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4 episodes with viva sales
2 episodes with viva sales
2 episodes with viva sales
2 episodes with viva sales
2 episodes with viva sales
2 episodes with viva sales
In episode 89 of Mastering Modern Selling, hosts Tom, Brandon, and guest host Kristie Jones, engage in a riveting conversation with Bill Kirst, a renowned change management expert. The discussion dives deep into the transformative potential of AI in sales and the critical role of empathy and effective change management in leveraging this technology.Key Takeaways:The Importance of Empathy in Change Management:Bill emphasizes empathy as his greatest skill set, crucial for understanding and supporting individuals through change. Empathy counters apathy and inertia, significant risks in any organization. It helps build trust, fosters relationships, and supports the human side of technological transitions .AI's Role in Enhancing Sales Efficiency:AI tools like Microsoft's Sales CoPilot (formerly Viva Sales) aim to free up time for sellers by automating administrative tasks. Bill shares statistics showing that sellers spend 70% of their time on non-selling activities. AI can reduce this burden, allowing sellers to focus on building relationships and strategic thinking .Adapting to AI: Embracing Change:AI is set to drastically change jobs, particularly in sales. It's crucial to help individuals understand how their roles will evolve with AI rather than just focusing on how to use the technology. This change management should be 90% about adapting to new roles and 10% about the technology itself .Building a Culture of Continuous Learning:AI implementation should come with support for continuous learning and professional development. Sales leaders need to ensure their teams are not just using AI tools but are also enhancing their sales skills and adapting to new ways of working. This involves coaching and mentoring to fully leverage the benefits of AI .The Future of Work with AI:As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, it will teach us more about ourselves and our work. Leaders need to prepare their teams for this shift by fostering a culture of curiosity and adaptability. This includes encouraging critical thinking and reducing over-reliance on scripts and rigid processes .Bill Kirst's insights shed light on the transformative potential of AI in sales and the essential role of empathy and effective change management. By focusing on human connections and continuous learning, organizations can successfully navigate the changes brought by AI. Dive into the full episode to explore more about leveraging AI in sales and learn practical tips for effective change management. Stay ahead in the game by understanding how to integrate these innovations into your sales strategies.This Show is brought to you by Fist Bump.Your prospecting partner to authentically fill your pipeline with ideal customers.
Generative AI for Sales Prospecting is an uncharted territory for many. Sure, it sounds like a tech buzzword that's been thrown around lately... But when it comes to implementing Generative AI in your sales strategy... Most are at a loss when it comes to incorporating Generative AI into their sales tactics. Utilizing Generative AI in your sales strategy could be the key to unlocking success. But if you don't understand how to harness its power effectively, you might as well be throwing darts blindfolded. The Role of Engage AI in Enhancing LinkedIn Engagement Let's dive into the world of artificial intelligence, where Jason Tan's company, Engage AI, is making waves. This innovative tool addresses a common challenge - maintaining regular interaction with prospects and clients on LinkedIn. Overcoming Writer's Block with Engage AI We've all been there; staring at an empty screen, struggling to craft compelling prospect outreach messages. No more. With its embedded generative AI technology designed for sales professionals like you, writer's block becomes a thing of the past when writing sales content or repurposing existing ones. A Comprehensive Outreach Strategy Facilitated by Engage AI Calls? Check. Emails? Absolutely. Videos Messages? You betcha. Texts too? Yes indeed. This comprehensive approach makes it easier than ever before to engage your audience through multiple channels. And guess what? You don't have to be a seasoned Sales Operations Manager or tech guru. No matter if you're just beginning your AI journey, Engaging AI has the resources to get you started. Now that we've explored how this powerful tool can change sales as Prabhakant Sinha envisioned, let us delve deeper into understanding Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our next section. Stay tuned. Understanding Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Exploring the distinction between generative AI and other types of AI, let's delve into the details. Generative AI, like DeepAI explains, is a branch of artificial intelligence that uses statistical models to generate new data similar to the input it receives. It's not your everyday chat GPT or Google Bard. Difference Between Generative AI & Other Forms The key differentiator? Its ability to create. This embedded generative ai technology designed for creativity can do more than just respond; it generates entirely new content based on patterns learned from existing information. Think writing sales content with an artistic twist. A Recent AI Survey - A Quick Look indicates how businesses are increasingly leveraging this tech innovation. Moving Beyond The Basics With Machine Learning While machine learning provides algorithms that learn from data inputs, generative ai tools run deeper by generating recommendations akin to human-like brainstorming. The Role Of Human Intelligence In Using These Technologies Let me be clear: these technologies aren't replacing us anytime soon. Instead, they're here as our digital assistants. The real magic happens when we combine them with human ingenuity - creating powerful synergies for problem-solving and idea generation. For instance, imagine launching Viva Sales a tool incorporating this cutting-edge techa into your business operations. As a sales operations manager or even someone who teaches sales executives regularly you could use such advanced tools effectively. From repurposing existing sales content into engaging prospect outreach messages without breaking a sweat to customizing scoring criteria using HubSpot's predictive lead scoring software the possibilities seem endless. Remember though an artificial intelligence learning path requires patience and persistence. So keep exploring because change is inevitable in fact it might even change 'sales' prabhakant sinha style someday. Now isn't that something worth looking forward too? Key Takeaway: Generative AI, unlike everyday chatbots, uses statistical models to generate new data based on existing information. Businesses are increasingly leveraging this technology for creativity and problem-solving. While these tools can generate recommendations, they are meant to assist humans rather than replace them. Combining generative AI with human ingenuity creates powerful synergies for sales prospecting and idea generation. So keep exploring because change is inevitable - it might even revolutionize the way we do sales someday. With the help of generative artificial intelligence tools like Lavender, sales teams can now streamline their prospecting efforts and increase their chances of success. Strategies For Effective Digital Sales Prospecting Leveraging generative artificial intelligence for prospecting is a game-changer in the sales world. Generative AI tools run, analyzing and repurposing existing sales content to create personalized outreach messages that resonate with your target audience. Leveraging Generative Artificial Intelligence For Prospecting The modern HubSpot's predictive lead scoring software, an embedded generative AI technology designed specifically for this purpose, can change sales prospects' engagement dramatically. This tool uses machine learning algorithms and custom scoring criteria to rank leads based on their likelihood of becoming customers. Sales operations managers find it easier than ever before to access key sales data thanks to these advancements in technology. A recent AI survey showed businesses using such systems experienced significant improvements in efficiency and conversion rates. Besides improving productivity, they also help teach new skills by offering an artificial intelligence learning path tailored towards each individual's needs. Balancing Automation And Personalization On Platforms Like Linkedin To truly harness the power of platforms like LinkedIn, we must strike a balance between automation and personalization when commenting or engaging with posts. This is where writing prospect outreach content becomes crucially important. Using pre-written templates or automated responses might seem efficient but often lacks genuine human touch needed for building relationships. Change Sales Prabhakant Sinha, one of the pioneers who teaches sales executives how leveraging tech can enhance results emphasizes this point strongly. While having unique selling points (USPs) are essential; knowing how you're different from competitors isn't enough anymore - being able to communicate those differences effectively through well-crafted prospect outreach messages sets successful brands apart from others. So next time you write a message remember: Be real. Show empathy. Make connections. Exploring Fly Message As A Text Expander And Engagement Insight Tool In the world of sales, every second counts. Fly Message is a game-changer in this arena, serving as an effective text expander and engagement insight tool. Achieving Better Results With Fly Message The primary goal for any sales team is to drive revenue growth. To achieve this, they need access to key sales data and tools that can streamline their processes. This is where artificial intelligence can help to produce results. FAQs in Relation to Generative Ai for Sales Prospecting What is generative AI in sales forecasting? Generative AI in sales forecasting leverages machine learning to generate predictive models, providing insights into future customer behavior and market trends, thus enhancing strategic decision-making. How does generative AI affect sales? Generative AI impacts sales by automating prospecting tasks, personalizing outreach strategies, improving writing efficiency and offering predictive analytics. This leads to increased engagement rates and revenue growth. How can generative AI help in marketing? Generative AI aids marketing efforts by creating personalized content for target audiences, predicting consumer behaviors based on past data patterns and optimizing ad campaigns through real-time adjustments. How will generative AI change retail? Generative AI will revolutionize retail by offering personalized shopping experiences, optimizing inventory management through demand forecasting, and enhancing customer service with automated responses. Conclusion It's the future of sales. It breaks down barriers, enhancing LinkedIn engagement and transforming how we connect with prospects. This technology doesn't replace human intelligence but complements it, creating a powerful synergy that drives success in the digital world. Tools like Grammarly and Lavender aren't just about correcting grammar; they're about improving understanding within teams to attract enterprise deals. The right strategies can balance automation with personalization, making your outreach on platforms like LinkedIn more effective than ever before. Fly Message isn't merely an engagement insight tool; it's a revenue growth engine powered by generative AI. If you're ready to take your sales prospecting game to new heights, consider exploring Vengreso.com. We are dedicated to helping knowledge workers save on productivity through innovative solutions such as Generative AI. Start harnessing this cutting-edge technology today for transformative results tomorrow!
Hallo liebe Zuhörer:Innen, Hallo liebe Community, in unserer heutigen Episode geht es um die neue Whiteboard App in Microsoft Teams, die Viva Summit, sowie einige weitere Funktionen innerhalb von Microsoft Teams. Außerdem haben wir über LAPS gesprochen, einem Tool was Ihr vielleicht schon aus dem lokalen AD kennt. Warum wir das in einer "Cloud" Sendung ansprechen? - das erfahrt ihr in der Sendung. Und wie immer gilt: viel Spaß mit dieser Folge und wir freuen uns über Euer Feedback!Michael und Thorsten ------------------------------------------------- Infos aus der Episode:LAPS via Intune: Ankündigung bei MicrosoftWhiteboard in Microsoft Teams: Message Center NewsViva Summit - Viva Sales : Copilot in Viva Sales innovates with next-generation AI - Microsoft Dynamics 365 BlogViva Summit - Viva Engage: Announcing Copilot in Viva Engage - Microsoft Community HubViva Summit - Viva Topics: Announcing Copilot in Viva Topics - Microsoft Community HubViva Summit - Viva Goals: The Future of Goal-Setting with Viva Goals: Copilot, Customized Experiences, and More - Microsoft Community HubViva Summit - Viva Tech Community: Welcome to the Microsoft Viva Community - Microsoft Community HubMicrosoft Teams - automatisches Hand runter nehmen: Roadmap ItemMicrosoft Teams - Teams Button bekommt Funktion: Roadmap Item-------------------------------------------------Link zum Blog findet ihr hier: https://talkm365.netAuf Twitter unter: @TalkM365Twitter Michael: @plemichTwitter Thorsten: @thorpickLink zum YouTube-Kanal: https://link.talkm365.net/YouTubeLink zum Teams UG - Meetup: https://link.talkm365.net/TeamsUGMeetupLink zu Thorstens YouTube-Kanal (Quick-Tipps): Thorsten Pickhan - YouTube-------------------------------------------------Reference-Links:Music Intro/Outro: Vacation - AShamaluevMusic.Music Link: https://soundcloud.com/ashamaluevmusic/vacationMusic Background: Inspirational Corporate Ambient - AShamaluevMusicMusic Link: https://www.patreon.com/ashamaluevmusic-------------------------------------------------
In this episode we chat with Andrés Padilla and Meer Alam about practical use of AI and ML systems. Examples of this are discussed around autonomous drone / delivery models and the various components in Azure that make this a seamless, scalable and sustainable experience. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode455.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/0Y_jeCWZn38 Resources: https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/1569428314103514552-drone-express-travel-transportation-azure-en-united-states https://github.com/Azure/KAN Other updates: Azure Disks Standard SSD billable transaction cap blog (microsoft.com) Public preview: Login and TDE-enabled database migrations with Azure Database Migration Service | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure General Availability: Customer Initiated Storage Account Conversion | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure ChatGPT is now available in Azure OpenAI Service | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure Teams premium - conversation recap, chapters, etc.; Viva Sales, Bing Chat Public preview: Azure Cognitive Service for Vision Powers State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Development | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Image captioning, customisation, improved learning, smaller datasets, higher quality. Public preview: Illumio for Azure Firewall | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Zero Trust segmentation; single holistic view of traffic with real time visibility of interaction and dependencies; test firewall changes before deploying; across all 3 skus of firewall Public Preview: Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus now supports querying PromQL | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Use promql to define alerts to view in the portal Generally available: App Insights Extension for Azure Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Installs an agent to your VM through PS, triggered by the portal https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-to-showcase-purposebuilt-ai-infrastructure-at-nvidia-gtc/
On the show this week, find out what's happening with recent changes to Exchange Online that might cause a delay if you're setting up a fresh Hybrid environment; plus security recommendations for your on-premises Exchange environment. If you're getting into Viva Sales, we discuss what the new OpenAI GPT add-in does. Creepy or useful - you decide! Plus Microsoft Syntex's PAYG model goes live and Teams gets user experience changes that your users will certainly notice.Want to stay up to date on all things Practical 365? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin to stay up to date on all things Microsoft!
