November 30, 2021
Empowering the assembly line
Toyota was already planning to deploy Microsoft Teams to connect its diverse lines of business and improve productivity, when the pandemic hit. A six-month launch plan was reduced to three weeks, connecting 40,000 people across the company and enabling a more efficient method for virtual troubleshooting of processes. Learn how Teams supports the company's culture and ideals.
How Starbucks is using AI to improve the customer experience
At Microsoft's Build conference, Starbucks showed how artificial intelligence is helping them better predict what customers may be in the mood for by considering such factors such as weather, location, and user preferences.
Breakthrough teamwork tools: 4 tips to identify what works for you
As a business leader, you need to make sure your organization provides collaboration tools that suit different personalities, skillsets, and needs. Individuality means that what works for one person or team may not work for another. You also need to accommodate the diverse workstyles of the multiple generations now in the workforce. This guide provides insights to succeed through communication, customization, integration and working in secure confidence. Subscribe here.
Emerging data trends in supply chain management
This infographic visually describes the findings from a 2019 report, "putting customers at the center of the OEM supply chain." Ninety-nine percent of OEMs believe that the digital transformation of their supply chain is important to meeting their organization's strategic objectives.
Transblue modernizes their business with Microsoft Teams & Microsoft 365
In this video, Transblue shares their modernization process from outdated paper processes to working in the cloud with up to date customer data with Microsoft 365.
November 29, 2021
Toyota Motor North America Migrates 40,000 to Microsoft Teams in Three Weeks
How does a company respond to the challenge of remote work when they are already managing a major digital transition? Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) made the decision to move their original Teams deployment schedule four months ahead, and as a result, thousands of TMNA employees migrated from Skype for Business to Teams over three weekends. Teams Only mode included a superior audio conferencing and calling experience, including Teams Phone for external calls. Employees appreciate the dynamic emergency calling feature. All meeting rooms are now Teams-ready.
Leveraging Tech to Improve Customer Experience: 11 Smart Techniques
The importance of customer experience has taken off in recent years. As competition becomes the norm in many digital and application spaces, the interaction that the consumer has with a company becomes more important. CX is vital in helping a company retain its customers and grow its customer base through organic referrals.
Luckily, technology offers several ways for businesses to improve their customer experience. In this article, 11 members of the Forbes Technology Council explain some techniques businesses can use to improve their customers' experience.
CTTI transforms the Generalitat de Catalunya with Microsoft Dynamics 365
The Center for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CTTI), a public company that brings together the computer and telecommunications services of the Generalitat de Catalunya, is using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform to manage in a unified way all the information related to its customers. This enables personalization and omnichannel attention for better customer experiences and improved customer satisfaction and retention.
Solution overview video
This video highlights how building a resilient supply chain with Microsoft can help your organization stay on track during a crisis, providing end-to-end visibility that allows for data-based decisions that improve response time.
Proactively prepare for and readily respond to disruption
The pandemic created havoc across nearly every industry. How will you continue to adapt as it continues to affect supply chains, how employees work, customer behaviors and demands, and various other aspects of the business landscape? Will you be ready for the next major disruption to your business? With the right tools, you can prepare and flex more efficiently as new challenges (and opportunities) emerge.
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November 24, 2021
Engage employees, improve productivity, and build team cohesion
After so much turmoil and change, employees all want different things. Companies need to support a successful back-to-hybrid-office life—a situation that is here to stay. The capabilities for positive hybrid meetings is possible with modern Microsoft tooling like Teams, Endpoint Manager, and devices like Surface Hub. Immersive and custom engagements that highlight leading guidance and innovation help remote and on-site deployment assistance prepare teams for hybrid work—meeting the needs of employees and increasing productivity and satisfaction no matter where they work.
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View: Engage employees, improve productivity, and build team cohesion
Azure App Service
Microsoft Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling your web apps. Work with .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, Python, and PHP—in containers or running on Windows or Linux. Subscribe to stay connected so we can help you build your app services on Azure—all while meeting rigorous, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements.
Security and Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams follows all the security best practices and procedures, as part of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 services. This article details how Teams handles common security threats through defense-in-depth, customer controls within the service, security hardening, and operational best practices. Teams is trustworthy by design and provides details of its security framework to keep users well-protected.
