources more accessible for educators.

As a change agent, how do you see the impact that you’re making change the technology landscape within Canada?

Technology is now starting to enter the education realm and it’s really exciting to see what you can do with technology, to help personalize learning. Before, it used to be that you’re teaching to the average; now we have a gifted child or someone who is struggling, and you can provide the information for learning at their level and help them catch up. You can accelerate their learning, with a developmentally appropriate way, and it’s pretty exciting that all of a sudden, students can have this opportunity to really have engaging and interesting content, and be able to give the information to not only teachers, but parents about how to better support their students, be able to provide tailored feedback, and help them essentially improve their student outcomes.

There’s a strong focus at Microsoft of enabling every person and organization on the planet to achieve more; you’re certainly helping to do that. Where do you see your company going in the future?

It’s pretty exciting with technology – if you think about AI, Machine Learning, and what we’re doing around machines with personalized learning. We can do more and more as we are collecting data around how students are learning different skills. What they’re excelling at, what they’re struggling at, and to be able to deliver content that really is at their level. To be able to accelerate and be able to predict where their interests may lie, where careers may be, how they can further excel and develop skills around those areas. And I think we can just do so much more as we continue to develop the technology, so it’s exciting to see what we can do in education and how we can integrate things like technology into that space to support the teacher and the parent, to be able to better support their students.

Aurelie Wen

Aurelie is the Managing Director North America at Agorize, a platform that makes life easier for organizations looking to launch open innovation challenges, student competitions and large-scale hackathons. She regularly speaks at conferences and universities about hackathons, open innovation and entrepreneurship.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

Well, a Change Agent, in my opinion, is someone who shares their enthusiasm regarding technology, new stuff coming up and is keen on sharing this on social media with other people. I think the role of a good Change Agent would be explaining that it’s going to be okay, and that technology is here for good things, not just for the bad, and be very transparent and have a lot of candor regarding technology to ease that change process, that can be very scary for most people.

Technology is a big part of the change that is going on around us. How do you feel that technology contributes to change and transformation in society?

Well there are so many areas, just to take one example, the job market as we know it today is going to really encounter drastic changes, it’s happening now actually, and in that sense, technology can really bring a lot of things to the table, so that all the repetitive tasks that we’re doing right now can be automated for example. We can, as contributors and coworkers, be more effective in the way we do our work. So, this is one of the key areas in which technology can really drive change.

Brent Vatne

Brent is a Computer Systems & Programming Analyst with Expo, a free open source toolchain built around React Native to help build native iOS and Android projects using JavaScript and React. Brent is active in the open source community, with over 2,700 contributions on Github in the last year.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

I think a Change Agent in my world, which is typically mostly in Open Source, can be anybody from someone who builds a project from scratch, or contributes to a project that they think is valuable and that they want to help succeed. That can be small changes like one small contribution to the project to make it better or something like a documentation change. I think it could be anywhere on that spectrum.

How have you used technology to transform and enhance your life?

Well it already has in the sense that this is what I do for work every day, working remotely, and it’s hard for me to imagine a world where I don’t work remotely a part of the time and I think that more people are going to start working remotely, at least a few days a week or something like that for other periods of time. I think that can impact my life in that I can choose to work in areas that I want to, with other people who are also working remotely with the rise of these sort of coworking spaces and that kind of thing.

Janelle Hinds

Janelle is the Founder of Helping Hands App, a platform that matches students with volunteer organizations using a skill development-based matching model. Helping Hands is on a mission to increase youth community engagement through technology. Janelle is also a Diversity in Tech and women empowerment speaker.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

To me being a change agent is a person that recognizes that there is some issue out there and that they’re not going to wait for someone else to fix it, that they’re going to go ahead and do it. I recognized that young people weren’t being engaged by their communities, and that there were all these barriers put up and that someone had to step in and help remove those barriers for them.”

What technology do you find helpful in the work that you do?