Jumping off an FT op-ed on venture capital and tech hype – which aligns great with TMK thought – we discuss the value and risk models of venture capitalism, then get into the emerging market structures and dynamics for generative AI. It's not just a web3 redux. We end with Ted Chiang's fantastic article on lossy compression as an analogy for large-language models. Some stuff we reference: ••• The new Current Thing for VCs mourning the implosion of Web3 https://www.ft.com/content/83807cad-5f2c-4c35-a4ff-e9df5cbd3505 ••• Generative AI: A Creative New World | report by Sequoia Capital https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/generative-ai-a-creative-new-world/ ••• ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
Bonjour, voici les actualités du monde digital qui ont retenu mon attention cette 6e semaine de l'année Twitter Blue arrive en France pour un abonnement à 8€ HT par mois. Une des premières raisons de s'abonner à Twitter Blue est certainement l'obtention du badge de vérification bleu. Voici quelques-unes des fonctionnalités : L'accès à un onglet "Articles Populaires" qui classe les liens les plus partagés par vos abonnés. La possibilité de télécharger des vidéos d'une qualité de 1080 pixels au lieu de 720 pixels et une durée prolongée jusqu'à 60 minutes sur ordinateur et 10 minutes sur smartphone. L'annulation d'un tweet après un laps de temps. La programmation de Tweets. La modification des Tweets jusqu'à 5 fois dans les 30 minutes qui suivent leur publication. https://www.numerama.com/tech/1258086-on-a-essaye-twitter-blue-le-meilleur-moyen-de-perdre-10-euros.html https://www.blogdumoderateur.com/twitter-blue-disponible-france/ Et suite à ces mises à jour, Twitter subit une panne le jour du lancement des tweets longs! La timeline continue à afficher les tweets avec une limite de 280 caractères, et pour les messages plus longs, on devrait voir un bouton « Afficher plus » pour développer le message. https://www.leparisien.fr/high-tech/twitter-une-panne-le-jour-du-lancement-des-tweets-longs-09-02-2023-JHFH3MDXLBFXLJEUQJRN22UREQ.php BING CONTRE ATTAQUE ! ChatGPT arrive bientôt sur Bing. Quelques semaines avant le déploiement, certains internautes ont en effet pu tester la nouvelle interface du moteur de recherche qui veut faire de l'ombre à Google. Grâce à ChatGPT, Microsoft espère pouvoir mettre un terme à la domination de Google. https://www.01net.com/actualites/microsoft-bing-version-chatgpt-arrive-apercu-cauchemar-google.html Et Microsoft n'en reste pas là et utilisera #ChatGPT pour rédiger des e-mails pour ses clients. Viva Sales, c'est son nom sera intégré dans les CRM Microsoft Dynamics et Salesforce. https://www.blog-nouvelles-technologies.fr/252560/microsoft-utilisera-le-chatgpt-dopenai-pour-rediger-des-e-mails-pour-ses-clients/ Voici le chiffre de la semaine : 43% 43 % des milléniaux craignent de perdre leur emploi à cause de ChatGPT, et 51 % des pertes d'emploi pourraient concerner le secteur du marketing https://intelligence-artificielle.developpez.com/actu/341251/43-pourcent-des-milleniaux-craignent-de-perdre-leur-emploi-a-cause-de-ChatGPT-et-51-pourcent-des-pertes-d-emploi-pourraient-concerner-le-secteur-du-marketing-selon-une-etude-de-Sortlist-Data-Hub/ Pour terminer, voici ma conclusion de la semaine La réaction web est aujourd'hui facilitée grâce à l'utilisation de ChatGPT et cela aura un impact sur les algorithmes de classement utilisés par Google. Ce dernier pourrait être en mesure de détecter plus facilement le contenu généré automatiquement et de le pénaliser en conséquence, ce qui pourrait réduire la visibilité de certains sites web. Voilà, c'est terminé, je vous dis à la semaine prochaine si vous le voulez bien !
Om Shownotes ser konstiga ut (exempelvis om alla länkar saknas. Det ska finnas MASSOR med länkar) så finns de på webben här också: https://www.enlitenpoddomit.se Avsnitt 402 spelades in den 7 februari och därför så handlar dagens avsnitt om: INTRO: - Alla har haft en vecka... David har haft bra vecka och fått göra en del musik. har börat spela Final Fantasy XIV, läst en bok av Magnus Carling och börjat av nästa. (Björn gör en liten ordningsfråga) Björn har Lajvat Vuxen, (Jobb, barn, mat, hundar, tvätta, städa), Kopplat iPhone till högtalare. Johan har bokat löping, haft seminarie, stödat och låtit nån fotografera, åsså fyllt år FEEDBACK AND BACKLOG: - Adobe Digital Editions, e-böcker, Kobo och epub - BONUSLÄNK: Boken som David pratar om: https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382 ALLMÄNT NYTT - Dashlane blir open source https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dashlane-password-manager-open-sourced-its-android-and-ios-apps/ MICROSOFT - Microsoft kör AI event https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/279091/microsoft-ai-powered-bing-edge-preview-launch - Authenticator for Apple Watch försvinner https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/06/microsoft-authenticator-ends-apple-watch-app/ - MS gör sig av med Teams Free och skapar Teams (Free) https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-teams-free-classic-retirement-no-data-180521994.html - Microsoft Teams Premium Har nu ÄNTLIGEN gått GA https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2023/02/01/microsoft-teams-premium-cut-costs-and-add-ai-powered-productivity/ - Viva Sales får GPT stöd. https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/02/02/microsoft-boosts-viva-sales-with-new-gpt-seller-experience/ APPLE - Riktiga Browseralternativ I iOS https://www.engadget.com/google-chrome-blink-ios-experiment-220001141.html https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/07/mozilla-is-also-developing-a-non-webkit-browser-for-ios - Jag är f*n imponerad av Apple https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/03/apple-collects-nearly-all-of-the-profit-in-the-worldwide-smartphone-market GOOGLE: - Google lanserar ChatGPT konkurrent https://www.androidpolice.com/google-unveils-bard-ai/ - Passkeys från Google https://www.androidpolice.com/googles-new-credential-manager-brings-us-closer-to-a-passwordless-future/ - Google är lite pryda https://www.androidauthority.com/google-search-blur-3280353/ - Android kanske kopierar iOS https://swedroid.se/android-14-kan-gora-det-enklare-att-anvanda-mobiler-som-webbkameror-for-datorer/ EXTRA NYHETER: - OnePlus Event https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/07/the-699-oneplus-11-arrives-feb-16/ https://www.androidpolice.com/oneplus-11-review/ https://swedroid.se/oneplus-pad-ar-foretagets-forsta-surfplatta/ https://www.androidauthority.com/oneplus-buds-pro-2-2-3276786/ - Samsungs Event https://9to5google.com/2023/02/01/samsung-galaxy-s23-price-specs-release-date/ https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/278893/samsung-galaxy-s23-galaxy-book3-series https://9to5google.com/2023/02/06/galaxy-s23-ridley-scott/ https://www.androidpolice.com/samsung-galaxy-s23-seamless-updates/ https://9to5google.com/2023/02/03/snapdragon-8-gen-2-galaxy-s23-tsmc/ https://www.androidpolice.com/google-samsung-team-up-android-based-extended-reality-headsets/ TIPS: - Vill du veta vilka nya funktioner som kommer i Azure. Fråga Billing APIt. :) PRYLLISTA - David: AIAIAI TMA-2 Studio Wireless+ (https://aiaiai.audio/headphones/tma-2-studio-wireless-plus) - Men den här ville jag ha, men verkar inte gå att köpa.. :( https://news.kaist.ac.kr/newsen/html/news/?mode=V&mng_no=26590 Eller https://www.etsy.com/listing/1334499723/mini-croc-shoe-charm-charms-compatible?show_sold_out_detail=1&source=aw - Johan: Till Mario Kart https://www.webhallen.com/se/product/268720-Nintendo-Switch-Joy-Con-Handkontroll-Pair-Green-Pink EGNA LÄNKAR - En Liten Podd Om IT på webben, http://enlitenpoddomit.se/ - En Liten Podd Om IT på Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/EnLitenPoddOmIt/ - En Liten Podd Om IT på Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/enlitenpoddomit - Ge oss gärna en recension - https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/en-liten-podd-om-it/id946204577?mt=2#see-all/reviews - https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/en-liten-podd-om-it-158069 LÄNKAR TILL VART MAN HITTAR PODDEN FÖR ATT LYSSNA: - Apple Podcaster (iTunes), https://itunes.apple.com/se/podcast/en-liten-podd-om-it/id946204577 - Overcast, https://overcast.fm/itunes946204577/en-liten-podd-om-it - Acast, https://www.acast.com/enlitenpoddomit - Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/show/2e8wX1O4FbD6M2ocJdXBW7?si=HFFErR8YRlKrELsUD--Ujg%20 - Stitcher, https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-nerd-herd/en-liten-podd-om-it - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/enlitenpoddomit LÄNK TILL DISCORD DÄR MAN HITTAR LIVE STREAM + CHATT - http://discord.enlitenpoddomit.se (Och glöm inte att maila bjorn@enlitenpoddomit.se om du vill ha klistermärken, skicka med en postadress bara. :)
Episode 120: Markus Erlandsson and Heidi Neuhauser have a chat with Jason Gumpert from MS Dynamics World about the state of Dynamics CRM and Power Platform in 2022 where the three of us talk about Government, Digital Contact Center Platform, Viva Sales, Release Notes, changes in the partner program and more… Bio Jason is the … Continue reading State of Dynamics CRM in 2022 The post State of Dynamics CRM in 2022 first appeared on CRM Rocks.
FULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/414 An introduction about Swapnil Agarwwal and what he does when he's not working with Microsoft. How did Swapnil end up in Microsoft and why he likes it? What is the Dynamics 365 Sales Accelerator? How does Sales Accelerator serve as an engagement and productivity tool? How Sales Accelerator helps sales managers create a sequence of activities around a particular product. What steps is Microsoft taking to ensure that the product is adaptable enough so that what works for one team also works for other stakeholders? How can a sales manager Templatized a Success? A conversation about the main sweet spot for sales accelerators. Swapnil shares his thoughts about Viva Sales and its implementation in sales. OTHER RESOURCES: Swapnil's GitHub: https://github.com/swapnilagarwwal Sales Accelerator and Sequences: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2022/10/26/new-sales-sequences-experience-improves-seller-productivity/ AgileXRM AgileXRm - The integrated BPM for Microsoft Power PlatformSupport the showIf you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.Thanks for listening
This episode is sponsored by AutoPylot Technologies. It's a universal complaint: the sales reps don't use the CRM. It's too much effort and takes too much time. As a result, the data in a system like Dynamics 365 Sales is incomplete. CRM may fail to meet expectations, yet the CRM remains the data touchpoint to a range of downstream business processes and decisions. In this episode, we talk with Steve Shaw of AutoPylot Technologies Corp. about how and why they have entered the Microsoft Dynamics space with a new mobile app for that integrates D365 with added automation and other smart features to encourage sales reps to capture key data. Steve explains why company decided to enter this competitive market and the early results of upcoming research highlighting the impact automation can have on CRM adoption. We also discuss the complementary nature of AutoPylot and Viva Sales, and how conversational AI always starts with conversations. Show Notes: 1:15 - AutoPylot's history and the decision to enter the Microsoft space 2:45 - Why sales reps embrace automation, including new research findings 4:45 - Must-have features of sales automation 6:30 - The importance of tracking data to manage the sales process 8:00 - What it takes to deploy an automation solution for sellers on top of CRM 9:15 - How do companies tend to get started with AutoPylot? 10:30 - Engaging with the Microsoft channel 11:30 - Viva Sales and how AutoPylot will complement it and contributer to conversation intelligence 14:45 - Experiences as part of Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub 16:00 - Why sales automation remains relevant To learn how AutoPylot can solve for your biggest CRM frustration, visit www.autopylot.com. And they will be at booth 640 at Community Summit North America 2022.
The first Microsoft Power Platform Conference (MCCP) 2022 has now concluded, and we catch up with Microsoft MVP Asif Rehmani to discuss what we learned at the event. We review some of the things we learned about Power Platform's position within the larger Microsoft Cloud, how SharePoint will co-exist with it, the various user roles related to Power Platform adoption, and our perception of the Microsoft product team's outlook. We also look ahead to how Power Platform events supported by Microsoft could change in the next year. Asif has also written a LinkedIn post sharing his event experiences. Related MSDW articles: Microsoft announces improved Power Platform governance, app coauthoring Microsoft announces Viva Sales general availability with new sales enablement integration
Thoughtstuff - Tom Morgan on Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business and Office 365 Development
Audio version of video on YouTube. Make Microsoft Teams meetings customer-friendly with the new Microsoft Virtual Appointment Graph API Microsoft Power-Up Program Understanding Microsoft's grand vision for building the next generation of apps Announcing the general availability of Viva Sales, an intelligent selling experience in Microsoft 365 and Teams Subscribe to all my videos at: https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/video Podcast: https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/itunes, https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/spotify or https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/podcast Blog: https://blog.thoughtstuff.co.uk
Thoughtstuff - Tom Morgan on Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business and Office 365 Development
Audio version of video on YouTube. Microsoft-provided, open-source code for document-signing in Microsoft Teams meetings Viva Sales is coming, are you ready? Introducing a Microsoft Teams ringtone that will make you want to dance In Development: Viva: Learning integration with Viva Connections Subscribe to all my videos at: https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/video Podcast: https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/itunes, https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/spotify or https://thoughtstuff.co.uk/podcast Blog: https://blog.thoughtstuff.co.uk
Episode 117: Markus Erlandsson and Heidi Neuhauser have a chat with Chris Cognetta from congruentX about Viva Sales. Chris starts by explaining the Viva brand as a whole and how Viva Sales join into that, then Chris explains Viva Sales features and it is now a lot easier to use advanced AI features to turn … Continue reading Viva Sales with Chris Cognetta The post Viva Sales with Chris Cognetta first appeared on CRM Rocks.
I had a chance to sneak up on Vahe Torossian, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President and the man in charge of Sales for Microsoft Business Applications. While Vahe has been with Microsoft for 30 years, many of you may not know him, so I wanted to fix that. Vahe is no ordinary Seller; he's the “Top” guy who sets the sales strategy and motions for the entire global team. Vahe is also the guy who runs the really big enterprise customer meetings, and he's super-friendly, as you would expect for the Chief Rainmaker. We covered a lot of ground in this one, so enjoy! Transcript Below: Vahe: Hey, Vahe Torossian speaking. Steve: Vahe, Steve Mordue, how are you? Vahe: Hey Steve. In fairness let's say Charles mentioned that somehow you were going to call me. I didn't know when, but it's great to talk to you. Steve: After I interviewed him, I asked him who would be a good person to talk to? And he dropped your name. So it doesn't surprise me that he gave you a little heads up. Have you got a few minutes to chat? Vahe: Yeah, of course. Thanks Steve. Steve: Oh, perfect, perfect. So before we get into it, maybe we can tell the listeners a little bit about what your role is. I know you've been at Microsoft forever, I think like 30 years or something like that, and you've held a lot of different positions. But now you're in the business application space and that's been fairly recent. So there's probably a lot of folks that might not be familiar with you, who should be. Vahe: Oh yeah, thanks Steve. You're right. I've been celebrating my 30 years anniversary at Microsoft in April in 2022. I actually took the helm of the Biz Apps sales organization globally in late 2020. So basically I took my one way ticket to Redmond in December 2020. And the plane was almost empty, it was during the pandemic. And it was kind of a strange feeling for someone who has been traveling so much in the past. And of course, let's say I came with the lens of the business application, of course. Having led let's say Western Europe in my past role, having all the businesses of Microsoft. And I think Western Europe was quite successful on Biz Apps, our trajectory growth. And I guess that was also in fact the good match to some degree to try to take it at the global level. Steve: So is it a little easier to think about a smaller segment of the product mix, now really being able to focus like a business application? So I think before you were looking over all sorts of different things, weren't you? Vahe: Yeah, actually it's a great question. Because I think it's very different way of looking at the business. When you are, let's say almost you are the CEO of Microsoft in the countries that you are, let's say leading. You have all the levers to engage customers, partners, government, in different circumstances. And you try to leverage as much as you can the portfolio that you have to maximize the value. In the context of let's say the business application. I think it was, the interesting bet to some degree Steve, was to say, Hey, this has been a portfolio at Microsoft, whether you call it Dynamics 365 or Dynamics only as a brand in the past. And if you go back 20 years, let's say almost, with the Navision and Axapta, and Solomon Software and Great Plains. All these stories, all these product came together. And 20 years later, I think it has been part of a portfolio somewhere. Vahe: And you had almost what I will call the strong, let's say, portfolio of Microsoft, the platform, the modern workplace and environment. And I felt the work that James Phillips in the past, and with Alyssa, and Charles, and Amy here now on the marketing side. Have been a strong inflection point to bring together both the technology in the cloud environment. But at the same time, a market environment that requires very different, let's say tools to make the most of this transformation. And I felt that there's one piece at Microsoft that requires a huge catalyst leveraging the innovation. But responding as much as we can to what the customer need or even don't know yet what they need. And I think that's what I think to me was almost a bet. It's almost like all of a sudden you move to the little dog, if I may say. But with a huge potential of transforming something with great asset for Microsoft, and the customers and partners. Steve: Well I have to say, having been involved with Microsoft for a while, we have a phrase over here called redheaded stepchild, which is kind of what Dynamics was for many, many years. It was off campus, it was just this thing out there and under Satya, when Satya came in, he's the first one that I think came into the position that recognized this should be another leg on the stool, not some remote thing out there. And I think that's made a huge. Difference because I was involved in the years before Satya with business applications and they were not just something over here on the back shelf, and now they're right front and center. I think that between Dynamics and what's happened with the power platform, cloud in general. Microsoft's ability to get into and help customers is massively different than it used to be. And in your role now, you're dealing with a lot different type of customer. You're talking about Office 365 or Azure, you're dealing with IT. And now you're mostly dealing with business users. It's a completely different audience you're having to work with today, isn't it? Vahe: Absolutely. I think also you're right since Satya took the helm of the company, to some degree you of course we have seen how we tackle the cloud computing hyper-scale environment. But at the same time, in fact what happened with the Covid in the last two years, have seen an acceleration of what we call in the past, the productivity tools to become more and more collaboration environment. And from almost an application or a set of application, it became more and more a platform on its own. And so it's almost like when you think about where we are today and we were talking about the Covid, I don't think the Covid is yet over fully everywhere. But now everybody's talking about recession, right? And there's no one headline that you look, you say, oh my goodness, what's going to happen? Which just means in terms of planning for 22, 23. Vahe: So I think the assets that is now quite unique to some degree, or differentiated as you said, between the Dynamics 365 platform components and the Power Platform, it's almost bringing together. But I think, I don't remember Steve, in a few years back, I think Satya was talking about the mobility of the experience. And that was more from a device perspective initially. But actually what you see now is that with Teams as a platform, the system of productivity almost connect with the system of record more and more. And it's re-transforming the way you are thinking. It's almost like, you think about, you don't have to go to a CRM environment or ERP environment to get access to the data. It's almost like wherever you work, if you use an Excel or if you use Teams or whatever, you get access naturally, almost intuitively to your data set. And the data set are that's almost fulfilled naturally. And so we have no additional task. Vahe: And so I think that's the transformation world in which we are. Which connects cheaper well. We almost do more with less, right? And that's going to be almost the conversation we're going to have in the coming month. And it started already with many customers and partners. How we can optimize the assets that they have, how they can let's say increase the deep provisioning of some assets that they have. They are paying too much to concentrate a bit more, to get more agility. And I think this is where also, from a partner perspective, Steve, I see a lot of potential. You are referring to Power Platform, it's fascinating to see what it was in the very beginning, this notion of citizens developer, what does it mean? Vahe: People didn't know exactly what it is, we're quite afraid to touch it. But now when you see the shortage of developers in the market in general. And how you can make the most of some absolutely topnotch people who are not developer, touching the last mile execution challenges. Have been facing crazy environment and situation that they say, I can't believe how my IT guide doesn't solve these things. I've been telling them the customer pain point for so many years. And now with some, let's say [inaudible 00:08:45] place, let's say available for them, along with some let's say technical assets, you can really make the magic in the very, very, very time. Steve: Charles came up with a term on the fly, ambient CRM. Kind of where we're heading here when you talk about things like Viva Sales and some of these pieces that are really wiring all these components together. Covid was a terrible thing, but it certainly was a perfect storm for pushing the technology forward into a place that it's been fighting to get to, it's really been fighting to get to that point. And Teams was a great product. But certainly Covid created the perfect environment where Teams made insane sense for companies that were maybe just thinking about it or dabbling with it, and suddenly they're all diving into it. And you