Putting your customer at the center of supply chain
The supply chains of original equipment manufacturers have always been complex and often unpredictable, but in today's hyper-connected world, OEMs are encountering new levels of complexity. Research finds that ninety-nine percent of OEMs believe that the digital transformation of their supply chain is important to meeting their organizations' strategic objectives.
November 23, 2021
The Workforce of the Future eBook
New levels of connectivity and advanced technologies like AI enable businesses to process more data on a larger scale. AI plays one of the biggest roles—in terms of disruption and resulting opportunity—for our industry and our workforce. As we look to a future powered by a partnership between computers and humans, we must address these challenges head on: How will AI impact employment and jobs? How do we ensure that AI is designed, used, and governed responsibly? Explore answers to these questions and more in this valuable eBook.
Digital transformation and the customer experience
Seamless communication, creativity, and immediacy are key factors in the digital transformation of the customer experience. As customers face pandemic-induced circumstances driving accelerated digital adoption, companies are finding they must develop a strategy for digital transformation catering to the needs of the modern-day user. That user demands authenticity, personalization, and empathy.
How SMEs can cure their fear of digital transformation
There's a perception that digital transformation is hard. Businesses resisting it are typically concerned about costs or lack of in-house knowledge. However, those who explore digital transformation quickly discover that these fears are unfounded.
To achieve the benefits of digital transformation, you need to set goals and think of costs as investments.
The Role of AI and People Analytics in Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow
While investment in digital business solutions continues to increase, employees remain the lifeblood of every enterprise. This article from Forbes covers key ways AI and analytics help organizations hire the right people and train them for success.
J Walter Thompson breaks new ground with Microsoft collaboration tools
J Walter Thompson has been successful in business for over 150 years and recognizes everyone in their company has different work styles. Because they are such a major distributor across many different countries, they've embraced virtual forms of communication and collaboration with Microsoft Teams. This allows them to move at the speed of culture to help position its clients' brands. The value it brings to clients is being brand pioneers, and Teams is a lifesaver in connecting and interacting, and is easy for their user base to adopt.
November 22, 2021
Embracing digitalization
Strategy, structure, processes, people, technology—are you agile across all five of these dimensions? Explore guidance for digital transformation of enterprise resource planning (ERP), from tracking performance metrics to adopting a culture of change.
ROI Azure Synapse
This infographic shows how @Microsoft Azure Synapse brings Big Data and Data Warehousing together in a single service to provide limitless analytics.
Why build an app for Teams?
Why build an app for Teams? 20 million people collaborating daily, harnessing the possibilities through collaboration. This infographic shares how apps built on Teams platform focus on increasing collaboration and productivity.
Maersk safely transports goods around the globe with Azure and IoT
Using Azure and IoT, Maersk uses remote container management to track and monitor 380,000 refrigerated containers around the planet. By leveraging the cloud, they are able to build new solutions and move much faster on data delivered to customers. This ensures that customers always know where their shipments are and goods arrive in perfect shape.
Nebraska Furniture Mart embraces Microsoft 365 to work smarter
The ability to work securely from anywhere already played a role in Nebraska Furniture Mart's (NFM) digital transformation vision, but COVID-19 pushed that goal to the forefront. Decision makers at NFM chose Microsoft 365 to advance a cloud-first strategy and standardize on a single solution. Consolidating communication on a single solution like Microsoft Teams helped drive efficiency and collaboration—all while saving costs. NFM implemented Teams Rooms systems at its Omaha headquarters, and the company will soon roll out the solution across all its stores, as well as integrate Teams Phone capabilities in the future.
November 17, 2021
Connect your team and transform your workplace collaboration in one secure hub.
Connect your team and transform your workplace collaboration in one secure hub with Microsoft Teams. Enhance virtual communication, collaborate and build with deeply integrated apps, customize and extend with 3rd party apps and devices, all while working in confidence using enterprise-grade security Subscribe now! Subscribe now!
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How to Use Microsoft Teams
In this step-by-step tutorial for beginners, learn how to use Microsoft Teams—the collaboration app with all your chats, meetings, and files in one place. Learn what it is, how you can get it, and how you can use it, as well as advanced tips and tricks.
How to build autonomous systems with AI
This video is a powerful example of how autonomous systems can be aligned to intelligently perform routine tasks. Toyota Material Handling partnered with Microsoft using AirSim (an open source simulation platform originally developed to teach drones or robots to learn in high fidelity simulated environments) to train a forklift on tasks like picking up a pallet. This video illustrates the vision for a future warehouse with pre-trained, intelligent forklifts assisting people in everyday activities.
