Getting People Ready
Empowering people who keep businesses running is at the heart of better software technology development at Microsoft.
- By Margo Day
- July 01, 2006
If you're reading these words, you appreciate the significant role technology,
affiliated services and expertise play in business success. While I share
that passionate belief in the importance of technology, there's another
component that's even more critical to any company's success: its people.
When people are empowered, they discover and decide. People drive innovation
and build meaningful connections. People are what make or break a deal
or a customer relationship or a business. Individuals and teams rallying
around goals are what drive innovation and results. In that spirit, everything
we're doing at Microsoft and throughout our network of business partners
is about empowering people, the differentiating factor in every business.
Our partners put the power of this concept in our customers' hands. Your
skills and expertise enable them to achieve their goals faster through
innovative technology solutions.
So at Microsoft, we're measuring the software we're developing against
some pretty tough standards—all of which have people at their core.
Software needs to help develop customer relationships, both internally
and externally. With businesses forced to do more with less, software
should play a role in improving operations.
Software can also facilitate more meaningful insights. Most people have
more information at their fingertips today than they can possibly manage.
For the last 20 years businesses have been focused on getting information
into systems. Now, thanks to the Internet, we can help customers get the
right information out of systems and into the hands and minds to the people
who need it.
Why Microsoft?
As organizations renew their focus on their people, Microsoft is
uniquely positioned to help. Together with the world's most diverse and
expert partner network, we deliver software and services that are familiar
and easy to use. Consider Microsoft Office, used by 400 million people
worldwide. The familiarity of Office makes it easier for customers to
integrate and connect new solutions with what they're already using.
Over the past five years, we've invested billions of dollars annually
in software research and development. As a result, we will bring more
innovation to market in the next 18 months than we have in all of Microsoft's
history — including Windows Vista and Office 2007.
Getting There Together
All of us at Microsoft look forward to working with you to bring these
solutions to life. To support you, we've developed customer campaigns
that can help you reach new prospects and better serve your existing customers.
The enterprise and midmarket campaigns for the coming year will be geared
to decision makers by role. Campaigns for business decision makers are
designed to address their needs by solution areas, such as building customer
connections, enabling a mobile workforce and improving business insight
or compliance. For IT decision makers, campaigns are focused on application
platform infrastructure and optimizing both core and information worker
infrastructures.
Also, if you target the increasingly lucrative small-business market,
you can take advantage of campaigns designed to demonstrate how Microsoft
technology, together with your expertise, enables small businesses to
run more efficiently and create tighter links with customers. These marketing
programs include a suite of case studies, product demos, how-to guides
and incentives.
We have an exciting year ahead of us. I urge you to take advantage of
the campaigns, tools and resources th at will work best for your company.
Together, we can help businesses off all sizes realize the full benefit
of their most valuable asset: their people.