A while back I switched roles at Microsoft and am now covering Sales Force Automation and Customer Service.  Here at Microsoft we are working hard to sell to our customers in a way that provides solutions to common business problems.  In that regard, we’ve come up with what we call “Solution Areas”.  A Solution Area is focused on a bundle of Microsoft products as well as partner products targeted at a large potential sales market and pulls through at least $1B in potential revenue for Microsoft.

Sales Force Automation(SFA) – focused on the selling process by  automating and enabling manual sales work such that the seller is able to have more face time with potential customers.  In most sales organizations, 20% of the folks generate over 80% of an organization’s revenue.  SFA software is intended to flatten the field, provide sales performance management and grow revenue by enabling each sales individual.

Customer Service – an old phrase that brings up visions of large stodgy call centers filled with phone answering agents.  Yet Customer Service is a rapidly growing segment bent on taking advantage of new technologies like social networks, intelligent dialogue, self-service and consistent multi-channel service through the web, phone, chat and online forums. 

In both of these solution areas, we are rapidly building sales content and a partner ecosystem.  It feels a lot like working for a start-up because as I’ve surveyed the market I see the new smaller companies doing the most innovative and exciting work.  I’ll comment on a few of the partners we are working with in follow-up posts. 

cheers,

James