Alex Thiede, digital transformation lead for Microsoft in Western Europe and a former Microsoft Azure field seller based in Vienna, set out to talk to other Microsoft Azure sellers to discover how to help them serve their clients better.

For a multi-billion dollar business with more than 3,000 sellers, the potential for impact was huge.

– Alex Thiede, digital transformation lead

What emerged was a common pain point around exploding data. An enormous amount of customer data was being produced, but it was being siloed into different systems that never connected. Cloud Solution Architects (CSAs) and Microsoft Azure specialists would have to go into Microsoft Azure portals for customer data, Microsoft Dynamics 365 to track their customer engagements, and the Microsoft Account Planning Tool to manage account plans.

For Microsoft Azure sellers, whose mission is to help their clients be successful with their cloud experience, it was difficult to get a clear picture of how their accounts were performing. They were spending hours analyzing their data, running it through their own Microsoft Excel sheets and Microsoft Power BI reports, before finally sharing their insights with their account teams which required even more hours spent building Microsoft PowerPoint slides.

“For a multi-billion dollar business with more than 3,000 sellers, the potential for impact was huge,” Thiede says. “So how do you bring those teams together on the IT side to have a customer-centric view?”

Thiede realized that this was a great question to answer with a Hackathon project.

Thiede assembled a team that included data scientists, field sellers, security specialists, and Microsoft Power Platform developers who were all passionate about solving the problem. They set out to build a solution using Microsoft Power Platform while demonstrating how IT and sales teams could come together in a citizen developer approach.

Within two weeks, the team had come up with the S500 Azure Standup Cloud Cockpit, a tool that brought all the data together in a configurable dashboard that put the individual sellers in the pilot seat.

For Jochen van Wylick, a cloud solutions architect, Hackathon team member and the lead CSA for strategic accounts in the Netherlands, that meant there could finally be a real tool to replace all of the manual unofficial hacking they had been doing to try to layer data in a meaningful way.

Van Wylick showed the team how they were adding additional metadata to the dozens of engagements they were tracking in their CRM to stay organized, and they incorporated that capability in an automated way.

“I like the fact that Alex implemented these ideas in the Stand Up Cockpit,” van Wylick says. “I also like the fact that it will boost my productivity.”

[Learn how Microsoft has automated its revenue processing with Power Automate. Find out how Microsoft is monitoring end-to-end enterprise health with Azure.]

The Microsoft Power Platforms and the power of citizen development

The team wanted to enter the Hackathon competition with a viable product to wow the judges. So, they used the Microsoft Power Platform to create a low-code tool that proved the feasibility of the Stand Up Cockpit while demonstrating how sales and IT teams could innovate together using a citizen developer approach.

Collaborating across six different regions on three continents in the first all-virtual Hackathon, the IT team members built the application environment while leaving the user interface up to the sellers to customize as they wished.

Stefan Kummert, a senior business program manager for Microsoft’s Field App and Data Services team, built the cockpit’s components on Microsoft Power Platform. Kummert says the challenge was the ability to create composite models layering Microsoft Power BI data with Microsoft Azure data analysis. While this is in fact a new Microsoft Power Platform Power Apps feature slated for release sometime in November, it wasn’t available to them at the time of the Hackathon in July.

“So, we tried to remodel this concept, more or less,” Kummert says. “We factored what’s available out of the box with some other Power Platform building blocks, and that’s what gave us all the functionality we needed.”

Sellers could now integrate their data sources into a composite data model, add custom mapping and commenting, gain insights at the child and business unit levels, and more quickly identify issues and potential for optimizations that would serve their clients. At the end of the Hackathon, they had a working prototype using real customer data.

The team largely credits this agility to the citizen developer approach, which empowers non-developers to create applications using low-code platforms sanctioned by IT. “There’s often not enough time to create applications in the classic way,” Kummert says. “I think citizen dev is changing the picture significantly, giving us a fair chance to address the huge amount of change happening in the business environment.”

Microsoft’s 2020 Empower Employees hackathon category. With their win, they were awarded dedicated resources and sponsorship from Microsoft Digital.

Turning the dream into reality

Fresh off their Hackathon win, the team is now working on moving the app into production and getting it into the hands of Microsoft Azure sellers.

They’ll first roll it out to 10 customers, then another 100, and if it’s successful, it will be built into the core platform and scaled out across the Microsoft Sales Experience, MSX Insights, Microsoft Organizational Master, and Microsoft Account Planning programs.

This rapid prototyping and incremental rollout is a strategy targeting increased adoption–an approach that’s appreciated by program managers like Henry Ro, who maintains sales and marketing platforms for Microsoft Digital.

Without the Hackathon, it would have been harder to bring this team together. Rather than doing this just once a year, why not have it as a regular working style? It’s about the energy, the inclusive culture, and the people coming together who have real passion.

– Alex Thiede, digital transformation lead

“Projects like the Azure Cockpit really make it easy for our team and others to validate an idea and take it to fruition,” Ro says. “We’re excited about its capabilities and how we can enable it.”

For their part, Thiede and the team are already itching for another Hackathon–or at least more projects driven by the same kind of inspiration and agility.

“Without the Hackathon, it would have been harder to bring this team together,” Thiede says. “Rather than doing this just once a year, why not have it as a regular working style? It’s about the energy, the inclusive culture, and the people coming together who have real passion.”

• Learn how Microsoft has automated its revenue processing with Power Automate.
• Find out how Microsoft is monitoring end-to-end enterprise health with Azure.

The post Microsoft Azure sellers gain a data edge with the Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Emeric and launch leadership had to do exactly that when they set out to transform the way Microsoft launches products, something that would require acceptance from product groups that build drastically different products and services.

