DJ Koh, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics, shakes hands with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, at a launch event for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 smartphone in New York on August 7, 2019.
On Sunday, Samsung introduced the Galaxy XCover Pro, a smartphone with a push-to-talk button that initiates a chat using Microsoft’s Teams app. It’s a joint effort by the two tech giants to get their mobile technology in the hands of more workers who spend their days and nights navigating hospital hallways, supermarket aisles and airplane cabins.
Samsung is the No. 2 seller of smartphones in the U.S. behind Apple, which has built its lead with the help of enterprise functionality like security and identity management. Microsoft has largely given up on handsets and ditched its smartphone operating system, but the company still has a big play in mobile through its cloud-based Office 365 suite, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams.
Microsoft set the stage for the Samsung agreement last week in announcing a push-to-talk feature in Teams and said it will be available to a limited set of customers in the first half of the year. The focus is on Android.
At the end of third quarter, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company had 200 million Office 365 commercial monthly active users. It’s been investing heavily in developing and marketing Teams, which competes with Slack.
‘One less device’
Emma Williams, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office verticals, said that in adding useful features for Teams, the company is trying to give people a more secure tool for chatting with co-workers than many of the consumer apps that are used in the workplace, whether it’s Facebook’s WhatsApp or Tencent’s WeChat.
It also cuts down on the number of devices people have to lug around. Williams said that while shopping at a retailer over the holidays, she saw a man carrying a personal phone, a work phone a walkie-talkie and a pager on his belt.
“The product we’re shipping extends the range of traditional walkie-talkie communication,” Williams said in an interview. “It reduces licensing and provisioning costs, and it’s one less device for the employee to carry.”
It’s not Microsoft’s first swing at the market. In 2017, the company announced a bundle that included Office and other products for what it calls firstline workers in services industries and at task-oriented jobs. Late last year, Microsoft announced a new folding smartphone that runs on Android, but it’s launching the new service with Samsung, which has a giant handset business and previously released a tablet for mobile workers.
The 6.3-inch Galaxy XCover Pro has a replaceable battery and can survive falls from as high as 1.5 meters, or about 4.9 feet. Taher Behbehani, head of the mobile business-to-business unit for Samsung Electronics America, said the device is rugged but designed to look sleek. It runs Android and Samsung’s Knox security software.
The push-to-talk button on the phone initiates a conversation immediately. If the person on the other end doesn’t have the device, there’s a soft button within the Teams app that can launch the chat. Samsung designed the physical buttons so they can be customized, meaning they don’t have to use it for Teams, Behbehani said.
Long ago, Microsoft had big ambitions in mobile hardware, acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business in 2013. The company scaled back, taking billions in charges on the deal and selling off the handset business. It also stopped developing new features for Windows 10 Mobile.
Microsoft and Samsung said in August that Samsung devices would gain new integrations with Microsoft services like Outlook.
As Walgreens embarked on plans to create a new type of retail experience for customers more than a year ago, it realized that an innovative approach to training employees was in order.
Walgreens employees were used to consulting with customers on the best beauty products, filling photo orders, dispensing medications and providing personalized health and wellness information. But selling fresh produce, delivering groceries to vehicles and helping customers find ingredients for dinner — that was all new, and potentially challenging.
So to prepare employees to handle around 2,500 new food items at its revamped “Kroger Express” stores, Walgreens is piloting an immersive, mixed-reality training program using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and tablet devices.
The program, part of a broader partnership with Microsoft, will use a three-dimensional model of the reconfigured stores and various scenarios to teach employees how to restock products, determine if an onion or banana is past its prime, help customers redeem grocery coupons and deal with unfamiliar customer service situations — for example, offering a substitute grocery item if something the customer wants is out of stock.
“We feel that this very immersive, interactive technology helps team members grasp new ways of learning beyond what I’ll call the paper exercise,” says Steven Lamontagne, vice president of physical design and formats for Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance, Walgreens’ parent company.
The HoloLens training, developed by Microsoft partner Altoura, is first being tested at a Walgreens store in Knoxville, Tennessee. From there, it could be expanded to another 34 stores in Knoxville and 17 in Northern Kentucky and the greater Cincinnati area that are part of a pilot with supermarket retailer Kroger. About 20 Kroger Express stores have opened since the pilot launched in late 2018.
The Kroger Express stores are being remodeled to accommodate the new products, and Lamontagne says HoloLens 2 training offers the benefit of familiarizing employees with the new store layouts even before renovations are finished.
“By using a 3D model for the store, a team member gets to see what the future is going to be like after their store’s remodeled, and they’re immediately within that new physical environment,” he says.
The effort is part of a multipronged partnership between Walgreen Boots Alliance and Microsoft, announced a year ago, that Walgreens envisions as transforming the modern retail and pharmacy experience. As part of the partnership, Walgreens and Boots stores — located in the U.K. and other regions — are migrating their on-premises data warehouses to Azure to improve operations and lower costs.
Walgreens Boots Alliance is migrating on-premises data warehouses into Azure Synapse Analytics — a service that merges enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics — to improve operations and modernize business processes.
The company is also using Azure Synapse to bring together data from disparate sources to understand customer needs and optimize supply chains. Azure Synapse will enable Walgreens to analyze vast amounts of data in real time while applying machine learning to get insights that help employees provide customers with the products they want while preventing unsold inventory from cluttering the back office.
The revamped Walgreens stores are also implementing an anonymous shopping path system, developed by Microsoft partner Acuity, that uses Bluetooth beacons on carts and baskets to understand how customers are moving through the reconfigured stores. That data is then aggregated in Azure, and Microsoft’s Power BI visualization tool is used to identify patterns — for example, how customers are shopping during the holiday season — and help determine whether the new store formats are meeting customers’ needs.
For now, the most visible aspect of the partnership with Kroger will be the rows of grocery items alongside the cosmetics and pharmacy goods. The Kroger Express stores will carry produce staples, dairy, meat items, meal kits and organic products. Customers can also order groceries online and have them delivered curbside at the pilot stores.
With more than 9,200 Walgreens stores around the United States, close to 78 percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walgreens or other Walgreens-owned store, Lamontagne says, so giving customers the opportunity to purchase food items made sense.
“If you think about the high-frequency purchases you make in your life, food tends to be one of them,” he says. “Having a range of Kroger products and leveraging their expertise within the Walgreens box really gives customers a new retail experience. This allows them to be able to fill their pantries and their fridges, and get a credible range of products to make a meal for their family.”