guys of course poured the investment on top of that. And I think that the silver lining of Covid, for technology, is how far it really allowed it to advance in that period of time. Maybe we just need a pandemic every five years to push a technology forward. I don't know. Vahe: No, but I have to say that even in my previous role when I was running Western Europe. Even the most skeptical people in regard to the cloud or the transition to a cloud environment. Having the one that rushed in the first, almost to a cloud environment, once the pandemic has been a bit of a real situation to face, and to drive the economy or the public services let's say on. So I think you're right, so you don't want to wish for another pandemic or whatever, but it has been absolutely a forcing function in many domains. And that's true. Steve: I think the challenge we have is particularly in the business application space. You guys have launched so many things in such a short period of time. And as you mentioned before, Power Apps, people picking it with a stick, they don't even know what it is. And there's also this first mover fear, I think. Microsoft has been, in my mind, kind of famous for coming to the game late and then just taking over the game. We were very late to the cloud, but once we got there we just took over the cloud, and it seems to be a pattern. But when you look back at the early days of cloud before you guys stepped into it, it was wild west. And all sorts of challenges with cloud. And I think that that gave a lot of people fear about, I remember I moved into cloud early and we got destroyed. Steve: And so I think there's a lot of folks out there, just from a technology standpoint, that have gotten their hands burnt by moving too quickly. And we're at that point with the platform and dynamics, where these are not new anymore. Relatively in history, they're new. But they're not new products and they're not built by some garage shop somewhere with a couple of developers. This is what 15,000 people building this stuff back there. This is professionally built, well built stuff, that is ready for prime time. So the first movers have already come through and they all survived. So I really feel like we're at that point where it should just take off now, it should just absolutely take off. And I'm sure you guys are seeing this. Vahe: Yeah. And Steve, I think one thing also is that you're right, there's a usual thing about let's say the first mover advantage. At the same time from a customer perspective, you don't want to be the Guinea pig, right? On any situation, especially from the technology standpoint. I think that increasingly what I see in the conversation is that there's almost now, because of the quality of the native integration of the several different applications. Whether you are in the customer experience environment, on the service side, on the supply chain, on the finance or the local no code or app. All these components are absolutely connected to each other. And basically whether you have Teams as a platform in your company, or Azure in environment, all these component are connected very, very easily to each other. Vahe: And so I would say that the beauty of it now is that you have all almost the notion of marginal cost. If you really want to leverage many of the assets that we can bring, and you don't have to take all of them at once, of course it has to be matching what you need now. But the right is that, let's say there's an almost fully integrated benefit all the connectors with the rest of the world outside of Microsoft environment, which is a great value for the partners, ISV and [inaudible 00:13:58], and at the same time to the customers. Who think now, hey I should do more with less. How should I think about my investments for the next, let's say five years? Most of the customers now are really thinking about the longer term relationship. And defining what's the value SLA almost that you're expecting both from the partner of the vendor and the vendor itself. Vahe: And so it's almost like, you remember when we transition from a world of build revenue and licensing, to now more consumption and usage. It's almost the user and consumption discussion is a forcing function about the customer success, how we align on the same definition of the customer success. And what's the time to value that you committed? What are the key milestones, in full transparency, that you need to bring in? And I think that's where we are now. And because Microsoft, I think overall as a company, have been increasing tremendously the level of trust. From the security standpoint, the compliance components, and so on, and the scalability. Vahe: I think that's the great leverage for us now in terms of the conversation and making sure that the customers are getting the value that we have been selling to them. How we show how much skin in the game we have to make them successful. And then it's a flying wheel. It's almost like the innovation will help you to bring new things, respond, anticipate, take the feedback of the customer to the engineering, develop new stuff quickly to the market. So I think it's what we are heading to now, Steve. And I think from a partner perspective you might even see and feel it, right, more and more. Steve: Oh yeah, I mean I think the sales motion has changed completely. Only a few years ago we go into a customer and try and convince them to replace Salesforce with Dynamics. And they'd say no, and we were done. We'd say okay, well we'll come back in a couple years and ask again. We had nothing else to sell them. And now today, I mean if they have Salesforce, fine that's great, keep Salesforce, let's add some things around it. Salesforce will work with Viva Sales, Salesforce will work with Power Platform. Steve: There's so many doors now, I think, for a seller to be able to get into a customer and solve problems for that customer without having to do the one big yank and replace. Which is very difficult to do, it's difficult to do on opposite as well. I mean once a customer gets a big solution like Salesforce or Dynamics 365 installed, those are very difficult to uproot, it takes a very long time. And you guys have created now, this product mix, where we don't have to uproot something to sell that customer and to get engaged with that customer. We can go all over that business without having to uproot something. And I think that's huge. Vahe: I agree Steve. And I think that it's almost this notion of rip and replace type of strategy, right? In some cases it works because this is what the customer wants. They are fed up about let's say competitive environment that didn't deliver on the expectation. And we should be ready to cope with that and respond, and we have a lot of this. But at the same time as you said, what we call the strategy of having a hub and spoke, let's say, almost environment, gives us for every line of business. That we decided as a company to go and have a significant acceleration of growth and market share, is very much to give that option to say, Hey, you know what, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, you decide to be on that type of environment, who we are to ask you to change? Vahe: If you are happy that's fine. But what we can bring you is almost to enhance what you have with some component that absolutely will be transparently integrated to what you're using. And it's a great circuit, an additional circuit for the partner, it's a great value for the customer. We don't feel harassed to change something because we know the cost of transitioning from one to another one. And then it's up to us to demonstrate the value we can bring and eventually we can take from there to the next level in the future. Steve: It's got to put some pressure on the competitors also. I if think of, I might just use Salesforce because they've always been the big competitor. I'm sure that they were confident sitting there at their large customer when all we had was trying to replace their instance that was going to be difficult to do and then we'd go away and they didn't have to worry about us. Now we're coming in and we're circling around, and we're solving problems in this department, and we're building apps in this department, and we're literally bolting into Salesforce. And one potential outcome is that the customer decides over time that wow, all of this Microsoft stuff that we've brought in works really, really well. Steve: That's gotta put some pressure on the incumbent big application in there that hey, you're surrounded by a bunch of stuff the customer is very happy with, you better make sure they're happy with your stuff and they don't reach that point. Cause like you say, oftentimes when you see those rip and replace, it's because the product, or the company, or something hasn't met the expectation. And to be fair, that could actually happen with any of us, right? It has a lot to do with implementation, design, how thing was put together. Less to do with the application itself, that could happen to any vendor. But certainly raises the bar to some of these competitors when they're surrounded by well performing Microsoft products that are satisfying customers. Would you think? Vahe: Yes. Absolutely. And that's why there's a continuity between what we sell, how we sell, to who we sell, and how we drive the implementation. It's an ongoing wheel that is a very different mindset that we all learn in the transition to the cloud, let's say, environment. But absolutely. I think it's a good forcing function to raise the bar to some degree, raise the bar for the benefit of the customer. You mentioned the competitiveness of what this type of hub and spoke strategy can create. You're right. But in the end, the biggest, let's say winner, will be the customer, right? Which I think is always and should always be the north star for us and our partners. Vahe: And I would say the relevance of the innovation should be in fact the pressure that we put to each other to make sure that say we listen carefully to what the customer is facing as a challenge, but potentially to translate their current challenge into the future challenge, to push them also to think differently. Because I think the notion of rip and replace [inaudible 00:21:06] One of the thing was, I don't know if you remember that the initial issue and worry was that people were saying Oh, we are moving to the cloud, therefore we are transforming. Well it was not that tried and true. People were just keeping the same processes in the cloud and the one that they had on premise. Which was not benefiting at all of the scalability and the agility of the cloud environment. Yeah, you remember that right? Yeah. Steve: They just changed the way they were paying for it. Vahe: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that's what we have seen on this application modernization, on some of the enterprise wide innovation also opportunities that we had discussed, is how much you can really say, in this new world of competitiveness, of un-expected challenges. How you can, let's say, keep your applications fitting always in fact proactively the challenges that you're going to have too. As opposed to keep going with a quite heavy code to maintain, with people who leave that cost you a fortune to maintain. So I think this agility that the power apps, [inaudible 00:22:22] to made, have been bringing I think is the reason why we have seen this huge acceleration of growth, which is today is six, seven times faster than the market growth of local no code. Vahe: So I think it's a great, let's say indication, of what people start to realize. And I think in the conversation that you had with Charles when he was referring to, hey some of the AI capability have been slower to be picked up by the vast majority of customers. And it's true because there's a level of, let's say, can I trust this thing? Am I going to lose completely ground and control of what I'm doing? All these natural thing. I think as we bring more and more, let's say tools, are manageable. The Power Platform environment, or let's say the device sales capability on top of the teams or Salesforce environment. That people will start to test this. Vahe: And I think we're going to be more and more advocate about Hey, what are the benefits of the organization that are using this technology and how we can trust them lean forward. And I think Charles was referring to our digital sellers. Their daily life is very much, let's say, using all these AI lead capabilities in terms of reporting, in terms of let's say incident management, in terms of even coaching for themselves to do a better call next time, is just fascinating to see. Maybe we should even do a kind of, let's say talk on this, once we have a bit more, let's say after the GA, maybe a few months after, we should have, let's say what the key learnings and [inaudible 00:24:00] from a customer standpoint. Steve: Yeah, it always makes a customer confident when they know that the vendor is using the product that they're trying to sell them. It's interesting, everything moving to a subscription has changed kind of the mindset, not just of you guys obviously, where there's no big sale. There's a sale of a big subscription, the revenue of which will come over a long period of time. But the customer has this option every month to say, you know what, I'm not happy, you're not solving my problem. In the old days they were kind of stuck, they bought all this stuff and they had to make it work. Now they don't have to make it work, we have to make it work, we have to keep them happy enough. Steve: We recently launched a professional services on a subscription, which is an interesting model, that I lay awake at night thinking about that same thing. That before a customer would pay you a bunch of money to a bunch of stuff and now they're paying you a little bit of money every month for as long as you keep them happy. And this bar of, I mean we've always wanted to keep customers happy. But it's never had the impact or importance that it does when you're on a subscription with that customer who can just any time say, “I'm not happy, goodbye.” It raises the bar I think for you guys to have to continuously innovate, what do you done for me lately? You got to continuously innovate and bring new things. And you've got more motivation probably than the company's ever had in history because of the subscription model. Do you feel that internally? Vahe: Yes, yes. As I said, it has been a great enabler to raise the bar. And it's almost like you know can have a beautiful slide deck and saying the right things, but the execution doesn't match what you are saying somehow, that you don't walk the talk. I think you could have been in that situation in a kind of on-premise environment. I think the cloud has been a forcing function to say, hey you know what, you can claim you are customer