Kirill Tatarinov: Convergence 2014

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome executive vice president, Microsoft Business Solutions, Kirill Tatarinov. (Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, good morning, everyone! Hello, Convergence 2013 [sic]. I’m so pleased and excited to be here with you this morning. We have an amazing show for you. Thank you for being with us. Twelve thousand people, as Wayne mentioned, are here today with us in this arena, and thousands more watching through the virtual event.

This is my seventh Convergence as the leader of Microsoft Business Solutions, and I cannot be more proud of what you are all achieving with our technologies, and we’re going to be able to show you some powerful examples through my guests, our best customers, showing you how these technologies come into use and how all of them are becoming dynamic, united, modern, digital businesses.

The dynamics of human connection, technology makes things truly amazingly possible. Technology reshapes the entire social fabric of our community. Our relationships are enriched, our collective intelligence heightened. We communicate and work in very different ways together more productively, and we’re much more interdependent today through technology than we’ve ever been in the past.

And if there is one event in human history that truly serves as the hub of human connection, putting all the politics aside and allowing people to come together and demonstrate their excellence, results and achievements, that is certainly the Olympic games.

Sochi 2014, the games were over about 10 days ago, Paralympics games are going as we speak. And truly those events were brought to a very large population of people around the planet through technology. And we’re really proud about the role Microsoft had to play, had an opportunity to play, to bring those games to you.

Windows Azure and Windows Azure Media Services delivered live streaming to over 100 million people around the planet through 6,000 hours of high-definition format.

Over a million people around the world watched the games and saw the results through Windows Phone apps, and actually saw them in real time live for the first time.

Windows SharePoint and CRM served as the information backbone for the games, serving the attendees and guests.

And, of course, Dynamics AX 2012 was the ERP system for the games, truly demonstrating something unique and something that’s never been done before. Dynamics AX 2012 received a gold medal of sorts by itself, being awarded as the best ERP for Olympics by International Olympics Committee. We’re truly proud of what we were able to do there.

This was the only solution on earth that could scale to tens of thousands of people using the system during the games. Yet the system also allowed the organizing committee to start very small with just a handful of people five years ago when they started to deploy the system. I’m really proud of what we were able to accomplish there.

This year, actually this next week by some accounts, we will celebrate 25 years of Worldwide Web. And it’s amazing what the Web was able to do in the last 25 years to popularize the Internet. Something that 25 years ago was just a domain of few, today is the domain of everybody, and all of us get a chance to benefit from this amazing technology through the innovation of the Worldwide Web, and everything that grew from it.

Today, the five very powerful forces, confluence of those forces, continue to reshape the world around us and the world of business, of course: cloud, mobility, big data, ubiquitous connectivity, social communications. These forces coming together really enable us to create digital enterprise, really enable us to take advantage of this broad range of devices that connect the universe, connect the world, and connect all of us together.

Yet at the same time, in my travels as I go around the world and meet customers, I find that very few actually put that technology to productive use. Only a few organizations today, as you see from this statistic, tap into the power of big data and gain powerful insight to benefit their business through that technology.

And when I think about the role Microsoft will play in this connected world, that is the role to bring these powerful forces of innovation to everybody.

We may not always be the first to bring and innovate this technology to the world, but we will be the one to bring this technology to everybody. That’s how we think about our role, bring technology innovation to everybody around the planet, make every business a dynamic business, and at the end of the day help every one of you to be highly successful.

The world of the customer is also transforming in a very powerful way. We’re truly now living in this era of the customer. The customers expect amazing results from you as you serve them. They expect information flowing to them just when they need it.

Switching costs vary a lot today, and it’s really the situation in the environment where competitors is one click away, and we find that over 90 percent of people, when they’re not happy they don’t complain, they just make this click and go away. So how do we keep them together, how do we keep them with us?

At the same time, those who are happy are prepared to pay more, and people really don’t have a problem paying more for excellent service. And at the same time, we find that those organizations that are excellent at delivering great service to their customers deliver amazing results, stay in the business, become digital enterprises, and help their customers transform and move forward.

In this new era of the customer more than ever before it is highly important for us to engage customers on their terms at the time when they need, using the medium that they need. It is very important to nurture this relationship and to truly understand the customer end-to-end. And of course delighting them with the product and the service that you bring to them is what fulfills the mission and essentially connects this virtuous cycle of customer satisfaction.

It is amazing to me that in this era of the customer there’s still so little knowledge around the world about the customers that organizations serve. And really the role that yet again Microsoft and Microsoft Dynamics will play in the future and starting to play today is to help you transform and enter that era of the customers by understanding who they are, where they are, where they want to be tomorrow very deeply and in a very powerful way.

You may ask a question, where do I start and how do I become the customer-centric company? Well, it starts with the culture. To be a customer-centric company you truly need to make sure that the customer-centric culture penetrates deeply in your organization.

It’s the humans who connect with the customers. It’s the people who talk to people. It’s not business-to-business, business-to-technology, B2B, B2C, it is P2P, it is people-to-people. And humanizing the enterprise and making sure that every single person in your organization thinks customer and thinks customer excellence and customer experience is the most important step in becoming a customer-centric organization.

It always starts with at the top, it starts with the leadership. In my travel I find organizations where CEOs truly become chief digital officers. And when you ask a question, who is responsible for CRM deployment in your organization, who is responsible for making sure that the customer data is accurate and who is responsible for making sure that customer concerns are being acted upon at the right time with the right answers, and when the CEO raises his or her hand and says, “It is me,” I know that that organization is going to be successful moving forward, I know that that company is on the course to become a digital business, dynamic business of the future. That’s how it all starts and that’s how it continues.

Business process helps, technology and amazing tools definitely help, but first and foremost it’s customer-centric culture, and it’s the principal leadership that helps organizations move into the era of customer.

Now, let me illustrate the concept that we talked about, let me illustrate this era of the customer by showing you a little visionary video.

(Video segment.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: Something that lasts a lifetime.

Now, let me talk about Microsoft, obviously lots of changes in our organization as we continue on our journey of transformation, as we continue to look at this changing world around us and our place in this world.

Last year, as you saw from Wayne’s presentation, lots of innovation. Truly it was another year of the best innovation from Microsoft, lots of changes. We’re a few weeks away from closing on our biggest acquisition in our history, Nokia.

New CEO Satya Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft exactly one month ago. I’m really excited about Satya becoming our CEO. I’ve known Satya for almost 12 years now. He has very deep insight, a very thoughtful, deep guy, with a lot of knowledge of the industry. Truly excited about him leading the company and leading us into this new era.

I know many people in the room actually know Satya quite well. He used to run Microsoft Dynamics in the past, and he deeply understands this business and how powerful this business is in transforming lives of organizations around the planet, and putting Microsoft into becoming mission-critical provider of business technologies for our customers.

Now, with all those changes, a number of things in Microsoft remain invariant. First and foremost, it is our mission to help people and businesses around the world to realize their full potential. Our strategy is to enable high-value activities for people at work, at home, and on the go, by giving them devices and services and powerful scenarios to connect the two.

One may look at our statements and say, well, Microsoft is truly the company that is set to help people do more amazing things, and that’s really how I want to think about Microsoft. We’re the company that helps people do more amazing things.

