I’ll also show you the ways enterprise users of WordPress are integrating Azure’s services in order to solve common business challenges and create seamless, easy-to-use content platforms that don’t come with extra hefty price tags like other modern content management systems.

Transforming marketing with AI

In the case of content marketing, the product is your content – the words, media, discoverability, and customer experience that you use to communicate.

First off, let’s have a look at how we can enhance the quality of your digital experience for your editors and website visitors alike.

Improve the quality of your written content with the Text Analytics API

The Text Analytics API cognitive service uses AI to ingest a block of content and returns a gaggle of useful insights to help improve your content and surface actionable insights for your business.

• Key phrases: These auto-suggest tags and give an insight into how a machine sees what is written. It is useful to quickly identify main points in large swathes of documents. Also, you can add the key phrases to your content as a ‘shadow taxonomy’ in the CMS for editorial use.
• Sentiment: Measures how positive or negative the content appears. This one is really nice when it comes to later analysis of content performance.
• Entity analysis – Azure has a Named Entity Recognition service which uses public sources like Wikipedia and Bing to recognise both an entity (e.g. Bill Gates) and the type of entity (e.g. Person). Again, this can be super useful for tagging; or to start adding structured data to your content. Once that structured data is there, you can start using it to drive visualisations or enhance the presentation of your knowledge to search engines.

Let the Computer Vision API maximise the power of your images

Alongside text analytics are a host of other cognitive services that are available through developer-friendly API web services. A simple one to use for almost immediate profit is the Computer Vision API. Passing an image through this service returns an incredible array of information that the machine recognises. This includes: faces, text, colours, objects, suggested tags, how ‘adult’ the image appears to be, and the image dimensions and format.

Much like text analytics, the structured data returned from the API can be integrated in a number of ways to improve editorial quality. It can automatically suggest images from a media library, auto-input image captions, meta-descriptions and tags (both for the image itself and for the main post).

Automatically adding this metadata will have some measurable and immediate benefits. Particularly better accessibility and SEO performance through the addition of higher quality image alt text, meta-description, and captions.

Four more ways to increase editorial quality using Azure services:

1. Auto-transcribe and analyse videos for better accessibility, search engine optimisation, and discovery.
2. Using document cracking to allow your editors and visitors to search your site’s media files (PDFs, Word docs, etc)
3. Use entity mapping to help your editors (and customers) explore your organisation’s content relationships and create richer related content suggestions
4. Embed PowerBI visualisations to add interactive graphics that let your visitors really explore the data behind your content.

Optimising operations

Teams are under constant pressure to be ever more productive and innovative in a competitive business world. Especially when you need to quickly adapt to changing needs or scale to an increase in demand. This can be very stressful position to be in. But using Azure’s cognitive services, you can boost team productivity while lowering stress.

Build a chatbot in minutes

First off – customer success. You probably already have a good knowledge base in the business – often exposed as FAQs on your website. Azure’s QnA Maker let’s anyone build an FAQ-style chatbot without any need to code quickly and easily by using your existing FAQs.

With chatbots able to save 30 percent in customer service costs, this could represent a huge productivity boost for your customer service team while reducing stress and pressure. While the chatbot takes over answering commonly asked questions, your customer service team will have more time to work on value-adding tasks and provide personalised experiences for customers.

Marketing automation

On the theme of connecting your back and front office digital estates for increased efficiency and customer response, here’s a great example: integrating your CRM directly with your WordPress site. It can retrieve inventory directly from CRM to ensure your website is always up to date. Or submit customer contact forms directly to your CRM for central processing.

There are tons of ways to integrate Dynamics CRM into your website: this WordPress plugin supports a good range.

Developer productivity

A computer science degree used to be a requirement it you wanted to host WordPress on Azure. Not anymore. With WordPress images available to install on a point-and-click basis, getting going with WordPress on Azure is easier than ever.

Moreover, you’re also covered from both DevOps and spend-management perspectives. Now Github is part of Microsoft, it’s super easy to connect your Github code repository to your hosting environment through Continuous Integration pipelines.

On the other side of hosting, Azure’s service insights help you to manage and optimise your spend.

Workflow productivity

Building on the editorial quality tips above, there are also productivity gains available through leveraging the same APIs and services. For example, finding appropriate images to illustrate content can be frustrating and time-consuming for editors. The Computer Vision API gives your media library a much richer search space, saving your editors time in finding images.

One step further would be to have WordPress and Azure work together to auto-suggest images from your media library or DAM based on the written content and taxonomies of the post itself.

This same principle applies for other media like video, social media embeds and for the taxonomic classification of content too. This means you can get information out to your customers at the right time, with the right context, and in the right place

Increase productivity and business value

In this article, we’ve looked at some highly achievable and straight-forward ways to start connecting WordPress and Azure to move towards the goals of transforming products, optimising operations, and more importantly, empowering employees and engaging customers.

These tools will save employees time by automating tasks that often take employees a lot time and focus. They are then free to focus on the tasks that deliver business value and drive innovation.

By having optimised content and marketing assets ready to-go, you can quickly respond to data insights or trends in a way that will add value to the business and increase employee productivity. This makes your marketing team more resilient and they can quickly adapt to changing customer requirements.

So the messages seems clear:

• Don’t let your back office and front office be disconnected. It’s so much more impactful and profitable for them to work together.
• It’s easy to leverage your existing Azure investment to augment your customers’ digital experiences.
• Combining WordPress with Azure gives you a best-of-breed architecture content marketing platform that’s on a par with market leaders. But without the huge license fees and with far more freedom and flexibility.

Get in touch if you’re interested to find out more about how to connect WordPress and Azure.

To optimise for resilient operations in digital marketing, take a look at Microsoft’s Supporting Resilient Operations Report:

Find out more

Discover how to integrate Azure and WordPress

Learn how to support resilient operations

5 barriers to AI adoption: learnings from Microsoft’s marketing team

Grow your skills and expertise at the UK Partner Skills Hub

About the author

David Lockie’s interests lie in WordPress, open source and future technology trends. He’s the founder and CEO of Pragmatic – a top-tier WordPress agency globally, which he started in 2012. David loves working with the team at Pragmatic in delivering websites that add real value to businesses, and in turn enjoys sharing his expertise on this topic at international conferences such as the B2B Marketing Expo, WooConf and WordCamp Europe. He’s also co-chair at the BIMA Blockchain Council, sits on the SE Advisory Board of BITC and is an advisor to several start-ups.

