These two characteristics of the Microsoft platform make it much simpler for a company to be able to adopt technology and transform its business model, optimize its processes, or create new products or services. From experience, a successful digital transformation strategy must include the adoption of products and services versus the adaptation of them. In addition to taking advantage of the good practices that are already included in the product, adopting further technologies allows a faster implementation, and cost-effective, efficient future maintenance of the solution. However, there are scenarios in which customizing the functionalities and services provided by Microsoft have competitive advantages by differentiating the product from other competitors. Any variation or customization of the product needs to be ring-fenced, closely measured with impact assessment, and monitored by solution design and architecture authority.
The Microsoft platform also allows adapting and personalizing the services and functionalities to be able to adapt them according to the needs of the client. These adaptations allow custom developments, integrations with other platforms, and customizations of products and services. The Microsoft platform adopts technology and security standards and compliance with market regulations, which facilitates such integrations and customizations.
April Dunnam, Partner Technical Architect, Microsoft
“The need for digital transformation has never been more crucial than it is today. We are living in an unprecedented time as we frantically try to adapt to ‘the new normal.’ Businesses are faced with new and emerging financial challenges, coupled with significant software developer talent shortages. This makes it more important than ever to have agile business processes that support fast deployment and delivery of solutions.
The Power Platform can bridge this gap by providing a comprehensive low-code platform that empowers business users and professional developers alike to get more solutions into production faster. The rich analytics and reporting of Power BI, the workflow automation of Power Automate, the rapid application development of Power Apps, and the low-code chatbot capability of Power Virtual Agents provide a powerful and complete toolset that enables organizations to transform their business processes.”
Martin Draper, CIO & Change Director, Liberty London
“Digital Transformation is NEVER simply about introducing new technology without the culture transformation. Culture is necessary to ultimately deliver a new product, business model, or operating model. Simply ‘IT initiative’ thinking is doomed to fail if the culture initiatives are not working in parallel.
Since culture ‘transformations’ do not happen overnight, it is important to get the culture piece correct in the first instance. This is not a project, with a traditional delivery methodology or playbook, like waterfall. It is more about new ways of working, using new organizational structures, processes, technology, and data in innovative ways, to deliver business change in a more adaptive, flexible, and faster way.
The ability to design and deploy initiatives quickly, established from sound analysis of data, and to be able to fail or succeed fast is the ultimate goal. Organizations that embed this thinking into their culture (and investment strategy) are those that are taking digital transformation seriously. Today there are more technology options than ever to accelerate the journey, but unfortunately many organizations are still relying on a proliferation of IT projects to define a digital transformation strategy and avoiding solving the more complex and more important piece of the puzzle.”
Chai Ming Kong, Head, Technology and Digital Transformation, KFC & Pizza Hut
“Digital disruption is a question of when and not if. In many organizations, COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst to accelerate their digital transformation and rethink their strategic priorities, investments, and a new market and growth potential. With Cloud as a means of the beginning—the connected value across the ecosystem now is more powerful than ever before with the strong integration that exists across the value chain. Embrace the opportunity.”
How to Drive Business Efficiencies
Engaging your customers is more important than ever before. To engage with customers in the way they need means empowering organizations to act on insights across the entire journey, build lifelong relationships, and create trustworthy selling and service experiences that are consistent, personalized, and always on.
Microsoft business applications are a complete set of intelligent modules that support the business processes of an organization. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on the Microsoft Power Platform, which is constantly evolving. A great example of a successful project implemented using the power of Dynamics 365 applications and Power Platform is shown here:
Michel (Miki) Tabakovic, Country Sales Manager, IKEA Sweden
“D365 and Power Platform gave us a platform for a better experience both for customers and co-workers at IKEA Sweden, giving us the possibility to be part of the total customer journey. We have reduced manual work with the use of the Power Platform. With D365 MVP up and running, we manage to capture a lot of customer insight on behavior and user journey. Now we can ensure that customers feel that IKEA Sweden sees me and for the co-workers that we see the customer. That is a prerequisite to secure a long-term partnership between IKEA and the customer. It allows us to adapt between digital and physical meeting when all depended on the needs of the customer.”
Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers analysis through built-in dashboards, reports, and views, and also allows the extension through Power BI and other reporting tools. You can tailor the platform to your company needs as Power Platform allows users to extend Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure. You can build your applications and share your data across modules easily, and at the same time take advantage of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics built-in features.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications provide value and impact to organizations through:
Engage customers: improve customer engagement, collect valuable information, personalize your customer journey and experience
Improve business processes for sales, marketing, customer service, inventory management, supply chain management, purchases, manufacturing, retail, and more
Optimize operations, reduce costs, and increment your efficiency
Data integration for all modules
Channel integration
Smart actions through built-in Artificial Intelligence scenarios
Flexible, easy to scale, and adapts to changes
Easy to adopt, supports innovation, and accelerates digital transformation
Empower employees: engage and attract the best talent