Of course innovation and the investment in innovation has been the powerful underpinning, the powerful platform, the powerful engine of everything that we’ve done in over 35 years of our history.

And in the last five years if there is one probably most significant, most important area of innovation where we invested and delivered some phenomenal result is the cloud.

Actually last year at Convergence 2013 we talked about one united Microsoft cloud for the first time. Looking back, I would say in the last 12 months we’ve certainly done more than 12 months’ worth of work. There are very powerful examples, some of which you’re going to see later this morning on how one united Microsoft cloud helps organizations, helps businesses become dynamic, help them move into the future, help them become digital businesses.

Microsoft cloud targets people’s productivity first and foremost, whether people in sales or people in production, whether just general information workers. The power of productivity that comes to people through the Microsoft Office 365 is just astounding. And yesterday, at the SharePoint Conference we announced yet more advancements to Office 365, really transforming the way people work.

Social communication, it is beyond just tapping in the power of social networks, it is really putting all the power of information through social media to work.

And it’s also multimodal. It needs to bring many different ways people communicate together and really give people a choice, whether it’s social interaction, live video or chat or email, and do it consistently from the same set of tools. Yet again a combination of Yammer, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, SharePoint creates this ability for people to do this.

Deep insights. Big data has certainly become a buzzword in our industry but at the end of the day, it’s the deep insights and analytics that put big data to work and really help businesses gain deeper insights so they can make better decisions.

With Power BI, probably the most amazing innovation the big data world has seen in the last few years, with Power BI becoming a part of Office 365 and that innovation being surfaced through Excel, through Office 365, is just phenomenal how Microsoft is democratizing the world of big data and making it available to everybody yet again.

And last but not least, everything we do is a platform. Extensibility is more important today than ever before. Our partners — and I know there are lots of partners here in the room — really enjoy the capabilities, the extensibility of everything that we build in the cloud, and really allowing rich community of ISVs and developers to build on our platforms, to make it richer, to deliver very unique solutions for different parts of the world, for different industries, for different unique scenarios.

This week, we’re launching one Microsoft cloud global advertising campaign, and it’s really our way to show the world how far we’ve come and what Microsoft cloud can truly do for businesses and organizations around the planet. You may have seen some early advertising in the press here in Atlanta this morning.

So I’m going to let you in on something that the world is actually going to see in about two weeks during Grand Prix in Sydney. We’re going to air this ad. Let’s roll it.

(Video segment.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: It is my absolute pleasure and privilege to welcome onstage Matthew Carter, chief executive officer of Lotus Formula 1 team. Matthew, please join me. (Applause.) Welcome. We’re very excited to have you here.

Certainly speed and agility is what makes Lotus Formula 1. Decisions must be made in a split second, and lots of analysis going on.

But first it takes more than a driver. So perhaps you’ll share with the group what does CEO of Lotus Formula 1 team, of the team that with such an amazing speed do?

MATTHEW CARTER: Well, basically, I need to look after the team back at the factory, as well as the team that are on the track.

So there’s two races in Formula 1. There’s the race that’s going on on the track, and there’s the race back at the factory to constantly improve and to constantly come up with new ideas.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, that’s great, and obviously technology is playing a very significant role.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely, absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: — both on track and off track.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely. In our industry one of the key areas is cost control. So over the last few years, all the teams have tried to cut their costs, and the FIA have introduced a number of different measures to try and cut costs.

One of those measures is to decrease the amount of testing that we’re allowed to do on track. Therefore, we need to do as much as we possibly can off the track, and that involves technology.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So simulation, analytics, all of that is the key. But you mentioned cost control. And Dynamics AX 2012, I know it’s live at Lotus, I know at Lotus Formula 1. I know you’re running it deeply. What has been the advantage since you deployed Dynamics AX to manage your business end-to-end?

MATTHEW CARTER: We’ve implemented the back office. So we’ve implemented AX and BizTalk at the moment, and we’re just rolling into Office 365 at the moment.

Where it gives us an advantage above some of the other teams is in terms of what we can analyze exactly what it’s costing us to make a performance gain on the car. So we can look at maybe a change to a front wing or a change to a rear wing, and we can decide which of those is going to be the most cost-effective way of increasing the speed on the track.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s quite amazing. So it is agility and speed that you clearly gain.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely, absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So what’s next? We talk about Lotus Formula 1 team in the context of Microsoft cloud.

MATTHEW CARTER: Yeah, we’re moving into the cloud. So we’ve already moved our website and our homepage into the cloud.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Azure, right?

MATTHEW CARTER: Azure, absolutely. And then for us it’s a case of moving more things into the cloud. So we can move our simulation and our testing onto the cloud and use the high-performance computing within the cloud to help us to gain a better understanding of stress components on the car and extra bits and pieces that will increase the speed on the track.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right, well, Matthew, this is really exciting, and I’m truly proud of the role we get to play in this partnership.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I know the season starts in about two weeks with Grand Prix in Sydney. You have the new car.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: You have a new set of drivers.

MATTHEW CARTER: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I’m really excited, and good luck to you and the rest. Thank you very much.

MATTHEW CARTER: Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: So certainly very powerful story that puts a lot of things together, but most importantly it’s the speed and agility that Lotus Formula 1 is able to gain from their investment in technology, and also operate on about half the budget than a few other teams, and yet deliver amazing results, coming second in the last year of the competition.

Delivering amazing experiences, let’s talk a little bit what it actually takes to deliver those amazing experiences to the customers, and let’s talk about what are the most common customer interactions out there in the world.

First of all, it is marketing. Marketing is the most common way of engagement and interaction today. Marketing has gained a really new sort of place in the world of technology, and many new channels coming up and opening up, and many new opportunities. Marketing is certainly on the front lines.

And marketing smarter creates a unique opportunity to reach more people in the right time, truly engage them by matching their needs with the information you’re able to provide, so you don’t annoy them, yet you give them exactly what they need at the moment they need it.

And we certainly live through this every day. Sometimes we’re truly annoyed by those marketing messages that we receive from our suppliers, from our providers, and we turn it off. And then later during holiday season we wake up to say, wow, gee, I wish I received this message to know what promotions vendor A or B is offering today. And making this timing work with people is something that marketers in today’s world need to deliver.

Selling more effectively, it is amazing that most customer interactions are actually occurring in the selling cycle, either it’s direct selling or whether it’s selling through websites. And selling more effectively and really being effective in reaching your customers during the selling cycle is probably one of the most powerful tools to get to true business outcomes in those customer engagements.

And caring and supporting your existing customers is yet another very powerful, hugely important element of engaging customers and delivering those amazing experiences to them.

Lots of opportunities that technology gives us to support our customers through multiple channels, support them through multiple mediums. And yet at the same time, it creates an environment where customer complaints can go absolutely viral unless we control the environment and unless we stay on top of that, and really see what’s being said about us in the social media and all the other blogs and Internet-enabled ways to communicate.

And caring everywhere, caring through multiple channels, looking at those channels and supporting your customers so they essentially become your brand loyalists is very exciting, amazing opportunity, yet at the same time very important responsibility for us to take.