Outside of work, David enjoys keeping fit, going downhill fast, alternative folk music, cooking delicious food, movies that involve running, jumping and shooting and spending time with family and friends, often involving a good walk and a pub.

The post How AI can help improve the digital customer experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To put this into context, the internet emits roughly a billion tonnes of CO2 per year. Compare this to in 2019, where worldwide flights produced 915 million tonnes of CO2. If the internet were a country, it would be the sixth-largest polluter in the world.

Why the Green Report?

To empower companies to understand their carbon footprint and find ways to reduce digital pollution, we’ve created The Green Report. Designed to educate and propose tangible solutions, it can help large businesses cut greenhouse gases, migrate their energy to renewable sources, and increase sustainability on a large scale. We help leaders understand the impact of their products, services, processes, and behaviours on digital pollution and how to innovate in an agile way. Ultimately, The Green Report can help businesses effect real, long-term change.

These are ambitious targets. We know that change needs to take place on a large scale, at a human and technology level, both inside and outside the company.

That’s why as part of The Green Report, we work closely with business leaders to help individuals within the company understand:

• Why carbon footprints matter.
• What impact their behaviours have on the environment.
• How they can make positive choices to reduce their digital waste.
• Where to find the resources and tools they need to make a difference.

Our formula for reducing digital pollution

The first Green Report was crafted bespokely to Vodafone’s requirements and it was designed to take an inner look at their sustainability practices, whilst helping educate, advise, and work towards the ultimate goal of reducing their digital pollution. This example alone reported saving 79,000kg of carbon – equivalent to the greenhouse gases generated by charging more than 10 million smartphones – and ~$1 million opex related to sustainable alternatives just under four weeks of work.

Through extensive research, focus groups, analysis and insight gathering, we learned a lot about the company’s existing practices and impact. We found that from within the company culture right through to end-users, there was much more that could be done to reduce their carbon footprint and increase sustainability.

The four Cs to reduce your digital footprint

The Green Report needed to make an impact. So, we collated our findings and developed our own formula for cutting digital pollution – The Four Cs.

Culture

It’s vital to promote an internal culture that supports sustainable development to see significant change. Strive to raise awareness and normalise behaviour that supports sustainable choices, alongside measuring the digital carbon footprint of products and services created.

Climate consciousness should be embedded in the DNA of every employee. Kick off with more visibility of policies around climate change and update your design standards. Publish data internally, possibly gamify it and celebrate successes and wins.

Cloud

Automation, optimisation, and sustainable practices are key to cloud-based success, whilst more consideration of procurement and budgeting is vital. It’s critical to review existing tools, systems, and processes and find opportunities to make them ‘greener’.

Turn off zombie service instances, as well as dev instances out of hours. Reduce on-demand, increase reserve instance coverage, and move away from annual billing to a real-time or more granular control way.

Code

There’s a need to lighten the load on code. Best practice and a more sustainable approach to requirements gathering will reduce the digital footprint of your code.

Optimise your page performance, weight, speed and overall efficiency. Emissions on mobile are higher than fixed line, so this is an area of focus.

Customer

More customers should be encouraged to go online and when they do, the company needs to ensure its technology is sustainable. When measuring online performance, it’s important that any business considers sustainability within their KPIs. For example, whilst dwell time may be a useful commercial KPI, it’s not great for emissions!

Look at metrics and find those pages with high bounce rates, remove any dead-end pages, and make your content as succinct and useful as possible.

The impact of digital transformation

Understanding the impact of digital pollution feels even more urgent now, with so many people going online to work, socialise, and stay connected. While there has been a huge reduction in air and road travel, the UN says we need a 7.6 percent reduction every year to limit temperature increase to 1.5 percent.

At Digital Detox, we’ve used this time to calculate our own carbon footprint whilst being on a fully remote working model. Our MD, Liam Snelling has put together a rough calculation of our carbon reduction, which has resulted in the range of 43-60 percent, compared to when we are in the office. Factors such as travel, procurement, water, waste, and home energy have all been taken into account.

We’ve also put together some tips on how to minimise your carbon footprint whilst working from home.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to spread the word on what digital pollution is and how businesses and individuals can take action to reduce their carbon footprint as they move to be a more digital organisation.

Find out more

How to use AI to promote environmental sustainability

Discover more ways AI can be used for social good

Learn more about Digital Detox

Sign the Partner Pledge to drive a sustainable and ethical tech sector

Tools to empower your development team

Watch the on-demand session: The 8 principles of sustainable software engineering

Listen to the Environmental Variables podcast series 

About the author

Narcisa Lupu is the Marketing Executive at humanity-led agency, Digital Detox. She is behind the social media noise, many of the blog posts, and looks after the events side. As an advocate for praising hard work, she is actively nominating her team for awards, with two wins so far this year. Her focus is to support in building out the Digital Detox community and work towards the company’s ultimate goal to leverage the latest technology to best service humanity, sustainability and growth.

Outside of work, she strives to maintain a healthy lifestyle through fitness and cooking, loves travelling (even if it’s just to the park these days!) and explores new ways to be more sustainable.

The post Four ways to reduce your digital pollution appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Sometimes when you work from home, you can find the balance between family life and home life blur. As a manager, it’s important for me to ensure my team work together, prioritise connections, and all support each other to maintain the right balance.

Modern mindset conclusion one: There is now a universal lens of empathy being applied to how we live first and work second.

Emphasise mental wellbeing

A University of Oxford study found a direct correlation between employee wellbeing and positive business performance. More and more companies are recognising mental health as important, with 83 percent of businesses addressing it directly in their wellbeing strategies, according to REBA.

Despite this information, only 9.2 percent of the C-level board drives wellbeing agendas. We all recognise there is no price on a healthy mind. Companies that consider how teams can work together and what support employees might need at home will likely see a quicker return to profitability and prosperity.

