For those looking for the full history behind the first release, please see the Cross Government Collaboration Blueprint – History Refresher content at bottom of this blog.

The story so far…

In June 2021, we partnered with the Central Digital and Data Office and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and set out to improve the collaboration experience for UK government organisations by creating a Cross-Government Collaboration Blueprint. The blueprint was created by focussing on key scenarios developed in consultation with several government organisations. It is designed to be used in conjunction with the other guidance we have published, which focuses on Secure Configuration, BYOD, and Information Protection (more on that later). Please be sure to check out those too, so you have the full ‘box set’.

Fast forward to today, we’ve given that ‘box set’ a new name that makes it clear how the guidance fits together, seen in this illustration:

We also updated the guidance based on real-world feedback and product evolution to include the following:

• Addition of Shared Channels guidance
• Updates that clarify Calendar Availability guidance
• Azure AD B2B updates
• Brand and naming updates to align with changes to Microsoft technology
• Teams 2.0 Release
• A statement in the Strategy regarding Google Federation

A notable recent development is the update to the Government Security Classification Policy (GSCP). Microsoft has partnered with Government Security Group, the Central Digital and Data Office and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to provide configuration guidance for those wishing to implement the OFFICIAL tier of the GSCP using Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP), available as part of Microsoft 365. The guidance assists those wishing to classify and protect files, control who can access them, and allow greater control when sharing information between departments, partner organisations, and customers. You can read about the Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government: Information Protection in another blog post.

Download the documents

About the authors

James has spent his entire IT career of 25 years specialising in the security arena, the last 20 of which have been for Microsoft. Based in the UK, he works in the key areas of security and identity in the public sector as a Cyber Cloud Solutions Architect. He is a regular contributor to Microsoft docs for Securing Privileged Access and was the lead architect for the Office 365 and BYOD guidance produced for Cabinet Office and NCSC.

Steve is an experienced IT Professional with over 20 years’ experience, working with clients across the world in multiple industries to help them achieve their goals in digital transformation. Recently Steve has been aligned to public sector clients, leading them to get the most out of their investment in the Microsoft cloud.

Cross Government Collaboration Blueprint – history refresher

We started this work in 2021 by consulting a broad group of end users from across government, and we found that there was an inconsistent user experience when working with colleagues from other organisations due to differences in configuration. The guidance helps to address this, and it is important to keep up with the recent developments of Microsoft 365, which is why we have updated the guidance.

We determined that a baseline configuration for government organisations would enable a more consistent and secure approach to collaboration. The recommended configuration we’ve produced focuses on these key areas:

• Keeping control of documents and allowing real-time co-authoring by sharing links rather than sending documents as email attachments.
• Making it easier to arrange meetings by allowing people to share their calendar availability across government.
• Allowing people to work more effectively as a team by enabling instant messaging and other features of Microsoft Teams.

Crucially, we’ve recommended an open approach to collaboration by default, giving users the freedom to choose who they collaborate with. This is a move away from a more restrictive ‘allow list’ approach which can create barriers to collaboration.

Does this approach make it less secure? No. Here’s what the NCSC have said:

“By following the Secure Configuration Alignment and applying the cross-government collaboration guidance on top, it is the NCSC’s view that Microsoft 365 can be appropriately configured to protect an organisation’s data against the threat profile for the OFFICIAL classification when collaborating and sharing information between government departments. The NCSC expects that guidance related to collaboration and security is implemented in its entirety to avoid gaps and weaknesses leading to increased risk of a data breach.

“The NCSC believes that modern cross-organisation collaboration services that share access to information via its originating system will be more secure than traditional methods such as sending copies as email attachments to external organisations. By using modern collaboration practices, such as those described in this guidance, organisations have greater auditing and visibility of how their data is being handled and more options for owning who and where their information is handled.”

National Cyber Security Centre

The Blueprint is intended to be a baseline upon which individual organisations can build. For example, if an organisation identifies specific needs that aren’t met by the Blueprint, there is flexibility for them to go further and implement even tighter controls, while being mindful that this could impact on people’s collaboration experience.

Find out more

Visit the Microsoft for Government website

Guidance on protecting government data using Microsoft Purview

Explore Microsoft UK Industry blogs: Government

The post Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government: External Collaboration appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The guidance assists those wishing to classify and protect files, control who can access them, and allow greater control when sharing information between departments, partner organisations, and customers.

A spokesman from the Government Security Group said: ”The Government Security Classifications policy (GSCP) sets out the administrative system used by HM Government (HMG) and our partners to appropriately protect information and data assets against prevalent threat actors. The GSCP was updated in 2023.

“This gave us a significant opportunity in UK government to modernise and standardise how organisations apply technical controls in line with security classifications. Microsoft 365 is widely used across UK government, so we partnered directly with Microsoft to define a standard approach to applying sensitivity labels and data loss prevention features of Microsoft 365 in line with the GSCP.

“The resulting technical guidance provides a baseline from which organisations can select the most relevant elements and tailor them for their specific use cases. Our objective is that this will be an enabler for the GSCP and that it will also create a better user experience for civil servants and our partners.”

Building on the Government’s Secure Configuration Blueprint

This guidance builds upon the Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government: Secure Configuration Blueprint for the UK Public Sector, which outlines how to configure a Microsoft 365 tenant for use at OFFICIAL (which includes OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE), and sits alongside the Cross Government Collaboration guidance and the Bring Your Own Device guidance.

Figure 1. Relationship with other NCSC and Microsoft guidance.

The guidance draws on experience gained working right across UK government and the public sector industry and incorporates existing best practice that has previously been published by Microsoft.

We determined that a baseline configuration for government organisations would enable a more consistent and secure approach to configuring classification and protection policies by providing a starting point for technology and compliance professionals alike. The recommended configuration we’ve produced focuses on these key areas:

• Increasing visibility of where data is located to data governance teams.
• Providing protection that follows documents as they are accessed internally or when shared externally by assigning the relevant GSCP label.
• Providing visual labels that indicate how a document should be handled.
• Providing visual labels for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to control whether external users are allowed access to content stored within them.
• Complementing the Cross Government Collaboration Blueprint to mark and protect documents as they are shared and co-authored between Government departments and partners.

Important note about this guidance

This guidance has been written as a starting point and organisations should consider how they may wish to supplement it with additional controls, as appropriate for the environment and risk appetite.

The blueprint guidance has been structured to follow a Microsoft-recommended three-phase approach for implementation: ‘Crawl, Walk, and Run’.

Figure 2. Microsoft’s recommended three-phase approach to implementation.

With the ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ approach, changes can be introduced in phases across your organisation, focusing on small sets of users first and then expanding to broader audiences. This will allow you to deploy quickly whilst minimising disruption and help you establish a baseline of user behaviour before introducing tighter restrictions. It will also help you identify early potential conflicts or compatibility issues between different tools, so you can address them before they have further impact.

Using the visual indication provided with sensitivity labels is a small, but important benefit of the capability that sensitivity labels can provide. The guidance is based on an outcomes-based approach which aims to reduce the likelihood of accidental data loss or oversharing.