And at the same time, those customer-facing scenarios will only work if you are able to deliver amazing products or service by operating more effectively.

And that effective operation today in this rapidly moving world is more important than ever before, and this is another very important scenario in our ability to deliver amazing customer experiences.

But at the end of the day, this is a virtuous cycle. This is all those scenarios coming up and lighting up your environment, helping you become a dynamic business, helping you amaze your customers, helping you engage, nurture and delight them through the tools, mediums and channels that they select, helping you understand end-to-end what those customers feel, where they’re going, where they’ve been, what’s on their mind, and how can you make them more successful, how can you delight them so they can come back to you as repeat customers.

And, of course, all of that stands and must stand on a solid platform of technology and business. Lots of amazing scenarios we’re talking about are only possible through deep data analytics. Most of those technologies are only available through deep cloud investments. All of them are available only through deep business knowledge and models, and ability to connect different sets of data in a very powerful way. So bringing it all together and really making it connected is a very important part of this journey of becoming and delivering amazing customer experiences organizations.

So let me illustrate what we really mean about marketing smarter, selling effectively and caring everywhere by a few powerful examples. Let me talk about marketing, very powerful, very exciting part of the value chain, part of the delivery, also the place that has probably transformed the most in the last few years.

We certainly all read publications saying that the marketing budgets have ballooned, saying that the technology buying power has shifted from technologists to the marketers, and we all see that.

And why is it happening? It’s very simple. It is the way and it is the most common way to reach your customers at mass, project your image and turn your customers into the brand loyalists.

The thing about marketing, I’m going to let you into a little secret, about 18 months ago the former head of marketing of Microsoft Business Solutions moved on to a different job, and I became my own chief marketing officer for about four months. That’s probably the most fun four months I ever had in my career. And to all the marketers people in the room, I truly envy you and the job that you have. I also thought that I did a pretty good job, so I wrote on my performance review back then, back that year, on what I did and how I really think that was a very exciting year for marketing of Dynamics. And in response my boss at the time, Steve Ballmer, wrote, I am really happy you hired Wayne. (Laughter.) Steve is no longer my boss, so I will never know what he really meant when he wrote it. But with that, ladies and gentlemen, let me invite back Wayne Morris, our chief marketing officer for Dynamics, who will show you the power of Dynamics marketing.

(Applause.)

WAYNE MORRIS: Thank you, Kirill.

Thank you. I hope I’m not one of those annoying marketers.

KIRILL TATARINOV: No, you’re not.

WAYNE MORRIS: Thank you.

You know, one of the issues with marketing is being that typically we’ve had to use a dozen or more tools to do all the things that we need to do in marketing. And what that’s meant is it’s diluted the productivity of marketing people, it’s kind of fragmented that use and experience, and that also translates into some of those annoying behaviors that we’ve had over time.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, we need to reduce that and get to productive again, right?

WAYNE MORRIS: Absolutely. Why don’t we have a look here, so this is where I come in on my home screen here. And basically what we’re seeing here in one picture everything I need to know, how we’re doing in our spend, some of the things that I might have in terms of priorities, approvals, et cetera. And if we just have a look here, for instance, in the spend, I’m just going to make a couple of comments here, you know I’ve set a budget and I can see that 

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is your true marketing budget, the way you look at it.

WAYNE MORRIS: Yes, it is, Kirill. Be gentle with me.

And you can see that right now, I’m about halfway through my spend. But you know as marketing, we have seasonality or patterns of spend based on timing of events, releases, launches, that sort of thing.

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is going to go up.

WAYNE MORRIS: Well, you’ll notice the adjusted spend there. We’re about 200 percent of what we expected to spend so far.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s factored in already.

WAYNE MORRIS: Yes, it is. So hopefully it will all be good in the end.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right.

WAYNE MORRIS: Now, one of the things I mentioned was all the different tools that we typically have. But what we’ve done here with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing is bring it all together so I can start with the plan. I can see my projects. I can look at the assets in media, I can do my budgets, et cetera. So here, for instance, under assets and media, all the collateral that I need, the ability 

KIRILL TATARINOV: (Off mike.)

WAYNE MORRIS: Yes, and the media planning, the media buying across multiple channels, et cetera. And then we can move into the execution part where I can see the campaigns that I’m running. I can manage my client list, customer list, vendors, et cetera. And that’s bringing this all together into one comprehensive solution.

So speaking about campaign executions, remember we’ve got a “Make Happy” campaign running, and maybe some of you saw the print and digital kind of assets to that. And really a campaign is just a process flow. What we’re doing in certain activities.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So this is your campaign at a glance, basically.

WAYNE MORRIS: Yes, it is. And we can kind of drill into that and have a look a little bit more closely at some of the activities that we’re running.

So you can see here we’re running some activities against our highly valued customers, and you can see kind of the process flows we go across here. Some of those leads, we do leads going based on the engagement that we’re getting. Some we might want to pass straight to sale. Some we might want to do some nurturing.

I also have a second element, too, which is with strategic partners. So there you’ll see a different set of activities that we’re doing based on the kind of behavior that we’re looking for there. But you know it’s so easy to add to that. We might want to add, for instance 

KIRILL TATARINOV: Let’s create a new campaign.

WAYNE MORRIS: OK. Let’s add a social media element to this particular campaign here. And I’m just going to drop that there. And then, by opening that up, I can come across here on the right, you can see that we have a couple of templates already set up.

So I’m going to pick the Dynamics CRM, and let’s just edit that.

And now here what we see is we’ve got the social media campaign kind of set up to go through Twitter, but let’s kind of get a little bit crazy, we might add Facebook and LinkedIn to that as well.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I don’t think it’s crazy, I think it’s what most people would do. I did this morning promoting this show, actually.

WAYNE MORRIS: You can see we’ve set up the hashtags, we’ve got our message ready to go. So we can just go ahead and post that.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Let’s go ahead and do it.

WAYNE MORRIS: OK, let’s do it.

So now it’s out there, and hopefully we’re going to get a great response to it, because I know one of the things that I’m interested in, and I’m sure you are, too, is 

KIRILL TATARINOV: So those folks who are posting those hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, it’s up there for you to see.

WAYNE MORRIS: Absolutely.

So now one other important thing is to close the loop and look at are we really getting the return on the marketing investment that we’re making. And here is where I can drill in and get some insight. I can look by campaign, by channel, and by geography.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So that’s really the money view.

WAYNE MORRIS: This is the money view.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I think this is the place where marketing professionals have been lacking tools, certainly I learned in my four-month gig in doing this how little actually the world knows about the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.

WAYNE MORRIS: Yes. It’s gotten much better since then, by the way.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right.

WAYNE MORRIS: Now, I just mentioned social media. You can see here across the campaigns, and I’ve drilled into the Americas. One of the things that’s a little disturbing, you see this enterprise social campaign, it doesn’t look too good in terms of return on investment. So maybe we want to look at APAC here, as well, and again I’m seeing the same kind of pattern. So that’s pretty disappointing to me.

Well, let’s have a look at Europe. Now look at this, here’s the French, now I know the French are kind of a social community, but look they’re just getting so much better results than any other country.

