Build AI agents to drive business processes with Model Context Protocol servers
To provide some context, generative AI is fundamentally reshaping the way organizations work, introducing a new way of interacting with technology—using natural language to simplify and accelerate tasks. This innovation is driving unprecedented productivity gains, streamlining complex processes that once required manual effort and specialized tools. As this technology matures, we’re entering the next phase: the autonomous enterprise, where organizations and people use technology, particularly AI and automation, to operate and adapt in an age of rapid transformation and innovation. Where there once was “an app for that,” there will now be “an agent for that”.

This transformation isn’t just about automation—it’s about people. By putting intelligent agents in the hands of every employee, organizations are empowering individuals to focus on higher-value work, make decisions faster, and drive innovation. Sales teams can deepen customer relationships without being bogged down by administrative tasks. Finance professionals can move from manual reconciliation to strategic forecasting. Marketers can go from idea to execution, and product managers can orchestrate complex workflows with clarity and speed.

The Autonomous Enterprise is the future of business. Business applications will work with agents built by Microsoft and our partners. In this new era, organizations aren’t just streamlining operations, they’re amplifying human potential and accelerating their journey to the autonomous enterprise.

This is why we’re so excited about the Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM MCP servers. These servers help eliminate data and application silos, allowing agents to work seamlessly across processes and enable new autonomous scenarios for improved business functionality and productivity.

Dynamics 365: Agent-ready business applications
Agentic AI is an AI system that can take actions generated by the system, with very limited or even no direct human intervention. Autonomous actions built into agents operating across various business processes, industries, and segments, can make businesses more efficient and responsive. Designed not just to support tasks, but to operate autonomously, AI agents can intelligently orchestrate workflows and make context-aware selections. But how do you create a context-aware agent when data, information, and processes are ever-changing?

MCP standardizes how applications provide context to language models, enabling seamless integration with different data sources and tools. This open standard connects AI assistants and agents to various systems where data resides, such as content repositories, business tools, and development environments. An MCP-compliant agent uses rich contextual information to act efficiently, unlike a non-MCP-compliant agent, which lacks necessary context.

Using the MCP server, makers can easily connect agents to existing knowledge sources and APIs, enabling them to interface directly with Dynamics 365 applications. Actions and knowledge synchronize automatically, facilitating real-time updates and the evolution of functionality. This model significantly simplifies agent development and minimizes ongoing maintenance efforts.

Diagram illustrating how different agents and clients connect to an MCP-compliant server to access data and actions from Dynamics 365 and other business applications.
Central to this innovation is Microsoft Copilot Studio, which provides a standardized protocol for agents to seamlessly interact with Dynamics 365 applications, helping to ensure consistency, reliability, and scalability. Security and governance are also prioritized from the start as Dynamics 365 MCP servers require authentication and enforce authorization. Agents that access Dynamics 365 through the MCP server must authenticate as a valid Dynamics 365 user, helping to ensure the benefits of Entra ID identity protection. This also prevents escalation of privileges, meaning the agent will only be able to perform the MCP actions that they are authorized to do. The MCP servers are also made available to Microsoft Copilot Studio using connector infrastructure. This means they can employ enterprise security and governance controls such as Data Loss Prevention controls and multiple authentication methods. 

For partners and customers, MCP standardization dramatically reduces complexity, accelerates development, and increases time to value.

MCP-compliant agentic AI
At Microsoft, we bring a deep understanding of critical business processes for small and medium business (SMB) as well as large enterprise organizations through our market-leading Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM business solutions—combined with our industry-specific expertise delivered through our Microsoft Cloud for Industry solutions. This combination of experience and expertise uniquely positions us to deliver on the needs of customers across size, business process, industry, or region.

Our newly introduced set of MCP servers enable multiple scenarios across business processes. Below are a few examples of what’s possible with Dynamics 365, Microsoft Cloud for Industry, and our broad ecosystem of partners.

Sales and service
Custom agents and AI assistants can now be connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central applications through MCP servers. Agents can retrieve and update CRM data, create quotes, and complete orders. They can also complete orders, get order/case summaries, and email drafts. These MCP servers open endless possibilities in automating tedious jobs in sales and service functions, irrespective of company size or industry.

For example, telesales representatives can use intelligent assistants, such as Claude, connected to Dynamics 365 MCP servers to prioritize leads, qualify them, generate quotes, and send personalized emails—without needing to switch contexts or rely on complex integrations. And when customers encounter an order issue, service representatives can resolve it quickly by using Dynamics 365 Customer Service data to retrieve/update case information and create replacement orders in real time.

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Supply chain and finance
The AI procurement agent illustrated below efficiently validates purchase requisitions against company policies, existing inventory, and delivery records to identify a suitable supplier that meets the criteria for cost, speed, sustainability, and reliability. It further consolidates multiple items from the same supplier into one purchase order and sends it for purchase. The agent can significantly enhance efficiency in procurement processes, where timely and budget-conscious supply delivery is critical.

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Business Central
For small and medium size businesses, for example, looking to optimize sourcing information and vendor compliance, the custom agent demonstrated here can quickly identify shipments containing materials that require compliance checks. The agent provides guidance on recycling requirements and updated sourcing standards, reads supplier contracts, and suggests next steps like confirming vendor certifications and updating shipment checklists. A solution like this could streamline the compliance process, which can help customers gain a competitive advantage.

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Partners using the MCP server
Our partners play a crucial role in driving innovation and delivering value to customers. We’re dedicated to making Dynamics 365 MCP servers accessible, enabling our customers and partners to develop diverse agent scenarios across industries and business processes, regardless of their business application vendor. Today we’re also announcing the creation of an “AI business applications” coalition with XX and XX as founding members. These organizations along with Microsoft are committed to delivering MCP standard compliant solutions.

With MCP server becoming the standard of the future for agents, partners can use it to more quickly and efficiently orchestrate headless business services in ERP and external systems. It turns simple intent into action, automating procurement for faster, efficient, and resilient supply chain operations. Our ecosystem of partners has started using MCP server for Dynamics 365 to create a host of industry-specific agents.