The guidance looks to provide ‘outcomes-based’ controls that use the features available in Microsoft Purview Information Protection to restrict access to content based on the label selected.  The sensitivity labels are broken down into two distinct areas: content labels and container labels.

Content labels

Content labelling applies the label directly to documents and emails. This stamps the data with label metadata, which is maintained wherever the data resides.

Figure 3. How content labelling relates to data, controls and policy.

Content labels are used to provide visual indicators for the scope where the document or email should be accessed.

Figure 4. Access areas that may be denoted by content labels.

Container labels

Container labels apply to a workload (e.g. SharePoint, Teams or M365 group) where content is stored.  The labels are used to define whether External Guest users are allowed to access the container and collaborate with internal member users.

Figure 5. Container labels define access permissions for External Guest users.

Container labelling applies the sensitivity label at the container. Container labels are named differently from the data labels as they serve a different function – namely to control access to the containers. These labels provide a visual representation of the Privacy level, Public or Private, and whether external guest users are allowed to be members of the Team or SharePoint site, Internal or External.

Find out more

Microsoft for critical infrastructure

Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government: External Collaboration

UK OFFICIAL and UK NHS Regulatory Compliance built-in initiative

About the author

James has spent his entire IT career of 27 years specialising in the security arena, the last 22 of which have been for Microsoft. Based in the UK, he works in the key areas of security and identity in the public sector as a Security Technical Specialist. He is a regular contributor to Microsoft docs for Securing Privileged Access and was the lead architect for the Microsoft 365, Cross Government Collaboration and BYOD guidance produced for Cabinet Office and NCSC.

The post Guidance on protecting government data using Microsoft Purview appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In 2022, only 4% of people were employed in digital roles throughout the public sector, highlighting the need to embrace technology, upskill internally and produce better outcomes for everyone. The way to do it is by employing public sector employees as ‘change agents’.

Usually recruited from within the organisation, change agents help to manage the relationship between the organisation and the individual for a smooth digital transformation. The best change agents have extensive experience in department processes and technology and can offer moral support to those cautious of change.

Full-time change agents can be expensive and may divert some of the best and most productive people from a team. So organisations should make smart decisions about how a change agent programme is staffed, managed and supported.

As part of Microsoft’s Innovate Together programme, the Change Agent programme aims to train at least one person in every public sector service to be a catalyst for change. Delivered through expert training sessions and an online community of UK public sector change agents, the programme will provide a platform for the rapid exchange of ideas and solutions to maximise your journey to digital transformation.

This article offers insights into the powerful role of the change agent and allows you to register for the next Change Agent training programme in June 2023, open to those from Local Government organisations.

Delivering transformation benefits on the ground with a change agent

A change agent supports strategic transformations to deliver benefits locally on the ground. They also act as transformation conduits from a technology and a culture perspective. On one hand, they need to supply the central team with regular progress reports and flag up potential issues. On the other hand, they need to win over colleagues and support them in embracing new technologies and ways of working that may be unfamiliar to many.

Using technology to overcome complexity

Given the right training, change agents can match an organisation’s needs with the technology that it already has and advise on other opportunities. The Change Agent programme provides training on a whole host of transformational technologies such as AI and Power Automate, along with insights into how to leverage the tech you are likely already using day to day, from Microsoft Teams to SharePoint.

The training also equips participants with an understanding of the principles of change, how to lead and support change, different learning styles and meeting accessibility requirements through technology; providing attendees with the confidence, theory and practical examples to embrace and lead change within their own organisations.

Confidence in these ‘softer skills’ is crucial in enabling change within a complex industry, which is why one day in the five-day Change Agent programme option is dedicated to providing attendees with the skills to enable change. This content is delivered by industry experts; supporting colleagues to adopt digital tools requires empathy and an understanding of human psychology as well as knowledge of the products being used.

The programme also offers a bespoke version for managers within local government, providing them with sessions on how to support their teams with change, as well as technology specific sessions. This is imperative to fostering a culture of change through a top-down approach.

What really brings the training to life is the real-world examples of how other public sector organisations have leveraged these technologies as the catalyst for change within their own teams. After completing the sessions, the change agents are invited to join a digital community of alumni to further share best practice, providing access to a wider support network at anytime, anywhere.

Even where organisations across the public sector provide completely different services, most have shared common problems and therefore benefit from understanding what technologies others have implemented to resolve these issues. For example, many have a similar approach to technology-enabled time and task management, automation of document ingestion, and reporting. Collaboration between change agents should therefore be encouraged, even if that means overcoming competitive instincts.

How change agents enable transformations that differ in scale

Whilst all public sector transformations differ in scale and scope, the success of a change agent depends on a close understanding of how people respond to – and eventually accept – the introduction of technology into their working life. Leaning on a community of change agents continues to be an invaluable resource to previous alumni.

Large scale transformations could include the introduction of a new HR system. For a smaller transformation, a change agent might help a local council save time on admin by enabling the adoption of some simple digital tools. The Change Agent training programme looks at a wide range of common problem statements and the technologies that help to address some of those issues, with digital breakout rooms to discuss and collaborate.

The first key to achieving measurable benefits from change lies in finding opportunities for efficiencies that might start small or incrementally but can then scale across an entire organisation. The second key is to persuade colleagues to collaborate with the transformation programme and embrace technologies that empower them to do more with less. This usually begins by showing them that change is possible, even on a small scale. This is why change agents benefit from training in technology acceptance strategies throughout the course.

Acquiring change-agent skills

Change agents can be full-time professionals who are qualified to optimise a large-scale programme, or enthusiastic volunteers who work within their teams to deliver measurable results on the ground.

Giving these proactive individuals a forum to update their skills and coordinate their efforts adds value to any organisation’s transformation effort by enhancing its collective intelligence. In other words, a coalition of change agents is greater than the sum of its parts.

Change agents can benefit from learning new skills and putting them into practice at the same time. This is often more efficient than attempting to accelerate onboarding with an intense training schedule at the outset. Enabling new recruits to gradually build their confidence through practice lessens the risk of overwhelming them with too much information. Not all change agents are volunteers; some are nominated by their manager to gather insights on the transformation programme, or to develop their career.

The Microsoft Change Agent programme

This free programme is a national initiative designed to support local and regional government (LRG) in its digital transformation efforts. It is open to Microsoft customers, and offers a five-day version aimed at the ‘change agents’ within an LRG organisation, and a two-day version for managers.

The training employs industry experts from Microsoft and Socitm, and experienced local authority staff to help prepare delegates in theories of change, using a wide variety of Microsoft technologies to address common industry problem statements. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn and engage with others in similar roles across LRG. The programme also provides an opportunity for participants to join a collaborative network of Change Agent alumni practitioners, while learning about digital transformation technologies such as Power Platform, Power Automate, and Power BI.

Read more about our Change Agent programme and partnership with Socitm in the Financial Times – Equip the public sector with digital skills for better government.

Find out more

Microsoft Learn for government
Microsoft Adoption Score
Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative
Digital Skills Hub

About the author

I am an Account Technology Strategist (ATS) at Microsoft, with an MSc in managing and leading IT systems change. I help customers understand how Microsoft products can solve business problems, and I lead the Change Agent programme within the Innovate Together programme. I’m passionate about technology acceptance and supporting scalable, sustainable change across public services.