I think for young people, they need something that is on their phone that they can look at and quickly just get an answer. They’re like ‘hey I want to volunteer now, I want to volunteer on a Saturday, where can I go?’ So, we’re trying to make an app that they can go on and say, ‘hey this is my availability, this is what I’m interested in, these are the skills I want to build’ and just get an answer right away, saying this is where you can build.

Jaxson Khan

Jaxson is the Managing Partner at Khan & Associates, a global advisory firm that helps innovative companies and organizations grow their influence. In the community, Jaxson serves as the host of the Ask AI podcast, a mentor with Techstars and is a member of the World Economic Forum.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

A change agent is an individual who challenges the status quo. They may be dissatisfied with some part of an existing process, structure, or product. They ask: “why do things have to be this way?” And then they do something about it. They seek out constant change in their life, because they know that improvement comes from regular iteration and effort.

How have you used technology to transform and enhance your life?

I use technology to automate tedious, low-value tasks, so I can free up time for more high value ones. And so that I can live more. For too long we have lived in a work obsessed society and one that is too focused on ‘growth at all costs by any means necessary’ as opposed to genuine human livability and potential and operating with ethics and principle. Technology coupled with intention have the power to change our lives and our world. It’s time to embrace technology in our daily lives and ensure that everyone in the world can access it.

Lyndon Johnson

Lyndon is the Founder of COMMS.BAR, a revolutionary new approach to helping startups and small businesses get the PR, marketing and publicity advice they need to scale their business. At COMMS.BAR, Lyndon has pioneered proprietary retail methods.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

I’ve spent the last few years working on making public relations and marketing affordable, accessible, transparent and measurable with the goal of enabling every startup and small business to get the help they need. That has meant changing every part of the traditional industry from business model, to the pricing structure to the way strategies are built and tested. The result is COMMS.BAR. Challenging the norm, makes someone a Change Agent.

How have you used technology to transform and enhance your life?

I had one of the first mass-market cell phones in the UK back in 1994 so that I could work and book jobs working as a freelance journalist while still at University. I purchased one of the first ultra-portable laptops so that I could file stories electronically. My primary objective with technology has always been the value it delivers – it’s even more important since I started COMMS.BAR. I switched from a MacBook Pro to a Surface Book because it added value to my business that I couldn’t get from Apple.

Scott Duffy

Scott is the Chief Architect and Trainer at SoftwareArchitect.ca, a consulting service that provides online skills training for software and enterprise architects. Scott currently has over 110,000 students in 177 countries around the world enrolled in his online training programs.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

Well as you know, technology is changing so rapidly, as a trainer myself I can create videos today and 6 months from now they are not going to be as relevant anymore. Keeping on top of the change within the entire technical space is a challenge, I’m glad to have this opportunity to work with Microsoft to bring out some of the great programs that you guys are doing to the world and let people know that things are changing and it’s not something to be afraid of, it’s something to embrace.

How have you used technology to transform and enhance your life?

My business revolves around creating videos for people to consume online, so if I didn’t have internet access, I don’t know what I would be doing because my whole career has been around development and creation of websites. Technology to me allows people to learn, anywhere that they want. If they have a phone, if they have a Surface or a device, they can watch videos, get their skills up to speed and continue to earn an income. It’s people’s lives really.

Tony Flath

Tony is a Technology Advisor, President TmanSpeaks Ltd., for Telecommunications & Technology Applications anything ‘aaS’ and Cloud – passionate about Technology with experience in Cloud, Cyber Security, Unified Communications, Connectivity, Network, Mobility, & AI. With more than 15 years of complex solution experience in the IT space from applications, custom development, professional services, infrastructure, managed services, cloud services, network, security to mobility, Tony has a diverse technology understanding. Tony is active on social media & recognized as an Influencer in Cloud, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence. His mission is to help enable the path to true Digital Transformation.

In your own words, what makes someone a Change Agent?

A Change Agent is someone who embraces technology, understands what value it can offer, always ready to look at a better way even if it means disruption. The role of the Change Agent is to explore new grounds, help organization’s transform by focusing on such matters as organizational effectiveness, improvement, and development.

