Back from the desert…

The FSi team just came back from yet another Microsoft Inspire event hosted in Las Vegas. As usual, there were numerous keynotes, sessions, and workshops designed to give Microsoft Partners a strategic insight on this strong current we call, the Digital Transformation. Ongoing topics like, Artificial Intelligence, Azure developments, security, and intelligent communication were among the common interests, but overall – this year’s partner event was a great success! A key takeaway was that Microsoft’s vision and achievements (under the extraordinary leadership of Satya Nadella) have surpassed every expectation and the future looks very bright.

Looking Beyond the Digital Transformation

If 2018 marked the birth of the Digital Transformation movement for Microsoft Partners, 2019 is all about its rapid expansion and adoption by businesses worldwide. Not only is the Digital Transformation here and well, it’s a juggernaut affecting our community. The case is clear: if companies want to stay competitive, they must embrace it. For partners, this means going beyond Digital Transformation as a vision and understanding how to provide value around key products like Teams, Office 365, Microsoft 365, & Azure.

The Incredible Growth of Microsoft Teams

At its core, Digital Transformation is all about leveraging the intelligent cloud to empower users through modern collaboration and communication. If you want proof that the Digital Transformation is real since its inception, just look at how quickly Microsoft Teams has grown since last fall. Clients have embraced Teams, as its been gaining more ground at 13+ million daily active users. Such a milestone for the modern meeting & voice solutions workspace – and rolling out newer features like, “announcements” which highlights essential news in a channel, “channel moderation/priority notifications” that pings a recipient every two minutes until a response is completed…and more to stay undefeated with its main competitors (hint.) Today, partners need to fully embrace the deployment of Teams and they also need to understand how to provide value-add around Teams for their clients.

Welcoming Adoption & Change Management

The Digital Transformation is being well received by clients and it’s moving at a faster rate than anticipated. This puts a greater emphasis on proper deployments of key products like Teams, Office 365, Microsoft 365, Azure, etc… Enter the importance of Adoption and Change Management as a service (and/or practice) by Microsoft Partners; by which clients adopt & embrace new services and continue the natural rhythm of work. As a managed partnership, it is vital that our framework & process stay firm with:

• educating employees rather than informing them about new technology & recognizing change champions
• relevant training practices to increase engagement & job efficiency
• leveraging a development methodology to establish momentum & show incremental results
• simulating alternative platforms to ensure best practices before/during the “go-live” date

Modernization of Workflows & Apps

Another expansion in their catalogue, Microsoft adds intelligent capabilities to PowerApps & Flow to power up tasks. AI is the latest trend for business applications and enhancing this, gives Flow the ability to learn historical performance and assess risk. PowerApps, better described as Flow’s more powerful version was making some noise; a push to make end-users (not only developers) to take on – launching AI building to leverage intelligence & historical data when performing a task.

Ask our FSi Experts! Learn more about how the wave of digital transformation can help shift the way you work.