Modern mindset conclusion two: Mental wellbeing support will be at the forefront of every company’s success moving forwards and no longer an optional ‘tick box’ benefit.

Working from home will become more acceptable

The working from home stigma well and truly has been blown out of the water. Amidst return to work considerations, savvy companies will properly design spaces to be about bringing teams together in safe, collaborative and productive environments.

We won’t encourage employees to be in every day just ‘because’. Office running costs will likely be lower, and this will enable bursaries to help employees set up decent, comfortable work areas at home. We will appreciate each other’s company more, and make more effort to support and reach out over video call, or chat.

Modern mindset conclusion three: Our appreciation of the workplace and colleagues will be invigorated, and mundane routines will be reduced leading to healthier and happier places of work.

Rapid digitisation of companies will help offset our travel carbon footprint.

Whilst I miss being with my teams across EMEA, their cultures, their languages, foods, and customs – I do not miss flying eight hours from Spain to New York for a two-hour presentation or hopping back-to-back across countries to roll out a new methodology.

My teams have quickly adapted to virtual workshops, presentations, and pitches. We meet regularly to reframe, brainsteer, and ideate together and with our clients thanks to Teams. It’s no longer a process of aligning diaries, tag team across weeks, and finally arrive in one physical place. We can get together as a global team quicker, meaning we can better adapt and respond to any changes.

Modern mindset conclusion four: Digital transformation has become more important. Focus on consistency to keep people connected wherever they are and whatever their work task.

The future of work

Empathy and human connections go hand-in-hand in a modern workplace. We will have a higher focus on everyone’s wellbeing. Technology will aid this. It will give us the ability to connect in new and exciting ways, no matter where your team is located. I’m looking forward to it.

Find out more

How to maintain a connected remote working experience 

Master working from home with Teams

Find out more about VMLY&R

Become a Microsoft Partner

Tools to empower your development teams

Watch the on-demand session: Top ten tips for remote working from the Teams team 

About the author

Karen is VMLY&R’s EMEA Chief Experience Officer. Karen is responsible for developing VMLY&R’s CX capability in the EMEA region and growing clients’ engagement. She drives the creation of world-class consumer engagement experiences and platforms at the intersection of technology, creativity and culture to create connected brands.

With 15+ years’ experience across every sector, Karen has led world-class brands and organisations forwards from both a strategic and implementation perspective, weaving together ideas and people in a politically agile way to gain momentum, both outwardly as a brand and inwardly as an effective organisation.

She previously held roles as Head of Innovation at Adam&EveDDB and Global Client Lead at AKQA. She is also the founder of tech startup THEI.A Cognition. Karen was winner of the IPA’s 2016 Women of Tomorrow awards in Tech & Innovation, named as one Google’s ‘Top 10 Female Creatives to Watch for 2017 and 2018, the Drum’s Most Influential Top 100 Digerati for 2017, 2018, 2019 and one of the Drum’s ‘Top 25 from the last 25 years’ Women shaping digital 2019.

The post How to keep your remote team connected appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

I love finding people-led solutions that enable this. So when my team at Silicon Reef were asked by transnational FMCG business Unilever to create a portal that would help manage their vast array of global suppliers, we immediately saw an opportunity to connect people and improve supplier engagement.

Our challenge

Unilever works with over 12,000 global suppliers to create and supply consumer products from washing powder to shampoo and food goods. They were overwhelmed with huge amounts of data, spread across different systems and data centres. This made finding relevant information time consuming and challenging.

We needed to create a communications hub to give them better access to news, events, key documents, and Power BI dashboards, as well as connecting them to the Unilever team. It would also support the development team when creating new products, helping with go-to-market faster, and with greater accuracy.

The technical details

To enable the suppliers and Unilever team to connect easily, we needed to modernise the Unilever SupplierNet solution to Microsoft 365 (M365). This meant a complete rebuild of the branding, user experience, and interfaces for supplier interaction. We moved the portal to SharePoint Online within M365. This gave Unilever:

• Consistent corporate bespoke branding across Portal Sites to signpost location and context.
• Single sign-on for suppliers using their own corporate credentials, making access easy and secure.
• Corporate group and nested group access.
• Digital support for all key activities.
• A file library for all manuals and documentation.
• Full reporting of all SAP data into Power BI for metrics and KPIs.
• Built-in security from Azure, with full ability to control user and network access.

5 ways employees are more engaged

Employees and suppliers now have a single source for all company messaging, communication, and resources, ensuring that the information they are using is timely and accurate.

Unilever Procurement Managers can now quickly and easily raise issues and incidents on their deliveries or goods directly within the portal, reducing the time it takes to raise and chase issues with suppliers.

The return of investment for Unilever will be under 12 months. This is due to a reduction in hosting costs from moving from a server farm model to using SharePoint and Power Platform.

But the added-value benefits have been significant and continue to roll in as the portal is used in earnest.

1.      Creative collaboration

Secure and discrete collaboration sites allow both suppliers and Unilever employees to confidently share information, from anywhere, on any device. This allows them to work together ad-hoc, encouraging creativity and spontaneity in the development of new products or rollouts. The hub is a place for everyone to come together. It’s a unique opportunity and – with the volume of suppliers interacting with Unilever – only possible through this technical platform.

2.      Secure and accessible file storage

Unilever has a vast array of regulatory certification requirements across a huge product range including animal testing, vegan certification, codes of practice, and other scientific documentation.

Managing these via the hub, rather than via email and attachments, creates a permanent, referenceable information trail for legal reference, and to aid future product development. SharePoint encrypts data in transit and at rest. When combined with single sign on and multi-factor authentication, it means these sensitive documents are protected.

3.      More efficient processes

Suppliers can now self-serve with access to their own performance metrics and KPIs on demand, as their own data is visible from SAP via Power BI. They can review their performance as an interactive dashboard and drill directly into the data.

Company information, procedures, up-to-date news and past documents can also be accessed without having to contact Unilever. All of this significantly drives down the volume of requests, meaning suppliers can focus on the work they need to do. This also frees up Unilever to spend more time on important work than document chasing.