Companies at the forefront of digital transformation recognize how critical it is to enable all of their people with the right technology and tools. That’s why, in industries like retail, hospitality, and manufacturing, there’s a movement underway to digitally empower the Firstline Workforce—the more than 2 billion people worldwide who work in service- or task-oriented roles.
With Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud, we’re in a unique position to help companies of all sizes and across all industries provide their employees the tools and expertise they need to do their best work, without sacrificing the security of their organization or customers’ data. Giving Firstline Workers the tools they need requires companies to address unique user experience, security and compliance, and IT management.
Microsoft 365 for Firstline Workers
Microsoft 365 combines intuitive best-in-class productivity apps with intelligent cloud services to empower your Firstline Workforce.
It’s inspiring to see how industry leaders, like IKEA and Mattress Firm, are driving higher levels of employee engagement and enhancing the customer experience by putting tools like Microsoft Teams into the hands of their Firstline Workforce. IKEA is connecting everyone in the organization with familiar features like chat and video calls and digitizing firstline processes such as shift management to save time and cost.
This video was created by Microsoft, with the agreement of Ingka Group.
Mattress Firm is empowering Firstline Workers with real-time access to the information, resources, and expertise they need to delight customers and provide a better shopping experience.
Ahead of next week’s National Retail Federation (NRF) tradeshow, we are excited to introduce new capabilities for Firstline Workers coming to Microsoft 365. Here’s a look at what’s coming soon:
New tools that make it easier for Firstline Workers to communicate and manage tasks
Walkie Talkie in Teams—This new push-to-talk experience enables clear, instant, and secure voice communication over the cloud, turning employee- or company-owned smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie. This functionality, built natively into Teams, reduces the number of devices employees must carry, and lowers costs for IT. Unlike analog devices with unsecure networks, customers no longer have to worry about crosstalk or eavesdropping from outsiders. And since Walkie Talkie functions over Wi-Fi or cellular data, this capability can be used across geographic locations. Walkie Talkie will be available in private preview in Teams in the first half of this year.
Intuitive push-to-talk experience to connect team members across departments and locations.
Tasks targeting, publishing, and reporting—With Tasks in Teams, now customers can drive consistent execution of store operations at scale across all of an organization’s locations. Corporate and regional leadership can send task lists targeted to the relevant locations, such as specific retail stores, and track their progress through automatic real-time reports. Managers have tools to easily direct activities within their stores, and Firstline Workers have a simple prioritized list available via their personal or company-issued device showing them exactly what to do next. Tasks targeting, publishing, and reporting is coming to Teams in the first half of this year.
Corporate headquarters can target, assign, and track tasks across locations. Firstline Workers can view tasks assigned to them and across the store.
Workforce management integrations—Customers using leading third-party workforce management systems—such as Kronos and JDA—for scheduling and time and attendance can now start integrating directly with Shifts via Shifts Graph APIs and SDK. Supported scenarios include management of shifts, schedules, schedule groups, swap requests, time off requests, and open shift requests. The JDA connector for Shifts is open sourced and available on GitHub. The Kronos connector for Shifts will also be available on GitHub later this quarter.
Enhanced identity and access management features that make it easier for IT pros to keep Firstline Workers productive and secure
SMS sign-in—With SMS sign-in, Firstline Workers are able to sign in to their Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account using one-time SMS codes—reducing the need to remember usernames and passwords for all their Microsoft 365 and custom applications. Once enrolled, the user is prompted to enter their phone number, which generates an SMS text with a one-time password. SMS sign-in is a single sign-on (SSO) experience, enabling Firstline Workers to seamlessly access all the apps they are authorized to use. This new sign-in method can be enabled for select groups and configured at the user level in the My Staff portal—helping to reduce the burden on IT.
One-time SMS codes on mobile devices to streamline the sign-in experience for Firstline Workers.
Shared device sign-out—Many Firstline Workers use a single tablet or mobile device that is shared between shifts. This can pose unique security challenges to the organization when different employees who have access to different types of data use the same device over the course of a day. With shared device sign-out, Firstline Workers will be able to log out of all their Microsoft 365 and custom applications and browser sessions with one click at the end of their shift—preventing their data as well as any access to customer data from being accessible to the next user of that device.
With one click, Firstline Workers can sign out of a shared Android device and log out of all applications and browser sessions to prevent sensitive data being shared with another device user.
Off-shift access controls for Teams app—IT administrators can now configure Teams to limit employee access to the app on their personal device outside of working hours. This feature helps ensure employees are not involuntarily working while not on shift and helps employers to comply with labor regulations. This feature will begin rolling out to customers this quarter.
Display a message and/or disable access to Teams app when Firstline Workers are off shift.
Delegated user management—Firstline Managers can approve password resets and enable employees to use their phone numbers for SMS sign-in, all via a single customizable portal enabled by IT for Firstline Managers. Delegated user management can give Firstline Managers access to the My Staff portal, so they can unblock staff issues—reducing the burden of identity management on IT, and keeping employees connected to the apps they need on the job.
Through the My Staff portal, delegated user management enables a Firstline Manager to manage their team’s credentials and assist with password resets.
Inbound provisioning from SAP SuccessFactors to Azure AD—Azure AD’s user provisioning service now integrates with SAP SuccessFactors, making it easier than ever to onboard and manage Firstline Workers’ identities at scale, across any application using Azure AD. This feature—in public preview—builds upon the ability to provision users to Azure AD from Workday, another popular human capital management (HCM) system, already generally available. Integrating with these systems of record helps IT to scale Firstline Workers’ onboarding and productivity from day one.
With Azure AD’s user provisioning service now integrated with SAP SuccessFactors, as well as Workday, it’s easier than ever to onboard Firstline Workers user identities at scale. Shown here, you can start the provisioning cycle and use the progress bar and provisioning logs to track the provisioning process.
All of these capabilities are expected to roll out in the first half of this year except where noted.
Empowering Firstline Workers to gain a competitive advantage
New research in partnership with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services highlights the untapped potential of Firstline Workers in retail.
This is just the next step in our journey to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We aim to build tools and experiences for the modern workplace and for workers at all levels of the organization. We’ll continue to develop and bring to market purpose-built Firstline Worker capabilities and experiences in partnership with our customers and industry leaders. And we’ll continue to innovate and build features that simplify work, bring people together, and help organizations big and small achieve more. Come see us next week at NRF 2020 in booth #4501.
Online child exploitation is a horrific crime that requires a whole-of-society approach. Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to child online protection. First and foremost, as a technology company, we have a responsibility to create software, devices and services that have safety features built in from the outset. We leverage technology across our services to detect, disrupt and report illegal content, including child sexual exploitation. And we innovate and invest in tools, technology and partnerships to support the global fight needed to address online child sexual exploitation.