November 16, 2021
How to fortify your supply chain in an era of escalating disruption
This article highlights the dangers of supply chain vulnerability and the importance of preparing for times of disruption. It offers three key approaches to protect and support your supply chain: diversify, invest in digitization, and develop a disruption mindset.
Lightning-fast innovation, elastic scalability, cost savings, and better performance
Perform better—continuous optimization and visibility drive performance
The world is moving faster than ever, and your organization cannot be left behind. Learn how you can adapt to these changes with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, which delivers new insights across your company and facilitates process optimization—all of which help your business grow .
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Building the AI-Powered Organization
The business world is rapidly changing. It is estimated that AI will add $13 trillion to the global economy over the next decade-and yet from thousands of executives surveyed, only 8% of firms are adopting core practices that fully support implementation. Businesses arrive at progress slowly, reflecting a failure to rewire within the organization. This article from Harvard Business Review demonstrates how companies can make a successful shift to utilizing AI and setting themselves up for success.
To Make Hybrid Work, Solicit Employees' Input
Driven by the state of the world today, more companies are committing to hybrid work. But how do you build out the model in a way that's right for your business and those who are conducting it?
Simple: Talk to employees to tailor the program to their specific needs. Easier said than done? Learn what questions to ask and scenarios to consider, and then maintain flexibility so you can quickly pivot if necessary.
November 15, 2021
2 Types of Artificial Intelligence
Bring the future into your business today with AI. Explore two types: Pre-Built and Custom Built. Pre-Built AI has cognitive services - deep learning cognitive capabilities ready to use (vision, speech, knowledge, translation, etc.), whereas Custom Built AI uses machine learning capabilities to analyze data to build and an artificial neural network to address specific problems not covered by Cognitive Services.
Deliver intelligent supply chain with Microsoft
In this video, learn how Microsoft is helping retailers anticipate and exceed customer expectations, avoid delays in production, and keep the business humming without interruptions. Microsoft empowers retailers of all categories and sizes to reimagine the way they bring together all aspects of their business, from the factory to the store floor, enabling intelligent retail experiences that customers love.
The future of frontline work and devices
Yesterday's tools are not enough to get today's job done. Microsoft Teams brings all the tools you and your workforce need into one app. Discover how to integrate the latest tools designed for today's frontline work and devices, tailored to your specific needs.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 intelligent business applications
When facing disruptive change, a seeming hallmark of these times, agility and innovation are no longer "nice to haves." Microsoft Dynamics 365, boosted by intelligent business applications, is empowering countless businesses worldwide to thrive in this changing business landscape where resiliency is a necessity.
The connected, intelligent applications within Dynamics 365 offer businesses limitless possibilities to innovate, create impact, adapt faster, respond rapidly, and work smarter—all while unifying data to deliver more forward-thinking customer experiences.
Connect your workforce to real-time insights, so you can innovate everywhere. With Dynamics 365, your business will be ready for what's next.
Hybrid Work: A Guide for Business Leaders
The pandemic has fundamentally transformed the way we work, do business, and meet customer (and employee) needs. With data showing that all parties want flexibility, the shift to hybrid work is a strategic business opportunity for every organization—one that requires a new operating model.
The customers' objective is to lead this change within their business and embrace innovation and the hybrid work opportunity—the inevitable way of the future. Fortunately, Microsoft has been a trailblazer in this transition, and has a guide to share what they've learned at scale about people, places, and processes.
Subscribe to stay connected. We'll help you take an active role in shaping your organization's future.
November 10, 2021
Subscribe now!
Microsoft Analytics and AI spark innovation and enable endless opportunities for using your data to foster growth. Subscribe now!
Reimagine the Flow of Work in the New Hybrid Work Reality
Flexibility is a must in the new post-pandemic work world. Hybrid work continues to evolve, and business leaders are looking for a new operating model. Technology is the binding factor to create inclusive meetings that keep employees engaged and inspired. Updates to Teams like PowerPoint Live, the Teams camera feed, Microsoft Whiteboard—and devices like Surface Hub—encourage digital collaboration.
Endpoint Manager combines services like Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager, Desktop Analytics, co-management, and Windows Autopilot to help secure access, protect data, and respond and manage risk.