4.      Faster innovation and creation

It’s easier for suppliers to input new materials into the product library. This gives Unilever direct access to the latest materials when creating new products, simply by carrying out a search.

Currently, they have libraries for fragrances, colour and naturals, with many thousands of individual items from many suppliers listed, and continually updated.

5.      Supplier empowerment

Corporate and nested group access in SharePoint allows divisional responsibilities and activities. SupplierNet gives a segregation of suppliers under their own control. Suppliers can create their own groups of users who can access key systems and block access to others. This means suppliers can control the access of their data, without breaking permissions at a higher level.

Working together without barriers

For Unilever, inviting external partners on to a collaboration platform was about far more than just sharing a document or site. It was about helping people connect to work together better, with the right information, from anywhere. And it worked – colleagues now have four times the increase of engagement against the original system.

“Feedback from the suppliers’ interviews has been uniformly positive. They consider it to be a huge step forwards. The concept of offering single sign-on to applications via a dedicated portal is something they believe will make their interactions with the complex Unilever IT architecture much easier. The suite of applications housed under the new portal provides a uniform look and feel, significantly reduces both training and barriers to access for supplier users, and increases uptake where Unilever requires suppliers to engage.”
Chris Yates, Lead SME, Supplier Integration, Unilever

Offering a tailored, permissions-based experience – one that recognises the way a supplier or partner actually works – brings significant benefits far beyond the financial ROI. Not only does it boost engagement, it also significantly improves management of security, and enables a greater collaboration between host and partner, and even between the partners themselves.

A solution like SupplierNet allows this communication. And, as in the case of Unilever’s Supplier Partners, when the users feel engaged, they are more informed, quicker to raise and respond to issues, and more efficient in their dealings with the business.

Find out more

Unlock innovation with cloud collaboration

See the latest Microsoft 365 updates

Learn more about Silicon Reef

Become a Microsoft Partner

About the author

Alex Graves is Founder and Managing Director of UK-based Microsoft 365 Agency Silicon Reef. Alex started his career in IT Training, honed his skills in IT project management and, three-years ago, started Silicon Reef with a group of like-minded friends and colleagues.

With his passion for blowing the boundaries away from conventional working practices, Alex leads the strategy thread of the business, helping clients to design operational and technical solutions to improve collaboration, employee engagement, and productivity.

Alex was on a perpetual hunt to discover the work/life balance and thinks he has found his own with the Silicon Reef model. Now he’s shifted his focus on bringing this balance to his clients.

The post How Unilever streamlined processes and empowered employees appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This means that organisations need to be more agile. They’re having to respond quickly to the changing needs of the customer and environment. They need to get to market ever faster, and do so in engaging ways that fit the moment and the mood. Being both proactive and reactive to rapidly shifting consumer behaviour has never been more of a necessity.

How AI can help deliver a stronger customer experience

AI can help organisations use data to drive business insights quickly, make decisions faster, and become more agile. Using AI will also help optimise processes and streamline operations.

We already know that customer and employee experience are intrinsically linked. If we use AI to free up employees time, they can spend it on tasks that provide a more personalised customer experience.

Artificial intelligence is such a vast ocean of a topic, however, that it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are four key components to consider before getting stuck into your first AI-driven project.

1.      Think why, not what

When you create your AI strategy, switch your mindset. You’re not trying to find a reason to use AI. You’re trying to define the problem and then look at how to solve it. The better the question, the more useful the answer.

For example, travel businesses that are overwhelmed with customer enquiries may find that a chatbot can help them manage the volume when programmed with a series of FAQs. Supermarkets experiencing an increase in online demand could use AI to learn quickly from changing shopping behaviours, and start to predict new trends to help them tailor the customer experience.

While these are still fairly practical and simple applications of AI and machine learning, notice how it’s about solving a problem instead of wedging a solution in for the sake of it.

2.      From tabula rasa to ethical AI

Any AI system starts as a tabula rasa, or a blank sheet. Its efficiency depends on what we teach it to do. AI analyses any data set far more deeply and effectively than we can, but we cannot expect more from it than we give.

This is why when you implement AI, you need to ensure it is ethical, reliable, secure, and fair. It’s incredibly important to test a system periodically (as it learns constantly) against any unwanted outcomes that may result in unintended exclusion or discrimination. You also need to create a set of principles and governance alongside your AI strategy.

3.      Consider quantity and quality

Efficient AI learning hinges around human understanding of what constitutes a proper dataset. Generally people think that the bigger the dataset, the higher performance expectations can be. However, it takes both quantity and quality to determine the efficiency of your AI implementation.

For example, if we want an AI application to predict future clothing trends, we need to make sure we combine various dimensions of the historical reference trends (colour, material, pattern, length, etc.). If we want to teach AI to identify trees but we only present birch trees as learning examples, we shouldn’t be surprised when it doesn’t recognise an oak tree.

4.      Think of AI as an extension to your team

One key thing to remember is that AI systems make mistakes. There is no system free from them. So, any application will always require some form of human audit. No action should be left solely to machines.

Still, AI is a powerful companion that will help us grow and work smarter. The concept of ‘Human+’ promotes AI as an extension of our skills. We’ve seen examples of this across multiple industries. In football, we’ve seen the benefits of Video Assistant Referee becoming an extra pair of eyes. There are navigation systems that actually empower the geographical senses of drivers and pilots. Da Vinci robots that extend and stabilise surgeons’ hands. And, of course, we’ve seen the benefits of AI driven pre-analysis tools that increase the efficiency of marketing analysts.

Human+ ingenuity

It is ultimately us humans that deliver the true creativity, artistry and innovation that brings true business value. It’s AI’s job to help drive these outcomes, whether it’s using data to provide analytics, optimising and streamlining business processes, or aiding our marketing campaigns to create a more personalised digital customer experience.