success, or you are customer first, or you are customer obsessed. But the reality is that if you don't deliver the service properly, if you are not as responsive timely, if you're not proactive, customer will say enough is enough, I can stop my subscription. Steve: I have options. Vahe: I have options. So I think it's a good hygiene, how it makes you having an embracing habits, that I would say are the natural thing when you engage with customer. But I think it's almost, let's say, for the one who might have forgotten that basics, it has been a great, let's say, opportunity to bring back the roots of what is it to satisfy a customer, right? And I think that's what the cloud licensing model helped put together. And I think there are still always room for improvement. Vahe: And similarly I would say, what you have seen on the collaborative applications, what we have seen on the low-code, no-code, you are going to see it now, also I would say on the supply chain environment, which is shipper, shipper at stress because of what we have seen on the Covid, but also in fact on the geopolitical aspect and some of the recession discussion. And also, on the overall, what I would say the contact center in our environment at large. How this world is going to change is going to be led a lot by the capability that technology can bring, and the ability to listen carefully to the strategies and the challenges of the corporation that are involved in. So it's quite exciting actually. Steve: I don't get involved a lot with the call center operations. But I picture the old call center is this massive building full of cubicles and people with headphones. And I picture that now that most of those people are probably working remote. A call center now could operate at my desk, just about, and have thousands of people all working from their home. So, that whole industry feels like it's changed significantly. And yes, I'm sure they're starving for the technology that fits the model that they're being pushed to adopt. Vahe: Yeah, yeah absolutely. I mean it's interesting, if you summarize some of the business challenges or the things that are coming from multiple conversation. We had the nuanced [inaudible 00:29:04] a few months back. And so it's almost the first fiscal year where we're going to be able to strategize, operate together as one organization. And it's great because somehow you take their own experience in terms of conversational AI and what they have been leading in for many years. And at the same time you hear both, let's say, the customer feedback when it comes to, as you said, the traditional contact center or call center evolution. How to translate this into a modern service experience, right? Vahe: And how AI can contribute to that on the seamless integrated way. How to think about customer retention in this world where people are a bit more struggling with their bottom line. How to protect the customer privacy as well. Because you talk about voice capability and recording, but how you cope with the privacy and the security during this service journey. So all these are absolutely great opportunities for us to combine what we're hearing, the technology and the acquisition that we did a few months back, to put that into a great component. And I would say the data analytics that the power Platform Power BI gives us on the back end, is going to be a great platform for us again to differentiate from the rest of the world. Steve: Well and it'll also help kind offset the fact that these people are all remote now, right? They used all be sitting in this big room. And people were standing up there looking over a rail at them making sure they were doing what they were doing and available. And you can't lose any of the customer service quality just because you've moved everybody out of the building and nobody can physically see them anymore. AI is the only way to plug that hole really of being able to know what's going on in this organization with all those people remote. In your day-to-day activities, I'm assuming that since you're head of sales that you get engaged with all of the big opportunities that come to Microsoft. And you're in there leading the charge to get them to make a decision for the services. What are the areas that you're seeing among those larger customers that they're really excited about? Is it the low-code stuff, is that very exciting to them? Or are they still wrapping their arms around that? Vahe: No, no. I would say that the notion of, let's say, application modernization, which doesn't mean I do the same thing I was doing before in the cloud. Really thinking about, what do I want to fix? And how much I can include some perspective about what could happen in some, let's say options or scenario? That capability that Power Apps has been giving them. And now we see that the corporations who are the most successful are the one who are almost creating a center of excellence within their own organization, that let's say help the IT to monitor someone, in fact the usage rate. But also to amplify the user experience and to spread it across the organization. And the ability to almost measure the positive impact. Vahe: The second thing I've seen is on the low-code, no-code, is the time to value. It's almost like you can almost now, and when I say “we,” it's almost we with the partners. We can almost say for this type of let's say expectation, or application, or challenge, it will take three month to be ready, not three years, two years. Or we have a heavy development environment. And so this center of excellence, let's say mindset or framework, is a very powerful one. Because it helps to almost create a concentration of hey, what are the most critical things to fix and how long it's going to take? Vahe: And people are almost, let's say very impressed, about how quickly you can have great quality because you bring both the expertise of, as I said, almost the person who is facing the challenge every single day. Being non-technical guy, we have in fact the support of IT. And I think that's the business decision makers along with the IT. I think to me, that's why we have been on this six, seven times faster than the market rate. We have huge ambition there. And be aware that we have also 20 million of users of Power Apps today that came from the city campaigns. So people are actively using it, not yet paying it. So that means that it's great, it's the future almost by, for us to go after. Because people are starting to use in fact at least the basic functions to get adjusted customers to and so on. Vahe: The second thing I would say is that people have realized how easy it is, and recognizing that Teams became a platform close to 300 million users. It started at 25 or 30 million almost pre-pandemic. And so that became, almost as you said, you are at home, or you are wherever you are and that's the interaction that you have with your customers, partners, ecosystem and employees. And so now it's a marginal component to say hey, can I have one tab that is going to do that type of task? My forecasting, my thing. So this is again the connection between what you use every single day at scale, and the marginal cost of bringing a component of Dynamics 365, a component of the application that you create quickly for Power Apps or Power Automate from the process, implementation, and automation. So I think that's what I see the two biggest part of the customer reaction, and I would say feedback for us. And encouragement to be fair, to keep going in that direction. Steve: We've got lots of examples that you guys have got out on the case studies of large companies that have really got in head first. And just thousands of apps in the organization solving thousands of problems. And just excellent, I mean you just have to almost grin when you look and hear about these things. But for every one of those there's still a bunch of them out there where, I don't know, IT maybe is still an obstacle. I mean IT has been, it's interesting because IT's been a friend of Microsoft for a long time because a lot of the products that they have engaged with were Microsoft products, servers, et cetera. They've had to make this transition to cloud, which was scary for them. But they ultimately did it for the most part, not all of them, did it. And now here comes low-code, no-code that's got to scare the bejesus out of a lot of IT folks. And how are you at that company size? Because frankly, we struggle with the same thing in the mid-market. How, at that big company size, do you deal with that occasional obstinance from it? Vahe: Yeah, it's a great point. You're right. I think Microsoft in general, I don't want to generalize, but in general have been for the last four years, very, very close to the IT decision makers. And rightfully so, because there were so many and still so many things to achieve in partnership with the IT and CIO environment. At the same time, when it comes to business applications or business process, I would say that you need to find the balance between the business decision makers, who are the ultimate decision makers when it comes to what is going to affect their business, or the way they work from a Salesforce perspective, or the way the marketing leaders wants to automate some of the processes that they believe is important. Vahe: And so that we probably are in a unique business case at Microsoft, where you have to talk to both. And the learning is that in the very beginning where you were only talking to IT, for example in the low-code, no-code, you could have signed a deal with IT, but then you know almost had to start to sell it again internally. Because you had to knock to all the doors of the business decision makers to say, Hey, do you know that you have this thing in your corporation, and anyway this is the thing that you can do, do you mind starting over there? Vahe: And so that was basically almost a waste of cycle. And so we said we have to do these two things together. We need to be able to articulate what is the value of low-code, no-code, maybe in FSI, financial service, or manufacturing, or in retail. And of course there's a strong common denominator. But there are some specifics that may resonate more for some industries more than others, and therefore the decision makers. And we have seen that when we do these things well together in parallel, when you sign the contract, or the deal, or the agreement, the time to move to usage or the business case implementation is much faster. Basically you bring more value both to IT and the business, and for Microsoft. And so I think that's the piece where I think it evolved on low-code, no-code, from being afraid in the beginning or skeptical, to a place where they are increasingly embracing this center of excellence environment. Where they own it as [inaudible 00:38:55]. It is connected to the business decision makers, therefore it brings value. Vahe: And so IT brings value to the business decisions or the business unit and the line of business. And then what was missing so far was, how can we give them the monitoring environment, almost the control board to manage the budget, to manage let's say, or having warning to say, hey, business A, you know are over consuming. Should we lower the investment or should we accelerate because of what you are doing? So I think that the kind of tools that we are bringing now to the IT, so that they are absolutely part of the success of the company and they are connected to the business decision makers. I think that's the best way for us to demonstrate value and keep it completely aligned with the business directions. Steve: And the opposite would be true also if you're going in trying to sell the line of business owner without talking to IT. And you convince the, now you got to go sell IT. So it's two cycles. Vahe: Absolutely. Steve: You have to somehow get them both in the same room and do it at once. So we've got so many products coming, we've got so many products here. And if you imagine a generic customer of a large size that you're going to be going to talk to next week about all the Microsoft has to offer. What are a couple of the key products that you're going to want to make sure you land in their head, that you feel across all companies are extremely high value or differentiators? The thing you don't want to walk out of that room without mentioning? Vahe: Yeah, I would say, and somehow you touch on it Steve, earlier on. As part of the transition that we are driving, one of the thing is also to simplify. To simplify the portfolio, to simplify the go-to market, to simplify the strategy. We discussed the hub and spoke, let's say strategy. And so I would say at the very beginning, what we said is that instead of saying, hey, there's a proliferation of products. And every year we add more and more and more. And at some point you confuse your own sellers, you confuse the customer, you confuse the product, it's super tough to digest everything, and even understanding what's the hierarchy across all these things? Steve: For licensing Vahe: And licensing on top all this complexity, right? I mean we have gone through it, and it's still not perfect. But at the same time I think what we said is that there are the categories, or the line of business, that we want to go in. We want to have a fair shot to take a leadership position in the next let's say years. And what it takes to get to that point, from an innovation perspective, from a go-to market perspective, from a part program perspective, from a sales and seller investment capacity perspective. And so on. And so I would say that's more the starting point Steve, where we say we define five categories, a fine line of business, where we believe we have a shot to become a leader. And these categories we need to be able to be clear on where the value that we bring. Vahe: For example, if you take the customer experience, let's say OLAP, which is more the connected sales and marketing, if I may summarize at the high level. It's going to be all the conversation about the collaborative apps, the customer experience transformation. You have already Teams for the vast batch of you, hey that's what you want to achieve. The Dynamic 65 sales is going to give you that capability, or the LinkedIn Sales Navigator on top of it is going to give you that type of insight. You know are not touching about AI, you think about almost sales automation, Salesforce automation. Let's show you how the AI infused capability within Dynamics 365 sales and marketing, give you that asset absolutely naturally integrated on your team's environment. Vahe: And same thing on Viva Sales, the sales productivity, we can measure it the way you want, and you're on control of that. And by the way, if it works on the environment that you are working, could be Microsoft, could not be as we discussed, that's more the conversation that we want