KIRILL TATARINOV: They’re certainly partying on in social tools. Now I need to look at what’s happening in those other geos.

WAYNE MORRIS: That’s what I’m going to do. I think what we need to do is go and have a look, is there a best practice that we could put across the different countries and really get improvements there, as well.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So visual analytics through Excel Web Apps, served through Office 365, straight into Microsoft Dynamics marketing, which is part of Dynamics CRM 2013.

WAYNE MORRIS: Absolutely. So there you have a very comprehensive solution, everything from planning to the execution, being able to quickly manipulate and change. We make our people much more productive. We get that right engagement. We can measure the results. And this kind of a solution, it makes marketers happy.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great. Making marketers happy, isn’t that a tagline to use today?

WAYNE MORRIS: Definitely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Thank you, Wayne. (Applause.)

We’re really proud and excited to be able to bring this technology to market this spring. And what you saw from Wayne, Dynamics Marketing is going to be available later this spring in a very cost-effective manner. One thing that I found in my four-month marketing gig is that even those tools that are available are hugely expensive. And this is truly going to democratize the role of marketer and really make it easy and accessible to everybody in business.

Let’s talk about selling. Let’s talk about effective selling, driving results, winning faster, at the end of the day being able to close more deals and deliver more revenue. I know many of people here in the room and online deeply care about this area, whether it’s about selling online, or selling directly. The world has changed. It’s multi-modal. It’s multi-channel. The social engagement has deeply changed the interactions during the selling cycle. Very often our customers know more than our sales people when they engage them. Very often people have actually made their minds completely before they enter and engage in their selling cycle. And that certainly drives the need to transform the way we sell, the way we interact during this selling cycle so we can help our sales people close more deals.

So we thought that probably the most powerful way to illustrate how we can enable all of you, and thousands of more around the world, to sell more effectively, is by showing how we at Microsoft are now selling more effectively. And I would like to invite Judson Althoff who is the president of Microsoft North America to join me here and show how we do that.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Hey, Kirill, how are you? It’s great to see you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Great to see you, too. Judson, this is your base.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: This is fantastic.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Convergence is an international show, but most of the folks here are U.S. and Canada and use the president of this region. This is your crowd.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Thanks for having me and it is truly an honor and a pleasure to be here with all of you. And I sincerely thank you for spending time with us here at Convergence.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Judson has been with Microsoft for about a year. It’s been a year of very deep transformations inside the company; also in the way we sell.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: What’s changed?

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Well, it’s an exciting time, Kirill. And frankly, I will tell you that I believe there has never been a better time to be a Microsoft customer, partner and employee, because in many of the trends you talked about we have the explosion of devices, the cloud, big data and social that ties it all together, and our product portfolio enables us to really light up high-valued experiences for all of our customers. What’s really changed in terms of our selling process, though, is that we have really worked hard to enable the sales force to light up first-person experiences and share those with our customers to help them innovate new ideas to bring business value.

KIRILL TATARINOV: We really make our people more productive, not just the process that drives it, people at the heart.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. You want to show us what you do?

JUDSON ALTHOFF: OK. I’m not a demo guy.

KIRILL TATARINOV: You’re not a demo guy. It’s not a demo. It’s how you do your work.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: I thought I would share this with you, because I believe in practicing what I preach. I won’t ask my customers to do what I won’t do myself. So I’m going to show you a little bit of how we use the products you’ve built to run my $25 billion business in North America. OK. So this is my favorite computer. This is the 82-inch.

KIRILL TATARINOV: It’s large.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: It is. It’s a little hard to fit in an overhead bin. But, everything I’m about to how you will run on any Windows 8.1 tablet.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s the problem with this computer; it’s actually showing the exact same view that you get on your tablet. 

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely. So let’s log in and get rolling. So what you see here is my home screen and this is a demo version of the dashboard I use each and every day to run my business. When I got here I was adamant with my staff that I wanted to have a singular dashboard that brought together Microsoft’s entire portfolio of products to help me run my business.

KIRILL TATARINOV: It’s really Windows 8 becoming the point of integration of different tools that you use for business.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely. And you see Live Tiles here pulling real-time information from Dynamics about my business. And so what’s great here is we’ve tied together over 20 systems within Microsoft IT, some of our legacy environments, our unified communications and productivity tools, my business scorecard, the marketing insights to get the outputs of all of the insights that Wayne showed you, the sales outputs from the marketing campaign, and where the rubber meets the road, the pipeline and forecast. I can drill into the forecast. And like I said, I’m not a demo guy and this is a real application. I can get a graphical view and we can see like the public sector folks maybe should start selling some more.

KIRILL TATARINOV: They sort of stopped last month.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Exactly, it’s hard when the government shuts down and doesn’t return your phone calls. In any case I can take a snapshot of the information straight from Dynamics. I can use Windows tools to share them graphically, dump a screenshot right into email, and I can ink all over this even with my busted thumb and tell people that, hey, listen, we need to focus on the business here.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: So let me show you my favorite part of this thing. So I can go straight into my pipeline and look at my top deals, immediately go from the graphical view into a detailed view, and hit the record number and go straight into the record detail from Dynamics 2013.

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is CRM put to use for Microsoft sales people. 

JUDSON ALTHOFF: CRM running against my business, fantastic things in 2013, by the way, highly intuitive, touch-enabled user interface. It can show me everything about my deals, built-in enterprise social with Yammer connectivity, and my favorite part, actually, is built-in social listening so I know what my customers are actually saying about my products. From here it also has Office 365 integration into PowerView and I can actually pull up a business intelligence view that gives me a  

KIRILL TATARINOV: From within CRM you get all the analytics.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely. It dumps millions of rows of data and paginates it into a graphical map view and shows me where my pipeline opportunities are. It’s a fantastic way to run the business.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: It’s how I run Microsoft on Microsoft.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Well, that’s great to hear.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: There’s one more thing I’ve got to show you, though, which, like I said, this thing is a little hard to fit into an overhead bin.

KIRILL TATARINOV: There you have it.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: So due to the power of the Windows platform I can actually put this thing on my Windows Phone and get the very same views about my business, drill into my top deals, get analytics about them, send real-time emails and connectivity back to my sales force, real-time, mobile access from the cloud, from Dynamics 2013.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s fantastic, Judson. We’re really excited you’re now using this technology.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Hopefully Microsoft is a better provider, better supplier and better partner for people in the room watching this show.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Absolutely.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Thank you, Judson. I really appreciate it.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: Thanks a lot.

Thanks, all of you, sincerely, thank you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: OK, 25 days in the quarter, go sell it.

JUDSON ALTHOFF: We will, thank you. (Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, you saw some powerful examples of Dynamics CRM 2013 that is now being deployed by thousands of organizations around the world. You saw Office 365. You saw Microsoft Cloud and Windows 8.1 really bringing this all together on a large screen and on a very small screen. You also saw Microsoft social listening that is being delivered later this spring as part of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, really serving the way for Judson and our sales people to see what is being said on social media and bring it into the context of selling, a very powerful tool, a tool that truly makes every sales person around the planet highly productive.