In furtherance of those commitments, today Microsoft is sharing a grooming detection technique, code name “Project Artemis,” by which online predators attempting to lure children for sexual purposes can be detected, addressed and reported. Developed in collaboration with The Meet Group, Roblox, Kik and Thorn, this technique builds off Microsoft patented technology and will be made freely available via Thorn to qualified online service companies that offer a chat function. Thorn is a technology nonprofit that builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse.
The development of this new technique began in November 2018 at a Microsoft “360 Cross-Industry Hackathon,” which was co-sponsored by the WePROTECT Global Alliance in conjunction with the Child Dignity Alliance. These “360” hackathons are multifaceted, focusing not just on technology and engineering but also on legal and policy aspects as well as operations and policy implementation. Today’s announcement marks the technical and engineering progress over the last 14 months by a cross-industry v-team from Microsoft, The Meet Group, Roblox, Kik, Thorn and others to help identify potential instances of child online grooming for sexual purposes and to operationalize an effective response. The teams were led by Dr. Hany Farid, a leading academic who, in 2009, partnered with Microsoft and Dartmouth College on the development of PhotoDNA, a free tool that has assisted in the detection, disruption and reporting of millions of child sexual exploitation images and is used by more than 150 companies and organizations around the world.
Building off the Microsoft patent, the technique is applied to historical text-based chat conversations. It evaluates and “rates” conversation characteristics and assigns an overall probability rating. This rating can then be used as a determiner, set by individual companies implementing the technique, as to when a flagged conversation should be sent to human moderators for review. Human moderators would then be capable of identifying imminent threats for referral to law enforcement, as well as incidents of suspected child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC, along with ECPAT International, INHOPE and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), provided valuable feedback throughout the collaborative process.
Beginning on January 10, 2020, licensing and adoption of the technique will be handled by Thorn. Companies and services wanting to test and adopt the technique can contact Thorn directly at antigrooming@thorn.org. Microsoft has been leveraging the technique in programs on our Xbox platform for several years and is exploring its use in chat services, including Skype.
“Project Artemis” is a significant step forward, but it is by no means a panacea. Child sexual exploitation and abuse online and the detection of online child grooming are weighty problems. But we are not deterred by the complexity and intricacy of such issues. On the contrary, we are making the tool available at this point in time to invite further contributions and engagement from other technology companies and organizations with the goal of continuous improvement and refinement.
At Microsoft, we embrace a multi-stakeholder model to combat online child exploitation that includes survivors and their advocates, government, tech companies and civil society working together. Combating online child exploitation should and must be a universal call to action.
Intelligent Edge devices and solutions were on full display at the Microsoft CES 2020 Showcase this week. New PCs, connected storefront and IOT solutions demonstrated the power of Microsoft’s unique and growing relationship with its partners around the world.
Working with this vibrant partner ecosystem has long been a priority for Microsoft and it is a key differentiator that’s helped make Windows 10 and Azure successful. Taking a collective, collaborative approach enables the top minds in our industry to work together, accelerate innovation, and ensure we bring great devices and experiences to market for our customers. Together with our partners, we are driving technology forward.
During the first CES of a new decade, we’ve been doing our own 10-year challenge this week, looking back at where we were in 2010 in contrast with how dramatically things have changed since then. Every year along the way has brought exciting innovation across the intelligent edge and computing as a whole, and it’s at these milestones where we can see the dramatic shifts in the tech landscape.
As we close out another great year at CES, let’s look at where we’ve been, how far we’ve come and where we’re headed.
A decade of disruptive change
In 2010, Intel launched its Core i7 line — the first six core desktop CPU. Blackberry owned double the market share of the iPhone and triple that of smartphones running other operating systems. The iPad and Instagram launched. Office 2010 was introduced and surpassed Microsoft’s previous records for adoption, deployment and revenue.
Ten years later, we can see how some of those innovations moved entire markets. Some of them played their role then passed the baton to other creations. And new, disruptive technology trends have emerged, affecting the entire technology industry.
Today we are in an age of services, cloud computing, AI and machine learning. Next-generation Windows PCs and entirely new product categories are being built to incorporate cloud and AI services, support new experiences like virtual and augmented reality, and address our insatiable demand for new ways to work with data.
With these emerging technologies and trends, we are creating new possibilities for the modern PC that weren’t on the radar in 2010. Yet in today’s PCs we still see parallels with the innovation from a decade earlier—in 2020 as in 2010, the whole ecosystem remains focused on delivering new customer scenarios. And as we move into a more connected, intelligent era of computing, PCs today can do what PCs simply could not do a decade ago.
Partner innovations at CES
The impact of the past decade’s innovations is showing up in many ways across a spectrum of devices. Features like Windows Hello, Windows Ink and Cortana all require specific hardware to work well, and this week, our partners have demonstrated innovations that complement our software, like fingerprint readers on the power button and cameras with security features, among many other advancements large and small.
Along with the evolution of devices have come changes in the expectations of both consumers and commercial customers. People want attractive, high-quality devices with no tradeoffs between cost and quality. At CES this week, we’ve seen how our partners continue to offer attractive, no-compromise devices packed with premium features to customers at all price points.
The Windows ecosystem is growing every year, and CES 2020 showcased some of the most innovative devices we’ve seen—from incredibly thin and light laptops, convertibles and 2-in-1s, to powerful gaming rigs, always-connected devices and more. Some of the devices at the show included:
The Acer Swift 3, which supports fast-charging, enabling up to four hours of use with a 30-minute charge.
The ASUSExpertBook B9, which offers a frameless four-sided NanoEdge display meaning the 14-inch panel fits into a standard 13-inch laptop chassis with a 94% screen-to-body ratio.
The latest version of the popular XPS 13 from Dell, which has reduced its InfinityEdge borders and has a 6.8% larger 16:10 display that spans from all four edges and is 25% brighter than before.
The HP Elite Dragonfly, the first world’s laptop with built-in Tile technology, which allows users to easily find a lost notebook, and is made with ocean bound plastic material with more than 82% of the mechanical parts made from recycled materials.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 with the exclusive Lenovo Q-Control Intelligent Cooling feature that uses AI to optimize battery life by an average of up to 20%.
The SamsungGalaxy Book Flex α, which offers a long-lasting battery, an immersive QLED display capable of producing over 1 billion colors and featuring an ultra-thin bezel, and up to 17.5-hours battery life.
