Reinventing Business Processes

Today is the first day of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. More than 13,000 partners from 144 countries will gather to learn and dream about how they can grow their own business with Microsoft. That opportunity is substantial.

Two years ago, we set out with an ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes. In a world of infinite information and computing and finite attention and time, we aim to help everyone get more out of every moment and change the nature of digital work within organizations of all sizes.

We pursue this ambition in service of our customers’ digital transformations. Businesses of all sizes in every country will not just use digital technologies, but become digital companies themselves. Each company is attempting to digitally transform to achieve the same four outcomes – to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations and transform products.

And let’s be clear – digital transformation won’t happen with another bolted-on cloud app or a giant implementation of monolithic and closed business application packages that take half a decade to customize and deploy, and another for employees to begrudgingly learn how to use.

Digital transformation requires systems of intelligence that are tailored to each industry, each company, each micro-task performed by each person. Systems that can learn, expand and evolve with agility as the world and business changes.

Last year, I made the decision to bring our Dynamics business into the mainstream engineering, marketing and sales teams. Last Thursday, we took a major step forward with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365, to empower business users with built-in insights and intelligence within the business applications they’re working in – apps like field service, sales, finance, operations.

This has been a dream of the industry, but also for me personally since 2000 when Microsoft acquired Great Plains. When I led that group, we dreamt of doing things for our customers and partners that are now only possible because of widespread adoption of the cloud, proliferation of data, devices and sensors, and agile development environments.

Realizing this dream requires unlocking data stored in silos and monolithic suites of applications so customers can combine them to derive new insights, extend and modify their business processes quickly, and surface them in the communications and collaboration tools millions of people use at work every day. Therefore, it requires us to reinvent business processes taking both a people-centric and platform-centric approach.

Each system of intelligence needs to be centered around a person and encompass anything that the person needs to do in the context of their role. This means removing the impedances that exist between the business solutions people work across today; breaking down barriers between productivity, collaboration and business processes; and creating a new customer-centric business model aligned to the realities of these roles today.

Perhaps most importantly, systems of intelligence require a platform where any business or ISV can add unique value to a company’s digital transformation by extending and integrating its existing systems and business processes.

Business leaders, imagine a world where your employees are empowered with predictive insights, prescriptive advice and actionable next steps.

IT professionals, imagine a world where you can quickly build and deploy what you want and pay for just the capabilities you need.

Developers and ISVs, imagine a world where you can build systems of intelligence to transform business for every company of every size in every industry.

Partners, imagine a world where your SaaS apps can be easily discovered by millions of customers and other partners.

Digital workers, imagine a world where you can respond to a customer request or replan production as easily as you can find a new restaurant or book a ride.

It’s here.

Microsoft Dynamics 365:

• Helps organizations move from monolithic application suites to purpose-built, SaaS applications with intelligence built in
• Integrates Microsoft Office 365
• Introduces a disruptive and customer centric business model to build what you want and buy just the capabilities you need, while ensuring all roles have access to all the data they need to be successful in their jobs

The motivating force behind everything we do and everything we build is to empower our customers to make things and make things happen. Together with our customers and partners, we are reinventing business processes for a world where devices, data, intelligence and connectivity can be everywhere.

We have a unique approach to building the technology and platforms that will drive widespread digital transformation for every company, in every industry and every country. This will generate tremendous opportunity for our partners around the globe.