Taking Centre Stage at Microsoft Modern Workplace Roadshow

Men in blue, meet the Cloud Collective crew at Microsoft Modern Workplace Roadshow on 7 November 2018

As the calendar year draws to a close, Cloud Collective is working as hard as ever to educate current and prospective customers about what’s possible with Microsoft technologies.

This month, for example, we came together with Microsoft to host two Modern Workplace Roadshow events in Sydney. Both events – one for private sector organisations and one for government – focused on employee engagement.

Their aim: to elevate customer conversations from products to workplace transformation, and showcase Microsoft technologies and Cloud Collective solutions.

The Cloud Collective Team was joined by two customers: Mission Australia and the UNSW Sydney. These customers generously volunteered their time to participate in panel discussions.

Watch Peter Smith, CIO Mission Australia talk about Cloud Collective

Employee engagement and customer experience are inextricably linked

Keynote speaker and director of employee engagement consultancy Meme Partners, Kate Messenger, presented on the link between employee engagement and positive customer experiences. She provided insights into how technology, such as Microsoft’s Modern Workplace, can be harnessed to:

• Transform workplace cultures
• Improve employee engagement and satisfaction
• Deliver differentiated customer experiences.

Kate provided a new lens through which attendees could view Cloud Collective’s solutions and the broader Microsoft stack in relation to employee and customer experience. By making it easier for people to do their jobs, the Modern Workplace goes beyond improving productivity, efficiency and collaboration. It also helps staff become more engaged and empowered, which directly impacts and improves the customer experience.

Multiple paths to digital transformation

Cloud Collective demonstrated four key capabilities that support employee satisfaction and digital transformation. These included:

 1. Bots development at UNSW School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

Cloud Collective member Antares has developed a chatbot with a difference at UNSW’s School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. We showed off some of the solution highlights at the roadshow events. Read more about the project here.

Watch Dr David Kellerman, Lecturer at UNSW Sydney talk about Bots

2. Security

We demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to secure internal and external information with Azure Information Protection. During the demonstration, we were able to send documentation with viewing restrictions applied that made it impossible for non-authorised recipients to open or view the information without requesting permission from the author.

3. Unified communications

We demonstrated how to get more value from collaboration platforms such as Skype for Business and Teams. We also demonstrated a new analytics solution that leverages Power BI to supercharge Teams reporting.

4. Microsoft Teams Quick Start Solution

We showed how to get started with Microsoft Teams for a fraction of the time and price of a traditional deployment.

Viewing technology solutions from a different perspective.

The feedback from attendees was positive. In particular, there was lots of excitement around the UNSW’s School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Bots project. People were keen to learn how we helped the university achieve a new level of collaboration between students, tutors, and professors.

Mission Australia also helped attendees see the benefit of moving to the cloud by working in a structured and co-managed fashion. This technique allowed them to bridge the gap between their legacy technology and the future, including a move to EMS including multi-factor authentication, Office365, and Intune with as little disruption to end users as possible. It also helped attendees see how even with limited internal IT resources it is possible to achieve digital transformation and increase collaboration among colleagues and clients alike.

As a result of Kate’s keynote presentation, our demos and the panel discussions, we saw attendees:

• Considering how they can harness technology to drive employee engagement
• Thinking about how to apply similar technology solutions in their own organisations
• Developing a better idea of what’s possible with the Microsoft stack and Cloud Collective

It was pleasing to see so many attendees take time out of their busy schedules to consider Microsoft and Cloud Collective solutions in a new light. We look forward to working with Microsoft to bring you more informative, hands-on events in the coming months – watch this space for details.

If you are interested in learning more or need help with any part of your digital transformation journey, why not start with a Cloud Collective, Cloud Realisation Workshop. During this 4-hour session with your key stake holders we help you take the first steps to:

• Understand your current-state
• Make sense of your technology platforms
• Demystify Microsoft cloud computing concepts
• Identify key Microsoft cloud workloads that will benefit your organisation
• Identify your high-level migration approach, ROI and operational benefits of moving to the Microsoft cloud

The output of this workshop will help you discover the business case to transform your legacy IT platforms to a Microsoft cloud model that provides you with the competitive advantage you need.