Innovation in Retail at Microsoft’s 2016 Worldwide Partner Conference
Retailers face new challenges—and new opportunities
Last week, at the 2016 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto, our team was overwhelmed by the positive response from partners to our continued innovation in the retail and consumer goods industry. We hosted several retail-focused sessions where we shared our vision for helping our retail partner ecosystem utilize new technologies for a greater impact.
Throughout the sessions, and in conversations with our retail partners, one dominant message came through: the industry is experiencing major disruption. Today’s focus in retail is about providing consistent, customer-centric experiences in both online and physical stores. And that’s not easy.
Providing customer-centric experiences is hard. Microsoft is here to help.
Driving the tailored, customer-centric experiences that consumers expect means embracing new technology trends, like machine learning and IoT. It means leveraging big data and analytics tools to anticipate demand, optimize inventory, and predict trends. It means transforming retail organizations into data-driven, digital businesses through the use of line-of-business (LoB) applications built on reliable, enterprise-grade cloud and mobile platforms.
Based on what we heard during the conference at WPC, it’s clear that our retail partners understand the challenge at hand—as well as the risk of not rising to the challenge.
Keeping up means keeping your technology current.
In the past, building LoB applications capable of optimizing processes and providing business insights was complex, time-consuming and costly. Business decision-makers are looking for faster, more cost-effective software solutions.
In response to these needs, Microsoft made three big announcements during WPC:
- Introducing Dynamics 365
- Launching Microsoft AppSource
- Announcing AFS Retail Execution
Introducing Dynamics 365. As Satya Nadella announced at Monday’s keynote, Microsoft will launch Dynamics 365 this fall, bringing together our ERP and CRM solutions into a unified cloud platform. It will enable business to start by deploying the parts of the solution that are best-fit for their needs today, with the flexibility to incorporate additional components easily later on.
Launching Microsoft AppSource. The second announcement was the release of Microsoft AppSource, a single destination where retailers can discover, trial and acquire line-of-business SaaS applications, as well as market and distribute their own.
When you consider that line-of-business funds 61% of technology projects and influences 81% of technology projects[1], it’s easy to grasp the value that AppSource brings to the table. It enables businesses to ensure that an application meets their business needs by running a full trial, and then implement the best-fit application quickly and easily.
Announcing AFS Retail Execution. Last week, AFS Retail Execution became the first retail solution to appear on Microsoft AppSource. AFS Retail Execution enables sales teams to improve shelf performance, promotion compliance and overall efficiency. It offers industry-specific features that fulfill the core set of requirements for field sales execution, while maintaining a level of configurability that enables retailers to address unique and advanced needs without customizing the software.
We were fortunate enough to have Joe Bellini, CEO of AFS, join us at the conference where we asked him about the benefit of listing AFS Retail Execution on the AppSource platform. His response:
“Often times, we see customers settling for ‘generic’ industry solutions versus industry-specific ones like ours. Microsoft AppSource is a game changer in this respect as CG Manufacturers and Distributors are now able to match requirements based on industry strategies and specific business pain points to the workflows, analytics, features and functions in our applications.”
It’s time to take your retail solution to the next level—Microsoft can help
WPC 2016 was a great opportunity for our team to connect with retail partners and demonstrate our commitment to continued innovation in the retail industry.
Our retail partners have the deep industry expertise needed to develop solutions that meet the business challenges facing today’s retailers. Microsoft can provide the critical technologies that power those solutions. When we asked Joe Bellini why he chose to partner with Microsoft, he didn’t hesitate to share with us.
“In Microsoft we found a partner whose platform enables our current offerings to be highly accessible, secure, scalable, and reliable – basically covering our table stakes. The big win for AFS came with Microsoft’s advanced intelligence capabilities. We now have the ability to expand our trade, retail execution, and direct delivery solutions in critical areas such as BI, analytics, AI, and gamification all driven by specific value propositions designed to improve the competitive position of our customers.”
Get started today
Retailers looking to transform into a data-driven, customer-centric business can take the first steps with Microsoft today. Start by learning more about AppSource and Dynamics 365, and trialing the AFS Retail Execution for your business.
If you weren’t able to join us WPC 2016, you can still view additional sessions. Visit www.digitalwpc.com to hear more from the conference.
[1] IDC North American Line of Business Technology Survey 2015, n=1548