Let me talk about customer care, delivering this care everywhere across the channels. First and foremost, let’s just think about what people want to do when they are stuck, when they find a problem. It’s quite human for people to try to solve this problem by themselves before they actually call anybody. So ability to deliver self-service through whatever medium people use becomes very high priority in the area of customer care. And this is really the place where we have crossed an amazing chasm by bringing very innovative technology into Microsoft.

Last month we closed an acquisition of Parature. This is a highly innovative company, born in the cloud, that’s delivering self-service customer care to hundreds of customers around the world and through now being part of Microsoft, delivering that technology. We’ll be delivering that technology to millions of people around the planet.

At the same time, knowledge is probably the most important part of any customer care scenario and turning the customer care professionals and knowledgeable conduits into solving customer problems is the most important part in the call centers and everybody who is dealing with customer care scenarios.

We also know that call centers and customer care professionals is one part of the business where we often see the most churn and lots of new people come to work. So the need to train these people and make them highly productive quickly is another very important priority in that particular area of delivering an amazing customer experience. And today we will show you how Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Parature, working together, deliver that amazing experience through either self-service, or through knowledgeable customer care agents in a very productive, connected environment.

So Fred Studer, who is general manager of Marketing for Dynamics will join me here in a minute to show you how it all works together.

Fred.

FRED STUDER: Kirill, thanks a lot.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you. I see your signature profile; you’re ready for the show. Isn’t it wonderful?

FRED STUDER: I did not want to disappoint anybody.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Let’s go.

FRED STUDER: As you said, customer care and delivering amazing customer experiences has never been more important. But, it’s never been more difficult, because Kirill there is a lot of new expectations, 67 percent of people want to do self-service care. So when you talked about the great Parature solution, that’s where I really wanted to start. So we’re going to start with one portal example, this is BusinessUSA.gov. And they’re whole  

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is the real website of Business USA delivered to millions of small businesses in the United States.

FRED STUDER: Exactly. So small businesses would come here to find out how they could get financing, and Parature is behind here. What they’ve done is they’ve organized and categorized all of their content.

KIRILL TATARINOV: What do you mean behind this? How does it actually work?

FRED STUDER: Yes, so Parature is just this great self-service care service that runs in the cloud and basically BusinessUSA.gov said, hey, we want that framework to help us run this. So they can get multi-channel capability to ask a question.

KIRILL TATARINOV: The Parature widget is embedded in the Business USA website, but the Parature cloud is what powers those customer care scenarios.

FRED STUDER: Exactly. So Business USA gets to keep their own branding. They get to do this exactly how they want. But, customers can actually interact in the way that they want. So let’s just say that I’m a small business and I want to talk about franchising. I can actually type that in here and Parature in the background is actually going out, looking at that knowledge base, and now I could actually bring that up. And notice not only am I getting that, but I’m getting all the blogs and different information.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s fantastic.

FRED STUDER: So great categorization of the information.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So that’s the Web.

FRED STUDER: That’s a portal, exactly.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s one of the channels.

FRED STUDER: Exactly.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I’m sure there’s more.

FRED STUDER: Well, here’s social. You talked about it. Everything is social. But, people don’t. Companies like Konami, who is one of Parature’s customers, they don’t want to lose their Web presence just because they go to Facebook.

KIRILL TATARINOV: And this is real Konami Facebook presence?

FRED STUDER: This is exactly the Konami page. So people here might know them from “Metal Gear Solid 5.” I actually know them, just like you do, from “Dance Dance Revolution.”

KIRILL TATARINOV: You may. I don’t.

FRED STUDER: Unfortunately, I guess my Beyonce has gotten a little crazy, because the left arrow on my mat is not working. Sorry, Kirill, got a little focused there. That’s why my mat is broken.

Now, because Parature is running this portal out of the box, I will say, we could go type it into the Facebook chat, and it would be routed to an agent. But I want to do self-service right from this portal. So what I’m doing now is I’m in the Facebook portal of Konami, but I can easily go contact Konami, I could start a Web chat. But just to really get to what I want, I want to go to Frequently Asked Questions, and just say: Mat not working.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right.

FRED STUDER: And so as soon as I search this, Parature is going out and looking for that Frequently Asked Question, and it looks like somebody else is having that same issue. So I’m getting this knowledge-based record. And it looks like I just need to keep doing what I’m doing, which is shake it like a rug. So a great solution.

So what we’ve seen here is a self service around somebody’s portal, keeping the branding intact, but also being able to do that out of the box on Facebook, that’s where everybody is.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Self-service takes you that far, I’m sure there are some examples of becoming a call center agent.

FRED STUDER: Kirill, you know just like I do that sometimes just doing self-service might not be enough, because customers have problems that we need to be ready to solve. So what I’m showing you here is the Unified Service Desk. So this is something brand new that we’re announcing.

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is coming this spring as part of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update.

FRED STUDER: Exactly, the Unified Service Desk. And what you see is that the agent has everything they need from the call scripts, very easy navigation, they have the same process routes so they can follow along. But the other thing that we’ve done is, most call center agents, just like the ones that you guys have, have 10 to 12 applications open at once. It’s very difficult. So we’ve integrated all of that capability in one Unified Service Desk.

KIRILL TATARINOV: You don’t have to leave the screen, everything is here. I see everything is process-driven, like everything that we do in Dynamics across the team is process-driven. It’s quite exciting.

FRED STUDER: Very familiar. And essentially I can just click these things and go. And I also have automation here. So when I start typing into things 

KIRILL TATARINOV: Something is going on here.

FRED STUDER: Well, Kirill, I’m sorry, I’ve got to get to work. We’ve got a customer calling. Hold on one second.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Take care of your call.

FRED STUDER: Yes, sir.

Hello, this is Fred. How may I help you?

VOICE: Hi, Fred. Hi, hey, can you help me? I’ve lost my credit card. I’m traveling. I need help. What can you do for me?

FRED STUDER: Well, first off, am I talking to Oscar Giles?

VOICE: Yes, Phil, it is Oscar.

FRED STUDER: Hi, Mr. Giles. Hey, just for security purposes can I get you to verify the last four digits of your Social?

VOICE: Yes, 3-5-4-2.

FRED STUDER: That is terrific. Well, Mr. Giles, I’m so glad that you called us. I apologize that you actually had that inconvenience. I’m just pulling up some information that will help me solve your problem a little better. Hey, I notice that you’re actually in Reykjavik, Iceland.

VOICE: Yes, I am. How do you know that?

FRED STUDER: Well, you know, we have these great systems. We use Dynamics CRM. (Applause.) I love the fact that you’re in Iceland, so you should just stop worrying. We’re actually going to get you taken care of here. I know that you lost your card in Iceland, and so I am just going to see what we can do about that.

VOICE: OK.

FRED STUDER: What I realized is that we actually have an Iceland customer service center, and in fact it doesn’t look like it’s that far away from where you are. So what I’m going to do is, I’m just going to send you that link via email and send it to your text message, if that’s OK?

VOICE: Yes. Does that mean I can get it today?

FRED STUDER: You can get it in the next hour, we’re going to have it there for you. But, in addition, I also notice that you’re one of our premier customers, and we actually have some travel offers in Iceland. So if you wanted to go take that dive in the blue hole, or whatever, you can actually do that. So I’m sending that link right now to you as well.