The power of these products shows how Microsoft’s vibrant ecosystem continues to enable the top minds in our industry to work together, accelerate innovation and bring great experiences to market.
Looking ahead
In the next 10 years, we expect this pace of innovation will only accelerate. The 5G networks coming online will process extremely high volumes of data at much faster speeds, driving new streaming experiences and even more services across a range of devices. Graphics will get even better as HDR displays continue to improve and 8K becomes ubiquitous. New types of devices are sure to appear, with dual screen and foldable PCs already on the horizon for 2020.
Customer expectations and demand for the most modern devices will keep rising, and the ways we use PCs will keep evolving as we expand our cloud computing capabilities and our understanding of AI and machine learning.
As we work through this new decade, Microsoft will continue to innovate with our partners to meet these demands, so everyone can achieve more. From 5G to the power of the intelligent edge, I’m excited to see what our partners will bring to market in the new “roaring twenties.”
Of all industries, retail is undergoing one of the most significant digital transformations. Various forms of computing are rapidly becoming embedded in every aspect of retail, from corner stores to the world’s largest retailers. Revenue from digital commerce is growing five times faster than from in-store sources, and global digital commerce sales now comprise 16.4 percent of total retail sales.
At the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference next week in New York, Microsoft will unveil our latest solutions to empower retailers all over the world to take advantage of this transformation. Central to these announcements will be our new vision for digital commerce and the toolkit that enables it. Our goal is to be a technology ally to the retail industry, to help retailers thrive — with more relevant and optimized e-commerce experiences, enhanced shopper-level personalization and expanded monetization opportunities. Today, we are announcing two new Microsoft solutions for retailers that do precisely that: Microsoft PromoteIQ and Microsoft Bing for Commerce.
Introducing Microsoft PromoteIQ
One of our key offerings for retailers is the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform. This is the next step in our journey of evolving our digital commerce offerings since announcing the acquisition of PromoteIQ in August 2019. Using Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can now dramatically increase revenue from their digital vendor marketing programs, while remaining fully in control of monetization and engaging brand partners.
Commerce marketing is a highly effective way for retailers to create powerful new high-margin revenue streams that can fund innovation elsewhere in their businesses, as well as provide brands with a powerful toolkit to market their products to shoppers. But competing for brand dollars with other marketing solutions can be daunting. Microsoft PromoteIQ helps make it easy by delivering an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with enterprise-grade capabilities to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing — whether on-site or off-site. The platform includes an extensive analytics suite to deliver audience insights and help brands understand incremental sales lift. It also includes integration with Microsoft Advertising, which opens up a powerful new source of incremental demand for retailers. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, a retailer remains fully in control and is finally able to turn commerce marketing into an essential growth engine for their business, funding new capabilities and innovations while strengthening their partnership with vendors and brands.
The Home Depot did just that. The world’s largest home improvement retailer needed to maximize the 170M monthly visits to homedepot.com, the fifth-largest ecommerce site in the U.S. They partnered with PromoteIQ to integrate a commerce marketing platform to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing efforts. Since the program launched in early 2019, customer engagement has increased by 35 percent and promoted products have seen double-digit growth compared to 2018. Numbers tell an important piece of the story, but it’s also great to see that the customer and vendor relationships are now stronger than ever. Customers are presented with relevant advertising for products they may need for their home improvement projects, and even may see content for complementary projects like décor to complete their room. Vendor partners now have enhanced marketing controls to drive better conversion, increase visibility, and learn from real-time performance insights.
Microsoft PromoteIQ offers great solutions to help retailers — and brands as well. For brands, the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform provides a robust offering for comprehensively managing advertising campaigns with key retailer partners, across campaign management, targeting, optimization and analytics.
At NRF we’ll showcase customer examples and show the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform. If you are interested in learning more about the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform, please visit www.promoteiq.com.
Introducing Microsoft Bing for Commerce
Another important introduction for retailers is our new solution for an essential enabler of digital commerce: product search. Today’s shoppers expect convenience, to the point that 80 percent of them will abandon a site that produces poor search results. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent search, personalization and product recommendation solution that helps gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue, thanks to more relevant and customized results that drive conversions.
Retailers can now leverage the power of Bing intelligence and Microsoft AI to searches on their websites, applying insights from millions of shoppers around the world. This puts advanced query understanding into the hands of retailers — helping to decipher the natural human language of shoppers on their sites and create a shorter path between shoppers and the product they’re seeking.
Microsoft Bing for Commerce includes product recommendations that are relevant and personalized, as well as visual search innovation that helps satisfy emerging shopping behavior. Microsoft Bing for Commerce offers all of these intuitive capabilities on PC and mobile and does this with Microsoft’s dedicated approach to privacy and data compliance.
Microsoft Bing for Commerce is now available in public preview for large retailers as a stand-alone offering and will soon be available as a part of Dynamics 365 Commerce. More information is available at www.microsoft.com/bing/commerce.
It’s a time of unprecedented growth and transformation for the retail industry. We’re excited to see our partners and customers grow their businesses by taking advantage of the opportunities in digital commerce.
If you are at NRF next week, please visit us at the Microsoft booth on Level 3, #4051.
The last several years have brought massive change – and opportunity – for the retail industry. Gone are the days when retailers chose when, where and what to sell; now consumers are in the driver’s seat, and retailers are being challenged to figure how to best engage with them. Additionally, they’re juggling pressures driven by industry trends such as the drive for more sustainability in retail, the proliferation of data, increased energy around “anywhere commerce,” the need to better equip store associates with technology and much more. But change often accelerates innovation, and because of this I believe that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a retailer at the intersection of retail and technology.
Microsoft continues to innovate side by side with retailers to help them embrace their biggest opportunities and enable intelligent retail by empowering businesses to take control of their own digital evolution. Our solutions enable retailers to transform across all parts of their business – from how they better understand their customers and empower employees, to putting the right technology in place to deliver an intelligent supply chain and ultimately reimagine their businesses. In the last year and a half, we’ve established ourselves as a trusted partner to some of the world’s largest retailers such as Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens Boots Alliance, among others. And we’ve empowered their transformation by providing the platforms on which to build innovation for all parts of their businesses.
We’ve learned a lot along the way both through our retail customers as well as our own physical retail presence about how technology can help this industry both embrace its biggest opportunities as well as tackle its biggest challenges. And today we’re sharing how our first-party innovations are helping to drive the future of intelligent retail across all parts of a retailer’s business.
Gaining a better understanding of your customers
If customers are the heart of the retail industry, data is the oxygen. Data has the potential to profoundly impact every single aspect of retailers’ businesses, including – and perhaps most importantly – how they respond to customer demands with differentiated and unique experiences.