to have. And of course on the back end you are going to have Dynamics 365 sales, and marketing, and Viva sales, most of the time for that line of business. If you think about let's say low-code no-code, I would say you will have probably three type of conversations. You know will have a conversation about hey, you're a large enterprise, multi-deals coverage. And basically the benefit of having an enterprise wide, let's say engagement, what does it mean? What's the framework for you to make the most of it? And how we commit with our partners to deliver you the value. Vahe: And so you can commit on five years maybe with Microsoft and how much value we can bring already to you. Or it's purely an application modernization. You move to a hyper-scale environment, but you have all these old fashioned applications. So basically, you are a platform that is modern but all your application are still old fashioned. How low-code, no-code is going to help you to accelerate that transition. And let's start with one company, one app. Pick one and let's do it right, and then replicate from there. And then potentially, in fact, the last one which I think is going to be the biggest one potentially, is the business process automation. Think about the forecasting process. I have to say that when I was running my business in Western Europe, we have been doing this traditional forecasting process, which in every company when we talk with business leaders or CFOs, that's the same thing. You ask the forecast at the lowest level of the organization, then the manager of that organization, do a judgment. That judgment moves to the next level of management. The management do another judgment. Vahe: So all the way up to the top level, who does a judgment anyway on top of it. Or they find, depending on who is doing the forecast, almost let's say a coefficient of let's say correction based on who is doing the forecast. When you start to do that thing into AI and you say what, we know the behavior of people [inaudible 00:45:26] potentially, you come after 18 months or one year to a trend of forecast that is so close to in fact what you were getting before. That you say how many hours, thousands and thousands of hours of productivity saving I'm going to have just because of this AI forecasting capability? That's the kind of example of it, for say an application for low-code, no-code, that is just checking in fact the behavior or the intelligence so far to help you to drive your business. Vahe: And so we have been running that internally as well and it's quite impressive. And so that's the kind of conversation that you want to have both with the IT, but you see this perfect example of hey, having that conversation with the CFO, or the sales leader, is a great one. Because it's a marginal cost again, to what you are using already. And the same thing happened on finance, and supply chain, and service when it comes to, all right so where you, what are you using? Are you still on-prem? The vast majority of ERP, the vast majority of contact center and call center are still on-prem. So you can think about hey, what does it take to move to a cloud and more agile environment? What are the best that you want to do? Which is the strategic partner or vendor, who are going to take this? Because you're not going to change this environment every two years. It's a 5 year, 10 year bets, right? Steve: The marriage. Vahe: It's a marriage. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean does it help Steve? Steve: Yeah. And I think interesting, one of the things I think about AI in forecasting, is it doesn't have any personal bias. And obviously in larger companies I'm sure there's a lot of checking and cross checking. In the middle market it's a bunch of optimistic sales people coming up with optimistic projections that have no basis in history or anything else that's going on, of what's going on. And I've been in meetings where we've been displaying some AI facts, or figures, or forecasts, or projections. And listen to senior people just adamantly disagree. That number is absolutely not correct. And I've had them tell me I've been doing this for 30 years, I know, I know. And then here comes next month and guess what was right? The AI model was right and the guy who's been doing it for 30 years is making up some excuses. Steve: So I think that the world right now is fraught with bad projections on everything. Cost projections, sales projections, there's too much personal bias involved in the process of creating those things. And as leadership of a company, you're relying on these things. They're going to drive you right over a cliff potentially, if you're not careful, if you don't have good information, if you can't get the bias out of it. And I think that's one of the big things that AI brings that I've found resonates with leadership sometimes, is kind of remove all the bias. I mean it's just removing all the bias. You don't want to hear smoke, you know want to hear reality so you can act accordingly. You're surrounded by a bunch of people who want to make you feel good, but AI doesn't care how you feel. It's going to tell you the truth, doesn't care if you get mad. Vahe: Steve also, it's interesting because sometime, you point to this that sometime when you are too early on the innovation, some people might be again scared or skeptical as we said. But I remember we were looking at let's say some numbers when it comes to, are we operating consistency, for example, in the world? Or there are some that say practices that are bringing more growth or more relevant than other places. And so, one thing was interesting was in the services line of business or category, you think of case management. And it's one of the opportunities. And you might say well case management is not super innovative. Well, it's something that is quite well known. But case management was one of the fastest growth in majors. And that was because it was responding to the fact that vast majority of the case management processes are still on-prem today. Vahe: And the one we're moving to the cloud, especially in public sector, to make sure that the queuing system is working, you have a full up, let's say email to tell you and tracing where you are on the request that you put in place. All these things we believe is generic everywhere, but it's not, it's by far not. And across mid-market, and large corporation, and private sector, and public sector. So it's not always innovation that drives in fact the next generation of work. It's also in fact the basics that are not fulfilled today and that create a bad customer experience. And that's interesting, in a way, to keep very humble about let's say what we still have on our plate. Steve: I can remember not that long ago, when you talk about customer service, the goal of many companies was to provide as bad as service as possible so they didn't have to do it. I mean it was a cost center for them. They hadn't come to the realization yet, this is decades, but hadn't come to realization yet that customer service is what drives future revenue. They just looked at as a cost center and figured the worst it is, the less people will use it and it'll cost us less, so that mindset has changed. You talk about fears that people have of technology. And so a lot of this is people self preservation fears. They see something coming, we saw it even in the partner channel, uh-oh here comes low-code, no-code, customers are going to be doing all the work themselves, they're not going to need us partners anymore. And it's like this first reaction that people have about anything new, is how's that going to affect me? And generally they're going to assume negatively. Steve: Our business is busier than we've ever been as a result of low-code. So it's actually been the opposite. But partners, and just like people, you know need to be prepared to pivot into that wind. If you're just going to stand there with your arms crossed and not move, yeah low-code's going to hurt you. You know need to lean into that. And the same thing with individuals that are looking at new technology. It's coming and you can either stand there with your arms crossed and let it knock you down, which is a foregone conclusion. Or you can bend with it. And to be honest, the younger folks are more flexible than us older folks. So they're not having any trouble with this technology at all. We recently signed a new customer, it's all young people and man they just get it. I mean there's no explaining anything. They understand every single thing you're talking about, why and what. And I mean they're born with a cell phone in their hand. None of this is foreign, but we still got to get rid of all of us old guys. Vahe: I agree, I agree. And time flies. And it's almost like, often, let's say, you need read to embrace that. Always a zero regret strategy in this type of, let's say, evolving environment. Anything that you postpone, to some degree, is almost let say a loss. And that has been proven in the technology run. And when I look at, we always have to be humble. It's a highly competitive market, and people are smart, and that's great. Cause as we discussed, it's all good for the customer. But I think that when I look back to the commitment of the company, the investment that we put in place last year with the support of Satya, Amy Hood, [inaudible 00:53:27]. With more than 1000 sellers injected in the marketplace, we keep going on the investment on the local no-code, even more so to drive the acceleration of the growth in addition to the Dynamic 365. Vahe: When I look at every category that we are in now, and I think it's a good confidence level that we on the path here. That first of all, we are between two times and three times the growth of the market for each of these category, that's a good indication. And I think that also raise the confidence level of the product sellers at Microsoft. To bring these different components together and add more value to the customer. So look, it's a journey Steve, and it's quite exciting to be on this. And people like yourself because we have been there also for a long time, and you know what it takes to transition. And you never fail, you learn always. And everything that you learn and that works, it's almost to think how we can scale and bring that to the mass as quick as we can so that people can benefit from it. Steve: Well success breeds success. And you know guys have got it going right now. I've taken up enough of your time. Anything that you want to get out there that I didn't ask or we didn't talk about? Vahe: No, I think, Steve, you did a good overview of let's say where we are, how we think. Again, I think that the simplification, the portfolio, the much more focused approach, the category, and more consistent execution on the go-to market is really the next level for us. And the hub and spoke strategy across all these categories gives much more room to increase the business opportunity for us and the partners. Steve: Yep, I think so, I think so. All right, listen, it was great talking to you, I'm glad you made the time. And I definitely hope to able to talk to you again in the future, get something new to talk about. Any time you want to reach out, and jump on, and talk about some stuff, let me know. We're happy to get you on. Vahe: We are all, let's say reading all these, let's say headlines on the recession. In a few months from now, between now and then of calendar year, we're to see a bit more clarity on how the planning is happening for the mid-market, large corporation, how the public sector is evolving in this dimension. And also, we'll have a few, let's say product launched that we talked about, Viva Sales, any learning from that, let's say maybe the first two, three months, would be interesting to see how people react. And maybe that could be a great opportunity for us to chat. Also what's going on the [inaudible 00:56:17] Steve: Yeah, yeah. Vahe: Plenty of things to talk, I guess. Steve: Sounds good. All right, well hey, thanks again for your time. Vahe: Thank you. Take care Steve, have a great day.
The delivery of sales-related technology solutions never stops evolving, and our guest, Chuck Ingram of CongruentX, believes advances in conversation intelligence are poised to become a critical piece of the puzzle for sellers. One of the things that makes conversation intelligence so interesting, Chuck explains, is how quickly the segment has emerged and impacted organizations, with specialist vendors taking market share while the CRM behemoths like Microsoft also step up their offerings. Chuck explains why his team sees promise across the conversation intelligence landscape, including with Viva Sales, Gong, and in Microsoft's vision around applying Nuance's tools in contact centers and beyond. Momentum in this area has also influenced how CongruentX delivers its services, including an evolving subscription model and new thinking on relationship management thanks to the addition of CRM thought leader JC Quintana. Show Notes: 1:30 - What the CongruentX team is working with clients on today, including refining their subscription model 3:45 - The evolution of service delivery in the Microsoft channel with better monitoring of key metrics and outcomes 6:45 - What excites Chuck about conversation intelligence tech in sales scenarios, both from Microsoft and other vendors 10:00 - How buyers should evaluate their technology options for conversation intelligence 13:00 - The importance of bringing JC Quintana to the CongruentX team and the influence of his expertise in building better relationships 15:45 - How will Viva Sales fit into the conversation intelligence landscape 18:30 - Microsoft's efforts to integrate Nuance into CRM scenarios 21:00 - CongruentX's framework on getting started with conversation intelligence More from CongruentX: CongruentX – https://congruentx.com/ Dialogue Prime for Viva Sales - https://resources.congruentx.com/dialogueprimeforvivasales What DialoguePrime for Viva Sales Does: Collect unstructured data such as emails and conversations via Microsoft Viva Sales. Identify relationship elements of your conversations that need attention, no matter the channel you use to interact with them. Conversational analysis identifies keywords that represent potential relationship deterioration that often leads to customer churn. Evaluate the sentiment of customer conversations and suggest next action to manage customer expectations and build stronger relationships.
In this week's episode we deep-dive into Viva - with the latest Engage app, Goals becoming GA and Viva Sales reaching preview. What can they do? What are the challenges in rolling them out and who are they for? Plus, PowerApps gets new collaboration controls to make Teams and Microsoft 365-integrated apps easier to make. And - we briefly explore ESports with Excel on ESPN and ask.. why...