VOICE: That’s awesome.

FRED STUDER: Well, terrific. Well, Mr. Giles, I hope that I’ve provided you with a good experience today.

VOICE: Fred, you’ve provided me an amazing experience. Thank you.

FRED STUDER: And that’s what we aim to do. And, thank you, Mr. Giles, you take care. Have a great day in Iceland.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, I think Mr. Giles is your friend for life now, Fred.

FRED STUDER: I think he would. And, Kirill, I will point out one last thing. You might see it down here, but that little clock ticker, I was able to resolve that case in less than two minutes. So you talk about resolution, this is great.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Outstanding.

FRED STUDER: So just to summarize, we actually showed all the great self-service capability, omni-channel with social, et cetera. And now we showed it all coming together in this wonderful Unified Service Desk. That is Care Everywhere, and that’s what our customers expect to deliver amazing customer experiences every time.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Amazing experiences.

FRED STUDER: Thank you very much. Have a great day everybody.

(Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: Yet again today in today’s world of business, very few customer care agents can do what Fred just did here on stage with us. And with technology that’s coming to you this spring, with Parature, with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Unified Service Desk, all of you who take care of your customers on the phone or through social channels could have this type of response, this type of experience for your customers, truly turn them into your friends, into the loyalists of your brand really in a democratized way, in a highly available, accessible fashion to all of you.

Let’s talk about operations. Everything that we talked about so far, marketing, selling, taking care of existing customers is only possible if you are able to build, ship, deliver service. This is really the important part, this is really quite the phenomenal change that’s happening in the world, quite a change that I’m seeing as I visit our customers around the planet.

Many organizations are essentially expanding into adjoining industries, those who have traditionally been only manufacturers are now also transporting and storing and selling goods themselves. Those who were involved in wholesale distribution are now also opening retail stores. And this multi-industry and multi-vertical engagement truly calls for new tools and for new approaches.

It is amazing to me how often do we find lots of legacy systems that really robbed back office of an organization, and really bring them down to not allowing them to deliver this amazing vibrant experience for their customers. And we have to loosen import of Dynamics ERP, Dynamics NAV and GP for small and medium-size organizations, and Dynamics AX 2012 with large organizations. And with Dynamics AX 2012 R3, we’re really raising the bar of what the back-office system can do for an organization to truly move it forward to help them become dynamic business, to help it become digital enterprise, to help it serve their customers in a very unique and vibrant way.

So let me introduce our next guest, New Belgium Brewing, a company that’s doing amazing things by utilizing Microsoft Dynamics AX and also Microsoft Dynamics CRM. And let me start with a little video introduction.

(Video segment.)

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me welcoming onstage Kaitlyn and Travis. Welcome, come and join me, folks.

(Applause.)

Welcome. Thank you for joining me today. What’s brewing in New Belgium Brewing Company? I see you have some devices with you. Is there something you want to show us?

TRAVIS MORRISON: As far as what’s brewing, we have a lot of great beers coming out. We have a spring seasonal, Spring Blonde, new Snapshot full-time beer that we just launched, and we did a wood cellar expansion that’s really exciting right now.

KIRILL TATARINOV: And you’re in IT, and yet you’re talking about real product.

TRAVIS MORRISON: We do make beer, yes.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I would expect nothing less when the product is beer.

KAITLYN PEOT: And as far as the company goes, last year we became 100 percent employee-owned. And so Travis and I can probably say that we truly do control our own destiny at New Belgium.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, that’s great to hear. And Kaitlyn, you’re serving the people on the front lines, the people who actually touch the customers every day.

KAITLYN PEOT: Yes, exactly. And we’re using technology and mobility to enable our sales folks, the ones who touch it, and we call those guys our Beer Rangers.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Beer Rangers, all right, that’s quite fitting.

KAITLYN PEOT: So we are enabling them to have real-time communications with our operations back at the mother ship in Fort Collins. And, more importantly, our Rangers allow us to have direct relationships with our customers. And that’s what I would like to show you.

You know, we use this Rangerland. Our Rangers go and do routine checks with our buyers and accounts. And so let’s check out staff across the 

KIRILL TATARINOV: So that’s a Windows 8 app talking to your Dynamics CRM system?

KAITLYN PEOT: Right, exactly. So we’ll go to stats, it’s a bar graph of the convention center, and I presume that we’ll be seeing a lot of customers.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I’m sure you will be.

KAITLYN PEOT: So our Rangers run in and did a routine check. They go in and they talk to the staff and make sure they have everything they need to sell our beer. And then, more importantly, as employee owners, quality assurance is very important to us. So do a quality check, and as we’re doing a check, we notice that there’s a problem with the labels. So immediately I want to make a note and alert the folks back at the mother ship. So I let Travis know that there’s a problem.

TRAVIS MORRISON: So the mother ship is what we call the brewery back at Fort Collins, Colorado. So I notice that I have a message here that says we have an issue with 

KIRILL TATARINOV: This is a Lenovo that people use on your show floor?

TRAVIS MORRISON: Correct. So just 

KIRILL TATARINOV: A brand-new, show-floor app.

TRAVIS MORRISON: Yes, just as mobility 

KIRILL TATARINOV: (Off mike)  12 R3.

TRAVIS MORRISON: Correct.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great to see.

TRAVIS MORRISON: Just as mobility is important for our Rangers, mobility is important on the shop floor. So now I’m able to go into our manufacturing order, which we’re running Blue Paddle, employee favorites, and we want to make sure that we get this corrected right away. I can go in and stop the production order, and we can take care of that very quickly.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So the production is stopped, hopefully not for long. The label is fixed.

TRAVIS MORRISON: Hopefully not for long, yes.

KIRILL TATARINOV: And the cycle goes on. That’s a great example, really great example showing unification of the front office, your Beer Rangers, and people who actually brew and product and bottle. That’s very powerful.

What’s next for New Belgium Brewing?

TRAVIS MORRISON: We’re really excited, we’re building the new brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, that’s going to allow us to become a national brand. So we’re very excited to be bringing our beer to the East Coast shortly.

KAITLYN PEOT: And it’s technology that is a key component to our continued success and growth.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great to hear.

KAITLYN PEOT: And should we toast to that?

KIRILL TATARINOV: Well, success, we should always toast.

All right. Well, I must tell you, I don’t often drink beer, especially at 10 a.m. in the morning, but when I do, New Belgium is certainly my choice. Cheers. To your success, guys. (Applause.)

Thank you all very much. Please enjoy the rest of your beer, and enjoy the show, and I’ll join you a little later.

Very powerful example. I think we’ve talked a number of times now that uniting front office and back office, and really making this unification help organizations become digital enterprises, become dynamic business, that comes true through the example like New Belgium Brewing.

Every year at Convergence we celebrate success of our customers. About 250 customers were nominated and a very special hard-working committee selected the excellence award winners. And today we’re really proud and excited to celebrate success of those organizations that are here. And many of them are here in the room. Let’s give them a round of applause for employing technology to great use. Thank you folks, and congratulations.

(Applause.)