How have you used technology to transform and enhance your life?

Throughout my career I have been on the leading edge of technology. This started early years back when I migrated client’s HR information to the cloud before anyone knew what the cloud was. I’ve had the great fortune to then learn about cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and now working with emerging technologies like Blockchain. My work with technology has taken me to interesting locations all across North America. Now with integrated connectivity through social media, I have connected globally with influencers establishing friends and colleagues around the world. Next stop, Blockchain!

The post Introducing the Microsoft Change Agents appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

When it comes to groceries, Canadians want it all – a big selection of high-quality food at low prices (and with sales and loyalty benefits with purchase). Couple that with the increasing desire for food to come from local and ethical sources and for organic or prepared foods, it’s no wonder that Statistica estimates annual retail sales of food and beverage in Canada at $188 billion.

While other retail has experienced a digital transformation, grocery shopping has mainly remained unchanged since the dawn of the grocery store: Canadians travel to stores, browse aisles, wait in line to purchase and then transport everything home. With variables in weather, perishable foods, complex food safety requirements and the traditionally high-frequency, low-volume business model of food service, full-service grocery delivery has remained out of reach.

Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery, or SPUD, is changing that simple truth. Building on their roots as a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) company, SPUD delivers more than just fresh produce: the catalogue now includes a full range of groceries, including produce, dairy, bakery, meat, seafood, packaged goods and ready-to-eat meals. The company runs an online store with a small, high-turnover inventory, so food items don’t expire or get damaged on the shelf; with perishables, SPUD only orders based directly on customer needs, so they don’t over-order short-shelf life items. The result is dramatically lowered food waste.

And it doesn’t stop there: SPUD has offered its Food-X-Urban Delivery platform to local companies to help make delivery a reality. Housed in a new facility in Burnaby, other grocery retailers can access SPUD’s industry-leading technology, warehousing, home delivery, and food preparation platform. Integrating directly with the retailer’s point of sale systems to provide live visibility of inventory, allowing orders to be fulfilled swiftly and efficiently.

So how does it all work? SPUD uses state-of-the-art technology to facilitate their full operations. With a proprietary inventory management tool built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, the company has end-to-end visibility into operations and analytics. Combined with Office 365 and Azure cloud services, SPUD takes full advantage of Microsoft integration and scale.

Read here to learn more on how SPUD uses AI, ebikes and Microsoft Cloud!

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The loss that retailers include in shrink includes shoplifting, associate theft and administrative errors along with vendor fraud. Grocers are even more detailed as they also face losses from products that go stale or spoil and need to be written off.

For retailers, operational issues can impact on more than 60% of their losses, theft and misdeed accounts for the balance. In retail where margins are thin at the best of times this is an issue that deserve a lot of attention. Fortunately, there are a lot of new technologies that are helping to address these concerns.

Let’s look at associate theft for a moment. One of the most common schemes is called “sweethearting”. It happens when a cashier has an accomplice come through the checkout and does not charge then the full amount, if at all for some of the items in their purchase. Video surveillance is part of the equation, today’s technology is sophisticated enough to identify when something is not scanned but still bagged. Analytic tools can also identify patterns of anomaly. (i.e. specific loyalty members consistently seek out the same cashier and the average transaction value falls out of normal limits).

Outside of collusion, there are a great many thieves who work without the help of staff.  RFID (radio frequency identification) technology is something that generates a signal which can be tracked inside the store. In recent years this has become very inexpensive. One store that has made great use of this is The Real Real. Every item in their store is imbedded with a thread-sized microelectronic tag. These washable electronic tags can be woven directly into a garment by the manufacturer, which makes them almost impossible to remove. They can also provide information about the entire lifecycle of the garment, such as the date of manufacture and where it originated, (more on that in a future article about Blockchain and retail). These tags allow the staff to find and follow merchandise through the store or set off an alarm when it leaves without being deactivated.