We’re helping retailers surface actionable customer insights with data solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics, which helps retailers not only analyze vast amounts of data, but also apply machine learning to quickly surface insights that can drive immediate impact for their businesses, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which helps maximize customer lifetime value by surfacing a 360-degree view of the customer to drive personalized engagements at scale. This means that even the most complex retailers, with thousands of suppliers in their end-to-end supply chain and millions of item-store combinations, can quickly make the decisions needed to not only run their businesses most efficiently but also delight customers in the process.
And with Dynamics 365 Connected Store, retailers like Marks & Spencer – which is piloting the solution in a store in London – can generate data within its physical stores that produces the same kind of actionable business insights as it gets from its digital storefronts. M&S is achieving this by analyzing data from smart devices such as video cameras and IoT sensors to provide real-time and predictive insights on everything from the current length of the checkout line to the traffic around endcap product displays to help associates make better decisions. We’re welcoming new retail customers into our Connected Store preview every day, so sign up here to request access.
One of the customer demands becoming more and more evident as retailers reason over their data is the desire for a seamless shopping experience regardless of where, when and how they choose to buy. We’ve invested in helping retailers bridge embrace this concept of commerce anywhere (aCommerce) with Dynamics 365 Commerce, the evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail and a true multi-channel solution that transforms the customer experience by unifying retailers’ back-office, in-store, call center and e-commerce experiences. One experience across all channels – that’s what customers are demanding today. The result? More personalized engagement with customers, employees who are better equipped to provide the best customer experience possible and deep insights to empower advanced decision making across every piece of a retailer’s business. I’m excited to announce that Dynamics 365 Commerce, currently in preview, with become generally available to our retail customers on Feb. 3.
Empowering employees with the tools they need to better serve customers
Despite the rise of e-commerce over the past couple of decades, we know that most shopping – across generations even – still happens in person. Research from Forbes Insights shows us that 60 percent of consumers still prefer to shop in physical retail environments, and this number stays fairly consistent across generations. This means that first-line workers are still one of a retailer’s most valuable assets – many times, they are the first impression a shopper gets of your brand and they play a significant role in customer acquisition and retention.
Retail associates need modern tools and experiences in order to remain productive and deliver the best customer service possible while on the store floor. With Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud, and new first-line capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams later this year, we are in a unique position to help this often-overlooked part of the workforce get their jobs done. Today I’m thrilled to announce that we’re adding even more productivity and collaboration value into Teams, including task targeting, publishing and reporting, new workforce management integrations to streamline shift management and a new Walkie Talkie feature. By building push-to-talk functionality into Teams, we’re helping our retail customers turn company-owned smartphones and tablets into a secure walkie talkie, extending the range of traditional walkie-talkie communication and streamlining licensing and provisioning for retailers’ IT staff.
Finally, as we extend modern tools and experiences across the first-line workforce, we know that we need to make it easy for IT to manage and help enable a secure and compliant experience for all employees. I’m excited to disclose enhanced identity and access management capabilities – such as shared device sign-out for Android and inbound provisioning from leading workforce management providers such as SAP SuccessFactors and Workday – that will make onboarding retail associates and operating shared devices more secure and scalable, something our retail customers have been asking us to add for some time now. And, later this quarter, retailers will be able to enable SMS sign-in to Microsoft 365 and custom applications for retail workers and empower their store managers with delegated user management capabilities, making it easier to reset passwords and manage workers’ identities without additional demand on IT staff.
Infusing more intelligence into the supply chain
A retailer’s supply chain can play a major role in customer satisfaction – outdated supply chain processes can mean delays, unfulfilled orders and more. By connecting devices and collecting data, retailers can analyze that information to create new insights and ultimately a truly intelligent supply chain that enables them to provide the best service possible to customers. This is the Internet of Things (IoT), and as IoT becomes more mainstream it continues to be a huge driver of data for retailers today. In fact, our IoT Signals for Retail study found that 92 percent of retailers have adopted IoT and are using it in various stages of trials and deployments, with the most common IoT scenarios being driving store analytics (57 percent), supply chain optimization (48 percent) and security and loss prevention (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively).
We’re making building and deploying IoT applications in retail environments easier than ever with new Azure IoT Central solution templates that help retailers simplify IoT deployments to start driving immediate impact. Today, the Azure IoT Central Micro Fulfilment Center template joins five existing retail-focused templates – including for scenarios across connected logistics, digital distribution centers, in-store analytics and smart inventory management – to help retailers more easily optimize their fulfilment processes through a managed service that includes everything a retailer needs to get started today.
Reimagining retail business models and customer experiences
The success of today’s retailers’ physical store environments rests on their ability to disrupt themselves and their own status quo by pushing into new business models and providing new experiences and formats that engage customers and keep them coming back for more.
We understand this better than most technology vendors, because we’re continuing to move through this same transformation journey with our own Microsoft retail stores. Over the past several years, we’ve digitally transformed and extended our physical retail store strategy from an exclusively consumer storefront to a commerce engine that connects with all customers – from commercial enterprises to small businesses and consumers. Partnering with enterprise sales, we’re offering new experiences in and through our stores targeted toward our enterprise customers such as J. Crew, Office Depot and Marks & Spencer. Our stores are also at the forefront of adopting new Microsoft technology across cloud, predictive analytics, machine learning, cognitive services and more to solve our most complex challenges – and we’re learning from those experiences to ultimately pass those lessons along to our customers. And of course, that’s a two-way street – we’re also learning from our retail customers to inform how we manage and operate our stores too, which is indicative of the true partnerships we strive to establish with every retailer we work with.
While reimagining retail can lead to the kind of business transformation we’ve seen in our own store, it can take different forms as well, such as how retailers are tapping into new revenue streams and digitizing their own physical stores to drive new customer and employee experiences.
Microsoft PromoteIQ is an end-to-end commerce marketing platform enabling retailers to create a new critical growth engine for their businesses through at-scale vendor marketing programs. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can empower their brand partners with powerful marketing technology to natively promote products to in-market shoppers, reaching them at the right time to increase digital sales – all supported by a deep analytics suite to deliver impactful audience insights. And now, thanks to the integration with Microsoft Advertising, we can offer our retailer partners a powerful new source of incremental demand for their programs. Take Home Depot, for example. While you may expect the world’s largest home improvement retailer to do most of its business in person, HomeDepot.com is the fifth largest e-commerce site in the U.S. Consequently, the company needed a solution to help it maximize the nearly 170 million visitors per month its site was seeing by integrating an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with capabilities to manage and scale its vendor-funded digital marketing. Since deploying PromoteIQ, Home Depot has seen very positive results, including double-digit sales growth for promoted products through this program.