The post Digital public services: How to drive transformation with change agents appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Sophisticated cyberattacks are on the rise

According to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2022, over 100 million attacks against remote management devices were observed in May 2022, up 500 percent on the past year. Human-operated ransomware remains the most prevalent cybercrime, however. One-third of targets are successfully compromised by criminals using these attacks, and 5 percent of them are ransomed.

Old perimeter-guarding strategies are no match for these increasingly sophisticated threats. An organisation needs to embrace a modern, data-driven and people-centred approach to managing security risk. This can help to identify and tackle existing threats more effectively while learning to anticipate new ones.

What is a security culture?

An organisation’s security culture is built on shared values, attitudes and ways of acting. It’s therefore hard to change, and it takes time. Creating a culture of security needs colleagues to understand the potential costs of a security lapse. They must also understand how bad actors tend to operate, and why existing security strategies are no longer adequate.

In the current climate, digital communications and cloud data management provide multiple ways to access organisations that previously didn’t exist. Once inside your network, cybercriminals can move laterally, seeking out value.

Zero Trust relies on strong identity verification

Adopting strong identity verification is key to Microsoft’s Zero Trust approach. Real-time data provides information on the user, the device, and the location – which is crucial in a hybrid world of work. Connecting both cloud and legacy systems to a single identity solution provides end-to-end visibility of an organisation’s digital presence. This helps to protect against internal threats that old-fashioned firewalls would miss. Where there is doubt, a Zero Trust approach applies conditional access. Where there is risk, it is assumed a breach.

A security strategy that enhances overall performance

Adopting a Zero Trust approach brings immediate improvements to an existing security posture, and builds a path that continuously improves risk management. It simplifies security processes to enhance customer experience, and potentially lowers costs by eliminating the need for external security providers.

Adopting a best-in-class security strategy can also make an organisation more forward-focused and risk-responsive in general. Nurturing a security culture brings long term benefits to a company as a brand and to its overall effectiveness in the marketplace. Security is not just a cost; it drives trust and therefore adds value.

Security culture starts small and collaboratively

When implementing a new security protocol, take a step-by-step approach beginning with a small, controlled group and a security risk that qualifies as low-hanging fruit. Once new protocols have been validated, and teams have given feedback, it can be expanded to another part of the business, such as identities, infrastructure, devices, data, networks or apps.

As for implementing organisation-wide security culture change, this will benefit from full and visible support from your senior leadership team. Aim to implement your new strategy collaboratively, and through a phased programme of activities. Taking a creative approach to security skilling and education helps stimulate staff engagement. Microsoft for example produces a successful video series that follows the security-themed adventures of its protagonist, Nelson, which gets promoted internally.

Understand and work with colleagues who may express resistance to change. While moving to new day-to-day practices – for example, new ways of working with different classes of data – openness and empathy will be crucial in empowering all teams to own, understand and learn from their inevitable mistakes.

Data-driven monitoring spots emerging risks

In time, your security strategy can become more sophisticated. AI can be deployed to detect abnormal behaviour and protect your organisation’s most sensitive information from accidental exfiltration as well as bad actors. Microsoft Azure, Azure Sentinel and Microsoft 365 apps can document your compliance with regulations, monitor access, and apply data analytics to predict where the next security risk might emerge.  Data metrics can guide security strategy on the principle of maximising costs to the attacker and prioritising your most valuable data. Many of Microsoft’s UK customers and partners have benefited from this security-first approach.

LGL money managers find security on the cloud

LGL Group are a financial services company who were frustrated by the cost and complexity of enterprise-grade cybersecurity. Microsoft worked collaboratively with LGL to design a roadmap that modernised their security controls, enhanced their security posture and reduced their reliance on third-party application subscriptions, driving down costs. By migrating to the latest Microsoft 365 and Azure security stack, LGL also benefited from a more streamlined and simplified hybrid security system.

Meanwhile Microsoft continues to work with schools and colleges to close the cybersecurity skills gap, with targeted investments here in the UK. Salford City Council leveraged the skills and resources of the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative to develop a cyber strategy and a security operations centre using Microsoft Sentinel. It now aims to share its best-in-class skills with other public sector organisations to proactively monitor, detect and respond across Greater Manchester.

Zero Trust is a journey

Zero Trust is a journey, not a destination. Visit the security hub at Microsoft Business Security Solutions and discover how Microsoft can help you implement an identity environment with cloud identity federation, strong authentication and conditional access at its core.

Find out more

Microsoft security blogs

Strong identity management provides Zero Trust security

Microsoft Sentinel strengthens Salford Council’s cybersecurity

The post What is a ‘security culture’? Best practices for implementing your security strategy appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The way forward for getting your P&L in line is to drive revenue. However, each business is unique, and its situation depends on the company’s leadership function, ownership structure, recent financial history, CapEx and OpEx exposure, and industry-specific concerns.

While digital transformation can often be mistaken as a ‘silver bullet’, it is, in fact, the cost of doing business in today’s environment. So how should finance leaders proceed? 

Balancing cost with ROI: the three biggest challenges for CFOs 

There can be a temptation to make immediate cost savings at every turn. Yet by investing in digital transformation programmes now, astute CFOs: 

• Can deliver a rapid return on investment with efficiency savings, thanks to automation and the cloud. 

• Will future-proof their company at a time of significant technological change. 

• Will make it easier to meet sustainability targets. 

While senior leaders recognise the need for digital investment, they want returns quickly. According to the Gartner Global CFO Poll 2022, 69 percent of CFOs are looking to increase spend around digital transformation initiatives – but their expectations for returns are one to two years. Agility, flexibility, and speed have become more pressing. 

To map out where savings can be made and how best to plan ahead, we advise considering the three most pressing, intersecting challenges faced by CFOs today – and crucially, where technology can win much-needed reprieve, helping organisations ultimately achieve more with less.  

These three challenges are:  

1. Cost optimisation

2. Supply chain

3. Energy

Let’s look at each factor in turn. 

1. Cost optimisation 

Following the global economic crisis of 2007-08, the world’s economy was fuelled by cheap money. With inflation making a return, this has become more difficult to find. Supply-side costs, including scarce affordable energy, have driven up inflation as never before. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, the annual rate of input inflation has lurched beyond 20 percent, while input cost inflation for manufacturers leapt 24 percent compared to the same time last year (end of 2022 data).  

How to balance growth aspirations with priorities around spend

This pain may not have hit every business yet. But when companies are forced to respond to it, many will go into survival mode, and some will fail. 

CFOs are having to evaluate their areas of investment to remain competitive when consumer expectations are high, but confidence is low. They also have to prioritise incremental investments designed to deliver efficiency gains. 

Organisations, in turn, are under pressure to ensure every part of their business is working as well as it can – and the digital imperative is key to resolving this. Businesses need more innovation, agility and resilience, with less complexity and at a lower cost, quickly. Put simply, they need to do more with less. 

Making the most of existing infrastructure and technology roadmaps 

We believe organisations should look to their existing infrastructure and technology roadmaps to drive further efficiencies with the assets they already own. They can reduce operational costs by digitising based on unified platforms. 