Find out more

Read more: How to become data-driven

Develop your skills: Lead with confidence in the age of AI

Download the report: Maximise the AI opportunity

Get in touch: Find out more about Cognifide

Grow your skills and expertise:At the UK Partner Skills Hub

Tools to empower your development team

Watch the on-demand session: Responsible AI panel interview

Read the blog: An intro to AI and the AI Builder

About the author

Jedrzej is the author of 14 papers, co-author of two books and has a PhD in AI. He has recently authored Cunning Machines, published in March 2020 by CRC Press. This pocket guide to the world of AI explains its main concepts: what does AI really mean, where do we find it, how do scientists try to evaluate it, what are its main limitations, and what future can we expect with it. Jedrzej is a Senior QA Engineer at Cognifide. He is better known to his Twitter followers as Dr. Hawaii (thanks to his fabulous taste in Hawaiian shirts).

The post 4 components to a successful AI-driven customer experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

So what we can do with machine learning? We can first use it to understand an individual’s learning needs. It can then be used to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of teaching.

Using technology to disrupt education

Teachers often understand the complexity of their student’s parent’s lives (often, they’re in the same boat!). Especially when remote learning and extra support at home can generate real pressures. But parents are always keen to help. And they now have a greater awareness than ever of the array of remote learning options available. Machine learning can help take the complexity out of giving students the extra help they need, coupled with adaptive learning.

What is adaptive learning?

Adaptive learning uses software to change what is presented to a student based on their interactions. To the student, it may seem that they are being presented with content, questions, and hints that are either preordained or random. The reality is that the adaptive learning algorithms are carefully guiding their path. When adaptive learning is blended with effective teaching, students can master and retain skills 1.5 times faster.

Many have looked to build more effective systems, leveraging the power of cloud and the opportunities it gives for data processing and machine learning.

If I were a Hollywood scriptwriter, this is the point for a montage with screens full of numbers crunching away, automating the creation of an education system. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. It also, disappointingly, doesn’t involve a montage filled with techy or 80s music (I’ll let you choose that one).

Back to reality. Here are the four most important things we learnt when we implemented adaptive learning with machine learning:

1. Consider the human side of technology to keep students engaged

We all have different preferences of learning style, such as visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinaesthetic. A teacher will recognise this and will adapt their approach for individuals as appropriate, particularly where one encounters an area of difficulty. This, however can take a lot of time away from the teacher to deliver these different styles to each student. Machine learning can automatically deliver content to suit the learning preferences for individual students, freeing up time for teachers to spend supporting their students in other ways and answering any questions they might have. It can also help with employing gamification techniques to provide a fun and interactive learning experience for students.

2. Be clear on the outcomes you want to achieve and get your data in order

We wanted to use adaptive learning to help students master and retain skills as efficiently as possible. To help this, we gave our machine learning program a dataset of previous interactions. This enabled us to predicts future events based on that previous data.

The more the program is used by students and the more new data it collects, the smarter your machine learning system will be as it learns to adapt and provide outcomes that are closer to what you set out to achieve at the start.

3. Determine how and when to intervene

Reinforcement is used to ensure that students continue to be exposed to skills that have been mastered until they have demonstrated a solid understanding. To achieve this, there are a number of variables adaptive learning will use. This includes the order that skills are presented, when to progress or regress skills, and when and how to intervene if a student is becoming stuck.

4. Look for opportunities to understand and optimise

Using machine learning optimises the learning path by enabling you to use a far more complex set of variables. This could include the time taken for a student to answer a question, and the geographical location (and therefore school system and learning method taught). When given a wrong answer, machine learning can identify and reinforce the skill that was the source of the misunderstanding.

Doing this will help a student retain and learn skills quickly, as well as ensuring they are getting the right information, at the right time.

Unlock children’s learning potential

Online education tools are a great resource for parents. Machine learning, when applied intelligently to adaptive learning, has the ability to provide highly optimised support for accelerating children’s progress. However, this is not purely a numbers game. The human touch is a critical element in providing true long-term engagement and progression.

When assessing tools available, try and choose those that best support the power of adaptive learning with human intervention.

If you have an idea where you think machine learning may help and want to know more, we would love to spend the day with you discussing the art of the possible.

Find out more

Discover tools and technology for distance learning

Learn how to create and collect data through adaptive assessments 

Explore more about Talk Think Do

Explore Learning

Grow your skills and expertise at the UK Partner Skills Hub

About the author

Matt is CEO of Talk Think Do, a UK based Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in cloud native solutions. Before Talk Think Do, Matt amassed 25 years’ experience in software development, working on high profile projects for world-renowned organisations. Employed first as a developer and then as a solutions architect, Matt’s CV includes work for Barclays, Fitness First and several Formula 1 teams.

Today, his focus is on the direction of Talk Think Do, growing the business by developing strategic partnerships and building the technical capability of the team.

The post 4 steps to enhance children’s education with machine learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Consumer sentiment supports this. Wunderman Thompson’s latest Future Shopper survey found that 65 percent of consumers expect to use digital shopping channels more in the future.

But where should you be focusing, to support the expectations of consumers today and in the future?

Even the most digitally resistant customer groups are changing their behaviours and shopping more online. That sets brands and retailers the challenge of thinking ‘digital-first’ and creating experiences that will keep all customers satisfied. Here are four key areas to focus on:

1. Leverage a broad range of digital channels

Now is definitely the time to look at ways of maximising value from your own ecommerce store. Think about adding fresh, personalised, and shoppable content frequently (but not invasively) across your site. Or send reminders and discounts out to shoppers who have abandoned baskets.

You should also think of creative ways to connect with customers outside of the traditional channels. Social media has now become more important than ever. It plays the role of information source, entertainment or distraction, and a means of staying connected. Also, don’t just stick to the ‘Big Three’ of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Platforms like TikTok have experienced significant growth recently. Think strategically about what channel works best for your customers before you start planning campaigns.

Early movers are now reaping the benefits. A Selfridges/Estée Lauder campaign on TikTok has already attracted 9.3 million views.

2. Optimise for a range of devices

For the first time, December 2019 saw mobile overtake desktop in terms of market share in the UK. The gap has continued to grow, with mobile at 49.2 percent against and desktop’s at 44.4 percent. Therefore, it’s important to make sure your websites and customer journeys are optimised for mobile. Take time to understand how different users interact with a mobile site and how much time they will spend on it.