Out of an 8-hour day, how many hours are you dedicating to your core responsibilities? You might be thinking, “Well, that's a silly question. I spend all 8 hours of my day on my core responsibilities”. If that's the case, then that's amazing...And you're more productive than the average seller. According to research, sellers only spend 1/3 of their day actually selling. The remainder of that time is spent on administrative and organizational tasks. In today's fast-moving market driven by high expectations of a tailored and elevated customer experience, a majority of time cannot be spent on non-selling tasks. Well, what if there was a tool that could improve productivity intelligently? Enter Viva Sales; a new Microsoft solution aimed to empower sellers and drive a better customer experience. Our Viva Sales expert, Renato Leite, introduces us to Viva Sales on today's episode. Episode Topics: What is Viva Sales? How does Viva Sales fit into the rest of the Dynamics 365 Platform? What are use cases for Viva Sales? How can customers get their hands on it? Useful Resources: Introduction to Viva Sales How to install Viva Sales Viva Sales + Teams About Renato Leite:Dynamics 365 Sales Growth Product Manager at Microsoft with more than 20 years of experience with Dynamics and CRM solutions for different markets and industries. Renato is focused on helping customers and partners realize the business values and benefits of Dynamics 365 and Viva Sales and learn from their feedback to help improve Dynamics solutions. Renato is an engineer with an MBA and a Master's in AI, based out of Orlando, FL. Connect with Renato Leite here – Renato Leite | LinkedIn We'd love to hear from you: Don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, comments, suggestions or feedback! We'd love to hear from you. Send your hosts an email at digestibledynamics@microsoft.com Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hans Brender joins us to talk about the latest news just ahead of Microsoft Inspire. We cover:Viva Sales and how it changes the outlook for Viva (pun slightly intended)How to make beautiful Power Apps, inspired by the awesome Kristine KolodziejskiWhy you should upgrade your SharePoint Framework solutions with CLI for Microsoft 365Thinking about questions to ask at the upcoming Microsoft Search AMA Microsoft's Viva Sales: A new companion app that works with many CRM systems (not only Microsoft's) | ZDNetViva Sales and what it means for the future of Viva (mcd79.com)CLI for Microsoft 365 v5.4 (pnp.github.io) https://www.kristinekolodziejski.com/Dribbble - Discover the World's Top Designers & Creative Professionalspowerapps-samples/samples/fluentui-for-teams-theme at main · pnp/powerapps-samples · GitHubHow to enhance maker experience with a custom theme for Teams apps (m365princess.com)Microsoft Search, Ask Us Anything - Microsoft Tech Community Upcoming eventsMicrosoft Inspire July 19/20 https://inspire.microsoft.com/AMS Kinshasha August 20th Hear Hans speak on OneDrive Tips and TricksRegister using Microsoft FormsCollab Days Netherlands - Sep 10th 2022 CollabDays Netherlands 2022 |Power Platform Conference Sep 20-22 https://powerplatformconf.com/Techorama Netherlands October 11 - 12 Home | TechoramaCollab Days Belgium - Oct 15th CollabDays Belgium 2022 | CollabdaysSouth Coast Summit 14/15th October South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology ConferenceEuropean SharePoint Office 365 and Azure Conference 28 Nov - 1 Dec European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
The Microsoft Business Applications product line's new look is starting to come into focus under the leadership of CVP Charles Lamanna. In a recent conversation with Microsoft MVP Steve Mordue, Lamanna discussed some of his team's recent work, its successes, and future challenges. Lamanna's upward rise at Microsoft started in the Power Platform team, but he now represents the Dynamics 365 lineup, too. Mordue discusses his impressions after talking with Lamanna this time (it was the fourth interview they've done over the years) and how both Microsoft's product and channel plans have impacted the community, including Mordue's own business decisions related to RapidStart CRM and Forceworks. Show Notes: 6:30 - Could Power Platform really help upsell Dynamics 365 apps? 12:30 - Viva Sales and the Biz Apps R&D team's involvement 15:30 - Why enthusiasm from Charles Lamanna is likely to be followed by real progress 20:00 - Some Nuance R&D is now under the Biz Apps umbrella 22:45 - Microsoft's much improved acquisition strategy for business apps 25:30 - Reviewing the D365 product management leaders 29:00 - Are Steve's new clients starting with an interest in an app or in the platform? 31:30 - Adapting services offerings for low code development 38:15 - Changing customer perceptions on the idea of continuous development vs discrete start and end dates 40:00 - Making sense of the channel outlook from Partner Economics as it relates to Power Platform opportunities 44:00 - Differences in the new generation of buyers 45:30 - Why Steve's firm transitioned to offering a free app on Power Platform with a subscription services model 49:45 - How will partners prove their worth with a new generation of customers? 52:00 - Thinking about the future of the partner business model
I have had my head down working on some big things since RapidStart CRM growth exploded, and it has been a while since you heard from me. Well, I'm getting back to it with a follow-up chat with Charles Lamanna who recently took over for James Phillips as head of Business Applications for Microsoft. This was my fourth chat with Charles, and it was interesting to back listen to them in order. It really gives you a sense of where Microsoft has come. I managed to catch him in his office having just wrapped up their year-end. Enjoy! If you want to listen to my chats with Charles in order, The first one was October of 2018, the second one was September of 2019, the third one was March of 2020. Transcript Below: Steve: Welcome to the Steve Has a Chat Podcast. Where I call someone out of the blue with a record button on, and hope to have an unscripted conversation about Microsoft business applications. Let's see how it goes. Enjoy. Charles: Hey, this is Charles Lamanna. Steve: Charles. Steve Mordue. How are you doing? Charles: Good. Great to hear from you, Steve. It's been a long time. Steve: It has been a while. Have you got some time for a chat? Charles: For you, anytime. Steve: I appreciate it. Well, I guess the big news for you obviously is putting on the big boy hat, huh? Charles: Yes. I moved up an extra floor in the Advanta building in the Microsoft Campus. Steve: Oh did you? Charles: No, I'm just kidding. But metaphorically speaking at least. Because for folks that don't know, James Phillips leaving in March of this year, I kinda stepped in across all aspects of business applications of Microsoft. And, over the last four years, I've gotten to know the place, know the people, know the business and I'm super excited about the opportunity. And I think the future has never been brighter for business at Microsoft. Steve: Well, I never got the feeling that James held you back, or any of the folks on your team back, but he certainly, we have to give him a lot of credit for really taking this thing to a whole nother level. You weren't here before, I don't think, at least with the business apps, but it was really run by morons before he took over. And he completely turned that thing around and turned it in a whole nother business. And now with you taking over, I'm expecting that to continue. I don't know if there's been some things that have been in your bag that you've wanted to do that James was keeping you from, that you're going to pull out, or if you're just going to continue the path, or what's your thinking now that you've got that gavel? Charles: So definitely not held back. I would say I was super fortunate I worked for James for, I think seven, eight years in total. So I was able to learn a bunch and he was without a doubt, the most supportive manager I've ever had in my career, in terms of both enabling and clearing paths for what we wanted to do from a vision and dreaming perspective. And if it weren't for his support, things like Power Apps would have never gotten off the ground. So, definitely. And I think as we go to the future, we have this amazing foundation. I mean, BizApps is a major and key component and pillar of the Microsoft Cloud. Charles: 10 years ago, you probably would've thought that impossible. Right. To have Dynamics and Power Platform alongside Azure and Office. Now that we're here, let's go take it to the next level. And that's the push, and it's continuing a lot of the great innovation we've already done from a data-first, AI-first approach. Kind of sprinkling in some more collaboration with teams, and really revisiting the end-user experience, the platform, to go increasingly modernize and scale it and make sure that all our components from CRM, to ERP, to Power Platform work great together. Steve: I don't think it could have achieved that status with Dynamics 365 alone. It really took the Power Platform coming into being, I think, to give it the breadth that it needed to be able to get there. With Dynamics 365, we didn't have apps for users to do small things, there was no way it was going to permeate an organization the way the Power Apps do. Charles: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I say two things are interesting. The first is, Power Platform has allowed us to help more users and more customers with business process transformation, which is what BizApps are all about. Right? Steve: Yeah. Charles: How do you make your sales processes better, your financial processes better, and Power Platform really turbocharged that. And that earned us credibility in a lot of those departments and with a lot of those users, and we have some great data about every user who adopts Power Platform is significantly more likely to adopt Dynamics within the next year or two. So we see that symbiosis working in a way which is incredibly customer-friendly, and it helps our business. Second thing is Power Platform has even helped us reimagine parts of the Dynamics apps themselves. And I think probably two of the best examples are the connectors, which are key to the Power Platform. Charles: You see the connectors starting to show up inside all these Dynamics apps, like Customer Insights uses Power Query for data ingestion, or Viva Sales even connects to Salesforce. So there's this amazing interoperability that we have, and also enabling the end-user. Our team built Viva Sales, even though it's not in the Dynamics or Power Platform brand. But it's this idea of having an integrated experience in Office for sellers, built on connectors and built on the Office integration. So it's changed the way you think about some products, and it's also helped us go expand our user base. Steve: Yeah. I saw I was on a PGI call with that yesterday. Very, very cool stuff. At the last PAC meeting, I was supposed to be on the Viva Sales round table, but I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds boring. I think I'm going to go to this one." And I really, I went to the wrong one, I missed a good one. But you know where I am, right? I'm on the platform. Charles: Yep. Steve: And we're exploding. Our app is continuing to grow on the platform as a low-cost simpler alternative to Dynamics 365 for companies that aren't ready for that. And I'm always bugging you about, "Hey, that cool new feature you guys got in the first-party. When are we going to get that at the platform level? So ISVs, and people that are just building their own stuff from scratch, could take advantage of some of the syncs." We got the Outlook app a while ago, we've been getting some things. And when I saw Viva Sales, that was probably my only disappointment was that, at least as I understand it, it's hardwired to Dynamics or hardwired to Salesforce. And I get that trying to play those two against each other, but it's leaving guys like me out in the cold. Charles: Well, I'd say for Viva Sales, the intent is to support any CRM, and I really do mean that generally. And even customers, because there are customers out there that we talked to today who have homegrown CRMs, they coded 15 years ago. They have a whole dev team still working on it. The idea is to support interoperability with your account records, your lead records, your opportunity records, standard pipeline data. And to do that in a way which works through the connector. So today it'll earn V1, it'll only be Dynamics in Salesforce, but the intent is to make that be a general purpose adapter. And you could have a RapidStart CRM connector, which shows up and supports the contacts the way we want, and it would be connectable. That's not going to happen in the next three months, but that's the ambition. Steve: I can call you in four. Charles: I go down and said... What was that, in four Months? Steve: I can call you in four months. Charles: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I might not pick up the phone then in four months, no I'm just kidding. Because even talking about, if people are even on Seibal. We should be able to support them with their sales. Because the idea is, you shouldn't have to transform the seller experience at the same pace that you transform your core CRM, your core system of record, and that's just the way the world's moving. Steve: Well, I love the idea that one of the challenges that CRM has always had, of course, is user adoption. It's one more place they need to go to do something. Outlook app helped with that, getting data into CRM without them having to actually go to it. It seems like yet another way for people to engage with their CRM without actually realizing they're engaging with their CRM. Charles: Exactly. Yeah. It's almost like ambient... Yeah for sure. Sorry. Yeah. I say it's almost like ambient CRM basically. How do you make it so that, instead of the user goes to your CRM, the CRM goes to the user where they are. And the outlook app was the beginnings of that. Some of the Team's integrations we've done are the beginnings of that. And that Viva Sales and that whole Viva idea is how do you elevate it? So anywhere you go, your CRM data is accessible without you having to go to a different user interface. Steve: Very cool. Very cool. So I ask you every time we get on a call about exciting features that are coming up. And in particular, maybe even some features that have launched, that didn't take off the way you thought they would and people are just missing something. We have this problem with our app sometimes, people don't understand and so they don't move forward, and it would be perfect for them. And I'm sure there's lots of features and capabilities that you guys broke a sweat building, and know in your heart, this would be awesome, but people don't seem to be getting that. What's a good example of one of those? Charles: I'd say a product which we've had a capability, where we've had a lot of customer usage from a small number of customers, but very deeply and with huge impact, and we wish were with more customers, is probably Conversation Intelligence. I'm not sure if you've seen that around the Sales app, and where that actually will sit in inside of say a phone call or a meeting and help you generate action items, and summaries, and coaching, and help you understand sentiment, and listening and talk ratio. We've used that internally at Microsoft with great success. So our digital sales reps and the folks who work our phones, they are diehard fans. We have this amazing video we released a couple months ago where we actually went out and interviewed these digital sales reps and their managers, and they just were going on and on about how great it is. Charles: And that's rare where you hear that about a piece of technology for a seller. And we have a few other external customers that have gone through that same journey, where they have a thousand digital reps, 2000 digital reps using this and just in love with it. But it's not as pervasive as we thought it would be at this point. And it's one of those things where, it's a product discovery, and easing people into the capability, because then you got to go out of your way to enable it and configure it. So we're doing work now to simplify it, and make it more accessible to more users. And we're doing that partly through Viva Sales, like conversation intelligence, the major capability of Viva Sales. Charles: And the second thing is also, there's even some culture aspects to it. Because if you use it, it's generating transcripts and recordings of a call, and not everyone's necessarily super comfortable with that. So we're even working about how do you enable more features without having to record the call, and how do you enable capabilities without having to get a transcript? Or how do you make it more natural to say, "Hey, I have a sales co-pilot thing. Are you okay if I enable it?" So there's a lot of interesting things, it's never just a technology problem. It's also a discovery and