Tami Reller's WebLog

Energy still running high!

Hi everyone,

We’re now three weeks past Convergence, (where we hosted 6,000 customers and partners) in San Diego. Even though we’re all back in the thick of our work lives, planning, meeting, e-mailing, etc., the energy from Convergence is still with me and with every Microsoft employee who was there.

From a customer satisfaction perspective, we exceeded our already high past Convergence scores in nearly every category. The most popular sessions were:

• Hands-on labs
• Detailed product-specific concurrent sessions (such as Inventory Costing in Navision 4.0)
• Microsoft Office sessions (especially OneNote)

Feedback from Bill Gates’ keynote (which provided a great crescendo to the conference) was very positive—attendees appreciated that he did a business applications-centric keynote and then dedicated nearly 60 minutes to a candid Q&A session with Doug Burgum. His Q&A topics included insightful perspective on Melinda’s and his foundation as well as some funny anecdotes about the early days of Microsoft. He also covered questions like “Do you ever call in sick and to whom?” and “What do you wish for your children, and by extension, all children?” If you missed it (or just want to check it out again), you can watch the video at http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2005/03-09convergence.asp

Moving on…

Vertical strategy, Industry Builder

Last month, we made a few key announcements related to our vertical strategy, including a new program called “Industry Builder”. This program continues to gain momentum and garner broad interest from ISVs and channel partners broadly as well as customers. It is an ISV-centric program for our Axapta product line (although not limited to Axapta) that will give customers piece of mind around a complete solution from Microsoft for their vertical solution. We will provide front-line support (as well as upfront marketing) for select vertical solutions. Initially, we will target about a dozen solutions. We see the program growing substantially over time given initial interest & the importance to our customers.

Target Market

We are often asked about our “target market”. We think about four distinct customer segments—small business, medium business, large organizations & divisions of global enterprises. The bottom line is that except for the very largest enterprises that are highly centralized (probably under 200 businesses worldwide), our solutions are a fit either as a headquarter solution or within the divisions or both. Increasingly, given partner skill set, expanding functionality & greater scalability, we are seeing customers across a very broad size range consider business solutions from Microsoft.

There are two other dimensions of target market—industries and the system our customers are moving from. Our product planning, certainly our sales and marketing and increasingly our community building is pivoting on our customers’ verticals or industries. The Industry Builder program is indicative of our focus in this area but is just one example of many programs. We also consider how to help customers think about and accomplish a move from their existing system to a Microsoft solution.

Peoplesoft, JD Edwards and Oracle applications customers are a recent example. We have been working with partners & customers from these solutions who are in the process of moving their capabilities or systems off of these solutions. We will continue to prioritize programs, technologies & capabilities.

New tools available of interest to customers & partners

Nucleus Research did a study that looked at Microsoft Axapta customers and SAP customers through an ROI lens. The findings were pretty conclusive & compelling. Microsoft Axapta produced a positive ROI 75% of the time after two years while SAP showed positive ROI 45% of the time after 3 years. Axapta’s ROI score was the highest of all products (a 4.2 out of 5) while SAP came in lowest (a 3.6 out of 5). If you want more information, you can find the Axapta study at http://www.nucleusresearch.com/research/f13.pdf and the SAP study at http://www.nucleusresearch.com/research/f16.pdf .

We just published a scalability benchmark study on Microsoft Great Plains benching 1,000 users. This has been super useful as increasingly large organizations (especially customers with SOX priorities or customers in the public sector, healthcare or professional services field) are looking at Microsoft Great Plains. The benchmark testing environment consisted of 1,000 physical Microsoft Great Plains users entering transactions and processing transactions continuously. The full results are available in a white paper titled Benchmark Performance for 1,000 Current Users. There are some exciting numbers in the whitepaper, such as 30,000 SOP invoices posted in an hour or nearly 40,000 payables vouchers posted in an hour. You can find this whitepaper on the PartnerSource (now) and CustomerSource (soon) portals. I recommend reading this and sharing the news!

Thanks for reading this entry! Until next time,

Tami Reller

Greetings from San Diego!

Convergence has been everything I expected: exhilarating, informing, connecting, motivating, and exhausting! Thanks for your comments on the blog – I truly appreciate them. A couple specific responses:

•  Andrea: Your points on user experience are solid. We have always put a high value on the impact our designs have on the person who uses them each day. Two areas we are working on—1) more & more our software will work with and like familiar Microsoft software (deeply) 2) In releases coming yet this year, we make some serious advancements in role-specific user experience. At Convergence we conducted a usability lab where customers and partners could connect with the UI (user interface) team to discuss these points and to provide feedback on new ideas. The lab was very busy again this year. 
• Adam: re: the MBF remark, please take a look at Satya Nadella’s blog (thanks Art for sharing the link)
• Troy: And finally, a special nod to you for being the first person to post a comment!

We’re just getting ready to listen to Bill Gates’ keynote. He’s going to be talking about “Where Business is Headed” and how Microsoft products can have a dramatic impact on our lives. He’ll also be doing several Microsoft Business Solutions demos that demonstrate the innovation coming in Wave 1 of Project Green, which will come in the form of major upgrades to our existing products. This is the second time Bill has spoken to this audience (he keynoted at Convergence 2002) and everyone is excited to hear him. Bill also had the opportunity to address our Pinnacle award winners (16 winners across 8 categories like “fast track” & “innovation”). Bill then held a roundtable with four customers to learn more about their implementations (these 4 great customers ranged from a $32M tourism company to a multi-billion dollar company that will be rolling out Business Solutions across more than 70 locations).