While people are using a range of different devices, it is also important to acknowledge they’re buying via a range of different channels. Understand your device mix and analyse the user journeys on each. Think about how they may want to carry out a certain task. Use your data to understand how they are doing this. For example, some customers may be accessing your website on multiple devices, such as browsing on mobile and then switching to desktop for purchase.

3. Test and adopt new technologies

Our Future Shopper survey consistently indicates that consumers prefer purchasing from brands that are digitally innovative. So, take a look at possible new technologies that can dial up the digital experience you’re offering.

For example, visual recognition technology can massively speed up classification of products. Creating personalised emails or targeted content will not only help to engage customers, but also provide insight into what content works best. This means you can focus on only producing the optimum solutions.

Finally, voice commerce is an important growing trend. Our Future Shopper 2020 survey found that 27 percent of online consumers have used a voice assistant to make a purchase. Your future customers are onboard too. We know from our Generation Alpha report that 59 percent of consumers aged 6-16 are comfortable talking to voice command devices and 22 percent have used one to make a purchase.

4. Optimise employees

Customers seek honesty and personal experiences so it’s vital your customer service supports this. Update your website to reflect how you want customers to reach out to you, and offer a timescale on when they should expect to hear back. Ensure customers can easily navigate your website and find the information they need. Keep FAQs up to date, so that customers can self-serve online as much as possible.

Create a digital form with fields which customers can fill out without speaking to an agent. The form should have enough information in it to direct the query to the right team efficiently and effectively.

If customers are using other channels like social media, then ensure that steps have been taken to cope with the increased demand. Consider upskilling and re-deploying employees to deal with social media traffic.

You can also deploy AI, chatbots and self-serve technologies to answer simple day-to-day queries, freeing up customer service agents to deal with more complex tasks.

These technologies can then be taught to escalate to webchat with an agent if they cannot answer the queries. Webchat is a great way to give quick answers to employees, and agents can often work on more than one issue at a time.

A platform like Dynamics 365 that provides a complete view of customer information is also useful. This will make it easier for employees to quickly access the information they need, when they need. It also means the customer will spend less time waiting for a resolution and more time getting a great experience.

If you are experiencing higher online traffic volumes, it is important to manage it effectively to avoid frustration for customers and ensure the business continues to operate efficiently.

Assess where your web traffic is coming from. It might make sense to pull back digital marketing campaigns to reduce the traffic coming to your website. Try introducing virtual queues and waiting rooms, with engaging landing pages full of content designed to keep customers occupied while they wait.

Personal experiences are about honesty

Above all, make sure you maintain open, honest lines of communication with your customers. Make sure your digital channels are prioritising what is most relevant for your customers. Don’t think about selling a product, think about how you can show the value of your organisation and products to the customer.

Retailers and brands that put customers first, support them across channels and devices, and speak with clarity and honesty will be the brands that are most likely to sustain positive sentiment with customers old and new. They will be more resilient and adapt quickly to their customer’s changing needs.

This is an opportunity to do the right thing for your business by doing what’s best for your customers. Aided by digital technology, it’s time to seize it!

Find out more

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About the author

Hugh is an internationally sought after digital commerce futurologist, heading up the Thought Leadership team at Wunderman Thompson Commerce. As an ex-Audi digital guru, Hugh uses his client-side experience and unique take on the future of commerce to help organisations set up for, and implement, digital change in the constantly evolving commerce market. His work focuses on helping ambitious clients to transact more digitally through strategic consultancy, covering digital business transformation, the future of ecommerce and conversion. He is a go-to spokesperson in press and TV for tech trends impacting ecommerce, and author of reports, white papers, and articles covering future shoppers, Generation Alpha, Digital Commerce Leaders, and peak selling.

The post Why the customer experience needs to be digital-first appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

As a digital agency, we specialise in voice and TV app development, but with a focus on research and development. During the hack, we learnt some valuable lessons. We wanted to share these to help other digital agencies and businesses who want to use their expertise for environmental good but aren’t sure where to start.

Identify the problem

It is no secret that the UK loves a takeaway. The delivery market has been booming in recent years, especially due to popular delivery services like Deliveroo, UberEats, and JustEat. Recently, these services have seen an even bigger surge, and have been providing a valuable service delivering groceries and essentials items to people across the country.

An often overlooked downside to takeaways and deliveries is the huge amounts of packaging waste generated by the industry. There’s often an array of cardboard boxes, polystyrene trays, and plastic containers leftover after ordering.

Government data shows that recycling figures are actually falling. One of the barriers to recycling is the confusion of what can and can’t be recycled. This is made more difficult as local councils and boroughs each have different rules and processes.

Finding the solution with AI

We wanted to use our tech expertise to benefit the environment. We also wanted to explore AI capabilities as a solution. As the increase of disposable takeaway containers continues to grow, our team thought about ways to engineer solution to help the public recycle.

That’s when we came up with Sort It Out. A chatbot that would tell users how to recycle their takeaway containers by analysing a photo. It would integrate an API with Azure AI services to make it easy and fun for people to access information on how best to get rid of their rubbish. In turn, it would encourage them to dispose of that waste responsibly and sustainably.

At the hack event, FX Digital set out to create a working API that would integrate with Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services. Here they discovered different ways to deploy Microsoft AI to create a sustainable solution to this environmental issue.

Deploying Microsoft AI effectively

First, the team built an API that retrieves the user’s coordinates. It then determines the area where the user is currently located using a popular map app and Postcode API.

Next, the team trawled the internet for as many different images of different takeaway packaging as they could find, from cardboard pizza boxes to polystyrene kebab trays. The team used these to train the AI model to recognise different packaging types.

They used Azure Blob storage services to temporarily store imagery submitted by users. Doing this reduces the size of the calls being done across multiple APIs. If these images were permanently stored, they could also be used to retrain the model and advance its machine learning. However, the team instead opted for a data dump of different container types. We did think about storing user images, but GDPR constraints may impact the storage of this data so opted out of that method.

The API was further developed to analyse a dataset and determine whether or not the container is recyclable in the user’s current borough, by pulling through information from local council websites. This presented a challenge, because the information on council websites is updated regularly. Unfortunately councils in the UK do not have an API that is easy to browse. Instead it is all consolidated in one csv file (our dataset) which the team pulled from the government database. Without the time to develop a more advanced solution, the csv file had to be added and updated manually.