Avanade, an early adopter of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales and a leading Microsoft partner, is excited to use MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to enrich their AI-powered request for proposal (RFP) Insights agent. This agent helps sellers summarize, evaluate, and respond to RFPs using historical Dynamics 365 data, further streamlining proposal generation. While initially for internal use, Avanade is exploring deployment for clients in engineering, construction, and professional services.
Emission AI agent by Fellowmind will use AI and MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to automatically classify and organize purchase transactions to prepare it for Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission accounting purposes by categorizing spend-types (e.g. office supplies, raw materials, travel expenses) through data extraction, classification, algorithms, taxonomy mapping, and real-time feedback and learning. The agent provides support to procurement and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) professionals, helping them streamline their processes and achieve more accurate results.
HSO’s PayFlow Agent improves invoice payment efficiency in accounts payable. Streamlining timely payments and reducing inquiries that require manual intervention leads to faster resolutions and enhanced supplier relationships. Using MCP server for Dynamics ERP MCP, PayFlow processes seller payment inquiries, identifies invoice statuses, matches them against buyer receipts, and retrieves tracking information to notify responsible parties to either remit payment promptly or set an expectation of when payment can be received. 
JourneyTeam is enriching its Strategic Account Manager agent that accesses MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to optimize lead engagement. The agent summarizes historical services and projects, compares lead summaries and interests, compiles recommendations, then, after manual reviews, will initiate next steps by utilizing MCP servers, Microsoft Azure AI Search, and Document Intelligence.
MCA Connect is building a smart sourcing agent that accesses MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to automate requisition processing, supplier assignment, and workflow submission. The MCP servers give the agent access to actions like getting open requisitions, approving vendors, and assigning suppliers based on supplier performance metrics without the need to create new APIs and integrate with Dynamics 365.
Publicis Sapient Hummingbird is building an agent to improve lead management using MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to access data that will streamline the process of managing business-to-business leads. This agent automates lead qualification, scoring, and personalized engagement, accelerating hot leads to quotes faster and nurturing warm leads through a series of targeted emails. This innovative approach enhances efficiency, improves customer experience, and drives higher conversion rates and revenue growth.
RSM is building intelligent, secure, and context-aware agents that accelerate workflows, improve decisions, and expand capabilities by embedding them directly into real-world business processes. These agents, developed using Microsoft Copilot Studio, will access MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to support humanitarian logistics by coordinating critical supply chains, helping to ensure timely delivery of life-saving equipment, and automating procurement tasks.
TTEC is building a post-service upselling agent that accesses MCP servers for Dynamics 365 to prospect for warranty plans after a purchase, turning each sale into an upsell opportunity. The agent will help drive personalized sales and service conversations at scale by using the knowledge, tools, and actions from the MCP server.
As we look ahead, the convergence of intelligent agents, standardized platforms, and deep domain expertise will define the next frontier of business transformation. The ability to harness autonomous capabilities will define tomorrow’s market leaders. Businesses that act now will gain a decisive competitive edge and chart a course toward sustained success. The autonomous enterprise is no longer a vision of the future—it’s here, built with Microsoft and its partner ecosystem.

Join us at Microsoft Build 2025 to explore how MCP servers are transforming Dynamics 365 and the broader Microsoft Cloud–MCP server focused sessions at Microsoft Build 2025.

Let’s shape what’s next, together.

The post The autonomous enterprise: How generative AI is reshaping business applications appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

As we gather for Microsoft Ignite 2024, we invite you to explore the latest advancements in AI and discover how these innovations can transform your business. With AI-powered agents, organizations can analyze vast amounts of data, adapt to changing environments, and execute complex processes, bringing efficiency and intelligence to your operations. Whether it’s automating customer service interactions, optimizing supply chain logistics, enhancing personalized shopping experiences, or driving sustainability efforts, the potential applications are vast and impactful.

Join us on this journey to unlock the potential of AI and pave the way for a more intelligent, connected, and sustainable world. Together, let’s embrace the future of innovation and drive exceptional value for our customers.

Innovating with new adapted AI models and agents

Adapted AI models are transforming industries by enabling new applications and driving business outcomes such as increased accuracy, enhanced efficiency, better decision-making, and improved customer experiences. These models are designed to meet specific industry needs and tasks, addressing unique challenges more accurately and effectively. By using customized AI for their needs, organizations can enhance their digital presence, improve customer engagement, and streamline operations. With a focus on trustworthy AI, which includes safety, security, and privacy, our AI solutions adhere to high standards of integrity and responsibility, offering a secure approach to advancing industry capabilities. These adapted AI models enable the creation of custom AI solutions within Azure AI Studio and can also be used to configure agents for specific industry scenarios in Microsoft Copilot Studio scenarios. 

We are collaborating with several partners across multiple industries on these adapted and fine-tuned AI models, which are available through the Azure AI model catalog, empowering organizations to build custom AI solutions to address their most pressing needs. Bayer, for instance, offers the E.L.Y. Crop Protection model to enhance sustainable crop protection in the agriculture sector. Cerence provides the CaLLM™ Edge model for in-vehicle digital assistant technology, while Rockwell Automation’s FT Optix Food & Beverage model supports asset troubleshooting in manufacturing. Saifr introduces models for regulatory compliance in financial institutions, and Siemens Digital Industries Software offers a copilot for NX X software leveraging an industry model to optimize the design process. Sight Machine’s Factory Namespace Manager standardizes factory data for AI readiness, and open-source models from Hugging Face are available for summarization and sentiment analysis of financial data. 

Microsoft also provides AI agents designed for various industry scenarios through Copilot Studio. These agents can be customized to meet the specific needs of different organizations. For example, retailers can use the Store Operations Agent to assist store associates, and manufacturers can utilize the Factory Operations Agent to enhance production efficiency. The new release of Agent Builder (preview) in Copilot Studio enables users to create agents directly in Business Chat and SharePoint by defining the agent’s purpose, configuring its knowledge base, and setting up starter prompts. With a user-friendly design requiring only low-code skills, Agent Builder allows integration of diverse data sources to customize agents with industry-specific knowledge and capabilities, improving their effectiveness in addressing key use cases for each industry. 

To learn more about the new adaptive AI models for Industry that are available in Azure AI model catalogue and directly through our partners, visit Azure AI model catalog.

Financial services

Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services are leading the generative AI revolution in financial services, empowering industry professionals to securely and easily incorporate rich industry data and specialty data sets into their everyday activities while providing enhanced security and compliance at the same time. Microsoft has dedicated itself to generating strong partner momentum across the financial services space, including through creating and offering the tools Microsoft partners need to drive innovation, mutual growth, and success both now and as the capabilities of generative AI continue to evolve. LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), among others, has already built pioneering new solutions aligned to this initiative.

Built in collaboration with LSEG, Financial Meeting Prep (see the recent announcement using the preview name, Meeting Prep for Financial Services) aims to streamline client meeting preparation for investment banking professionals. Combining LSEG Workspace, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365 Copilot, the solution will consolidate important data, introduce organization-specific insights, easily refresh content as new data becomes available, and enhance relationship manager productivity and decision-making. General availability of Financial Meeting Prep is expected by the end of 2024.

Financial Insights Agent in Copilot Studio

Gathering insights from online sources and proprietary financial documents is crucial for making investment decisions, strategizing, and conducting assessments. However, finding the right data can be time-consuming for financial services professionals, and reviewing the vast amounts of relevant information is nearly impossible.