Rolls-Royce succeeded on both counts by leveraging benefits available in its existing Microsoft stack. The company trained staff to use our low-code Power Platform – including Power Automate, Power BI and Power Apps – which has since become its most popular upskilling solution. In a few months, Rolls-Royce saw a financial benefit of about 8M across the organisation, a figure that can grow organically as more staff and teams use the platform. 

Retaining talent by digitising 

At first, the COVID-19 crisis stalled attrition rates; later, it saw employees reassess their career priorities. Many left their roles in what was sensationally termed the ‘great resignation’. As a result, the war for talent heated up.  

Retaining talent is now more pressing than ever. With employee turnover forecast to be 50 to 75 percent higher than businesses have ever experienced, they need to ensure staff are both happy and productive, with enough investment in skills to keep top talent within the organisation.  

Digital investment is the only way to meet higher staff expectations. Employees want modern technology that works effortlessly, and are increasingly expecting hybrid or remote roles as a given, with all the associated technology support. 

What the pandemic demonstrated to CFOs is that every business must strive to be a technology business, or fail. Those unable to swiftly pivot to digital were punished harshly.  

2. Supply chain

The wider supply chain is the core of most businesses and must absolutely be on every CFO’s radar – but using history to make decisions for the future no longer works. Customer demand is constantly changing, whether it’s influenced by the economic climate or making environmentally conscious purchase decisions.  

To shore up customer confidence, organisations can take advantage of intelligent automation to reduce costs, maximise operating margins and recalibrate their supply chains from ‘just-in-time’ to ‘just-in-case’. 

Take the UK company Spy Alarms, for example. By switching to Microsoft Dynamics, the service team have reduced the time it takes to book a service interview from six minutes to a few seconds. Their sales operations have also benefited from a much simpler and faster quotation process for its 45,000 customers. With the seamless integration of Power BI and Microsoft Teams, all levels of the team have access to data insights – empowering data-driven decision making with incredible precision and foresight.  

3. Energy 

Energy is a hot topic and is central to the boardroom conversations CFOs are becoming involved in. Data centres and offices are an enormous cost factor; a more cost- and energy-efficient answer is to retire data centres and invest in the cloud.  

Investing in the cloud to reduce energy consumption 

At Microsoft, our customers want to use energy management tools to reduce complexities around staffing and save costs in the near to long term. Cloud-native organisations can deliver more core value, with fully managed, end-to-end Azure cloud solutions to boost developer productivity, optimise and allocate resources, and speed up the pace of innovation. 

The East London NHS Trust has been a shining example of this. By taking advantage of Microsoft’s Intelligent Data Platform such as Azure Synapse Analytics and BI, staff can sense-check, monitor metrics and look at trends to see what’s happening on the ward. These insights are accessible from any device and even off the network, building a truly efficient integrated data system. 

Three takeaways: simplify, unify, innovate 

Every business can use technology to become more efficient and effective, whether it’s driving more value from existing platforms and assets, consolidating to reduce cost and complexity, or introducing deployments with rapid payback. 

By leveraging data and AI, businesses are armed with the data and insight on how to increase agility and growth with the assets they already have. 

At Microsoft, we’re working with our customers to define how they will survive, and even thrive, in a continually changing environment. If you’d like to understand more, visit The Microsoft Cloud – Trusted Cloud Platform. 

Find out more

Read Microsoft Azure case studies and customer stories

Announcing Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy: Enable your data to do more in the cloud

Imagining more: How organizations are reinventing operations and finding opportunity in the face of volatility

Understanding Microsoft’s digital transformation

About the author

As CFO of Microsoft UK, Mark leads the Finance Organisation supporting Clare Barclay and the UK Senior Leadership team by delivering against the strategic priorities of the company, through influencing key decisions around people, business processes and performance.

Prior to this role, Mark held the position of International CFO at Adobe and Rackspace, where he was a key part of leadership teams driving growth across all markets outside the US. With a career spread across banking, the oil industry and technology, a breadth of finance experience contributes to his dynamic, objective approach as we pursue great customer outcomes with our product portfolio.

Mark returned to the UK recently after spending time in Zurich and Amsterdam in previous roles, is a trained accountant with the ACCA, studied Economics at the University of Leeds and is married with 3 children.

The post How to future-proof your business: a CFO’s-eye view   appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Technology advancements are now accelerating faster than our ability to adapt, leaving a huge gap in digital skills. A recent Microsoft study has revealed that 82 percent of UK jobs already require digital skills, and that 69 percent of leaders feel their organisation suffers from a digital skills gap, even though 59 percent of employees believe in the importance of developing their digital skills.

The skills gap is only getting wider. By 2025, there are expected to be three million new tech jobs in the UK, and 60 percent of employers are expecting their reliance on advanced digital skills to grow in the next five years. In effect, organisations hoping to grow and remain competitive in the future need to build a workforce that is equipped to fill these roles and thrive in a digital world of work.

Yet many employees don’t have the skills they need to perform their role currently, let alone in the future.

Demand for digital skills also goes beyond the technology sector. A recent employer survey by the Learning and Work Institute found that the proportion of employers who saw basic digital skills as important for employees was particularly high in certain sectors – including media, marketing, advertising and PR (100 percent), IT and telecoms (99 percent), and finance and accounting (97 percent).

However, even in the industry with the lowest proportion – manufacturing – nearly nine in ten (87 percent) employers said that basic digital skills were important for their workers.

So, what more can businesses and employers do to ensure that we have a steady supply of tech talent joining the sector? And, importantly, how can Microsoft help?

Introducing the Microsoft Connector Community

Whilst many business leaders recognise that their organisation is facing a skills shortage, the challenge often comes in knowing what to do about it.

At Microsoft, we believe that part of the answer to tackling the UK’s digital skills gap is collaboration. Bringing together organisations from across the public and private sector to work collectively and deliver tangible benefits to the prospective careers of young people, while driving growth and innovation across the economy.

The Microsoft Connector Community, part of the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, is designed to bridge the digital skills gap. It nurtures a connected community of businesses and organisations that collectively leverage their brands, reputations and resources to address the need for digital skills in the workforce and connect talented individuals to opportunities.

We believe that taking a collaborative approach ensures a steady and well-equipped technology talent pipeline. This is essential to addressing the skills shortages faced by employers today, as well as mitigating future shortages.

I’d like to share my thoughts on how this could work:

1. Creating a connected talent ecosystem: When employers work together to support, empower and inspire young people, rather than bombarding them with too many competing options, we all benefit. By using the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector to advertise digital vacancies, digital skills bootcamps and opportunities for learning and training, we can create a highly visible and inspiring platform that enables young people to find the opportunities that are right for them. In addition, by pooling vacancies across one platform, with a single access point for roles, we can recycle and share talent. We can also signpost applicants towards other vacancies and employers, even if they have been unsuccessful in applying to a different company.

2. Simplifying the talent pipeline: We can help simplify the technology talent pipeline by reimagining how we advertise digital vacancies and training opportunities. For example, we can reach a larger and more diverse pool of candidates by simplifying the language that we use across our digital vacancies. This might increase engagement with candidates from non-conventional technology and digital backgrounds – allowing us to widen our talent pool and employ people who bring a unique and diverse perspective to the sector.