While it may seem like a scene from Minority Report, the use of video analytics is coming into its own. This isn’t just a case of recognizing known offenders, the tools associated with technology are sophisticated enough to analyze a person’s facial expression to identify a propensity for theft.

It’s becoming a wild place where the respect for consumer privacy must be balanced by the need to secure the store and its merchandise. But as new store formats (like autonomous checkout) become more common, security measures like this will be something we see as the price of admission.

The post What’s Wrong With Shrinkage for Retail Companies in Canada appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Every day, digital technologies are transforming business. How can organizations equip to keep pace?

Being first in the market with your offering is necessary to be successful in today’s fast paced economy. Fast followers may grab some of the market share from the leader, but the market maker will already have monetized on their offering. Truly innovative leaders have already planned how to disrupt their own offering. Like a chess match, thinking a few steps ahead yields more options for a winning play.

In a cloud world, technology-based product creation or product enhancements have never been so easy. Combining the power of cloud with slick development and product release mechanisms can ensure success for quickly introducing, enhancing, and shutting down innovative ideas. To succeed at this you need to be first to market, ready to fix what isn’t right, quick to enhance, and decisive on when to decommission.

The biggest challenge when moving forward with the release of new features is time. Releasing something before anyone else does allows you to stamp the market and provide a high value back to those sponsoring your work. Releasing something that everyone else is already doing, only allows you to play catch-up and has less value. Being first may also allow you to achieve more product iterations as you get feedback from real customers in real time. By the time your competitors catch up, you have moved onto the next high value idea and its development.

Develop and Release Quickly

Agile development shops are successful at developing and iterating on products. This practice allows for a close working relationship between development and the business, while product or feature releases happen in short sprints. As a developer you quickly discover if you understand the business’ needs or not, and you also have a chance to quickly make it right.

Problems arise when this is more than a development exercise; when you must get those feature releases out to monetize as soon as you know they are good enough.

If your IT organization is laden with process and used to manual promotions, you can develop using the Agile approach, but your new features will likely not make their way into the world with the velocity your business expects. Automating releases is key, and pipelines are a great way to do this. Consider these actions to achieve success:

• Develop in close alignment with the business
• Iterate often and don’t worry about designing everything up front
• Automate testing and release of your features
• Work in tight knit teams that provide new capabilities and support

How can DevOps accelerate digital product innovation? Read my next blog to find out.

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Changing roles – DevOps

Developers, especially those who work in an Agile shop, have little difficulty with the migration to DevOps. They’re used to being assigned to one application or set of capabilities, so they tend to be deep vertically into one technology limiting the scope of their reach within that application, suite or platform.

Infrastructure and security professionals have traditionally been more horizontally aligned. It is rare that the infrastructure disciplines limit their scope to a particular application. They usually provide services across multiple applications. These roles struggle more with being attached to one product/application team. Traditionally, these resources relied on standards, streamlined and repeatable processes to keep the quality and the value high. Similar access, bandwidth, compute, storage, security features are provided to every application using the shared resources. The value these roles brought to our organisations was in the efficiency in which we leveraged their resources (technology, process or human) and how well we spread them across all our offerings. The value equation has changed. Velocity is what drives business. Efficiency only saves costs. Making the market requires a different mindset, thus leveraging our resources differently.

DevOps Teams run the entire Application

Soup to Nuts. Development, QA, Infrastructure, Security, Operations are all accountable for one application, its feature iterations, its uptime, its performance; almost everything. Integrate Agile and the project team is measured on how well it was able to keep its commitments to release a feature within a set time frame. It’s about releasing to the user community within a sprint. This means that you will deploy new code into an existing environment to provide a new capability to the technology consumer within a short time frame. Moving code to production must be nimble and quick and must be able to rollback quickly without taking down the system.

Releasing a feature by infrastructure is now obsolete. A pipeline handles the integration of the code within the code base and a build will be automatically be generated. This new accountable application team becomes essential to the development and operations of the application. All roles on the team become part of support.

