Microsoft fuels tech intensity in India

Showcases innovation across sectors at Future Decoded: Tech Summit 

Kolkata, February 25, 2020: At Future Decoded : Tech Summit, a conclave for Indian developers, technologists and industry leaders, Microsoft today showcased how innovative use of technology is driving stories of success across businesses and communities across the country.

Indian businesses and startups are emerging as innovation leaders, signaling how state-of-the-art technology can drive growth, enhance customer experience and tackle some of India’s most pressing societal and environmental issues, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Currently visiting India, Nadella said that Microsoft’s mission was to help organizations jump-start their growth through transformational tech intensity  -  which results from enterprises adopting best-in-class  technology rapidly, building their own digital capability, and having trust both in the technology they use and the companies they partner with.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity to apply technology to drive economic growth that is inclusive, trusted and sustainable everywhere, including in India,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “That’s why we are partnering with leaders in every industry across the country to help them build their own digital capability, transform their organizations and achieve more in this new era.”

Addressing Future Decoded: Tech Summit, Nadella outlined examples of tech intensity from Indian organizations.

Azure – the preferred cloud platform for unicorns

MYNTRA:  Myntra, India’s leading destination for fashion and lifestyle, is using Azure to focus on innovation, speed and agility and strengthen their leadership position even further. The elasticity of Azure is helping Myntra scale rapidly for big spikes that occur routinely during festive seasons. Since the deployment of Azure, Myntra, has recorded a 50 percent rise in orders in the latest edition of its biennial End of Reason Sale.

UDAAN:   Udaan, the fastest Indian startup to become a unicorn, is a born on Azure company, With a lean technology engineering team, Udaan leverages Azure for all their infrastructure and cloud needs that span business functions, like lending credit, logistics and e-commerce. Azure provides the tech platform that enables Udaan to be agile in building out technologies that help them rapidly increase their coverage and scale.

Dynamics 365 - helping to deliver business outcomes as a service

ROYAL ENFIELD: Royal Enfield, the oldest motorcycle brand in continuous production in the world, had multiple IT systems that were unable to provide a single view of customers. This led to higher turnaround times, as well employee and customer dissatisfaction. They integrated reporting capabilities across departments, deploying D365 across its operations – specifically D365 Sales, Service, Field Service, Retail, Finance and Operations. This has improved customer experience/touchpoints across the sales journey – from the sale itself to post-sales service. They are now able to follow up after a test ride and capture customer feedback, and also seek services appointments actively. Moreover, they are also able to generate new insights across operations, for example they can identify the most frequent reasons for repeat repairs. The solution is now live at 120 dealers & distributors.

EUREKA FORBES: Eureka Forbes has a 6000+ strong door to door sales team – one of the largest direct sales forces in India.  Their sales model needed to be modernized for an era in which customer expectations are changing and behaviors are changing, such as checking products online. Moreover, there is new friction in the buying process, such as gated communities restricting access. Eureka Forbes has consolidated seven different CRM systems onto Dynamics 365, Salespeople can access customer info directly on their smartphones, including granular insights like water quality and the right product to sell in real time.

How innovation improves outcomes for everyone, everywhere

Microsoft is committed to empower individuals, organizations and society towards fulfilling the promise of holistic growth. The company believes that it has an enormous opportunity and responsibility to ensure that its always benefits everyone on the planet, including the planet itself.

HAMS: Road safety is a major public health issue in India and across the world. The HAMS (Harnessing Automobiles for Safety) solution, developed by Microsoft Research, aims to mitigate this. In pilots underway. a smartphone attached to the car’s windshield authenticates the driver is the same as the license applicant. It also monitors the driving test to ensure that the test is fool-proof and objective.  At the end of the driving test, HAMS generate the result to show whether the driver has passed the test or not. The implementation has increased the number of driving tests, reduced the time a candidate has to wait to do a test, and also made the tests completely objective both for the evaluator and the candidate.

NARAYANA HEALTH: Narayana Health has used Power BI to improve efficiency across 6,000 beds in its network of  hospitals – from a 60 percent improvement in lab turnaround times to reduction of wastage of blood in the blood banks to  better predicting surgery costs. Power BI dashboards are key to Narayana Health’s vision of offering low cost, world-class healthcare. They are used to track both financial and operational metrics offering real-time insights across all hospitals at Narayana – a process that earlier took as many as two to three weeks to complete. The solutions also measure real-time data of more than 3,000 doctors across 30 comparable parameters.

Notes to the editor: Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft is in India for a three-day tour. For more details about Nadella’s India visit please refer to https://news.microsoft.com/india-visit-2020/  and follow #FutureDecoded to join the conversation on Twitter.

About Microsoft India:

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 10,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian start-ups, businesses, and government organizations.

Customer Relationship Management For Small and Medium-sized Businesses Made Easy by Microsoft ByRajarshiChoudari

Satisfied customers are instrumental to a company’s popularity, goodwill, and profitability. A seamless customer experience enhances engagement with the brand and breeds loyalty. According to research done by Gallup, a fully-engaged customer brings in 23% more revenue and profitability compared to an average customer. The Gallup research further reveals that interactions and engagement with the brand strongly influence a customer’s buying decisions rather than rational thinking.

The brand loyalists purchase more and refer more compared to average users. Businesses across several verticals have identified the need for robust customer engagement tools. Gartner estimates suggest the customer experience and relationship management software market is valued at US$48.2 billion and rising. However, there is no one method to engage and interact with consumers effectively. Stuck in the vicious circle of trying out new tools and software, companies end up spending millions on customer engagement and relationship solutions.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) to put that amount of money into building an app or a marketing website for customer engagement. However, the current market demands an online presence to interact with the customer and manage relationships. Microsoft has an out-of-the-box customer Engagement Solution to address all issues concerning customer relationship management. Available for free with the Office 365 suite, Kaizala appprovides the option to create customer engagement group and add features like ratings, raising issues, business enquiry, and more. This functionality is a boon for SMBs, who can now engage with customers without having to spend thousands of working hours and marketing dollars into building a website or an app.

The customer engagement groups can be set up within 5 minutes and can be made discoverable within 500 Kilometers. The range of discoverability is customizable as per business needs. Businesses can promote new releases, announce product launches, or communicate policy changes to all the consumers within the group. Organizations can upload Brochure, Contacts, and Terms & Policies, which can be accessed readily by the consumer. Furthermore, customers can raise business enquiries using the platform, which can be addressed accordingly.

Features and functionality offered by the customer engagement solution.

Gathering customer feedback has been made easy with the rate us feature. Businesses can run polls and surveys for collecting additional insights. Another critical issue addressed by the engagement group(s) is resolving customer issues. Customer dissatisfaction can prove detrimental to business growth, and often, the dissatisfaction arises from delayed resolution. Using the group features the businesses can track and resolve the issue on-time without any holdup. Companies can further expand their reach by utilizing referral functionality, which enables satisfied users to spread the word over social networks.

The Customer Engagement Solution from Kaizala provides Small and Medium-sized Businesses a comprehensive tool to interact with customers, gather feedback, collect insights, resolve queries, and acquire potential leads, at the click of a button.