3. Leveraging expertise and insight: A coalition of like-minded individuals enables us to learn from one another’s expertise and experience, helping us to identify, profile and address the systemic issues that are stifling the UK’s economy. What’s more, the Apprenticeship Connector can also support business leaders and employers to better understand the social impact of the work that they’re doing. With demographic and geographic insight, we can identify and better target under-represented and under-served groups.

Building a Connector Community in Greater Manchester

As part of Microsoft’s UK Get On commitment, we’re committed to helping 30,000 people find jobs in the technology sector in Greater Manchester.

I recently had the pleasure of joining colleagues in the region for an event focused on building a connected talent system, as part of National Apprenticeship Week. After the event, I caught up with Greater Manchester Regional Lead, Marie Hamilton, for her take on how the introduction of Microsoft Connector Community could empower the next stage of the Get On campaign in Greater Manchester, and across the UK. Marie said:

“Greater Manchester is now the fastest growing technology hub in Europe, but to maintain this growth, we need to build a skilled and sustainable digital workforce. Working collectively across sectors and industries, regionally and nationally, allows us to understand and measure the skills gap, as well as enabling us to build a shared plan to tackle it.

Our National Apprenticeship Week event demonstrated huge enthusiasm for using the Connector Community model to further the progress made by Get On – as shown by the attendance from not only our largest private sector customers but also across the public sector, academia, central and local government”.

Marie Hamilton, Greater Manchester Regional Lead

What’s next?

Over the coming months, Microsoft will be holding a series of regional roundtable events to help businesses and organisations understand more about the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector, and the Connector Community.

To find out more, please visit the Microsoft Apprenticeship Connector platform.

Microsoft Get On

At Microsoft, we believe everyone deserves access to the skills, knowledge and opportunity needed to achieve more. Through our Get On commitment, we’re helping 1.5 million people build tech careers and connecting 300,000 to tech job opportunities.

You can find out more by visiting our Digital Skills Hub, where you’ll find a host of information and resources designed to provide business leaders and employers with insights on how to close the UK’s skills gap, harness new technology and drive innovation.

You can also explore Microsoft Learn, which has an array of certifications, modules and learning pathways designed to help business leaders to upskill employees, as well as supporting individuals to take control of their careers and build vital digital skills.

Find out more

Microsoft Digital Skills Hub

Microsoft Apprenticeship Network

How Microsoft is connecting jobseekers to employers

About the author

I am the UK Apprentice Lead for Microsoft in the HR team. Working with apprenticeships since 2012, I have also worked with SMEs creating, designing, and delivering large corporate apprenticeship programmes. My role at Microsoft is all about creating and developing an apprenticeship strategy that supports our UK business and delivers an exceptional experience for both our apprentices and our business.

The post New connections: how we’re bridging the UK digital skills gap appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In a recent webinar, held by The Institute of Engineering and Technology, we spoke to other industry leaders about the recent shift of digital technologies from ‘nice to have’ to essential. We discussed the re-emergence of IT as a business enabler. Additionally, we talked about how manufacturers can use it to build resilience.

Digital technology as an enabler of resilience

From what we’ve seen in our work in the sector, it’s not about implementing digital technology for the sake of it. It’s about ensuring the technology is aligned to business use cases and outcomes, both for today and for the future.

For manufacturers, data is an asset and they can leverage IoT or Industrial IoT, data analytics, AI and digital twins for resiliency. However, where the sector has been lacking is developing the right data strategy across the business, as well as standardising and sharing open data. Also, there needs to be more understanding of the business models that data and digital technology can enable.

The organisations who are successful in this take an agile approach to digital modernisation. They adapt quickly not just to the changing needs of the sector, but also to external circumstances and the expectations of an increasingly digital native workforce. To do this, we’ve seen many manufacturers approach digital modernisation through smaller projects instead of taking a wider waterfall approach. This can help build champions and leadership support, as they see the positive effects quicker.

Sustainable operations

Manufacturers need to continue to operate their assets as reliably and efficiently as possible. Additionally, as we head to a net zero future, manufacturers need to look at more sustainable ways to operate. This is where digital technology can help. Using a secure cloud platform, manufacturers can connect data across offices, factory floors, and more to create holistic views of their business.

Manufacturer Ricoh uses Azure Machine Learning and AI across all areas of its factory to manage costs, and access greater insights to optimise operations and reduce costs. Ricoh uses AI to adjust machines in real-time to respond to changing demand, and to predict maintenance. And by connecting this data to HR and financial systems, they can manage labour needs, track costs and more.

Create an agile supply chain

Data helps embed visibility and intelligence into supply chains. A connected supply chain will predict disruptions, enhance visibility, improve planning, and maximise asset productivity. This, in turn will reduce waste and can deliver data that will help build a sustainable circular supply chain.

Bel Fuse manufactures electronic circuits products globally. As part of a larger supply chain, they rely on small parts from suppliers before passing their components onto other manufacturers that create the finished products. Therefore, they need to ensure that they do not become a bottleneck in the process. By using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Bel Fuse now has a deeper, more precise view into its supply chain.

“Our system quickly shows us when parts haven’t arrived on time, and we can pivot to load our production with parts that are available,” says Stefan Naude, General Manager. “With Dynamics 365, we streamlined our planning and have flexibility to adapt to our vendors and adjust our inventory—all while remaining a reliable supplier.”

Personalise customer relationships

To be resilient you need to ensure you’re meeting your customers’ expectations in new ways. You need to engage with them throughout the relationship lifecycle. By connecting data silos, manufacturers can gain new insights into customer behaviours. They can also use AI and machine learning to predict, support, and improve customer relationships.

Malvern Panalytical designs, develops and commercialises analytical instruments for material analysis across a wide range of industries and applications. To help customers optimise their instruments, they built a digital solution that streamlines data capture – effectively offering them a ‘cloud-based control room’. Customers can use performance metrics to optimise assets. At the same time, Malvern Panalytical can use the data to understand how customers use their products. This allows them to offer better post-sales support and develop improved innovations.

Build the right culture for resilience

Whether on the plant floor, the office, or mobile, your people need to be empowered to drive resiliency. Investing in your existing talent and attracting the right talent is important. Not only does this help your organisation to take advantage of digital tech, but it is also key to building innovation and new business value.

Organisations need the right data and digital skills, plus a more agile culture to maximise impact. Manufacturers are clearly exploring these areas, but there is some way to go. Partnerships can support manufacturers here. At Microsoft, we have a range of learning resources available to help build technology competencies. The High Value Manufacturing Catapult is also working on data and digital skills programmes for the sector.

Use digital to innovate and build resilience

Finally, as manufacturers bounce back, using digital will be key to innovating and creating new business models and opportunities. For example, using technology to optimise and automate time-consuming manual tasks, giving employees more time to spend on value-adding work. At Phlexglobal, they use AI to automate the indexing and management of vaccine trial master files, improving time savings by 25-30 percent.