Finally, we developed the function to analyse the picture sent by the user to the chatbot. Here, they used Azure’s Cognitive Services Custom Vision. Utilising AI to determine what type of container the object is (e.g. box, cup, bottle) and what material it is made of (e.g. cardboard, glass, plastic) and then tell the user how they can dispose of the rubbish.

Moving forward

We learned valuable lessons from experimenting with AI. We realised this technology could be deployed to create innovative solutions. With the growth of the takeaway industry showing no sign of abating, the environmental burden must be shared by the takeaway industry, the Government and ourselves, the consumer. We all have the responsibility to ensure that we dispose of our waste responsibly and recycle as much as possible.

During the Microsoft hack event, the FX Digital team was able to utilise AI to create an API which is now being used to develop the Sort It Out chatbot. Although environmental projects are not FX Digital’s core business, we realised through this experience that we can use our expertise and AI technology to provide a service that could make a real difference to the environment.

Since finishing the hackathon, the team have been inspired to use their Friday afternoon personal development time to see the project through to completion. The ultimate goal is to have a chatbot that gives the user a smooth and informative experience, leading to better information and an increase in recycling. This chatbot could be used by delivery services to promote recycling with their users.

Sort It Out has inspired our team to use AI to benefit society in a small way. We hope other businesses may be inspired to do the same.

Find out more

Learn more about FX Digital and follow updates about Sort It Out

4 skills organisations can embrace to use AI for social good

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About the author

Ramsey is the Marketing Manager at FX Digital, a digital agency specialising in TV and Voice App Development. Working in an agency obsessed with Research and Development, you will often find him writing articles about the latest and greatest developments in new and emerging tech, from Voice technology to Connected TV, AR and AI. Ramsey and the team at FX Digital are always seeking new ways to solve complex issues. He believes marketing is a powerful tool to educate and inform, as well as spark debate and discussion, hoping that it results in innovation.

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Businesses have been chasing the goal of having a ‘single customer view’ and providing omni-channel experiences for a long time. We’ve been helping businesses harness the power of data to drive more informed business decisions and transform customer experiences for 25 years.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provides a platform for your team to deliver innovative and personalised customer experiences with a streamlined and unified view of data across the whole business. However, there are a few things you need to do to set yourself up for success before getting started.

1.      Start with the right team

It’s perhaps trite, but having the right team is critical. Successful teams are those who can clearly articulate the business impact of data decisions to stakeholders who might never have considered customer data in that level of detail before.

Successful projects start with upfront acknowledgement that the organisation will have to address more than just the technical aspects of customer data. You need to also examine what data really means to the organisation and how you can get the most value from it.

That means open discussion between people who really understand the data and people who have the vision for how the data could be applied to deliver amazing insight and inspiring customer interactions.

2.      Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

What does your customer think about their experiences with your organisation? How would they describe their relationship with your brand? Think about whether you will apply probabilistic or deterministic data signals to identify customers or a mixture of both to better link disparate customer interactions.

Putting yourself into the customer’s shoes will influence how you assemble a single customer view. Thinking of your customer’s needs and wants from the outset will help ensure your project stays true to its values and goals, allowing it to have greater impact, quicker.

Finding the right platform is key to success. With built-in security, privacy, and governance, tools like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will help you maintain full ownership over your data while making it easy to apply compliance and governance rules with your single view.

These are just a snippet of the types of things you will need to think about based on the unique needs of your organisation and your customers.

3.   Don’t forget the big picture, but focus your scope to drive speed to value

Customer data projects that deliver strong ROI control breadth of scope, not depth. When you pay attention to the details early in a project, it translates into faster realised value and a smoother deployment. It also makes it easy to optimise processes for your employees, making it easier for them to do their work and create innovation.

Some of the details it’s worth focussing on are:

• What degree of ‘real-time’ is appropriate to deliver business value? Not every data source or interaction needs to be real-time, and batch refreshes can be much more cost effective.
• How will you make data readily understandable and discoverable to your teams? One organisation we worked with had over 7000 calculated customer data variables – it was quicker for users to create a new calculated variable than find one of the existing ones. Using clear naming conventions for data variables, adding metadata to make them searchable, and promoting their availability around key users will be essential to success.
• How will you develop data competencies? Specifically, the skills needed to be able to manage the data lifecycle. A clear competency development plan is key.
• Think about how you can access the data. Using a platform that works across different devices securely means your employees will be able to work anytime, anywhere, and keep delivering the best experiences to your customers. According to a 2019 Gallup study, engaged employees had 10 percent higher customer ratings.

4.      Build your data roadmap

Details don’t have to be at the expense of the big-picture. Successful organisations have a living roadmap for their customer data and their customer data technology projects.

Each step along the customer data journey roadmap should align inputs with outcomes and feedback. This loop continues as you gather data and use these insights to further improve your roadmap.

Outcomes

Think about the actions you want to take and how you want to grow. To do this, identify the data-driven customer interactions you want to provide and the kind of insight you need to inform better decisions.

Input

Once you’ve identified the insights you need, think about the technology you need to gather and harness data to help drive these outcomes. A platform like Dynamics 365 will adapt and extend with your needs, growing alongside your business and help unlock insights and power personalised customer experiences.

Feedback

Share this roadmap widely among all stakeholders (marketing, IT, sales, customer service, etc.) and update it every time new customer data capability is released to the organisation. This helps everyone contribute, feedback, and buy-in to any phasing decisions that are made.

Finally, turn to technology

Doing these first steps before you start using software means you’ll understand your customer’s needs more and use the power of data to drive better experiences. You’ll also have better buy-in from stakeholders and employees when implementing the technology.

That means you’ll be well placed to streamline how you source, integrate, and assemble data to deliver your single customer view. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights uses AI to help drive insights that your marketing, sales, and customer service professionals need to give personalised experiences to your customers.

Find out more

Explore Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

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About the author

Alex leads marketing technology for Edit as a key member of the Strategic Consulting team. His mission is to collaborate with Edit’s clients to align their marketing ambitions to an optimised technology landscape, bringing together the right platforms with an organised data set to drive value through improved capability, better marketing operations, and data driven continuous improvement.