With the Financial Insights Agent, now available in Copilot Studio, financial services professionals can quickly and easily gather information from financial news and regulatory reporting websites. And because this agent comes ready-made and is easily customized agent, you don’t need advanced development skills to get started.

The Financial Insights Agent gives high-quality results and works best when integrated with the financial document analysis skill for agents (preview), available in Azure Marketplace, which makes it possible for users to gain info and insights from financial documents provided by their organization, such as analyst reports and other complex financial documents that are stored in-house—even when the data is found in complex financial tables, graphs, or charts. This skill not only works with the Financial Insights Agent, but it can also be integrated into custom agents. For example, Reflexivity has been integral in helping Microsoft understand challenges in the industry. Within their own platform, they use this skill for certain document flows, helping financial services professionals derive insights from both structured and unstructured data more efficiently so they can make informed decisions faster.

Financial Services landing zones

Microsoft has recently developed and is now ready to introduce a new Financial Services landing zone. Based on the Azure landing zone—a secure, scalable cloud foundation tailored for compliance needs—the Financial Services landing zone is an infrastructure-as-code solution that provides the baseline governance, resilience, security, automation, and prescriptive guidance that Microsoft industry partners and other financial services organizations need in order to comply with the industry’s strict, mission-critical regulations. As the Financial Services landing zone also provides financial services organizations of all kinds a robust and compliant cloud environment, the solution represents a powerful means to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is experiencing a dynamic transformation, with opportunities for growth and innovation despite challenges like economic uncertainty and supply chain disruptions. Microsoft and its partners are at the forefront of this evolution, empowering manufacturers with cutting-edge solutions that help enable intelligent factories, resilient supply chains, and enhanced customer experiences.

Manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric

During Hannover Messe 2024, we announced the preview of manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. This solution integrates operational technology (OT) data, with information technology (IT) data, creating a comprehensive data foundation structured according to the ISA-95 information model.¹ This standardized approach enables manufacturers to break down data silos, enabling cross-domain insights, streamlined processes, and data-driven decision-making. Partner solutions from Sight Machine, Litmus, and Avanade further enhance these capabilities.

Sight Machine Factory Copilot on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing transforms your manufacturing execution systems (MES) data into the ISA-95 standard for consumption in manufacturing data solutions in Fabric, which can be surfaced through factory agent experiences to help address operational issues on the factory floor.

Litmus Edge Manager enables a robust hybrid edge-to-cloud infrastructure, streamlining real-time machine dashboards and facilitating advanced machine learning. Litmus and the manufacturing data solutions in Fabric unlocks unprecedented efficiency and innovation, seamlessly bridging the gap between edge and cloud.

Learn how to get started with manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric and Factory Operations Agent.

Factory Operations Agent in Microsoft Azure AI

We’re excited to announce the public preview of the Factory Operations Agent in Azure AI, which empowers manufacturers to develop customized, AI-powered agents for frontline workers. These intelligent assistants leverage natural language processing and retrieval-augmented generation, making complex data analytics accessible for scenarios like root cause analysis, production loss reduction, continuous improvement, and asset maintenance. With the Factory Operations Agent, factory teams can intuitively interact with data, receive timely insights, and resolve issues more efficiently—ultimately enhancing productivity and empowering the workforce to drive operational excellence.

Avanade Manufacturing Copilot, powered by manufacturing data solutions in Fabric, helps customers to overcome OT-IT data accessibility and utilization challenges and leverage AI at-scale to make higher-quality products faster with less waste.

Learn how to get started with Factory Operations Agent in Azure AI (preview).

Factory Safety Agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio

The new Factory Safety Agent in Copilot Studio (preview) is focused on workplace safety. Factory Safety Agent provides organizations with a low code option to quickly develop a customized agent, grounded in occupational health and safety data. Whether using publicly available standards like Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or specific protocols of the organization, this agent can provide critical safety information, insights to factory workers, and streamline critical activities such as safety inspections or incident reporting to reduce risks and ultimately accidents.

Retail

As the retail industry adapts to new customer expectations and competitive pressures, Microsoft and its partners are providing tools for retailers that offer real-time insights, enhance customer engagement, and drive digital innovation.

Retail Data Solutions in Microsoft Fabric

Retail Data Solutions in Microsoft Fabric help retailers unify and standardize their data. This platform enables customers to integrate data from different systems and offers ready-to-use agents to speed up AI transformations. Currently in public preview, it includes four customizable features for retail:

• Retail Industry Data Model: Plan and design data solutions for governance, reporting, business intelligence, and analytics.
• Frequently Bought Together: Use insights to enhance upselling, shelf optimization, and store efficiency.
• Sitecore OrderCloud Connector: Standardize commerce data from Sitecore OrderCloud to gain actionable insights.
• Personalized Shopping Agent: Improve shopping experiences with tailored customer conversations.

Personalized Shopping Agent

The Personalized Shopping Agent can engage in natural language conversations to understand and respond to shoppers’ needs. It provides tailored recommendations based on the shopper’s specific requirements and preferences. Additionally, it can handle specific requests, such as finding matching items or suggesting outfits for specific occasions. The agent leverages Retail Data Solutions, using aggregated product catalogs, and AI orchestration tools to provide accurate and contextually relevant answers.   

Store Operations Agent

The Store Operations Agent revolutionizes how store associates handle daily tasks with its headless architecture that integrates into applications or websites. It offers ready-to-deploy plugins for:

• Product search or inventory search: Real-time access to product details and stock.
• Order details: Tracks order information down to the line level.
• Incident management: Resolves incidents using Copilot and ServiceNow.
• Task management: Integrates directly with tasking apps.
• Omni channel access: Provides natural language access to current prices, promotions, and information.

The agent integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Commerce, and ServiceNow. These integrations can extend to other enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and applications with pre-built connectors and APIs. These features are continually updated, adding more plugins to help partners scale operations.

Partners can also utilize the Store Operations Agent alongside their own solutions to accelerate customer adoption. Accenture Avanade has launched a Clienteling copilot, which has Store Operations Agent embedded and assists store associates in managing daily tasks efficiently. It also offers a natural language query interface for store policies and procedures, enabling informed decision-making for store associates and managers.

Public sector

Microsoft is leading the way in helping government and regulated organizations address their compliance, security, and data sovereignty requirements while adopting modern digital technologies. With initiatives like Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty and generative AI, Microsoft offers comprehensive solutions tailored to diverse regulatory landscapes, enabling organizations to streamline their compliance processes and enhance their digital capabilities.

Citizen Services agent

Available in Copilot Studio, Citizen Services agent allows public sector organizations to create AI-powered agents using their public websites and information. The agent helps citizens navigate government services and information through a Q&A experience, providing answers from configured knowledge bases, such as responses about city plans, road closures, or service applications, offering citizens access to up-to-date information.