To be resilient, manufacturers also need to build partner ecosystems – not just within industry but across digital technology companies and other sectors. Open data and data sharing will help build resilience by driving new business models and innovations and creating more robust supply chains. We saw this in 2020, when British manufacturers united to build 20,000 ventilators in 12 weeks with the help of technology – something that would normally take 20 years.

For manufacturers, resiliency and digital modernisation go together. Embrace data and empower your workforce with the right skills to adopt an agile approach to implementation. Look for partnerships that support your goals and values to not only share expertise, but also innovate and drive new and current business models.

Find out more

Watch the webinar

The future of supply chains: Unlock sustainability through innovation

Build resilience today

About the authors

Rik leads Microsoft’s industry strategy across manufacturing, energy and resources in the UK. Responsibilities include working with the government and regulators, industry bodies, industry partners, and largest customers to ensure Microsoft enables sectoral needs. Rik sits on multiple industry boards for energy, manufacturing, research, digital twins and digital skills. His focus areas include the energy transition, sustainability, cyber security and digital technologies for operational environments.

Prior to Microsoft, Rik worked at Cisco for 13 years, with global lead roles in energy and resource industries, IoT and security, and digital transformation. He has been a member of multiple industry standards groups and consortia, is a published author, has written multiple industry white papers, and has spoken at conferences all over the world. He has an MBA in international leadership and is currently studying sustainability and green economies.

Lizzie works with a number of Manufacturing, Aerospace and Defence customers and partners in the UK, working closely with business leaders to help drive the use of digital technologies to achieve industry-focussed outcomes and unlock innovation. It is a pivotal time for both the Manufacturing and Aerospace industry to transform, with sustainability, factory of the future and connected supply chain being at the heart of many customer conversations, as well as the future of Manufacturing/work.

The post How digital tech can help manufacturers build resilience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To rise to the challenge, firms are increasingly using technology to support their new ways of working. They’re empowering staff, improving client experiences, and driving the practice forwards.

Firms are exploring ways they can empower their people with data visibility to streamline key workflows and drive new levels of efficiency. By doing so, they can create those much-needed personalised client experiences. An experience that is faster, more responsive, and more familiar to their client base.

Adopting the right strategy and the right technology is pivotal in meeting new client needs and moving your firm forwards. A 2019 PwC survey found that eight of the top ten law firms identified technology as the key challenge to growth in the next two to three years.

There are five scenarios where law firms today should be looking to introduce efficiencies that enrich and differentiate client experiences through technology.

1.      Earn trust in uncertain times

Workplace transformation and technology adoption has accelerated. Innovation is becoming a critical capability for the modern in-house legal function. But to deliver successful outcomes it’s essential to build a long-term strategy – one that leverages measurable business insights to make clear decisions.

Your clients need to trust the decisions you make. Your employees need to be trusted and empowered to make those decisions. Reduce silos and gain insights from data across the firm. This not only enables your employees to make better decisions faster but meet the needs of your clients proactively. Earning and building trust takes time. An intelligent platform that works across devices will help deliver a consistent approach to the right contact, with the right information at the right time. This will help to build solid client relationships and allow firms to differentiate from competitors.

2.      Provide personalised client experiences

Clients value genuine working relationships. They also need to feel confident that the team representing them understand their requirements. Personalisation is essential to building lasting client relationships. However, currently face-to-face meetings and events have been put on hold. This means you need to consider other approaches to nurture client and working relationships.

The industry is seeing the shift to virtual work play out on LinkedIn, where engagement on the platform has increased. Understanding and learning about your clients and their challenges through a platform they are using everyday can help you transform your firm into a client-centric business.

Share your business insights across all your silos such as marketing, business development, and lawyers. This will help create better services and solutions. It will also enable you to create personalised experiences across all touch-points and provide better services that help clients as they need it or even before they realise they do.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 reduces silos by bringing together disparate data sets across your business to make informed decisions, faster. It covers all the critical areas for law firms and the entire client journey such as Marketing, Business Development, Finance and Operations and HR.

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3.      Understand your data and be agile to client needs

A recent survey by The Law Society’s Law Management Section suggests law firms are forecasting a 10-20 percent drop in revenue for the 2020/2021 financial year. Data holds the key to making timely, considered decisions. However, it is important to bring together data silos across legacy systems. This will provide a clear single client view.

One of the UK’s largest listed legal businesses, DWF, recently broke with tradition by going digital first.

“We had to be brave to step away from proven technology that the legal sector uses, but we had to in order to take DWF forward and give our clients the service they want today. By adopting this system, we are taking case management to the next level and transforming how all our staff work…It’s enabled our employees to see a complete picture of their clients and make informed decisions. That’s good for both parties.”

Samantha Charman, Head of Applications and Development, DWF

Microsoft Power Platform enables your firm to analyse data, build agile solutions, automate processes and surface knowledge at speed. The platform allows your firm to meet changing client needs in an agile way as well as empower your employees to make faster decisions.

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4.      Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for your employees

Efficiency is key for sustained success across organisations and industries. Especially to become more agile and resilient. Therefore, automation has become a high priority for law firms. It can help reduce the time-sapping administrative processes found in the legal industry.

The Allen and Overy Legal Benchmarking Report 2020 states that “the proliferation of legal technologies means that it is more feasible than ever to automate and streamline legal processes.” Yet only a small percentage of firms have invested resources into building a strategy in this area.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is gaining momentum to free up employees’ time to focus on higher–value work. Alongside this comes a growing demand for turning insights into opportunities and automating daily activities.

Put simply: the more you reduce unnecessary admin the more time you have for your clients.

5.      Provide confidence in data security

Data breaches have grown in intensity in 2020. The National Cyber Security Centre handled over 700 security incidents last year, compared to 658 in 2019.

Cybercriminals are more likely to take advantage of vulnerable businesses who have been forced to use legacy technology remotely. Therefore, clients need more assurance that their data is secure at all times.

With a cloud-based technology platform built on Microsoft Azure, your firm and your clients can have the confidence that their data is safe and protected, without compromising on anytime access for all approved staff.

Discover the way to make every client interaction count

Remote working doesn’t need to be a barrier to creating enriched, differentiated client experiences. It’s also likely that new measures of remote working and flexibility will continue to be expected by your clients and your employees, creating a hybrid working environment.

By making every client interaction count through adopting the right technology and supporting the best talent, your firm will be able to increase competitiveness, lower operational risk and truly embrace modern ways of working.

Find out more

Discover new ways of work with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn now to adapt your business now and for the future with Microsoft Power Platform

Reimagine an agile, smarter law firm with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Discover new ways to reimagine your law firm

About the author

Craig is a Microsoft Business Applications specialist aligned to the Professional Services and Legal sector. He has over 15 years’ experience in the software and services industry and is focussed on helping law firms through their workplace transformation journey. Craig is passionate about helping firms realise their strategic goals and understanding how the latest software innovations layered with data and AI can add value through the delivery of outstanding and increasingly distinctive client experiences.

The post How to build exceptional client experiences as a law firm appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Microsoft, we’re also going through this journey. We’ve seen that giving people the tools to be more productive and collaborative whether in the office or at home is only one piece of the puzzle. An effective culture is one that gives people what they need to succeed. It also encourages everyone to truly be themselves. This drives a more diverse culture, and in turn, more innovation and agility for the future.