We also had an opportunity to spend good quality time with our excellence award winners, and some other marquee customers to understand what business outcomes they actually gained from deploying our technology and from using Microsoft Dynamics. And you see those statistics. They’re absolutely staggering, 244 percent return on investment; 50 percent reduction of TCO; amazing growth of revenue; employee adoption, something that has really historically been a big problem in the world of ERP and CRM now is dramatically improved through the use of Microsoft Dynamics. We’re really proud of those results that our customers were able to get to by deploying our technology.

Now, there’s one of our excellence award winners who is actually here to receive their award in person, and we would like to show this story and really tell this story to the world, because I think the story is truly amazing. This excellence award winner actually doesn’t really need a whole lot of introductions. They’re based here in Atlanta. Many of you used their services to get to Atlanta for this show. And their case of using the technology is truly amazing.

Let’s roll the video please.

(Video segment.)

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me welcoming on stage Theresa Wise, who is senior vice president and CIO of Delta Airlines, and Meleia who is the flight attendant.

First, I want to give you your award. Congratulations. Thank you for being here to receive it in person. Thank you so very much, and it’s good to see you again.

Please join me, let’s have a little chat.

So I think the world knows by now, and many of the people actually had a chance to experience what Microsoft technologies end-to-end were able to do for Delta. And, Theresa, perhaps we’ll start with you. It’s a major transformation, 20,000 flight attendants, pilots are getting a new technology. What does it take to get this transformation moving in a large organization like Delta?

THERESA WISE: You know, I think it really starts with a vision, and it starts with a partnership with a partner such as Microsoft. In fact, this original vision started with a visit to your Redmond offices and a look at I believe it was a retail center of the future was really the origin of this opportunity. And so once that vision is there, it’s been continuing with those partners with a great case, a great opportunity, and really that continuous focus on our customer and what’s necessary to improve the experiences over and over for the customers of Delta.

KIRILL TATARINOV: You are certainly an organization that is on the front lines serving those customers around the world. So global comes to mind as a sort of very true sort of coming to life in your case.

THERESA WISE: So worldwide this is an application that can serve in just a lot of different ways. So it is starting as a point of sale opportunity, being able to sell product on a flight, but what comes next is really what’s exciting, ways to further engage with our workforce, which is a global workforce, which is a mobile workforce. And beyond that looking at how can we further use this device as well as the applications on it to continue to engage with customers in new and different ways.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s amazing. And, of course, the case for change, I know there are many CIOs in the room, many IT people in the room, what can you share with them in terms of driving the case for change in the organization?

THERESA WISE: You know, the case for change, Delta, really all airlines, have been long users of technology in really important ways. Historically, technology was used for planning, it was used for efficiency, it was used to distribute our product. But really the case for change I believe as we go forward is how to further engage with customers, using technology to create a seamlessness and a stickiness with both our customers as well as our colleagues throughout the world on the front lines.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So it sounds pretty simple, customer engagement and customer experience is the case for change.

THERESA WISE: That is the No. 1 case for change.

KIRILL TATARINOV: It’s certainly reassuring for this group to hear.

Now, Meleia, you’ve been flying for a number of years.

MELEIA JORDAN: Thirty-eight.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Wow.

THERESA WISE: Congratulations. That’s amazing.

KIRILL TATARINOV: You must have started when you were five.

MELEIA JORDAN: Bless you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: And I see you’re holding the device, the device which you use at work every day. I know many people had a chance to see those devices if you fly Delta, but let’s take a quick look at what’s going on there.

MELEIA JORDAN: OK. I’ll show you the things that our flight attendants use the most. This is our sales app up here. Also we now have access to Fly Delta, which is great. Now we give our customers information in real time on board. That’s something that we’ve never had previously. And then also company email, probably another one of the items our flight attendants use the most, otherwise we didn’t have access to anything unless we were sitting in front of a computer. A mobile workforce with a mobile device, it’s a great combination.

I’m just going to go into the sales app real quickly, show you our onboard sales. Our flight attendants go into our products. It’s going to show them products that are market-specific and in it’s going to allow us to actually bundle products. We’re offering things online now that we could never  or I’m sorry, not online, but onboard, that we couldn’t do before. One of the best things on here is economy comfort. It used to be that we’d take off, if we had empty seats those seats stayed empty. Now at 10,000 feet, because of this device, we’re going to make an announcement, ladies and gentlemen, I have three empty economy comfort seats, would somebody like to buy an upgrade? So we’re definitely moving forward. It’s helping us capture revenue that we didn’t have before.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. That’s fantastic and so it’s truly the case where technology is transforming your life, and you’re accustomed to very different tools in your 38 years of flying. What’s this change doing for your work every day?

MELEIA JORDAN: I think just the instant access to information has been a huge boost to our flight attendants, not only the information that they need from the company, but the information that we share with our customers. So to have access to that information, I think, one of the most telling features of this is that we have 20,000 flight attendants that range in age from 21 to 89. And that’s a huge testament to the ease of use of the Windows 8 platform that we’re using onboard.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right.

Theresa, anything to add?

THERESA WISE: I would say also perhaps one of the most happy surprises that we went through, as a part of this, was the ease of that transition. Again, with the huge range of experience, I believe you were a flip phone user, weren’t you, prior to this device?

MELEIA JORDAN: I admit it, September 1st of last year I gave up my flip phone and finally bought a smartphone.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right, outstanding. (Applause.)

THERESA WISE: And having gone from being a flip phone user to being really one of our predominant people using this technology, again, drives towards the ease of that transition beyond what I would have imagined. So it’s really exciting.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That is truly phenomenal, really huge thank-you for being our customers, for being our partners. We certainly think of it as a partnership and we look forward to continue this relationship. There is so much more we can do for pilots, helping flight attendants get rid of those bulky manuals and put them on this Nokia device and really move forward with the technology.

Thank you so very much for being with us.

MELEIA JORDAN: Thank you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: And congratulations on your award.

MELEIA JORDAN: Thank you so much.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you, Theresa.

THERESA WISE: Thank you, Kirill.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All the best, thank you so much. (Applause.)

What an amazingly powerful example, these services in this particular case delivered from private cloud with Dynamics AX 2012, devices, Nokia 1520 and 800 series, and 500 series for some, and all wrapped together by this powerful technology.

Of course, the project like Delta could not be even remotely possible without engagement from our partners. We are really proud and excited to have the most vibrant ecosystem that serves the needs of our customers and delivers our technologies to them. Customers who are small, customers who are large, served by partners who are really catering to their unique needs. And for very sophisticated, deep engagements like Delta, partners like Accenture and Avanade come together with Microsoft to deliver this technology.

Ladies and gentlemen, today we have the pleasure to welcome Robert Wollan, who is global managing director responsible for sales and marketing at Accenture to share with us how Accenture and Avanade participated in the Delta project, and more.

Robert, please welcome. (Applause.)

ROBERT WOLLAN: Thank you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: I’m very happy you were able to join us here today. It’s an amazing event and obviously the partnership between Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics and Accenture has been quite amazing in the last few years. It would be fair to say that Accenture and Avanade for many of our customers are go-to partners, go-to partners for deployments like Delta.

ROBERT WOLLAN: Absolutely. It’s great to be here. It’s going to be a great event.