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Newcastle University challenges tradition with connected, collaborative culture
Newcastle University has a lot of connections between the different faculties, and it needed a formal way of supporting them. Launching Microsoft Teams provided a very rich, integrated platform that can create work groups dynamically in a multidisciplinary team. They now have up to 5,000 users between the faculty and students, streamlining professional services, research, and support for students.
November 9, 2021
Improve decision making with data and replace manual business processes
Improve decision making with data and replace manual business processes with Microsoft. Subscribe now.
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Safer workplaces for frontline workers
The Pandemic has taken a toll on business but it's pushed us to find solutions to overcome obstacles. Learn how the Microsoft Power Platform Return-to-the-Workplace solution is helping customers safely prepare for the return to physical facilities.
Eight Finance Trends Every CFO Should Know
The CFO's role can be summarized with these two truths: 1) If something impacts the bottom line, it's the CFO's responsibility, and 2) Everything impacts the bottom line.
From unified data to intelligent technology powering finance operations, discover the eight key trends that are affecting the CFO's role.
Sign up to stay connected and access the "Eight trends" infographic. Review the highlights and then, if you like, access the full report.
Setting The Stage For Collaborative Hybrid Teams
Remote work is starting to feel mainstream, but many companies are still struggling to normalize their own personalized hybrid work models. Explore four things you should avoid in order to balance the needs of a diverse and divided workforce—from investing in the right tools and overcoming meeting fatigue to finding new ways for personal connections.
Future Generali uses Microsoft AI to Deepen Customer Engagements
Future Generali India Life Insurance Co. Ltd. adopted the use of REVA, a chatbot built on the Microsoft Bot Framework, which plays a key role in driving insightful conversations with its customers. In this video, see how the company has already seen an increase in the customer satisfaction rate by 91%, which won them the Microsoft and CNBC TV18 #AIForAll award for leveraging AI for enhancing customer engagement.
November 8, 2021
Empowering Remote Work with Microsoft Teams
With more people working from home, fostering virtual connection is crucial. This one pager displays tips on how to empower your team to stay connected, inclusive and focused online. It also provides insights on how to share content and keep your business running smoothly using Microsoft Teams.
Develop your own path on Microsoft Azure
Whether you're developing your apps on .NET or Java, Microsoft Azure offers great benefits for both. From Visual Studio tools, global compliance, and multiple hosting options, Azure is the go-to cloud service for faster, simpler development.
Sign up to stay connected so we can help you develop your own path on Azure and keep you up to date on the latest cloud computing advances.
The NFL Huddles with Microsoft Teams to Digitize Collaboration for Game Day
Everyone knows that teamwork is vital in the National Football League (NFL)—on the field and off. The arrival of COVID-19, however, pushed the league to reimagine how to collaborate behind the scenes. Executing hundreds of live events while preserving the gameday experience for online fans and business partners was a new challenge.
In exchange for the traditional high-touch, in-person communication culture at league offices, the organization adopted a virtual home field. Microsoft Teams helped the NFL stay connected and safely execute all 270 combined regular season and playoff games and Super Bowl LV—despite the collaboration challenges brought on by the pandemic.
Dr. Martens "Joins the Revolution" with Microsoft Dynamics 365
Dr. Martens is an iconic British footwear brand loved the world over for its signature style that unapologetically represents freedom, self-expression, and authenticity. Formed in 1947, Dr. Martens made headway as a wholesale business. Now, they have more than 100 stores globally and ambitious plans for retail and e-commerce growth. Recognizing the need to evolve to suit the needs of the twenty-first century consumer, the brand embarked on "Project Reboot: Join the Revolution" to replace all its legacy applications with Microsoft Dynamics 365. See the full story here.
Three ways to take cloud-based ERP to the next level
In today's business environment, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are crucial—especially in a post-COVID world, where meetings are more often streamed, and work is conducted from home. By bringing together functions such as financial management, operations, manufacturing, reporting and analytics, and human resources, ERPs enable companies to be run remotely while maintaining security and driving cost efficiency.
Learn how to take your cloud-based ERP to the next level while expanding the flexibility and adaptability of your business.
November 3, 2021
In an era of distractions, Microsoft wants AI to be your coworker
Microsoft is aiming to adapt its productivity suite to a short-attention-span world, bringing years of research into products like PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel. This article outlines how after years of slavishly digitizing and formatting words, numbers, and images, future versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be much more aware of your work and how you do it. Intelligent algorithms will find patterns and meanings in the data and use the insights to help you get through your day more efficiently. This transition to smarter work software has already begun.