Alex balances deep technical knowledge with the ability to understand client requirements and translate them into appropriate, and ambitious solutions. With strong foundations as a software engineer, he has six years experience working with some of the world’s best known marketing data solutions providers. He also has over 16 years pre-sales experience working for a some of the UK’s best marketing solutions providers and system integrators. Alex helps clients select the right solution for them, and adds practical experience of what it takes to make technology projects successful. Alex is a Microsoft Advocate and one of the lead Microsoft CI and Azure technical pre-sales consultants within Edit, Part of Kin + Carta, a top 10 global digital agency (eConsultancy).

The post The power of data: how to deliver a strong digital customer experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Think about the last time you had a good experience. It’s typically seamless and frictionless – but the bad experiences stick with you, as does the brand association.

Customer experience is key in brand consideration and advocacy. And ultimately, as more and more of our brand experiences move online, those brands that provide first-rate customer experience will win out.

So, in this era of emerging tech, how can we use data and AI to create more personalised, immediate and intelligent interactions? And should you take a data-first or domain-first approach?

Sorting your customer experience strategy

Firstly, if you haven’t started to already, it’s important to view data and AI as part of a broader customer experience strategy and vision, and ask yourself how technology can enhance the journey. This includes incorporating what you already know about your customers with customer journey analysis and mapping. You’ll need to make sure you understand all the touchpoints across the journey your customer will make, taking into account what can and will improve the experience and resolve their problems.

This may already incorporate a foundational data activity, and once you have the foundation set you can begin to explore data and AI more deeply. But where do you start?

Focus, focus, focus

As part of your strategy, you may have loosely embraced the idea of data and AI, and potentially built a roadmap, as we often have with clients. But to deliver tangible results, start by thinking about the specific problems you want to solve:

• Do you want to improve touchpoints and share more information?
• Do you want to improve brand engagement and personalisation?
• Or do you want to optimise conversion?

Having a focus point enables you to take action within the context of your strategy.

Next up is the data

Consider what data you have and what data you might be able to access that you don’t currently. This can be a very broad area, stretching from Net Promoter Scores to more obvious data like search queries, stored website data, geographical location and historic customer data.

But with a focus point, you can drill down to the data sets you have or need to deliver a project. AI thrives on information – the more the merrier, as they say. But make it work for you.

Time is money

The beauty of AI lies in the ability to collect and analyse rich real-time customer data, allowing you to anticipate customers’ needs and deliver hyper-personalisation – reaching customers at the right time, through the right device, and with the right message. It means we can move from customer segments to a single customer view.

With the ability to action insights in real-time, you might choose to either convert a new customer, reduce costs in an existing process, or improve your reputation.

Familiarise yourself with the tech

To help understand customers faster and more efficiently, and to action the insights you gather, you’re likely going to need to build or buy solutions. This is a whole subject in itself, but getting it right could have a significant impact on successfully delivering your vision and deriving true business benefit.

In my experience, for most mid-sized businesses (£10-£100m turnover) this is as good a time as ever to look for a partner that shares your values and has similar experiences of working with companies of your size and sector.

Applying the learning

So you have your strategy, and understand the customer journey and potential frictions. You’ve looked at the data you have and considered what you might like to collect, and you have the technology solutions that might meet your specific needs. Now you’re ready to go, so let’s look at some of the applications you might consider.

1. 1. Improving customer service/satisfaction

AI-powered chatbots can intelligently engage customers to help with their journey through a website, either through conversation or nudges and prompts. They also have the availability (24/7/365) to provide quick answers to questions, resolve complaints or problems, and find the correct customer service agent.

If implemented well, including taking into account correct use cases and your brand’s tone of voice, chatbots can provide significant value:

• • Save time and money
  • Generate leads and revenue
  • Guide users to better outcomes
  • Provide ‘after hours’ support
  • Engage users in a unique way

1. 2. Personalising the customer experience

There is a reason psychologists promote the use of people’s names, and using data and AI we can engage customers on a similarly personal level, encouraging them to feel that your products, services and brand experiences are tailored for them.

AI-powered recommendation engines are capable of analysing data and adapting in real-time to provide customers with products, services and offers that are tailored specifically for them, rather than being delivered (as in the past) by simple ‘category’ alternatives.

In addition to recommendations, entire digital journeys can be personalised to a customer, with images, messages and signposting uniquely adapted to their needs and preferences.

1. 3. ‘Smart’ engagement

By a wide margin, research shows personalised content is more effective. AI algorithms can record your customers’ previous email interactions and website journeys to understand how they interact with your brand. Machine learning-driven segmentation and clustering can also help profile customers based on multiple variables, including demographics, buyer type or brand advocacy, and can provide significant insight into how to engage customers as well as when and where.

This data can then allow you to create dynamic, super-relevant, personalised adverts and emails. Using emails as an example, these can be based on details such as:

• • What blogs or other content they have read
  • How they have navigated your website
  • Reactions to previous email communications

AI and natural language processing are now also being used to write subject lines that beat human-authored subject lines in 98% of head-to-head tests.

So bringing dynamic emails and AI-driven subject lines together could supercharge your email marketing.

These are just a few ways data and AI can improve the experience you deliver to your customers.

If AI is relatively new to you or your business, it might be helpful to take a look at my previous blog How to implement AI as a mid-sized company: 5 practical steps to success. This should help you explore AI and data for customer experience in the broader context of understanding how your business can make the most of the opportunity AI brings.

Good luck with turbo-charging your customer experience programme!

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About the author

Dean has owned and managed agencies for over 16 years. In this time, he’s worked on a range of technology projects for global companies. Now, in his role as COO at a specialist health and beauty agency, The Pull Agency, he creates multi-disciplined teams that help bring the worlds of brand and technology together. Although Dean has a broad, journalistic knowledge of emerging technology, he’s most passionate about solutions that improve customer experience, applying old school marketing know-how and creative thinking with the latest technologies. He has a passion for road cycle racing, having represented Great Britain at the Under 18’s. Dean also enjoys a good Rioja and listening to Radiohead at maximum volumes.

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