During 2020, many employees were working strictly from home. Microsoft had to work differently to extend this culture onto a digital platform. I’ve talked previously about how using this technology, especially in the manufacturing and utilities industries can help drive an innovative culture. From our learnings, we know that with the right tools and leadership, you can successfully have a transparent and collaborative culture.

Centrica also recognised this and began to survey their colleagues more frequently to check in on employee wellbeing. Their people told them that there was a growing sense of isolation. Feedback from employee groups also shared a greater need to focus on inclusivity, addressing barriers to inclusion and creating a workplace where all can thrive.

Creating a platform to share our culture change stories

In November, Centrica invited us to join their first ever Culture Hack which gave their employees a platform to come together, listen to different experiences and discuss ideas for what their culture could grow into. Culture change doesn’t always come from the top down, it can be from the bottom up and the Culture Hack was a great way to uncover the changes that were needed and to start driving them forward.

Here are three learnings from Centrica’s experience of running a Culture Hack to help you with your own culture change revolution as we enter a new world of work.

1.      Use your values to drive your culture change

At Centrica, our values act as a guide to driving this culture change, our business is founded on a 200-year heritage of serving people and our values are central to our success:

Technology helps mobilise productivity and collaboration from anywhere. Our people are already using it effectively in their day-to-day, so we leveraged it to help us start our culture change. We decided the best way for people to come together would be a specific day. Then we would have follow up communications and events designed to keep the ball rolling.

We used Microsoft Teams to host the events. We hosted one main event for keynotes and talks and then created Channels to host smaller breakout groups, based on key topics. These groups were each assigned a Microsoft and Centrica facilitator. We gave clear advice on what we wanted these breakout sessions to achieve. We provided a virtual Whiteboard template, with prepared sticky notes as well as simple guidelines on how to get the best from the session and what we wanted them to discuss.

The most difficult part of running the Culture Hack was the planning and logistical side, but it was worth the extra effort. Our tech worked perfectly. Our people were genuinely excited and engaged. We even had people wanting to join last minute, which showed how enthusiastic the team were to be involved. It was challenging to manage the individual breakout sessions based on employee availability. However, scheduling the Culture Hack as much in advance as possible will definitely help if you’re looking to run your own.

2. Encourage everyone to get involved in the culture change

Our leaders have found that the virtual way of working requires dialling up their emotional intelligence skills to improve online collaboration, demonstrate empathy, model personal resilience and look after their team as well as having the ability to listen to and coach others.

The Culture Hack was something they were completely engaged with. We also encouraged everyone to join and share feedback. It was a very empathetic, collaborative space with people sharing and listening – you truly felt like everything was being taken on board. This is something highly important for culture change. Listening to feedback and ideas is the best way to ensure everyone stays on board with the movement.

Our speakers from Centrica, Microsoft and LinkedIn were well received. They generously shared stories of their own cultural transformation journey. Our people found that it provided inspiration as well as practical tips on how organisations can make a change that matters. When organising your own Culture Hack, be sure to share personal stories. Encourage people to come off mute or use the chat window to share their own ideas.

3. Implement the quick wins and act on the bigger ideas

Following the feedback, we got so many ideas to follow up on. What’s important for our colleagues is to show that we’re hearing them and taking action. So, while some ideas may take some time to develop, we have immediately implemented the ones we could. Sometimes, this is as easy as signposting our people to programmes we already run.

For example, skills was a big topic discussed during the Culture Hack. One of our Responsible Business Ambitions is to inspire and develop 100,000 people with essential STEM skills. So, post-event we shared how to access our Learning Academy, Workday Learning App, and The Career Development Hub with our colleagues so they could start building skills. These resources already existed but employees weren’t necessarily aware of them. Having a central place where resources can be shared can go a long way to alleviating some of the challenges faced by your teams.

We also have suggested people implement a ‘Golden Hour’ – something our Irish team in Bord Gáis does already. This is an hour everyday, blocked out in diaries, around lunch time when people are encouraged to leave their computer and get some screen-free time. A Microsoft Research study found that in the last few months workers experienced reduced boundaries and struggled with work-life balance. In the office, this is normally represented by grabbing lunch with a colleague, or going for a midday walk. We want people to ensure they take their breaks during the day. By implementing this organisational-wide, we can ensure everyone can take their time without feeling guilty, and come back refreshed.

For those ideas that take a little bit longer, we’re looking forward to hosting more discussion groups to develop them. However, we told people if they wanted positive change – don’t wait.

Creating a more transparent, collaborative future

For us, running a Culture Hack in partnership with Microsoft brought people together to co-create our new world of work. We were able to:

• Help our people understand why culture change is critical to delivering Centrica’s strategy and what it looks like.
• Source their feedback/input on the type of organisation we want to be.
• Reflect on how we, as individuals, may need to shift their own mindset, actions and behaviours.
• Commit to pragmatic actions to nudge us towards the desired future culture.

People loved the opportunity to be open. They appreciated our leadership team and Microsoft showing up and genuinely taking part, sharing their culture change experiences. Our speakers were extremely popular. People are already asking us when the next sessions are running. This is just the first stage of our culture change journey.

It’s never been more important to maintain a continuous conversation and ensure that all employees voices are heard, particularly as we begin to navigate a new world of work. Centrica have been on an incredible journey and we hope that the learnings they have shared in this blog provide some helpful inspiration for your organisation’s transformation journey.

Find out more

Learn how to empower employees in the new world of work

Discover more about Centrica’s values

Drive innovation through inclusion

How to have productive and inclusive workplaces in the new normal

Resources for your development team

Discover how a DevOps culture can help high-performing teams perform even better

About the authors

Rik joined Microsoft at the start of 2020, with responsibility for Microsoft’s strategy across manufacturing, energy and resources in the UK. He is Microsoft’s lead when working with regulators, industry bodies, industry partners, and our largest customers to ensure Microsoft enables the needs of industry. Since joining, Rik has become a board member in techUK’s Smart Energy & Utilities working group, techUK’s Digital Twin steering board, UK Research & Innovation Manufacturing Made Smarter board, and the BIM4Water Digital Skills steering group. Prior to Microsoft, Rik worked at Cisco for 13 years, with global lead roles in energy and resource industries, IoT and security, and digital transformation.

He has an MBA in international leadership and is currently studying for a Masters in Green Economy.

Heather joined Centrica in 2020 as HR Director for Centrica’s Digital and Technology Services Division. Here, the focus is on reinforcing strong company culture, creating and leading employee engagement and development programs, and implementing reward and talent management strategies that enable the achievement of business goals and objectives as well as meeting the needs and aspirations of its employees. Prior to her appointment at Centrica, Heather has held senior HR leadership roles including as HR Director UK & Ireland for OTIS. Heather has also served in HR leadership roles at Virgin Media, International SOS, the Telegraph Media Group and BT Plc.