Get started with the Citizen Services agent in Copilot Studio.

Regulated Environment Management

Regulated Environment Management (REM) in Azure, currently in private preview, supports cloud adoption as part of Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty. REM simplifies the configuration, deployment and management of regulated environments through landing zones, policy and drift analysis. Starting November 2024, REM will shift to a subscription-level service, offering benefits like data isolation, regional boundaries, and group management of landing zone configurations. Transparency logs and the Landing Zone Account (LZA) simplify managing configurations and provide data residency. REM also includes a REST API for easier integration.

Request access in the REM private preview.  

Sustainability

With growing demands for disclosure requirements under regulatory directives like the European Union Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the pursuit of impactful initiatives such as decarbonization, and the increasing need for transparency in corporate sustainability claims, businesses are under pressure to demonstrate genuine commitment to sustainability. To address these challenges, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability is introducing Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric and enhanced reporting in Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric

Now generally available, Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric enables customers to unify environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with organizational data, fostering innovation, process changes, and simplified reporting. With Microsoft Fabric, businesses can create a standardized sustainability data lake for their ESG needs. Features include an extensible ESG data schema, pre-built notebooks for data transformations, data pipelines for various business systems (including Microsoft Sustainability Manager), and built-in dashboards for analyzing ESG topics.

OneLake in Fabric allows businesses to enhance sustainability by building analytical insights with AI and machine learning models and using Copilot agents for autonomous workflows. Learn more about Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric.

Partners like UST Global use Sustainability data solutions in Fabric to develop flexible ESG systems of record that align with sustainability goals. Leveraging Microsoft Fabric, they craft customizable solutions for unique ESG challenges and adapt as requirements evolve.

Sustainability data solutions in Fabric offers tools to manage ESG data complexities, improve data integration and accuracy, provide real-time insights, and support compliance. This platform helps meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations and drives effective sustainability efforts across organizations.

External reporting in Microsoft Sustainability Manager

Also in general availability, the new external reporting capabilities in Microsoft Sustainability Manager (formerly Project ESG Reporting) simplifies external reporting across various standards with AI-powered insights and recommendations, making it easier for organizations to prepare and manage disclosure reports. Users can seamlessly connect, organize, review, and report data according to global standards.

Whether used as a standalone solution through the Power Platform gallery or integrated within Microsoft Sustainability Manager, it supports custom frameworks, iXBRL compatibility through partners, and offers a workflow user interface (UI) for editing and approvals. These new capabilities reduce the complexities of compliance, helping businesses stay on top of their sustainability reporting.

Using Copilot Studio with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Copilot Studio is a key part of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability toolkit, helping users create customized agents to meet sustainability and compliance goals. As compliance standards change, Copilot Studio uses large language models (LLM) to help organizations adapt quickly. It offers pre-built connectors for easy data integration, reducing the time and effort needed to manage diverse data sources and focus on actionable insights. Current features include the Sustainability Insights Agent for interacting with sustainability reports, with upcoming agents for estimating European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) costs and setting goals. This tool, combined with our network of partners, helps organizations achieve their ESG goals by unifying data intelligence and streamlining sustainability management.

Shaping the future with AI

Join us on this journey to unlock the potential of AI and pave the way for a more intelligent, connected, and sustainable world. Together, let’s embrace the future of innovation and drive exceptional value for our customers. By leveraging the latest advancements in AI, we can transform industries, enhance productivity, and create meaningful experiences for everyone. Whether it’s through automating routine tasks, optimizing operations, or providing personalized services, the possibilities are endless. Let’s work together to harness the power of AI and make a lasting impact on our businesses and communities. 

Watch the Ignite 2024 sessions

Watch Accelerating industry partner growth in the age of AI with Kathleen Mitford and Satish Thomas and Delivering adapted AI models for industries with partners.

Financial Services

• Accelerate AI Innovation with Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services 
• Empowering the financial services partner ecosystem with Generative AI

Manufacturing

• Democratize data-driven decision making across factory operations with AI

Retail

• Elevate the retail experience with the Personalized Shopping Agent 
• Empower the retail workforce with the Store Operations Agent 

Public Sector

• Accelerate Cloud Adoption with Software-Defined Sovereignty 
• Collaborating with partners for digital sovereignty in the cloud 
• Deploying AI with Sovereign controls

Sustainability

• Accelerating ESG progress with sustainability data solutions in Fabric 
• Sustainability reduction and calculation compliance simplified with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Sustainability Manager 
• Building solution practices for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability 
• Implementation best practices for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability 

Microsoft Ignite 2024

Experience the latest innovations for AI transformation

Discover more

¹ https://www.isa.org/standards-and-publications/isa-standards/isa-95-standard

The post Unlocking the future: AI and data revolutionize industries at Microsoft Ignite 2024 appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Hear from me, Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa, and other sustainability leaders exploring the latest tech innovations helping companies address regulations.

Harnessing the power of ESG data

We understand to effectively measure and manage sustainability progress, organizations need digital technologies and data. Addressing the scale and breadth of sustainability challenges requires a data-first approach. Additionally, accurate and reliable data intelligence is critical to drive impact reduction efforts, reporting, and business transformation. Furthermore, using data to gain a holistic understanding of an organization’s sustainability footprint and value chain allows for development of more effective strategies to improve ESG performance.  

Our initial release of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model focused on the pressing need to address carbon emissions. We’ve since expanded the data model to include water and waste. These data models centralize data to help streamline data ingestion, sharing, calculations, and reporting. This includes data from across the enterprise—enterprise resource planning (ERP) data, plant data, the Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data, telemetry at the edge—and, from external sources, too—including suppliers, utility companies, transportation, and more.  

To enable organizations to centralize and standardize data in a comprehensive ESG data estate we are introducing, Project ESG Lake (preview in July, 2023). Like other Microsoft data manager solutions, this is an industry data platform, enabling customers, partners, and independent software vendors (ISVs) to perform analytics and build custom apps to meet their industry-specific needs. They will also be able to leverage Microsoft Fabric to analyze, define, train, score, and predict emissions. With an extensible analytical data model and integration templates, organizations can access and organize ESG data, improve data sharing and governance, and ultimately use datasets and AI models to unlock intelligence and generate actionable insights. 

AI is being infused into many of our solutions to perform advanced analytics and generate detailed, actionable insights, helping customers use their data to speed up progress in their sustainability journey. We are also introducing a new anomaly detection feature coming later this year which will enable customers to find outliers, trends, and correlations between their activity data and calculated emissions through an integrated and interactive AI model.  

Another AI-based capability in the works is “what-if analysis.” This will enable Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability customers and partners, to use data from both the data model as well as external sources through Project ESG Lake to derive insights and forecasts related to their sustainability goals. For example, a retail organization evaluating how to reduce sustainability impact in their supply chain, can look for a new manufacturing plant based on energy source. They can also evaluate materials emissions and waste projections based on recycled content and long-term durability. The outcome of this analysis is intended to enable organizations to improve operational and supply chain sustainability.  