Where Business is Headed

Welcome
Greetings, and welcome to my blog (now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write). “Blog,” “diary,” “journal” ... no matter what it’s called, I want to extend a warm welcome to you as members of our Microsoft Business Solutions community. And I do hope you think of this as a community, a community that connects you with other customers, with us and with others you want to connect to across the Microsoft community.

This community comes to life every day via The Business Solutions Community Site. Check it out!
Think of this blog as yet another way for us to connect for feedback, comments, and questions. I invite you to use both the community site and the blog to send us feedback and ideas. I will have the opportunity to provide key updates and respond to your feedback through upcoming blogs.

I’m writing this first blog from Convergence, a premier conference for Microsoft Business Solutions customers and partners. Convergence started in 1997 with 90 participants. Today, nearly 6,000 members of the Business Solutions community are gathered together for 3 days of business content in San Diego. If you didn’t make it this year, I hope you can make next year the first of many years of participation. I will use this blog to highlight a few of the key ideas & themes popping at Convergence 2005.

The first idea is the concept of affordable adaptability. We see affordable adaptability as the convergence of three big goals our customers have for their business systems—rich functionality, high adaptability (when customers need it) & lower costs. Because of the unique assets we have at Microsoft across platform technologies, desktop applications & business apps, we do the best job of delivering today across functionality, adaptability at low cost by focusing on integration across the Microsoft stack. And, our product roadmap going forward delivers major breakthroughs to propel this concept of affordable adapability significantly forward. The details we’re delivering to customers and partners at Convergence bring together our vision and the product roadmap in a very real way.

Definitely check out Satya Nadella’s blog (Corporate VP of Business Solutions R&D) for much more detail. He details a roadmap of innovation delivered to customers through major upgrades to their product lines in two major software waves. These waves deliver innovation in user experience, collaboration, business intelligence, integration and business process.

The best thing about this strategy is that we are delivering this new technology in a progressive approach across all of our product lines.  Customers can consume this innovation consistent with the pace of their business not ours. We are announcing a five year product lifecycle commitment that promises support and enhancements for at least five years from the shipment date of a given release.

Great Plains (including Solomon) has been a part of Microsoft for four years, Navision & Axapta for almost three years. It is so exciting to see the demos at Convergence—they represent the type of integration we saw as vision when Business Solutions was first created. The role-based desktops integrated with Office, the Sharepoint work, the new BI tools that are based on your job in the company, the Visual Studio and .Net integration – they are all examples of what our customers have been expecting from us, and it’s great to see it here or around the corner for customers. 

Another key theme that is popping from customers is ROI. Customers have great stories about 1 month positive ROI or 6 month positive ROI, either way they are seeing measurable ROI as a key indicator of how they judge the success of their solution. A customer yesterday described having their most profitable year (they are a 65 year old company) the year after implementing their Microsoft Business Solution business suite. Another customer theme is the idea of implementing a business solution to drive a key business change (a “pivotal” change in their business model or value proposition). Many great customer stories.

Just a few of the key theme from Convergence.
 
What do you think of Solution Finder?
To increase the visibility of Microsoft’s extensive portfolio of partner vertical solutions, the Web-based Solution Finder tool will help customers select industry-specific partner solutions and related Microsoft financial management, supply chain management and customer relationship management solutions. This tool, available in the second half of calendar year 2005, will also let partner account managers help identify opportunities for partners to develop their own intellectual property (IP) or identify opportunities for them to work with other partners to deliver a complete industry-specific solution. Solution Finder will work with data from the Microsoft Partner Program systems to streamline the partner profiling experience.

Watch for it
Last week we launched a new ad campaign in the US, UK, Canada. Watch for these ads in print and online media like the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business 2.0, Inc, Fast Company, Red Herring, CFO, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and BusinessWeek. These ads will hit many more markets soon.

You tell us
Our latest customer feedback shows that better reporting, increased employee productivity and efficiencies, and improved customer service are among the top needs people list for considering the purchase of business management applications. What did you consider when you made your decision? Your answer is an example of what we consider when planning our future roadmaps. Our strategic direction, based upon your input, is how we can enable you to drive success for your business and achieve your business goals. We’ve been doing this for more than 20 years, and we understand that no two customers are exactly alike. With our partners, we really want to understand your unique business processes, create solutions that serve them, and help you reach your full potential.

Convergence 2005 – Where Business is Headed
As I mentioned earlier, I am currently attending Convergence, our ninth annual customer conference, in San Diego, California, USA, and it’s already shaping up to be one of the best ever. We’re hosting nearly 6,000 customers, partners, and team members this year. The atmosphere is electric, and it’s very exciting to see our virtual community becoming a true tangible community. There is so much learning happening here: from the concurrent sessions to the hands-on labs to the expo to the larger general sessions and keynotes. But perhaps most important, our community is manifesting itself in non-structured, spontaneous ways. Walking through the hallways, it’s impossible not to bump into a familiar face and find yourself in a thought-provoking conversation. The Community Lounge is full of active conversations, too, and it seems to be the place to go when you want to find groups of people to meet and chat with. Watch for my Convergence update here (in the next week or so).

I invite you to come back and visit my blog. I will update it often with my thoughts about business, the industry, and life in general. You should also take a moment to join in by posting your suggestions and comments. We all enrich the community together. This is our place.