November 2, 2021
Work smarter—unlock productivity and business insights
By connecting Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Microsoft 365, you can work from almost anywhere using nearly any device. You can videoconference, chat, call, collaborate, and seamlessly share Dynamics 365 Business Central data directly within Microsoft Teams.
Collaborate and take care of multiple business processes in one place. For example, you can check your email and create a quote by surfacing contextual customer relationship information, sales records, and inventory data within Microsoft Outlook. Then, schedule and start a Teams meeting with your customer in a few clicks.
Sign up to stay connected. We can help you unlock new methods for productivity and fresh insights for your business.
View: Work smarter—unlock productivity and business insights
RACQ transforms customer experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) in Australia replaced a 22-year-old legacy platform with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft 365. This new pipeline delivers streamlined processes and a digital feedback loop with a single source of insights for staff responding to member inquiries.
The result? More engaged workers and better service for its 1.7 million members, leading to improved satisfaction.
The Great IT Awakening
In the U.S. alone, 4.6 million IT workers supervise security, manage software, and process data to streamline information for organizations of all sizes. This current period has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and it has led to massive changes in the ways we live and work. In this in-depth article from the New York Times, look at how the IT industry is looking to cloud technology to modernize and revolutionize.
.NET Core invests in consistency to accelerate open-source innovation
Microsoft partnering with the open-source community to collaborate on .NET Core proved a valuable learning opportunity for large-scale retooling of its development processes. Consolidating 80 different repositories with more than 800 contributors from inconsistent implementations to a shared toolset required a fresh DevOps approach and the flexibility of Azure Pipelines and its support for GitHub.
The result: Developers can now move between repos without the need to learn a new CI system each time, and tests are more efficiently run which means iterations—and by extension, innovation—is quicker.
Subscribe to stay connected and download the full white paper detailing how the .NET Engineering Services team helped improve developer productivity at scale.
View: .NET Core invests in consistency to accelerate open-source innovation
November 1, 2021
Microsoft Teams Innovations Designed for Hybrid Work
Microsoft Teams empowers employees to interact on the spot with people all over the world. New features like chat, live reactions, and Whiteboard make the Teams meetings experience uniquely modern. Intelligent in-office cameras designed to enhance the presence of people can produce multiple video streams and create unique experiences for both presenters and attendees.
The culture of hybrid work is here to stay, and the innovations Microsoft Teams is making offers employees choice and flexibility—including a new way in Outlook to organize and display your hybrid office hours or join a meeting using companion mode on your mobile device.
Analytics & AI solution video
This video is a quick introduction to Microsoft Analytics and AI, explaining how to expand the reach of your data insights and gain increasing levels of efficiency and personalization. By harnessing the power of Microsoft Analytics, you can inform and drive intelligent automation through AI and machine learning.
Work remotely, stay secure
As businesses have had to quickly pivot to new working environments, cyberattacks become an urgent concern. In this thought leadership article, you can learn some of best practices using Microsoft security that help ensure the best protection. Examples include secure access to cloud applications that protect sign-ins with security defaults, methods to manage and secure corporate data in approved apps on personal devices, and providing clear and basic information, including how to protect their devices, will help you and employees stay ahead of threats so they can remain productive.
Customer Story of RLH Corporation, Dynamics 365, Teams
Discover how Red Lion Hotels Corporation uses Dynamics 365 and Teams to digitally transform their internal processes to drive higher guest satisfaction. With a vision to lead the hotel industry with technology, there's been a shift in RLH's reliance on IT. See how this top hotel chain is maximizing Microsoft solutions in this video story.
Digitalization future-proofs business thanks to connectivity and the cloud
Schmitz Cargobull AG is Europe's market leader in manufacturing refrigerated vehicles. Management knew that to fulfill their customers' need to track vehicles and loads at all times required scaling up access to data from multiple databases to one location in the cloud—creating a "data lake."
With Microsoft Azure supported by Azure DevOps, these customers now have access to a portal where they can check the location and condition of each vehicle, regardless of where the underlying data lives. Such a solution would have been costly on-premises, but using Azure turnkey modules reduced time to market and the need for in-house tools
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