Ultimately these capabilities are designed to help sustainability managers, procurement officers, facility managers, and other users fine-tune decisions to drive reductions.

Addressing new CSRD regulations  

Emerging regulations such as the pending Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will require large organizations and their suppliers and trading partners doing business within the European Union to be more detailed in their sustainability reporting. The disclosure guidelines include information about emissions impact and emissions reduction targets, social impact, and governance systems—including ESG risks and opportunities, both to the business and how the business impacts people and the planet. Reporting must be both quantitative and qualitative, forward-looking, and retrospective.  

To accomplish this, some 50,000 impacted organizations need to quickly organize their data estates for insights and reporting. Over our year of growth, we launched capabilities to help organizations improve the collection of environmental as well as collect social and governance data to address new ESG reporting requirements.  

We’re also introducing prebuilt ESG reporting templates that help customers organize and track their evidence for different ESG regulatory reporting standards, starting with CSRD. We will extend this to other regulations as they are defined and implemented by governing bodies. 

Tracking across Scope 1, 2, and 3 

To effectively become sustainable, organizations must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in every facet of their business. Greenhouse gas emissions are divided into three categories for businesses and organizations—Scope 1, 2, and 3. International regulations and GHG reduction targets require companies to cut emission across all three scopes. In addition to currently available Scope 1 and 2 calculation capabilities, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability customers will now be able to calculate all 15 categories of Scope 3 carbon emissions across their enterprise and value chain. In July, the final five Scope 3 categories (3, 10, 11, 14, and 15) will be available in preview. Customers can also bring in precalculated emissions across all scopes and emissions categories, load their own factor libraries to tailor calculations to business needs, and maintain consistent emissions calculations and reporting over time, on top of multiple existing standards we are supporting out of the box. 

The expansion of our data model to store product carbon footprint (preview) data is aligned to standards defined by the Pathfinder Framework, which creates guidelines for how product level carbon data is shared across the value chain. This data model will allow organizations to store the exact carbon footprint of a unit of a product or product stock keeping unit (SKU) from suppliers for use throughout the solution. Customers will be able to calculate their Scope 3 emissions more precisely, instead of relying on emissions estimates. It is projected that by 2026, regulations and sustainability-linked lending will require adopting product carbon footprint as a key metric.¹ 

Moving the sustainability journey beyond carbon 

Since our launch, organizations are using this flagship application to unify data intelligence and enable comprehensive, integrated, and increasingly automated sustainability management at any stage of their sustainability journey. We also recently announced water sustainability management capabilities in collaboration with Ecolab and upcoming availability of waste sustainability management capabilities (preview in July, 2023).

The water data model allows customers to track water consumption, withdrawal, and discharge. With this data model customers can gain a unified view of water sustainability data needed for water accounting, water sustainability disclosures, and compliance.  

Globally, 11.2 billion tons of solid waste is collected annually, with organic waste contributing 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.² For organizations that want to lower their impact, by improving recycling, landfill, and incineration practices while complying with regulations, for example, the new waste data model (preview) can help by unifying, standardizing, and preparing their waste sustainability data.  

Organizations can also make more informed decisions about suppliers based on supplier sustainability rating data from EcoVadis, the largest business sustainability ratings provider. Planned for July, 2023 the integration of EcoVadis into Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability brings their broad supplier sustainability ratings data to track how suppliers are progressing on their sustainability programs. This data considers impacts on the environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement.  

Increasing transparency for carbon credits 

Environmental Credit Service (preview), a managed service under Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, delivers a common infrastructure to track environmental credit provenance from creation through retirement, bringing new levels of transparency to carbon credit ecosystems. The service helps decrease time to market and increase the quality and quantity of credits by automating, simplifying, and better securing the lifecycle processes that are used by ecological project owners, verifiers, and registries—ultimately giving credit purchasers more confidence and fueling marketplace momentum.  

Create new efficiencies around cloud usage 

The latest Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 helps organizations track Scope 3 carbon emissions related to the use of these cloud services. It enables Microsoft customers to quantify the impact of Azure services on their environmental footprint and estimated emissions from on-premises alternatives. It also tracks greenhouse gas emissions associated with an organization’s use of Microsoft 365 cloud services, like sending emails through Exchange Online, storing files in SharePoint, and joining Microsoft Teams meetings.  

Both of these solutions are available through Microsoft Cloud Solution Center. 

A global effort with partners 

Foundational to our success with our Microsoft Industry Cloud solutions is the collaboration and work we accomplish with our global ecosystem of partners. In February, 2023 we highlighted the great work from some of our system integrators and ISVs. Trusted advisers like Accenture, Avanade, Capgemini, EY, KPMG, and PwC are helping organizations everywhere plan, design, and implement strategies and robust solutions to enable transformation.  While other partners are building companion solutions on top of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.  

Along with EcoVadis, another initiative this year was related to water sustainability capabilities within Microsoft Sustainability Manager in collaboration with Ecolab. Our joint solution with Ecolab, a global sustainability leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention, combines the power of the ECOLAB3D™ digital platform with Microsoft Sustainability Manager. With this solution, organizations are able to monitor and manage water data so they can gain greater visibility into how they are tracking water and sustainability goals. 

Most recently we also shared that we are building a catalog of prebuilt and custom data connectors from third-party providers. One of our priorities is pre-built connectors that aggregate data across key emission categories to scale benefits to customers. We are also enabling custom connectors that address more specific data scenarios to be built, using an in-app experience for importing data. Arcadia, Seeq, Johnson Controls, Cognite, and Mesa are just a few of the ISVs with whom we’re partnering. 

Learn more 

• Try Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability first-hand with a trial.
• Get news and updates. With regulations growing, we’re quickly innovating around ESG tracking and reporting. Sign up to receive email updates. 
• Learn more about the latest Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability feature releases.

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Take the next steps on your sustainability journey.

Get started today

¹IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Manufacturing 2023 Predictions, IDC.

²Chapter 16 – Economic evaluation of solid waste management and wastewater management, ScienceDirect.

The post Introducing the latest ESG innovations with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

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The imperative to move to net-zero emissions and reverse the damage from the last two centuries of the industry can seem like a daunting endeavor. With increasing regulation and growing customer demand for positive change, organizations across multiple industries are embracing the challenge and Microsoft is here to help. Sustainability has been at the core of our business for more than a decade. As we operationalize Microsoft’s sustainability plan,¹ we are sharing our expertise and developing tools and methods that customers can replicate. 