Infrastructure based roles assigned to DevOps teams will evolve their roles. While they will still have some purview over shared resources, they will be measured along with the rest of the team on how well features were deployed on a set timeline in their assigned vertical. They will care about they same things they always did, but automation will compel them to learn to code.

Cloud and Infrastructure as Code

While cloud can be managed through graphic user interfaces, to manage at scale and participate in automated deployments, people need to learn to provision and configure using infrastructure as code.

“Born in the cloud” applications are immutable and not reliant on their operating systems (OS), which means that should OSs be required, they can and should be rebuilt on the fly. They aren’t patched, and you don’t troubleshoot them. You rebuild them using the latest build and the app doesn’t care. But you need to deploy them through code as the application counters may trigger scale outs and scale backs of compute, storage etc. Under the conditions where an event is triggered, your “infrastructure as code” can be invoked.

Platform services in the cloud are the future. Typical Infrastructure as a Service requires more care and feeding then Platform services where compute, storage, operating system and other base components are tackled by the cloud provider. Code is key to managing these services.

Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery (CICD) Pipelines

CICD pipelines are highly effective in the management of releasing a feature. They help us automate the code releases into production. As soon as the code for a set features is ready for production it can be integrated into an existing code base and delivered to the user facing environment. This is done with no down time typically and is fully automated. There is still quality assurance and user acceptance testing occurring in a pre-prod environment, but the whole code release occurs with no manual intervention.

Bottom Line: Innovative Digital Capabilities Drive Value

In a digital economy, innovative digital capabilities will drive value generation for companies developing new products or layering on value to existing ones. Financial benefit will be driven by getting out there first and iterating on versions quickly as you take feedback from your consumer. Being the first to innovate will require agility in IT and they will have to automate processes to ensure timeliness, accuracy and still protect your reputation. DevOps needs to permeate more traditional shops and siloed groups need to be united in the support of a platform or a specific application

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For modern marketers, the best way to innovate is leveraging the power of the cloud to drive efficiency, scale content, sift data, and ultimately use it to make informed decisions. The clouds plays a crucial role in every aspect of my own life as a marketer, but especially three key areas: social content planning and amplification, stakeholder management, and analytics.

Sociabble, a tool by Microsoft partner Brainsonic, helps our social-savvy employees find and share brand content to their own networks. Because it’s built completely on top of Azure, it provides 24/7 access to employees at any place or time. That’s especially useful for our increasingly mobile, agile workforce.

Collaboration is a large part of our internal planning and execution. We use Microsoft Teams for the its power to enable stakeholder coordination. In a worldwide organization the size of Microsoft, collaborative tools need to be equally global.

There are 38 Azure datacenters across the planet, which means that workspace tools like Teams have the power to make global colleagues into local coworkers in real time. The ability to assemble and structure team relationships and collaborate on projects with all eyes on the same data would be impossible without the reach of Azure.

Collaborative access is one thing, but for crafting high-level marketing strategy, nothing is more useful to me than a customizable data dashboard that can mine exactly the breadth and depth of information my team needs. Power BI is our solution for analytics, and our marketing teams rely on it extensively for real time data in the form of a customizable overview of their business.

This gives them the insights they need from back to front, throughout the process of developing strategy, monitoring results for agile pivots, and providing data-rich interactive reports. Azure’s reach and collective processing power is the engine underlying this vital tool.

We believe in Azure to our core. We see the power of tools that rely on the cloud at work within our own teams. They’re revolutionizing the marketing landscape, and it’s happening so fast we can see it unfold in front of our eyes. And these advantages in collaboration and implementation are just the beginning. When you consider the potentialities we’re exploring in predictive AI and bots, the power of cloud computing will only accelerate. These tools will move from interpreting data to curating knowledge, and from there to engaging, anticipating, and exceeding customer expectations. It’s a very exciting time!

We want to provide your marketers with all of these advantages and raise the bar on cloud-based tools. Visit the Azure Digital Marketing site to see what we can do for your business.

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