Of course, reaching customers at the right time is only half the equation; a retailer must also be able to deliver on what that customer is looking for. In fact, 80 percent of shoppers will abandon a site that produces poor search results. And that’s why we’re investing in this critical piece of digital commerce – product search. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent artificial intelligence-driven solution for product search, personalization and product recommendations that gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue through more relevant and customized results that drive conversion. We’re also enabling our retailers to meet customers where and how they want to shop through visual search innovation included in Bing for Commerce, to help capture sales from new, emerging shopping behaviors.
Connect with us at NRF
Microsoft will have a significant presence at NRF once again this year, headlined by our own CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote session to open the show. You won’t want to miss hearing his perspective on business and cultural transformation, and how our retail customers are putting our technology into action to reimagine their businesses. And if you’re attending the show, make sure you stop by our Microsoft booth (#4501) to see how we’re bringing intelligent retail to life across all parts of a retailer’s business and how you can achieve the same – we’re offering complimentary envisioning workshops, where retailers will have an opportunity to work directly with us to create a shared vision and digital road map to unlock a future of endless possibilities.
You’re also invited to attend one of our sessions on the show floor – I’m leading a Big Ideas session where I’ll share my thoughts on the increasing importance of sustainability to the industry and how technology can help accelerate retailers’ sustainability visions. In addition, my colleagues Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for Microsoft Business Applications and Global Industry, and Emma Williams, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office Vertical Solutions, and I will participate in the FQ Lounge at NRF along with many other “women rocking retail” for panel discussions about diversity and inclusion in the retail industry (we’re proud to be a sponsor of this space as well). And of course, visit Microsoft’s NRF page to keep up to date on the latest developments.
As we embark on a new year (a new decade, in fact!) and look ahead to next week and another National Retail Federation conference and expo, I am inspired to pause and reflect for a bit on the successes of the past year. And the highlights that first come to mind are not from Microsoft but rather from our customers and partners – those retailers and companies supporting the retail industry with technology that have truly embraced our industry’s new normal – constant disruption – with fresh thinking and innovation.
We often hear that every company is becoming a software company, and this feels especially true for the retail industry right now, as many across fashion, fast-moving-consumer goods, food service and more are building their own net new digital capabilities.
Shelley Bransten.
We refer to this concept as tech intensity – not only using technology for technology’s sake, but also using it to build net-new capabilities to propel your business forward. And it’s why we believe that the next big innovations aren’t going to come from technology companies but rather be driven by retailers as they work to find new paths to revenue, keep up with customer demands and ultimately reimagine their businesses.
According to a study we recently conducted on the global impacts of this concept of tech intensity, more than half of retailers are already doing this – building first-party IP with advanced digital technologies – and the vast majority believe that doing so is the most effective way to build a competitive advantage, particularly in the areas of customer experience and delivery of goods and services.
Taking a new technology-enabled approach to business is the formula for retail success today, and between Microsoft and our global network of partners, we’re helping our retail customers do just that to address some of their greatest opportunities. All our technology and partnership investments are deeply rooted in the four critical priority scenarios our customers have told us they want most from Microsoft:
Know your customer
Empower employees
Deliver on an intelligent supply chain
Reimagine retail
We call these our priority scenarios, and here are just a few examples of customers and partners bringing them to life.
Know your customer: Deliver unforgettable experiences that make you stand out from the crowd
Retail begins and ends with the customer, and it’s so important that retailers use technology in ways that create new, engaging experiences that keep them coming back time and time again.
H&M
Our work with global fashion retailer H&M Group extends across different pieces of its business, including fueling new customer experiences. But one area of collaboration with the company that is currently top of mind for me is sustainability. H&M Group has a strong focus on sustainability, with a vision to lead the change toward a circular and renewable fashion industry, and because of this H&M launched a garment recycling program in its stores in 2013 with the goal of preventing customers’ unwanted clothing from ending up in a landfill.
Recently, and with the help of Microsoft Azure and partner Ombori, H&M reimagined its garment recycling program in the U.S. with new “smart” recycle bins that offer engaging experiences to customers. The new bins are outfitted with an Ombori digital screen that serves up discount codes and engagement opportunities (pictures, social prompts, etc.) to customers who donate, and digital scales within the bins allow each store to quantify the impact its customers are having in real time.
And collecting garments in stores is only one of many H&M Group sustainability initiatives; join me Jan. 13 at NRF 2020 to hear from Arti Zeighami, head of advanced analytics and AI at H&M Group, about how the company is working for a global fashion industry where sustainability and AI go hand in hand.
Intermarché is partnering with Microsoft, Accenture, SGS and Transparency-One to provide a more personalized customer experience.
Intermarché
France’s third-largest grocer, Intermarché, prides itself on living its motto: “Mieux produire, mieux consommer, mieux manger,” which translates to “to produce, consume and eat better.” Through a partnership with Microsoft and partners AccentureSGS and Transparency-One, the grocer is leveraging data from “farm to fork” to help improve every Intermarché customer’s understanding and ability to measure and control the impact of his or her own consumption.
By implementing Azure Machine Learning and eventually other Azure AI services, Intermarché will be able to personalize offers to shoppers based on their dietary preferences (for example, low-cholesterol diets, gluten-free diets and more) as well as provide more transparency into the supply chain of its organic products, making healthier, sustainable living affordable and accessible.
dunnhumby
UK-based partner dunnhumby, a leader in customer data science, works with leading retailers and consumer-goods companies to use data science to help them deliver better shopping experiences for their customers. And we’re thrilled that, through a global strategic partnership, dunnhumby will move its customer insights products – used by the likes of Tesco, Unilever, McDonald’s, Nestle and many more – to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Combining dunnhumby’s tools, such as Shop on Lab, with the Azure cloud platform will allow many more retailers and consumer-goods companies to unlock and share insights into their businesses. The processing power of Azure and the machine learning data science of dunnhumby can offer the right insights at the right time, so action can be taken quickly on company performance, new trends and innovation, brand switching and loyalty.
Empower your employees: Enable your people with the tools to deliver extraordinary customer service
Retail associates are often the first point of contact for customers, so it’s important that they’re armed with the right information and training to provide the best experience possible.
A partnership between Walgreens Boots Alliance and Microsoft is helping WBA to cut costs, improve operations, modernize business processes and train employees.