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability is our first horizontal industry cloud designed to work across multiple industries. Our solutions can be customized to specific industry needs, whether a customer is in retail, energy, manufacturing, or another industry. At its core is a data model that aligns with Greenhouse Gas Protocols—the standard in identifying and recording emissions information. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability also reflects the deep relationships we have with partners that enable us to offer better together solutions to solve critical customer needs and customer problems.  

Watch the demo video of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability in action.

This release of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability delivers Microsoft and partner solutions across four investment areas to empower organizations in their sustainability efforts: 

1. Unify data intelligence.  

2. Build a sustainable IT infrastructure. 

3. Reduce environmental impact of operations.

4. Create sustainable value chains.

Unify your data intelligence 

Customers face many challenges in acquiring and identifying data, unifying it, and creating a single and actionable view of their sustainability data. Our Microsoft Sustainability Manager built on top of our data model enables organizations to easily input, extract, and understand data. It centralizes emissions-related data to help streamline data ingestion, sharing, and reporting. Customers can see results quickly with the prebuilt calculation models and can further configure calculations to support their specific needs. The consistency delivered by our data model enables more accurate and reliable reporting. Unified data represents the foundation of our approach to sustainability, providing customers with a rich and self-service data integration and calculation experience with rich connectors to key partner applications.  

Building a sustainable IT infrastructure 

Replacing tools, systems, and activities with more energy-efficient options, including migrating workloads to the cloud, is one of the first steps to building sustainable IT infrastructure. Moving from on-premises to Microsoft Azure can reduce carbon and energy emissions. The Azure Migration and Modernization Program—which utilizes system integrator partners to drive cloud workload migration for customers—has been a key investment that ultimately enables these sustainability benefits.   

To help organizations measure the sustainability impact of migrating to the cloud, in October 2021 we shipped the Microsoft Emissions Impact Dashboard (EID). The Emissions Impact Dashboard provides customers with independently verified emissions data associated with using Azure; inclusive of scopes one, two, and three. Organizations also gain visibility into emissions avoided by migrating productivity workloads to the cloud. As of April 2022, over a thousand customers are actively using it to estimate and report on emissions savings.   

We’ve also released the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 (in preview) to bring the same level of transparency to the use of Microsoft 365 services. 

Reduce environmental impact of operations 

Organizations drive sustainability progress by reducing, removing, and replacing processes that have a high environmental impact. This includes reducing the environmental impact of buildings, space, and equipment through smart facilities. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability prioritizes solutions that help reduce energy consumption, create smart facilities, and focus on collaboration and planning tools. As part of our efforts to help customers reduce environmental impact, we partner with companies such as Johnson Controls, Inc (JCI). Their OpenBlue Enterprise Manager is a solution suite to drive sustainability, operational, and space health goals from a single pane of glass. Enterprise Manager enables a suite of capabilities to monitor, analyze and optimize energy, asset, space, health, and occupant comfort parameters to improve ESG scores and enable the right balance among competing priorities. 

“Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability advance our capabilities to create solutions that enable greater customer experiences and outcomes, which in turn increase safety, health and sustainability worldwide—a win for our customers, our businesses, and our planet.”—George Oliver, Chief Excecutive Officer, Johnson Controls, Inc. 

Create sustainable value chains  

Transparency throughout an organization’s value chain is imperative to achieve progress in becoming more sustainable, and organizations need accurate and reliable upstream and downstream data. This is mostly managed through survey-based data or by manually obtaining supplier ratings and data from organizations such as EcoVadis, which rates more than 90,000 companies on their sustainability and is one of the leading providers of this information. We’re exploring opportunities with EcoVadis to surface rating data alongside our supplier data in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability analytics and reporting experiences. With this, organizations would be able to utilize information to inform supplier selection through the ingestion of supplier ESG ratings, emissions values, and revenue intensity scores from EcoVadis to unify data with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.  

“Businesses are realizing that their value chain is the largest lever for driving sustainability improvement and impact, and they need ESG management tools with a global view to guide their strategy and action plans. Our sustainability ratings in combination with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability would empower businesses with essential insights for better decision making, and fuel the innovation needed to drive sustainability impact at global scale.”—Pierre-Francois Thaler, Co-Chief Executive Officer, EcoVadis.

Deployment orchestration with the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center 

The beauty of our industry clouds is that they each contain a composable set of use case scenarios to meet organizations wherever they are in their sustainability journey. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability is uniquely designed for organizations, across multiple industries and geographies, to start with their greatest business pain points and identify how best to overcome them. Our deployment orchestrator, specifically developed for Microsoft Industry Clouds, allows for easy consumption and updates of these use case scenarios across customer environments around the world.  

Find your better together solution and learn more 

Our industry clouds are bolstered by our collaboration with industry experts across our unmatched global ecosystem of trusted partners. We work with leading independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, and advisory partners, so our customers in every region have comprehensive solutions they need to address their unique business challenges. Our partner ecosystem boasts solutions across multiple industries. Trusted advisers like Accenture, Avanade, Capgemini, EY, PwC, and Tata Consultancy Services are actively helping organizations plan, design, and implement strategies to enable sustainable growth. 

“The cloud is enabling entirely new ways to innovate, while putting sustainability at the core of the business—from unlocking clean energy transitions, to enabling the use of digital twins in manufacturing. As a long-time partner with Microsoft, we can help clients get the most from Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, embedding sustainability into products and services and leveraging data-led insights to measure and manage their sustainability performance. These are critical capabilities for success in achieving not just net-zero goals but also in delivering 360° value for all stakeholders that could reinvent this space with ESG at the heart.”—Peter Lacy, Global Sustainability Services Lead and Chief Responsibility Officer, Accenture. 

Learn more about the breakthrough work being done by our sustainability partners at Microsoft AppSource. Find the right sustainability solution for your organization from partners such as ABB, Bentley Systems, Blue Yonder, Ecolab, EcoVadis, Honeywell, ICONICS, Johnson Controls, and Transparency-One.  

Learn more at Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability and sign up for a trial today. 

¹An update on Microsoft’s sustainability commitments: Building a foundation for 2030, The Official Microsoft Blog.

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As part of this focus, we are announcing new previews and general availability updates to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. This release reflects customer and partner feedback and deepens our commitment to helping healthcare providers and patients:

• Better navigate data through enhancing patient engagement.
• Empower team collaboration.
• Improve clinical and operational insights.
• Enable further expansion of the global availability of our Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solutions.

A holistic and connected view of your patients

Getting a 360-degree view of patients is essential for providing quality care. Our updated unified patient view is capable of displaying demographic and clinical data across our solutions. Healthcare teams can see relevant information faster through better visualizations. We aggregate data sources into actionable patient insights, allowing the provider to identify care gaps based on patient demographics and clinical data. Access to clinical and non-clinical form information can also be determined by security roles.