a, I'd say, change culture management problem. Steve: Yeah. I think that's been the challenge with anything AI really. A lot of people, it seem to think it might be a little too futuristic. They look at the benefit and think that's really cool, but they have no idea how to get it. And AI just in general, doesn't feel that approachable to people, even though in certain cases, it's extremely approachable. You don't have to do anything, it's approaching you. So it's a learning curve, you got to wait until my generation dies off and then you guys will see. Charles: I don't have as myopic of you, as you Steve. But I would say that, the big thing that we have to do is, there's been this evolution of AI where the AI is going to be something that automates away what humans do. And what we've realized is, AI is not even remotely close to being able to do that. But what AI can do, is it can turbocharge the people that use it. And so what we're trying to do is, how do we go expose these AI capabilities in a way where you or anyone else who uses them feels so much more productive. And just like when you first got the ability to use PC or a spreadsheet, you're like, "How did I exist before?" We're hoping we'll get to the point where, once you start using some of these AI assistive capabilities, like we've done in Conversation Intelligence, you'll be like, "How did I ever do a customer call before? And I had to take notes on paper while listening as opposed to having the AI take notes for me?" Yeah, exactly. Steve: I'm terrible about that. I'll be chicken scratching over here while I'm talking to people, and then we get off the phone I look at and I can't understand a word I wrote. Charles: Yeah. I like post-it notes next to my desk where I'm always writing stuff down. Steve: Yeah. So what else cool's coming on the horizon that we should be... That sounds like the Conversational Intelligence has been around. Sounds like Viva Sales is going to really bring that to the masses, so that one's on a path. What are some other new things that we should pay attention to that you're able to talk about? Charles: Yeah. Another one of my favorite things, which we've started to reveal some capabilities going back to last Ignite, so November of 2021. And we have some big announcements planned for the second half of 2022, is the new Contact Center related capabilities inside of Dynamics Customer Service. We have Omnichannel, we announced integrated voice, the Nuance acquisition closed, and the Nuance contact center AI team joined my group to align with customer service and contact center. So there's a lot of really exciting innovation happening there. And I'm really excited about the potential to make it super easy to get a comprehensive customer engagement story, without having to wire up eight different pieces of technology and do a ton of different complex integrations. So that's a place where there's a lot of innovation, there's new capabilities, Omnichannel, Power Virtual Agent, even the same type of conversation intelligence applied to support cases, Nuance for their Gatekeeper, which is identity and authentication verification based on voice and biometrics. Charles: There's a lot of cool stuff in that space. And that's one of the places where so many of the customers we work with are trying to improve the customer experience, and to go reduce costs. So I say that's a place where we've had a lot of exciting announcements over the last six to nine months, and we have a whole bunch more planned for the next six to nine months. So I say, stay tuned. And I won't say more than that to avoid getting in trouble by leaking information. But I just say, that's a place to really pay close attention. Steve: Who knew call centers could be cool? Charles: Yeah, exactly. Who would have thought that I'd be talking about contact centers, and how it's the next generation or next frontier of AI applications in 2022. Steve: Oh, well. Well I do have to thank you guys for the low-code advances you've continued to make in that platform. It actually allowed us to launch a, I think we're the first ones to try this, a new Service as a Subscription. Which includes awesome includes deployment, customization, training, everything except development code, which as you know today in so many of these projects, there's so little, if any of that. Charles: Yeah. Steve: Just a few years ago, if you tried to offer something like this, it really would be little more than a support agreement. But now, we're deploying, we're building, we're customizing, we're building entire things for customers all on a monthly subscription. It's an interesting concept, and hopefully I don't go broke, but... Charles: But you know what, it's fascinating. I literally was talking about this with the Power Platform team this morning. About a future where we'll have more partners who are able to sell a comprehensive service agreement, which includes the cloud hosting licenses, but also some incremental custom development and also ongoing maintenance and support. And it'll be almost this whole new industry, which will push a lot of innovation to the edges of the ecosystem, right? Steve: Yep. Charles: Not built by Microsoft, built by partners who really understand particular regions, particular industries, or particular segments. Like y'all are targeting a space where we're not trying to go take Dynamics, CRM, and go bring it down there. You can go build a world-class experience on top of our platform and provide a very much all-in-one, which exactly serves the needs of that audience and that market. And we can stay focused on building the super horizontal platform, which has great performance, great usability, incredible power, those types of things. Steve: Yeah, it sounds great. I'm glad that we had the same idea you guys did. I'll let you know, in a few months, if it was a smart one. Time will tell. Charles: Yes. Yeah. Steve: So, how are the rest of the team doing? It seems like some folks have moved around a little bit in the org, who's moved where? Charles: Yeah. So one of the big things we've been really focused on the engineering side, for the engineering organization, is bringing together strength from a product perspective that target the same type of user. And for example, we have a new customer experience platform team underneath Lori Lamkin, who leads all of our Dynamic Sales apps. So the Core Sales and Viva Sales, as well as commerce, as well as marketing, as well as customer insights. And it's very much focused on revenue generation, customer journeys, customer experiences. And what's great is by bringing those assets together, we have a great answer for B2B customers, as well as B2C. Like if you want to have self service, no touch eCommerce experience with lightweight telesales, you can do that all with those sets of applications. If you want to do a high relationship, high touch B2B sales process, you can do all of that. You're not going to use commerce, but you're probably going to use customer insights and sales, and maybe a little bit of account-based marketing. So we brought together these things, which are solving similar problems under a single leader. And that way the engineering teams can go back and forth between these different places to finish out full end-to-end customer journeys. And so that's a big area that we've spent a lot of time on, and that's a place where it's really the biggest and fastest growing category for us in the Dynamics 365 application portfolio. So that's one interesting example. Jeff Comstock, folks may know him. He's been around Dynamics 365 for a while. He continues customer service, he leads omnichannel, he's done some of this great expansion around the contact center for us. Ray Smith leads our supply chain team. So that includes things like more supply chain. Steve: So Ray moved? Charles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He by way of acquisition to SAP then moved. He worked in Dynamic Sales for a bit, where people may have known him. And now the supply chain, and really helping us be this new data driven, AI powered, supply chain story for core supply chain execution. Then we also had some exciting announcements around process advisor and the minor acquisition to help turbocharge that. Or Georg Glantschnig who leads our finance room of the house. And basically we call the room of the house, is the collection of products which focus on serving the CFO and the finance department. And that includes the Suplari acquisition, which we had done a couple years ago, as well as the Core Dynamics, 365 finance, HR, and project operations products. Charles: So you can see how we started to build these critical paths around particular departments and particular lines of businesses with our products. And in addition to that, we also of course have Power Platform to support all of it. So it's amazing to see these things come together and converge. And we've been on this incredible run of innovation around Dynamics. I was counting it earlier this year, 29 different products in Dynamics, and really coalesced around these specific areas where we have a lot of energy, and also very well understood. I'd say synergies between the products that we have. So I'd say exciting times. Very exciting times. Steve: Customers are starting to understand it better also. Business Applications was the same thing for a long time. Then it spent the last five years reinventing itself every month, and new things exploding out of Advanta. And I think a lot of customers were having trouble just keeping up with... It's like little whackamole for them. And it takes a little time for customers to absorb what's happening, and what it's for, or what it does, and then to adopt it. And we're seeing that now. We used to have to go out and promote Power Apps to people who didn't understand what this was, or why it was. And now it's the opposite. They always come to us, looking for Power Apps, looking at those sorts of things. So that understanding seems to have finally permeated down to the customer level. But boy, it took a while. Charles: Yeah. It warms my heart. And I would say one of my favorite books is by Jim Collins, 'Good to great.' I always recommend it to folks on my team to read it. And he talks about this idea of the flywheel. It takes time to get a flywheel spinning, for the first period of time it looks like it's barely moving, but then eventually it's going super fast and it's just a blur. And you need to be consistent, and convicted, and believe in the strategy and the approach. And what's amazing about BizApps is for the last four years, we've been on the same mission, the same vision, the same ambition. And we just spend all the folks in advance at turning that flywheel, turning that flywheel. And it's started to reach that blur phase where it's spinning so fast, you can't even see it. Charles: And this, this all started years and years ago with a ton of work, but we're really at that magical moment where customers know what Power Platform is. Customers know that Microsoft gets customer experience and customer engagement. They know that Microsoft can help them optimize their supply chain. And what the good news is once that thing is going, it really builds upon itself, and I think it'll only continue that momentum further. And my favorite story is, I used to always do these executive briefings at Microsoft where we have executives come in from our customers to Redmond and we have a briefing center. It's very nice. And I would always say, let me talk about Power Apps and low-code. Charles: And everybody gives me a blank stare like, "What the heck is Power Apps? What the heck is low-code?" I go in those meetings now, and people know what Power Apps is, and they know the low-code strategy. And the only question is, "how?". Not, "should I?" Or "if?" "How do I do it with you, Microsoft?" And so different from three years ago. So anyway, so you're exactly right. A long winded answer, but I'd say it's exciting to see all of these things come together, and the benefits of just consistently repeating a message that resonates with customers. Steve: I would say at least three quarters of my customer calls today, they're bringing up right out of the gate, "We don't want any development. We want to do everything low-code, no code." So this is coming from the customer side where we used to have to explain to them what low-code, no code meant. Now they're coming demanding, "I only want low-code, no code." I think that they've come to this realization that, while low-code, no code might not be easy enough for your mom to do, it doesn't require a developer, and code does require developer. And once you've got this little blob of code in your environment, it's a black box for you. And so they don't want any of these black boxes. They want everything to be accessible. Steve: Use your knowledge to build us something complex out of low-code, but then I can still go back in there later and manipulate it, adjust it myself, or our team. So they have absolutely bought into that. And I know we originally, a lot of us partners were concerned early on that this was going to reduce the workload for partners, while our workload is more than it has ever been. Although the developers on the bench don't stay as busy as they used to. We've completely pivoted the team from developer heavy to now, we haven't even got a good title for them. A citizen developer doesn't sound right. We tell customers that, but citizen developers is what we've got so... Charles: This guy we found on the street, or gal found on the street, we just asked them to start building out. But no, it makes sense. There is almost this new role which is, it's not just pure coding expertise, it's technical development concept expertise. But even more importantly is business process and solution expertise. And that fusion of those two skill sets, that's the magic. That's what makes it special, because you understand it. Steve: Yeah. The challenge that we have with this brand new model that we just launched, because, first of all, being the first one out there is not always good because people have no idea what you're talking about. They're trying to compare it to other things. But we've got this little caveat that it's all you can eat, everything, except development code. And trying to define what that is hasn't been easy, and you get these customers coming in, "Oh, we're going to need a lot of customization. So this isn't going to work for us." And so you may need a lot of customizations, but you don't need any "development code". Charles: Yeah. Steve: And getting them to grasp that development code and customization are not synonymous, not even close. Charles: Exactly. Steve: Development code is a very small component today of customization. And once I think that they understand that, then we'll probably see more partners coming into a model like this. Because it makes a lot of sense for customers, makes a lot of sense for partners. Charles: Yeah. And if you go look at building solutions that last a decade, this is to your point, code is this little black box opaque thing, which is hard to maintain over time. If it's no code, low-code, it's easy to open it up and reconfigure as business requirements change. And it's how you build solutions that last. And I think we're getting to the phase with business software where customers are expecting to make long term technology bets. You're not going to replace your CRM every five years from now on. It's like building manufacturing plants and warehouses. These are big investments that you need to be able to amortize over a long time, to justify. And so I think to your point, no code doesn't mean no flexibility, no customization, also doesn't mean no agility. It just means you're doing it in a different way. Couldn't say it better myself. Steve: All right. Cool. Hey, listen, I'm going to let you go. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day here when I caught you, to chat with me about this stuff, always fun talking to you Charles. I'm going to call you in four months and ask you about Viva Sales for the platform. Charles: Sounds good. Sounds good. Steve: I've got you on record there. Charles: So really appreciate you taking the time, giving me a ring, Steve. Hope you have a great rest of the summer. Steve: All right, man. Have a good one. Charles: Yep. You too.
Wir legen heute los mit Outlook, ja auch dort gibt es immer mal wieder interessante Updates. Weiter geht es danach mit dem neuen Tool in der Microsoft Viva Familie namens Viva Sales. Es folgenen einige super interessante Microsoft Teams features. Wirklich gute. Abgerundet wird das alles dann noch mit SharePoint. So muss das sein. Mehr Microsoftinhalte findest du auf meiner Seite afrait.com
We're starting today with Outlook, yes, there are always interesting updates there too. It then continues with the new tool in the Microsoft Viva family called Viva Sales. Also some super interesting Microsoft Teams features. Really good. All this is rounded off with SharePoint. For more Microsoft content, visit my site afrait.com
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