Heather holds a Bachelor of Law degree from Durham University, a Postgraduate Diploma from University of Law and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Tara Keatley joined Centrica in 2011, reporting directly into the CIO of Centrica Energy. After a whirlwind tour of Digital Technology Services (DTS), she moved into the role of DTS Transformation Strategy Manager in 2019. Tara’s main focus is on the people within DTS; ensuring that diversity and inclusion, learning and development, and wellbeing are at the forefront of a strong culture within Centrica. Tara also works closely with the DTS leadership team, concentrating on encouraging employee engagement, improving motivation and morale, and highlighting career development and capability building for our colleagues.

The post How to deliver successful culture change for the new world of work appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In manufacturing today, this is reflected in the complex proprietary systems that create data silos and slow productivity. Manufacturers must combine talent, technology, and future readiness to drive transformation, resilience and competitiveness in the new normal.

How can manufacturers become more innovative and deliver a sustainable future and competitive growth? By looking at unifying data and intelligent manufacturing and resources. Here are five ways you can get started.

1. Transform the workforce and empower innovation

Manufacturers often work across different sites. Frontline workers often need secure access while out in the field. Or perhaps, you have a hybrid workforce. To work in their best way, everyone needs the same secure access to their tools and apps, no matter where they are.

Combine productivity apps, intelligent cloud services and security to transform the way you work wherever you are. While the Ventilator Challenge UK was a unique scenario where 33 manufacturers came together to address the shortage of ventilators, the way they chose to work highlighted the power of technology.

By using Microsoft Teams, the Challenge found communication between everyone easy. They could collaborate on documents, have meetings, and share information as a single source of truth. With built-in security, data is protected in transit and at rest, meaning confidential proprietary information can be shared with confidence.

“It’s been absolutely invaluable as a collaboration tool. It saved so much time and confusion,” says Laura Shrieves, Head of Systems Engineering – Training Solutions at Thales, one of the participating engineering companies.

Another challenge manufacturers face is the ability to train and assist frontline workers from anywhere. This is where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and the HoloLens 2 can come in handy. With the help of this technology, manufacturers can now empower people to collaborate, solve problems in real time, access critical information while working and be able to walk through the site virtually. With Dynamics 365, the Ventilator Challenge were able to quickly train employees across different sites and deliver expert guidance when needed.

“We quickly realised that the HoloLens 2 could be used with the remote assist capability in order to get expertise and knowledge out of Smiths and Penlon, who have been building ventilators for many years. This was one of the big advantages,” says Shrieves.

2.      Engage customers in new ways

By unifying your data across different silos (e.g. service, sales and marketing), you can drive value with insights and deliver personalised customer experiences, making you more agile and competitive in the market.

Automotive enterprise CNH Industrial, wanted to help customers optimise the use of their vehicles. They built a digital platform on Azure to collect insights that can give their customers information on how to save fuel or optimise their journeys. They can also then use this data to deliver better experiences and build better products, quickly.

“The platform may provide feedback to truck drivers on how to brake or accelerate differently. Such changes in driving style can save money on gas,” says Matteo Barion, Head of Digital Platform, DevOps & Quality Assurance at CNH Industrial.

3. Make the supply chain more visible and intelligent

When you make your supply chain intelligent with AI and IoT connected to devices and factories, you can improve resiliency, efficiency, traceability and profitability. When you build agile manufacturing and distribution processes you can deliver products on time, optimise resource planning, adapt to changing business models, and ensure business continuity while staying profitable.

Coats is one of the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturers and thus has global operations and a complex supply chain. By moving to Azure, they gained the flexibility and agility to optimise existing processes and accommodate for unexpected changes in operation.

By linking everything to an intelligent supply chain, Coats can minimise its environmental footprint while keeping up with demand. For example, they were able to fine-tune thread winding machines to ensure it only uses what it needs, and by moving to the cloud from on-premise data centres, they have been able to reduce their carbon footprint and now only use processing power when they need to.

“With Azure, we have the horsepower we need to hold to our timelines and get products through the manufacturing floor in an efficient manner,” says Helge Brummer, Vice President of Technology and Operations at Coats. “In some situations, the results have been dramatic. For example, sampling orders—which are an important part of customer decision-making—used to take 10 to 14 days to process. With the agility of the cloud, we’ve cut that to two days.”

4.      Optimise plant and asset lifecycle

That brings us to our next way that manufactures can innovate by infusing operations with tech and industrial IoT you can drive reliability and quality whilst delivering safe and secure operations.

By leveraging machine learning and AI across factories, Ricoh can access greater insight through data to deliver greater value for customers. Ricoh can adjust machines in real time ensuring they are running at optimum and producing high quality products. They have also improved operational and cost efficiency by up to 10 times with predictive maintenance.

5. Drive new innovation and new services

Finally, by unifying data and harnessing the power of analytics and AI, you can uncover new business value from digital services and sustainable products that can transform the customer experience.

To increase supply chain transparency and implement innovative logistics solutions across plans, BMW Group started several logistic pilot programmes in their production lines. They developed automation kits, smart watch capabilities, and Smart Transport Robots.

This meant they were able to load and unload goods containers quicker, integrate scanners, displays and smartwatches to support employee logistics and utilise virtual reality to create spaces for planning and logistics of new plant sites.

“Logistics is the heart of our production system. Our broad spectrum of ground-breaking projects helps us run increasingly complex logistics processes efficiently and transparently​,” says Jürgen Maidl​, Head of Logistics.

Be ready for the new normal

Underpinning manufacturers ability for sustainable growth now and in the future is Manufacturing technology and industry expertise. The most important thing to remember about driving this change is to keep your people at the heart of any decisions. Unifying data and optimising processes across supply chains makes it easier for your employees to uncover insights, deliver personalised customer experiences and innovate with new products and services.

We work closely with manufacturing companies and industry organisations to ensure we are delivering genuine business outcomes through partnerships that bring together expertise in people, processes, and technology. We work closely with a number of the innovation centres, in particular the Advanced Manufacturing and Research Centre (AMRC), to help scale innovation across the manufacturing landscape. We’ve also worked with BMW Group to create the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP). Designed to break down barriers through the creation of an open technology framework and cross-industry community, we’re supporting the development of smart factory solutions. The goal is to significantly accelerate future industrial IoT developments, shorten time to value and drive production efficiencies while addressing common industrial challenges.

This all connects to help manufacturers become more resilient, agile and ultimately more innovative. In the last year, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected and sustainable growth helps us manage this with confidence.

Find out more

Discover more about the resilient supply chain

Harness the power of data and analytics

About the author

Richard is responsible for leading Microsoft’s approach into the UK Manufacturing industry.

Richard joined Microsoft 14 years ago, where he has held various leadership roles across the business, the most recent of which is to establish and drive Microsoft’s strategy into the UK Industrial sector. He works closely with businesses and partners across automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing focussing on how digital transformation can enable them to achieve more.

He also works closely with associated industry bodies and consortia, supporting industry collaboration, growth and skills development.

Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Accounting.

Join the conversation at Envision

Digital technology is changing not just how organisations operate but how leaders lead. Join us at Envision, where executives across industries come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this era of digital disruption. You’ll hear diverse perspectives from a worldwide audience and gain fresh insights you can apply immediately in your organisation.

Connect with leaders across industries to get relevant insights on leadership in the digital era.

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