The new unified patient view standalone offering enables end-to-end scenarios leveraging low code solutions from Microsoft Power Apps, enabling providers and partners to create custom applications with consistent patient views. Learn how to build model-driven applications.

Solving the common issue of fragmented and multiple records for a single patient, we now offer better support for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) record merge capabilities. The new, generally available patient links enables the ability to view “rolled-up” patient data. Administrators and patient data specialists can now maintain Health Level Seven (HL7) FHIR® patient links (merge patients).  

We are making it easy for clinicians to cut through the clutter of fragmented systems so they can focus on providing the best possible care using data from a variety of sources. Virtual Visit for Teams integration into Cerner Electric Health Records (EHR), now generally available, allows clinicians to easily launch a virtual patient visit directly from Cerner EHR. Embedded in the solution includes capabilities such as the ability to track if SMS notifications have been sent to the patient or to copy and re-send visit links.     

Bringing data together

The volume of data produced by the healthcare industry from disparate sources including legacy systems is often large, unstructured, and not universally accessible. How healthcare organizations capture, store, interact, and leverage data is critical for clinical and operational effectiveness—both to enable insights and experiences. As such, data is at the very core of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. To help healthcare organizations improve insights, regardless of where the data resides, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare helps customers structure their data with the healthcare data model and the Azure Health data services.

Our newly released Azure Health Data Services  is technology for Protected Health Information (PHI) in the cloud. It is also one of the only generally available solutions of its kind to ingest, manage, and transform a combination of clinical, imaging, and MedTech data formats into other data standards like Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM). While other solutions exist for clinical and imaging data, Azure Health Data Services provides the most holistic view of the patient by unifying these three key types of health data. With Azure Health Data Services, you can bring together diverse datasets and streaming data from medical devices in the cloud.  

Making sure data can be shared securely for research and AI development is what will bring about truly powerful change. Azure Health Data Services creates a strong cloud foundation for big data, which makes deep AI and machine learning possible. Azure Health Data Services can connect to Microsoft Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics for visualizations and analytics, use SMART on FHIR apps to build new applications, and apply machine learning to create new algorithms for diagnosis assistance and research. As we look to the future, we also are building strong strategic partnerships with key health technology start-ups such as Truveta to integrate lifesaving and democratizing capabilities. Our recent acquisition of Nuance further brings AI, machine learning, and other leading-edge capabilities to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

Optimize data footprints with real-time data routing

When utilizing data to support business processes, such as a patient service center, organizations often ingest data from multiple systems. No single system hosts all the data—and controlling how much data is duplicated between systems is a priority to ensure efficient technology architecture. Today we are announcing the release of virtual health data tables. This capability optimizes the cloud storage spend, allowing organizations to virtualize their clinical reference data when using model-driven applications. Health data can remain where it is, or it can be transferred to Microsoft Dataverse, which allows organizations to securely store and manage data that can easily be used by business applications. This new feature takes advantage of Dataverse virtual tables combined with a health data routing concept, allowing dynamic switching of the underlying data source between native Dataverse storage and direct access to external Azure Health Data Services for select healthcare tables. For more details, read our FAQ. 

Dataverse Health Data Exchange API, upcoming preview in May, is a new data interoperability method that allows organizations to move data between cloud for healthcare solutions and health information systems, that expose data as FHIR Bundles. These features work in environments with or without FHIR server implementations. With the Dataverse Health Data Exchange API, organizations get full control of the integration architecture, rules, and logic.

Work intuitively with natural language processing

Organizations can further leverage analytics through natural language processing to improve the delivery of clinical insights with our preview release of Text Analytics free text to FHIR feature. This enables healthcare organizations to find and label valuable information in unstructured clinical documents, transforming them into bundles of interconnected, hierarchical FHIR resources that adhere to core FHIR guidelines.

Empower your healthcare team with collaborative tools

Care managers often manage hundreds of patients with limited time; they need clear visibility into planned activities and tasks to better organize their day. The need for timely touchpoints with patients to support care plan adherence is part of our collaboration focus. We are delivering a more focused workplace for care coordinators to help organize their appointments and follow-ups with intuitive charts to understand progress, upcoming activities, and immediate next actions. We are releasing a new Care Plan Activities Dashboard, in preview, that provides care coordinator and care management views with filtering capabilities.

As part of our investment to help onboard new team members quickly and keep the whole workforce aligned, we are releasing guided tours. This feature is immediately available in the Care Management solution and will be available in other solutions in future updates. Organizations can onboard new users and highlight new features with ease—including in-app guides that describe frequently used features and scenarios. Users can continue to interact with the solution in the background as they are guided through the product. The homepage also provides how-to guides and resources to help the care coordination teams make the most of the care management solution and increase job satisfaction.

We enable organizations to build and deploy AI-powered, compliant, and white-labeled experiences at scale. Last month we announced new templates for Azure Health Bot, our intelligent and industry-relevant conversational service, to quickly build custom scenarios for popular healthcare use cases—saving teams valuable time and ensuring consistent quality of care. Azure Health Bot allows healthcare organizations to instantly build bot scenarios for collecting secure and compliant responses directly from patients for use cases like triage, flu vaccinations, and more. This release expands the catalog with new templates for self-reporting of quality-of-life measures and chronic condition management.

Healthcare organizations can accelerate their business processes by automating information extraction; applying AI and machine learning frameworks that utilize analytics data to assist in many different processes. With Azure Forms Recognizer, patients can take photos of their identifications and insurance cards and submit them before arriving at their appointments, reducing data capture errors and manual effort. Learn how customers like HCA Healthcare are using Azure Forms Recognizer to cut down on administrative time spent entering repetitive card data into their care system

Where we’re headed: A global commitment

Microsoft is committed to supporting customers around the globe. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare previously available in eight countries is expanding our offering to include another nine countries—Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Further, as part of our commitment to providing a complete product experience, healthcare solutions are now available in ten languages: English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is continually expanding its ability to provide a unified approach that enables healthcare organizations to compete and grow through greater efficiency and improved patient and workforce experiences—ultimately resulting in delivery of care faster, better, and at a lower cost. We are excited about how this series of updates builds on our strong foundation, and for our continued future investment in healthcare. You can learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare by signing up to stay informed and following us on social.

FHIR® is the registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7. 

The post Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare: Transforming patient care through data and insights appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

Expectations around digital experiences in the financial services industry are increasing at an accelerated pace—bolstered by the pandemic and an onslaught of disruptive innovation. Industry leaders view modern digital experiences as the “next frontier” to gain insights, collaborate, and sustainably differentiate across customer and employee experiences. As part of our commitment to enabling this industry transformation, I am delighted to discuss the availability of the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services at Microsoft Ignite on November 3, 2021, and as part of this blog post!