“Initially, there was resistance to change because people were familiar with the processes in their own silos,” Emeric says. “We encouraged employees to have a growth mindset and recognize the value for the entire company.”

Teams across Microsoft used 600 different launch types, each with their own vision, roadmap, and revenue forecast. Emeric and Brandon Ruby, a director of operations in MBO responsible for launch process, infrastructure, and analytics, knew that transforming the launch process would require a change in the people, process, and technology. But the most crucial part was adding value to the work of launch managers.

“We saw a gap in experience and productivity, and we wanted to make sure that the launch managers felt like they were a part of the process,” Ruby says.

This transformation aligned with MBO’s vision to run state-of-the-art operations.

“Our culture of innovation in Operations empowers employees to lead improvement for our customers and partners through end-to-end business process improvement and tool optimization,” says Mary Ellen Smith, the corporate vice president of MBO. “Modernizing our launch processes enables us to compliantly launch products, services, and capabilities with agility at scale.”

[Learn how Microsoft is optimizing launch management to deliver innovation to market with speed and compliance. Check out how citizen developers at Microsoft used Microsoft Power Apps to build an intelligent launch assistant.]

The previously siloed launch process didn’t align with Microsoft’s integrated selling model that bundles products, devices, and cloud services.

“We knew putting together end-to-end solutions would be challenging if we didn’t change the way we sell,” Emeric says. “Bundled solutions are especially important for commercial and industrial scenarios where you have a range of devices, cloud services, and AI on top of what you’re trying to build.”

Additionally, compliance was also done manually in silos using spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint decks, and Microsoft Word documents. Each launch manager would be responsible for knowing the latest launch rules or working with experts who could flag finance and anti-corruption risks.

This led Microsoft to create a single launch delivery process that runs on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform to deliver innovation with speed and compliance.  This ensures that over 200 launch managers at Microsoft have a consistent way to conduct compliance assessments of their product, service, and program launches at scale.

“Before, there was a perception that our launch process was slowing people down,” Emeric says. “In reality, offering a standardized launch process enables Microsoft to do highly complex launches and assess risks with minimal risk to the company.”

The new launch process requires a dynamic digital compliance assessment, which asks a list of questions that change as risk domain owners continuously evaluate risk categories. This is critical to consistently assess risk across the launch ecosystem. The launch team’s responses are used to determine the risk of the launch, and launch managers consult relevant risk domain owners on key risks involving finance, trade, and anti-corruption. Launch managers are then responsible for mitigating or closing risks before launching their product or service.

“Through a centralized risk management process and consultation with risk domain owners, we are much more confident that 100 percent of critical launches are managed, maintained, and meet compliance requirements before they go out the door,” Ruby says.

Built by the launch community, for the launch community

Initially, Ruby’s team focused on the process, data fields, and controls of the transformed launch process. Halfway through their journey, it was evident that the team was putting the process and digital requirements ahead of experience and productivity. Launch managers needed to be more involved in shaping the launch process that was a part of their day-to-day work.

“We found that communities, citizen development, and incubation are a great combination for creating experiences that empower the productivity of launch managers,” Ruby says.

In the summer of 2019, a team of people from MBO and Microsoft Digital participated in the Microsoft Hackathon with the goal of transforming the company’s launch process.

“This led to the creation of a citizen development program where we create rapid prototypes of value with the community,” Ruby says. “We continue to have conversations where we identify top priorities before making major investments on the platform.”

Ruby is referring to the Launch Management Excellence team, a forum among launch managers and citizen developers across the company who bring perspective from their launch portfolios. They share pain points that they’ve heard from their teammates, advise on best practices for the launch process, and provide information about upcoming trainings and events. Based on these conversations, Emeric and Ruby can return to their leadership team and share what the launch community is passionate about addressing.

“Our launch managers drive the conversation,” Emeric says. “We prioritize the needs we get in this feedback loop and address the top pain points first.”

Leading with a vision and intentional investment in your employees

Transforming the launch process with compliance by design is already paying off. It’s been exciting for Emeric to see the vision come to life.

“When it comes to transforming your launch process, it’s vital to have a clear vision about what you want your transformation to look like and have buy-in from leadership,” she says.

As this vision has come to fruition, Emeric has found that teams see MBO as a leader in launch.

“Business groups come to us for launch resources or oversight so they can ensure that they’re compliant,” Emeric says. “They’re also using our launch platform for portfolio, launch, and external risk management.”

Transforming the launch process requires intentional investment in the experience and productivity of employees. At Microsoft, the launch community and citizen development community have been central in deciding what features to add to the new process.

“You have to invest in people just as much as the process and technology,” Emeric says. “Our leadership team understood that they could have the biggest impact by empowering people with the tools they need to be productive.”

Ruby and Emeric also emphasized the importance of prioritizing progress over perfection. The team is always iterating on the launch process, and they’re willing to repivot if necessary.

“It’s a journey, and you have to start somewhere,” Ruby says. “If you anchor it in making an investment and having a shared vision, you’ll see progress.”

Emeric and Ruby recognize that the launch platform and community have grown significantly since this journey began two and a half years ago, and they hope to empower customers and partners to transform their launch processes too.

“The goal for Microsoft is to be the industry leader in how enterprises launch products and services,” Emeric says. “Our launch process is designed to uphold our commitment to trust and compliance, all while ensuring that our customers and partners have a great experience.”

• Learn how Microsoft is optimizing launch management to deliver innovation to market with speed and compliance.
• Check out how citizen developers at Microsoft used Microsoft Power Apps to build an intelligent launch assistant.

The post Rethinking how Microsoft launches its products and services appeared first on Inside Track Blog.