Empowering your business: The latest from Microsoft Cloud for Industry
This is an exciting time for partners and Microsoft. Last week, we celebrated the opportunities and successes across our products, services, and global partner ecosystem. Partners across multiple industries joined us at Microsoft Inspire 2023 to learn about the latest developments at Microsoft.
It was great to see industry infused throughout several sessions and news at Microsoft Inspire 2023. Our partner strategy continues to reflect the investments we’re making in our global partner ecosystem. These investments are detailed in our upcoming 2023 wave 2 release plans.
Microsoft Cloud for Industry 2023 release wave 2 plan
Learn about the latest updates for customers.
Optimizing for partners
We continue to invest, build, and expand industry-specific capabilities that accelerate time-to-value for our customers and partners, including lifecycle commitments every wave. In a recent blog, Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President of Global Industry Marketing discussed in detail, our partner strategy, which aligns to three growth pillars:
- Accelerate your innovation and reduce time to market.
- Quickly scale your go-to-market by helping partners drive.
- Win new customers with industry solutions.
We believe the industry cloud solutions will provide customers with simplicity and predictability when engaging with Microsoft. Watch on-demand sessions at Microsoft Inspire 2023 to learn more about our industry-specific investments.
The latest capabilities
The release notes cover new features for Microsoft Cloud for Industry releasing from October 2023 through March 2024. The latest plans for Microsoft Cloud for Industry bring new innovations that provide organizations with significant capabilities to transform business. The release contains several new features across Microsoft Cloud for Industry applications, including Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Microsoft Cloud for Retail, and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
Healthcare
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare provides trusted and integrated capabilities that make it easier for healthcare organizations to create personalized patient experiences, give health teams connected collaboration tools, and adopt data standards important to healthcare. Together with Nuance, users can access the broadest and deepest set of trusted AI solutions to address some of the biggest challenges in healthcare. Organizations can use AI to provide full visibility into data, relieve provider administrative burden, boost clinician productivity, increase workflow automation to improve the quality of care, reduce clinician burnout, and deliver better care faster at a lower cost.
Key investment areas for wave 2 include:
Personalized access and outreach
- Releasing patient journey capabilities in Patient outreach.
Care management
- Enabling better support for payor and insurance companies.
Virtual health
- Launching virtual consultations both directly from electronic health records (EHRs) and from Teladoc Solo in Microsoft Teams, enabling health systems to maximize their EHR investments while also providing access to virtual care workflows for members of the care team who may not have routine access to the EHR.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.
Retail
Microsoft Cloud for Retail is a comprehensive solution developed to support retailers in using their data, enhancing customer shopping experiences, and empowering store associates to work more efficiently and knowledgeably. In the 2023 release wave 2, Microsoft Cloud for Retail will include investments in retail workforce management, address customer feedback, and improve the Store Operations Assist and Smart Store Analytics features. We will also utilize AI, machine learning, and generative AI models to provide valuable insights into customer engagement, advertising, inventory management, and supply chain management. These insights can seamlessly integrate into relevant applications like Microsoft Dynamics 365 and other Microsoft solutions, enabling retailers to take actionable steps based on the intelligence gained.
Read the details on retail workforce management planned for this release wave in the release plan for Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
Sustainability
Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability empowers organizations to accelerate sustainability progress by bringing together a growing set of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities from Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and solutions from a global ecosystem of partners. We are investing in multiple areas to help your sustainability initiatives and reporting. We’re incorporating new features to enable and simplify the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requirements, including adding a CSRD template into Purview Compliance Manager (in preview). We’re expanding on our improved data ingestion experience, including enhancements to data approval management and more third-party connectors. Our new Project ESG Lake will help you aggregate your ESG data in one place and provide rich analysis and insights. We’re also adding features for recording and reporting on water usage and calculating waste intensity. Environmental Credit Service, which was released in preview in November 2022, continues to expand capabilities that are being validated by customers and partners. Finally, we’re bringing our AI capabilities to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability to provide what-if analysis scenarios and other important insights.
During this wave, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability will invest in:
- Value chain visibility
- Data integration and calculations
- System expansion and enhancement
- Reporting, disclosure, and automated insights
In the 2023 release wave 2, we are also adding more reporting capabilities for the European Union’s CSRD and AI capabilities to provide what-if analyses and other insights.
Learn more about the new and planned features for Microsoft Industry Clouds, 2023 release wave 2 and watch our sustainability session on demand.