Financial institutions are often focusing on three key digital experience areas:

• Gaining deep customer insights to ensure interactions and experiences have high relevance.
• Determining the best ways to engage clients, meeting them where they are across channels.
• Empowering employees with modern tools to collaborate with peers and across customers.

Our industry cloud brings together the breadth of offerings across the Microsoft Cloud to unlock capabilities in these areas—harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. It is designed for industry regulatory requirements and control frameworks, including multi-layered security, compliance, and trust commitments built-in. It is upon this foundation that we have built new capabilities, data connectors, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) tailored to the financial services industry.

Virgin Money UK is a top digital bank anchored in customer experience—and understands the importance of using technology such as Microsoft’s Cloud to wow and delight their customers:

“At Virgin Money UK we are always looking at ways to innovate and deliver a world-class, digital customer experience. We see Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services accelerating that journey of digitizing our customer experience while enabling us to scale and grow. Microsoft’s technologies have a broad range of applications and meaningful insights; whether it is to help advise customers on their financial plans or service their needs under their existing portfolio of products. This transformation will also support our efforts to enhance our employee experience, empowering our frontline colleagues to deliver the best heartfelt service for our customers, working together to make money simpler and easier.”—Fraser Ingram, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, Virgin Money UK.

The offering can also be augmented by an unmatched global ecosystem of trusted partners. We work with leading ISVs and System Integrators, so that organizations in every region have the comprehensive solutions and interoperability with their existing systems they need to address their unique business challenges. Let’s take a closer look at the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services.

Unifying data for 360-degree customer insights

One of the foundational scenarios is Unified Customer Profile. This scenario helps banks unify data by breaking down silos between legacy systems and contribute to achieving a better customer understanding, gain client insights, and see a 360-view of their customers. It brings together financial, behavioral, and demographic data to tailor customer experiences with a 360-degree view of the banking customer and suggested next actions.

With the 360-degree view of customers, relationship managers can tailor customer journeys and make experiences relevant. Household data, key life moments, and upcoming events are available at their fingertips. In addition, segmentation helps banks to focus on the right customers and opportunities to increase success.

Unlocking the power of data with Customer Churn Modelling

One of innovations within the Unified Customer Profile being implemented is around Customer Churn Modeling. This capability provides insights to client advisors about their clients’ likelihood of becoming a dormant account or worse leaving their institution. 

This churn model powered by AI is specifically tailored for retail banking and utilizes rich data sets across Financial Holdings (Accounts, Credit Lines, Loans, Long-term Savings), Financial Instruments (Cards, debits, standing orders, overdrafts), and even “life moments” such as planned graduations, home purchases, and relocation. Using a simple step-by-step wizard, customers can harness their client data to build these predictive models complete with a model performance grade (A, B, or C) to provide a sense of accuracy of the prediction.

By providing this type of churn modeling, we not only unlock insights to where a customer currently is, but also where they potentially are heading—allowing banks to proactively engage in retention activities for their highest churn risk accounts while better forecasting the future. This is just one early example of the innovation being realized with industry solutions to modernize and help digitally transform our clients through richer insights. 

Collaboration Manager

Since lending origination processes are highly collaborative in nature, we have developed Collaboration Manager for loans utilizing Microsoft Teams to enable automation and collaboration across front and back office. It helps improve business-to-consumer communications to accelerate lending processes, minimize errors, and enhance customer experience.  

Key capabilities of Collaboration Manager include lending automation, cross-team collaboration, and communications. Lending automation helps orchestrate lending processes and streamlines automation. These capabilities aggregate data from existing systems using pre-built connectors and help partners and customers customize processes using low-code tools. Cross team collaboration are dashboards that help empower teams to collaboratively manage lending volume and centralize task and file management to enhance productivity. Lastly, communications features help support customers virtually while meeting security and compliance needs. 

Customer onboarding

Customer onboarding is one of these processes critical to customer experience. These capabilities provide customers with easy access loan apps and self-service tools, helping streamline the loan process to enhance customer experience and loyalty while increasing organizational and employee productivity. 

Automating loan tracking via a single consistent experience helps streamline loan application monitoring and validation, which includes many documents and detailed information gathered across applicants. Furthermore, being built on top of the Power Platform, loan application tracking can be extended with data from existing tools, using pre-built connectors, and/or customized using low-code development tools to meet specific lending needs.

Banking customer engagement (preview)

This capability is designed to help personalize customer interaction with financial understanding to engage customers on their preferred channel in a meaningful way, while intelligently managing their journeys across channels, to reduce churn and time to resolution.

Banking customer engagement utilizes Dynamics 365 Customer Service with Omnichannel to offer consistent, connected customer experiences across channels, including voice and messaging. Agents benefit from financial information that helps to personalize conversations, as well easy access to subject matter experts via integration with Microsoft Teams. This ensures customer service representatives have relevant resources at their fingertips.

Data Fabric

As financial institutions have grown over time, customer data is stored in a variety of data sources. We are investing both in industry data models and data connectors to make high-value data easily accessible to power business processes tailored for financial services as you have read earlier in my blog post. The industry data model with financial services-specific semantics and industry-specific pre-built connectors help accelerate interoperability with existing systems and ingest, unify, and enrich data to develop insights and business workflows. The industry data models are discoverable from within the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center.

Deployment Orchestration with the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center

The beauty of the Industry Cloud is that it contains a composable set of use case scenarios to meet you where you’re at. We can first start with your greatest pain points and identify how best to overcome these. Then, you can continue the journey with us to identify other areas. Our deployment orchestrator, specifically developed for the Microsoft Cloud, allows for easy consumption and updates of these use case scenarios across customer environments in regions around the world (see screenshot below).

Find your solution easily on the Microsoft AppSource Industry Gallery

Our aim is to deliver solutions tailored to their specific needs and recognize every industry is unique. We work with leading ISVs and system integrators, so our customers in every region have comprehensive solutions they need to address their unique business challenges. For example, Mortgage365 is an end-to-end digital lending platform that helps banks meet their financial goals by leveraging Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, connecting disparate mortgage data systems, automating core processes, and providing banks with visibility into the full customer picture. Accenture and Avanade have developed specific services and solutions to address the requirements from financial institutes utilizing Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services.

“By leveraging the power of Microsoft Financial Services Cloud, Avanade and Accenture will enable banks to accelerate innovation and create a highly differentiated set of experiences to empower their employees and realize value for their customers.”—Michelle Baxter, Global Leader, Avanade Financial Services.

To improve the discovery of these industry-specific partner solutions on Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and other industry clouds, we have now released a new AppSource Industry Gallery that features partner solutions available on the Microsoft industry cloud.

For detailed guidance on how to deploy and use Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services in your organization, review the documentation.

I am looking forward to our collaboration on the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services—please join us at Microsoft Ignite and get the latest on this new release. In addition, you can get more information in Bill Borden’s blog post and on our website.

The post Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is now generally available appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.