Walgreens Boots Alliance
Almost a year ago, we announced a partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) to transform health care delivery. Today we’re sharing updates on how we are making progress with this partnership. Cloud modernization is well underway, helping WBA to recognize cost efficiencies in the cloud in several ways.
WBA is migrating on-premises data warehouses into Azure Synapse Analytics, improving operations and modernizing business processes. The company is also using Azure Synapse to analyze vast amounts of data in real time while applying machine learning to get insights that help associates provide customers with the products they want while preventing unsold inventory from cluttering the back office.
We’re also working together on two new pilot projects to enable more empowered employees and better customer insights in Walgreens stores. WBA is currently testing a new way for store associates to receive training on new scenarios presented in stores where it carries fresh food products – such as culling produce, executing curbside grocery pickup and more – via an immersive mixed-reality experience using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and a training solution from partner, Altoura.
The mixed reality training replaces document-based training, lowers costs traditionally associated with getting employees up to speed on new processes and ensures employees have access to the latest and greatest training in real-time to better serve customers.
Additionally, to better understand Walgreens’ customers and their needs, the company is conducting anonymous footfall tracking via carts and baskets with Microsoft partner Acuity’s Atrius system. The Atrius system helps Walgreens better understand the consumer journey using Bluetooth low-energy beacons to learn how customers are navigating its new format stores and using that information to better optimize the shopping experience for consumers.
Deliver on an intelligent supply chain: Close the gap between demand and fulfillment to delight your customers
So much of customer satisfaction rests in ensuring that you have the right products in the right place at the right time, and infusing data-driven intelligence into your supply chain can help make all the difference.
Mars, Inc.
For most consumer-packaged goods companies, sales spike during holiday season due to investments across the marketing and sales mix, from online display advertising to in-store physical displays. This past fall, Mars Inc., a global manufacturer of confectionary and other food products, decided it was time to gain deeper insights into an age-old problem of tracking where its product displays went after they left the warehouse.
Previously, Mars was only able to track the number of displays it produced and how many left its warehouses for retailer destinations. To help tackle this problem, it found the right partner with Footmarks, which designed its beacon- and gateway-based display tracking solution with Azure IoT Central to deliver secure, simple and scalable insights into what happens once displays begin transit.
With the Footmarks solution, Mars is now equipped with information on how many displays were in warehouse, how many were in transit, where they were headed, when they were put in market and how long they remained in use. With this insight, sales teams were able to access live updates to ensure displays were at the right stores, ensuring customers were always able to find their favorite snack foods when they were shopping.
Reimagine retail: Imagine the impossible and then make it happen
Consumer demands are changing, and retailers need to evaluate how they can change, too – from the experiences they create for customers to their core business models – to succeed and compete in today’s industry climate.
AWM Smart Shelf solutions create compelling experiences for customers around the world.
AWM
AWM is powering the future of autonomous shopping with AWM Frictionless, a Microsoft Azure-based solution that provides a seamless shopping experience by allowing consumers to shop as normal and then check out by simply walking out of the store, bypassing the traditional checkout process. AWM Frictionless is already deployed at several multi-billion-dollar retail organizations in the U.S. and Mexico, with hundreds more expected to come online in 2020.
Other Azure-powered AWM Smart Shelf solutions have been deployed in 16 countries around the world for scenarios such as demographic reporting, on-shelf inventory intelligence and custom shelf-edge LED displays that support ads, electronic shelf labels and planogram functionality.
Trakomatic
Trakomatic is a Microsoft partner in Asia that is digitizing brick and mortar stores with its Azure AI-based solution that provides more personalized, VIP-caliber shopping experiences to customers. Once a shopper opts in by signing up for the service, she has the option of adding her photo image to her profile. If she does, Trakomatic’s video analytics, AI-powered facial recognition and intelligent sensors, all on the Microsoft Azure cloud, do the rest, recognizing her as she enters the store and personalizing the experience – from targeted offers and digital signage that changes based on her preferences to alerting store associates so that they are prepared to provide the VIP experience she expects.
Visit us at NRF 2020
I’m inspired each and every day by our customers’ and partners’ innovation and can’t wait to see how they will reimagine retail next. To see more of this kind of innovation in action, visit us next week at NRF 2020. And be sure to check out more details on our latest retail innovations on the Official Microsoft Blog.
Retailers experienced more change in the last decade than nearly any other industry, a trend that is not likely to slow as we enter 2020. The only certainty in the new decade is the need for technologies that help retailers stay nimble, relevant, and anticipate customer needs and shopping preferences.
As my colleague Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Retail and Consumer Goods Industries, shared in a blog post today, consumers are driving the future of retail—from when, where, and how they engage with a retail brand to demands for higher standards in data privacy and secure shopping. Technology will usher in a new era of intelligent retail experiences across every storefront, physical and digital.
Next week, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show, Microsoft will demonstrate Dynamics 365 solutions as part of the breadth of our company’s offerings, that will power retail innovation in the next decade. These applications unify customer experiences across every commerce channel from physical to online stores and pop up shops to subscription services as well as unlock AI-powered insights from the back office to the frontline to deliver exceptional, personalized customer experiences.
This vision for the future of retail is spotlighted by new features and product releases announced today:
Dynamics 365 Commerce, generally available on February 3rd is a modern omnichannel commerce solution that unifies back office, e-commerce, in-store, and call center and simplifies the integration of new emerging channels.
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, featuring two new capabilities to reduce fraud and related costs while improving the buying experience: loss prevention and account protection, available for preview on March 2nd.
Dynamics 365 Connected Store is an application that combines AI-driven insights and IoT-connected sensors and cameras to empower retailers with real-time observational data to improve in-store performance, coming to preview later this calendar year.
Deliver insightful shopping experiences
Omnichannel retailing is now the standard for success in the market. For too many retailers, however, the slow adoption of technology to support the model has hampered progress toward truly unified cross-channel shopping experiences that bridge physical and online channels.
At NRF, Microsoft will demonstrate a modern, flexible cloud commerce solution that powers rich, customer-first experiences at all touchpoints. Dynamics 365 Commerce, slated for general availability on February 3rd, is an evolution of our Dynamics 365 Retail offering and delivers a comprehensive omnichannel solution to unify back-office, e-commerce, in-store, and call center experiences.
Spotlighted features for the February 3rd launch include:
Native e-commerce capabilities, featuring built-in web authoring and development tools to create engaging, intelligent digital storefronts, plus a connected marketing and commerce platform for seamless management of content, assets, promotions, inventory, and pricing across channels.
Native integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.
AI-moderated ratings and reviews and intelligent customer recommendations for more personalized customer experiences.
