Are you amplifying the impact of your people and watching your business flourish? Technology is the enabler, while people remain the engine of customer-centricity. So create a competitive advantage with your best assets: your people, processes and technology. But how?

Microsoft recently made a significant investment into a new worldwide marketing initiative called the ‘People-Ready Business’. Its proposition is to enable your people and you’ll empower your business. Because when your people are really free to use their skills, experience and expertise, they can give your business an immense competitive advantage. The key? It’s people that make a difference – enable them via technology and you’ll achieve greater success.

Empower your people

Rarely in business does total victory or complete catastrophe stem from a single decision. Rather, success or failure is based on the cumulative impact of a myriad of decisions and actions by a range of people. In fact successful organisations are those that find new ways to empower their people with tools that amplify their talents. Tools that connect them to an information structure which allows them to see their role in the wider context of strategic objectives, to find and collaborate with the right people, and to make best use of the available data in their decision-making.

As we move towards a new business model, where the level of service is at least as important as product quality, the winners will be those businesses that can truly drive value with ideas. Whether through intellectual property, process innovation, strategic insights, or personalisation of services. In this new environment, winning organisations will be the ones that find new ways to empower their people with tools that amplify their talents.
Dell: An example of best practice

A great example of an organisation that’s getting it right is Dell. As a Customer Service Agent Kerry, works for a company that empowers her to take action on the customer’s behalf, and offers her the right tools and information to do so effectively. A few years ago she would have had eight or nine applications open on her computer, and, switching between them, may have been able to track the progress of a package or update an order. Now, because the technology has adapted to the way she works, she uses one application that reaches into 40 separate applications or stores of data – enabling her to update an address, add a bigger hard drive to an order, track a package or answer a question about an old service order. At this moment this particular customer service agent is the voice of Dell. At this very moment she is helping Dell succeed.

Software provides a key component for any people-ready business. While organisational structure, a clear understanding of priorities and an engaged and effective leadership are key, providing people with the right information, at the right time and the tools to act on it, is vital to turning business culture into business results.

The demographic crunch

Demographic trends show an ageing, shrinking workforce in most of the developed world over the next 50 years. As the workforce matures, businesses will have to maximize the productivity of their remaining workforce while being strongly motivated to retain them in the face of increasing competitive pressure.

At the other end of the demographic curve, the “net generation” that is coming into the workforce today has lived its entire life in the digital era. They have never known a time without computers, cell phones or the Internet. Email, the Web, vivid real-time interactive games, instant messaging and mobile devices are as natural to kids today as the telephone, television and ballpoint pen were to the previous generation. They are fluent in the most current technologies to trade information and collaborate, and they communicate around the clock. They expect their work to be as connected as their play. Businesses that understand and embrace this new “digital lifestyle” will certainly enhance their ability to attract and keep this new generation of employees while benefiting from the increased connectivity and communication.

The principles of the people-ready business

Each business is unique, but just like successful people, successful businesses often share traits and habits. The people-ready business provides the means, the authority and the environment for its people to thrive and its organisation to flourish. Systems, tools and culture enable people to make better decisions. They give their people the right information so they can delight customers, create new products and work with colleagues and partners, in the next office or on the other side of the world. They use technology that adapts to change so that their people don’t have to.

A people-ready business is a business that is primed for success today – and tomorrow.

To hear from organisations that are already benefiting from People-Ready Software visit www.microsoft.com/uk/exec

By Simon Gautrey
Microsoft, Group Manager, Partner Marketing, UK

Email: Sgautrey@microsoft.com
Mobile: +44 (0)7802 881 869
Web: www.microsoft.com/uk/exec