In the last couple of years, I have posted a few entries on how Microsoft has been leveraging its wide portfolio of assets – to win Delta business, and here, here and here
Headed to its annual Convergence event in Atlanta I did not see much on that messaging so was a bit concerned Microsoft had reverted to its silos and this event would be more about feature-function around its ERP and CRM offerings.
Boy, was I wrong. Instead of messaging they let their demos and their customers do the talking
In the CRM demo part of the keynote Julia White, GM for Office, showed a vision of next-gen selling using an opportunity for a 3D printer proposal and presentation. It was a showcase for CRM, Office365, Skype for Business, Cortana personal assistant, Surface Hub display, Delve, Apple and Microsoft mobile hardware and predictive pipeline analytics from Insidesales.com
The customers profiled in various sessions played to Microsoft’s positioning of “intelligent cloud”. They represented cloud, machine-learning and leverage of Internet of Things in a wide range of industries. See more (with graphs) in this post on New Florence but they represented asset-heavy ones like Ford (which is using the Azure cloud for various connected services and has partnered with Microsoft for its Sync infotainment system) , Rockwell Automation (using the Azure cloud to monitor asset health) and Wash (an operator of laundromats which described how Microsoft helps in a low margin industry to deliver differentiating service calls and how it is starting to help with dynamic pricing ) and asset light ones like Accuweather (which amalgamates a wide range of weather related data feeds to provide forecasts and other useful weather/climate data), J&J Services (a UK food service provider which described how machine learning is making their eCommerce portal far more interactive). Marston Pubs and Taverns in the UK discussed Microsoft tools for social engagement. Pandora (which runs a nimble supply chain across thousands of jewelry stores, factories in Thailand and HQ in Denmark).
While exciting, I do see two challenges from this much wider Microsoft positioning
a) Its services channel will struggle to keep up. Today it is pretty siloed with Dynamics, O365, Azure and other specialists. Pulling a wider portfolio of MS technologies may require some mergers in the services ecosystem. It will also help larger outsourcers like IBM (which was an “Executive Platinum” sponsor of Convergence) but risk some of the same challenges SAP and others have had with the larger outsourcers in their ecosystems.
b) With the market in churn, I am seeing at least the replacement ERP and CRM market as somewhat tactical. Feature/function, cloud architecture discussions are still fairly basic. At Convergence I heard several analysts bitch they did not hear much about AX and other detailed areas. As I profiled last month Microsoft continues to do well with the current churn in the market and hopefully will not lose that momentum.