Dynamics 365 Commerce customers are finding new ways to build brand loyalty, optimize operations and supply-chain efficiencies, and deliver better business outcomes. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, the third-largest premium wine company in the United States, leverages Dynamics 365 Commerce to provide a seamless customer experience across all three direct-to-consumer channels, e-commerce, brick and mortar, and clubs, and across the different brands in the Ste. Michelle Wine Estates portfolio. With a full end-to-end retail solution, Ste. Michelle can put the customer at the center of the buying journey and provide more personalized and timely customer recommendations and experiences from the tasting room to digital touchpoints.
“From the moment a consumer visits one of our wineries or tasting rooms, joins one of our clubs, or decides to purchase products online, we want to remove all sources of friction that come between the consumer and the perfect wine choice.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates
Even for global e-commerce leaders, it’s not always easy to safeguard millions of transactions and deliver the best possible shopping and purchasing experiences at the same time. The accelerating shift toward omnichannel has increased the threat of fraud-related losses. And greater exposure to theft or improper discounting can introduce more pressure on the already thin margins in brick and mortar stores. In fact, fraudulent transactions globally account for over $175 billion in fraud-related costs every year.
In 2019, Microsoft introduced Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to help reduce fraud and its related costs, increase revenue, and deliver better buying experiences with lower friction and more support.
Today we’re announcing two new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection—both available for preview on March 2nd—to help prevent loss and mitigate risks for merchants, leveraging the power of big data and ethical AI to provide a best-in-class fraud solution for omnichannel merchants:
Account protection helps retailers recognize patterns related to fraudulent e-commerce activities during account creation or attempted hijacking. Account protection uses artificial intelligence to aid in decreasing the costs of account fraud by helping to reduce the number of fraudulent accounts, in turn protecting the businesses’ reputation and improving customer experiences and satisfaction.
Account protection can help retailers improve the bottom line by reducing fraud activities and friction throughout the customer journey, improve business reputation by preventing negative exposure due to fraudulent activity, and increase customer satisfaction by protecting customer authenticity and privacy.
Loss prevention helps reduce fraud in brick and mortar stores and boost revenues at the retailer by providing insights around returns and discount fraud. By using data from commerce systems and the power of AI, loss prevention helps merchants decipher patterns of losses from returns, improper discounts, merchandise mishandling, and inventory turn-over.
Loss prevention helps provide anomaly reporting and actionable insights that allow retailers to gain visibility into specific business functions which may require additional controls. In addition, loss prevention can help reduce the manual effort needed to determine the business entities and functions which are at risk.
BESTSELLER, the international clothing and accessories company, is leveraging Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to reduce fraud-related losses across its 70 markets spanning most of Europe, the Middle East, Canada, India and globally via e-commerce. BESTSELLER uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to spot patterns of activity that suggest fraud and work to remedy the situation within its stores. After a successful pilot deployment, BESTSELLER is rolling out Fraud Protection across its stores in Europe, and eventually the world. The company projects that it will save millions of dollars as a result, while also boosting BESTSELLER’s core value of trust.
“By identifying fraud and loss quickly with Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, we’re boosting business outcomes and building a culture where our core value of honesty is practiced by everyone every day.” – Kim Guldager, Senior Program Manager at BESTSELLER.
With real-time observational data about customer movement or the status of products and store devices, there’s tremendous opportunity to gain a better understanding of the retail space and improve in-store performance. Microsoft is dedicated to helping retailers adapt and optimize physical retail spaces to meet new levels of customer expectation.
Available in preview later this year, Dynamics 365 Connected Store helps retailers both understand how customers use the retail space over time, as well as monitor real-time activities from checkout line queues to shelf voids to help frontline workers deliver exceptional customer service.
Connected Store can optimize the shopping experience in real time through triggered alerts based on real-time data from video cameras and IoT sensors and also provides longer term insight that can illuminate patterns and opportunities that lie within the day-to-day occurrences of a retail space.
Marks & Spencer, for instance, is using Dynamics 365 Connected Store to capture observational data from customer behavior across multiple stores worldwide, and over a period of time, to identify patterns and trends. This unlocks the opportunity to predict inventory needs and replenish stock levels in real time, all to create first class experiences for the customer.
See what’s in store for retail and technology
Microsoft, along with our global partner ecosystem, is dedicated to enabling intelligent retail by empowering the industry with the tools to unlock the full potential of customers, employees, and data. Together with the solutions highlighted above, NRF attendees can see demonstrations of our portfolio of business applications which will include Supply Chain Management, Customer Insights, and Power BI dashboards for frontline workers to the back office. We’ll also be showing our new mixed reality solution, Product Visualize, that lets sales representatives place a 3D digital twin of a product in their customer’s environment.
Get the full story
For those attending NRF, stop by the Microsoft booth for immersive demonstrations of our full range of retail solutions, attend deep dive sessions, network with us at the FQ Lounge, and more. View the agenda for all the ways to engage with us at NRF.
We also invite you to view our latest research, the Retail Trends Playbook 2020 for more insights into emerging trends that will help empower retailers to create exceptional, insightful shopping experiences for customers.
Last fall, we celebrated early access for Gears 5 Ultimate Edition with the television debut of “The Chain” during the NFL Season Opener. Today, transcendent, two-time Grammy Award winning rock band, Evanescence, has released the full official music video “The Chain,” their first new rock recording in eight years. Directed by frequent collaborator, P.R. Brown (My Chemical Romance, John Mayer, Green Day), the piece blends powerful, epic performance visuals with footage from Gears 5. Watch it above, and listen to the song on all digital streaming platforms here.
Kait Diaz’s journey to discover herself in Gears 5 is brought to life by Evanescence’s haunting rendition of “The Chain,” one that evokes the feeling of standing together in solidarity against adverse and unknown forces, even those coming from within. The partnership with Gears 5 also begins a new journey in what is expected to be a very active period for the band as they get set to tour on the international stage.
On March 29, Evanescence’s spring tour dates commence with a performance at Download Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Shortly thereafter, the group will embark on a massive co-headline tour of Europe and the U.K. with Within Temptation that runs from April 4 to May 1. You can check out all of the band’s tour dates and purchase tickets at Evanescence’s website here, and fans can also keep up with what the band is working on by following them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Evanescence is currently working on new original music, which will start rolling out in 2020 in advance of their highly anticipated fifth full-length studio album.
If you haven’t experienced Gears 5’s five thrilling modes and deepest campaign ever, jump in on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. For the latest on Gears 5 and the Gears franchise, stay tuned to Xbox Wire and follow Gears on Twitter @gearsofwar.