KIRILL TATARINOV: It is a great event. So what’s important for Accenture today?

ROBERT WOLLAN: Well, I think we’re seeing a real surge at both Accenture and Avanade in this point you brought up about business outcomes, with a real focus on speed, and speed to those business outcomes has become a real critical focus. And I think at the same time we’re seeing a surge in interest in companies to take advantage of these new digital capabilities, become truly digital businesses.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Of course, you’re a global business, serving the global community, and you’re one of the few who can serve companies like Delta, who really have employees all over the world.

ROBERT WOLLAN: Yes, I think a real interest point over the last couple of years; we’ve seen these programs truly become global. I mean this great example of Delta rolling out a program that hits so many different markets, so many different kinds of workforces, so they become truly global, or automotive companies who are looking to roll out programs at 40, 50, 100 markets simultaneously, and across many different channels, so marketing and sales programs that are really dominant. So that truly global program is becoming more common.

I think the other thing that’s happening is we’re seeing an increase in the acceleration of these programs at scales of 20, 30, maybe even 50,000 individuals within a year. You think that, it’s a major change, but also a major opportunity that these kinds of digital capabilities are helping us to bridge.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Now, of course, the partnership with Microsoft and Accenture has been going on for a number of years. Avanade is our joint venture helping deliver Microsoft technologies to our partners. But, Accenture is the partner. There are lots of different technologies that you’re able to touch in your daily work, especially serving the selling and marketing communities around the world. Can you share your observations about Microsoft Dynamics and what you see with Dynamics sort of moving into this world?

ROBERT WOLLAN: I think it’s an exciting time. It’s an exciting set of toolsets that are allowing companies to really bring together these various functions in a more integrated way. Maybe five years ago we’d say were companies playing in this space, were they doing analytics, were they thinking about the cloud, mobility, social connections, all these things we talked about earlier? Now we’re starting to see a real interest in those companies who are not just playing, but the real gap between the companies who are playing to win, versus the companies who are playing not to lose. And that’s the part that we’re going to see very much what we consider the disruptors. And we’re seeing secondarily these kinds of tools, like Dynamics, are helping companies really think about how they can fight back against these new entrants in their market.

Think those traditional, strong brands that are represented well in this room today and already are using Dynamics, are looking to say how do I take advantage of those capabilities and my scale so I’m not disrupted? In fact, I’m going to be the disruptor to my industry. So all those are capabilities we need to go after.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great. And I’m really excited about the partnership with the Microsoft Dynamics part of Microsoft and Accenture in particular.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, Robert will hold a special signature session as part of our leadership track, and has a lot to share in the world of selling and marketing with all of you. So I encourage you to attend. It’s going to be a great track.

Robert, thank you for joining us.

ROBERT WOLLAN: Very good.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you for your partnership and I’ll look forward to many more projects and engagements like Delta in the future.

ROBERT WOLLAN: We are.

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you so very much.

ROBERT WOLLAN: Thank you all.

Very good to see you again, Kirill. (Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right, thank you.

Now, at this event we talk about Dynamics for human connections. True human connections certainly go beyond, way beyond the world of technology. For Microsoft it’s been a 30-year tradition to help those who are less fortunate through our giving. We give money, last year Microsoft raised over $120 million in our campaign. We give our time. And we also help those who are less fortunate through technology. So let’s take a look at how one organization puts Dynamics to work to improve and change lives every day. Let’s roll the video, please.

(Video segment.)

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Matthew, who is head of operations for City Harvest; and James, who is head of IT. Please welcome, you guys.

MATTHEW REICH: Thank you.

JAMES SAFONOV: Thank you.

(Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: What an amazing cause, and I’m sure it’s not easy and if you think about the complexity of operations, it certainly takes a lot.

MATTHEW REICH: It certainly takes a lot. It’s true, our mission is quite simple, we rescue food that would otherwise be lost in the supply chain, and we deliver it to New Yorkers who are hungry. The business model is quite complex, and so we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage the 4,000 food donors, and the 500 community food programs that we deliver food to seven days a week. And the technology that we’ve been using has allowed us to double the amount of food in the past three years to over 46 million pounds.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s quite phenomenal.

And you take no money from taxpayers.

MATTHEW REICH: No, we’re a completely privately funded nonprofit enterprise. And we have a responsibility to our financial donors to make every dollar go as far as it can. And so we’re using technology to become more efficient, drive down the cost per pound to rescue and deliver a pound of food to the nearly 2 million New Yorkers who face hunger every year.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s phenomenal.

(Applause.)

The IT engine room, and obviously to make this operation work and to support it, I’m sure your IT budget is pretty small?

JAMES SAFONOV: Yes. So we made the decision early on to leverage cloud where it’s possible. So the ease of integration between Dynamics CRM, Office 365 and on-premise Dynamics GP module that we use, such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Inventory Management, allow us to manage expenses, inventory, and use our financial donor dollars the most efficient way possible.

KIRILL TATARINOV: So CRM Online in the cloud, plus not in the cloud Dynamics GP on-premise, your guarded financials are on-premise all working together.

JAMES SAFONOV: Yes.

KIRILL TATARINOV: That’s great to hear. What a phenomenal example, what a phenomenal case, and let me tell you how proud I am to be able to serve your needs and really help you connect your donors and suppliers and recipients with our technology.

Anything else you want to share with the group here?

MATTHEW REICH: Well, just that if people are interested in finding out more about City Harvest, they can visit our website, CityHarvest.org, and they can even make financial donations right online.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Glad to hear it, glad to help.

MATTHEW REICH: Thank you.

KIRILL TATARINOV: All right. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you, James. Thank you for joining us, and thank you for doing such amazing, amazing work for the community. Thank you really so much.

(Applause.)

It’s an amazing time in our industry. It’s an amazing time in the world where technology is really helping us connect and move into the future with more confidence, with more precision, to help us all move into the digital world and become digital enterprises. It is also a new era for Microsoft with our new CEO, with amazing innovations that’s coming to you this spring with the continuous wave of technologies, but most importantly with end-to-end solutions through Microsoft cloud that help you expand and move into the future.

It is our commitment to you to help all of you to tame those forces that shape the industry, to help all of you to become dynamic businesses, to help all of you to become digital enterprise.

To all of our customers who are here, and I know this is the majority of the group, I want to thank you for entrusting your business to us. I want to thank you for being our customers. And I hope that Convergence 2014 will serve as a reassurance to you and your shareholders that you made the right choice.

To those who are making a decision to join the Dynamics Customer Community, to our prospects, and I know there are many of you here as well, I truly hope that this week will help you make the right choice, and I truly hope to see you at Convergence 2015 as our customers.

To our partners, our commitment to you is invarying. We cherish our relationship. Our partner ecosystem is what makes us unique and enables us to deliver our solutions at scale to all the industry verticals across the globe. We’re truly proud of the work that you do for our customers.

And, of course, for industry and press who are here, for our friends and families who are watching us online, help us share the world. Microsoft is here with the cloud, with Microsoft Dynamics, we are changing the world. We are making technology for everybody to help every single person in business and in the world to move forward in the digital world with the digital revolution.

Thank you all so very much. Please enjoy Convergence 2014.

(Applause.)

END