Through the Covid 19 pandemic, we’ve seen the pace of change accelerate exponentially, compressing an up to ten-year prospective journey from on-premises to cloud based digital transformation to a journey now measured in months. The legacy systems that organizations had either been nursing along or ignoring suddenly became noticeably archaic and exposed. It has become abundantly clear that digitally mature organizations are able to move faster and extend their growth advantage over competitors during the past 18 months. To embrace continual change organizations must rethink what it means to be agile, resilient and put people first in this new hybrid world.

The Microsoft industry clouds are designed to be a platform that provides key answers to these challenges, delivering a solution that is relevant for industry-specific needs. The incremental value that can be realized from these industry clouds will come from how it’s further personalized for each individual organization – something Avanade is uniquely positioned to do.

Microsoft industry clouds, personalized for your success
The hard lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic have been used to shape the Microsoft industry clouds. Built from the ground up during the pandemic with those learnings in mind, Microsoft has pivoted their existing technology, so it is now “industry first”.

The industry clouds build on the Microsoft Cloud, which means, the power of Azure and capabilities like AI it extends, GitHub for application development, Power Platform to empower business users to create their own low code or no code applications, Teams, the collaborative lifestyle platform, and Dynamics 365 for business process automation.

Industry clouds extend the value of the Microsoft Cloud into industry-specific components and capabilities like an industry-specific common data model, and API connectors to Microsoft and third-party apps, open standards, workflows, templates and apps.

Together with Microsoft, Avanade is doing a huge amount of work – deep in the code, deep in the scenarios and deep in to use cases – to really help create and extend the value that industry clouds can bring to our clients.

The healthcare sector is a great example of how we can help personalize the industry cloud. We’re co-innovating with Microsoft to develop a new generation of healthcare specific solutions that help clients rethink how to manage and embrace continual change with digital innovations. We are accelerating the expansion of specific technologies such as virtual visits, remote patient monitoring and advanced clinical analytics. Together we are creating a digital path forward using a flexible, secure cloud infrastructure to create a more agile, future-resilient healthcare organization.

Accelerating innovation through industry cloud
The ability to adapt at speed with new technologies can be a challenge for many sectors, preventing them from accessing growth opportunities. Microsoft industry cloud makes it easy to access emerging technologies, such as AI and IoT relevant to each industry.

Avanade can then take it a step further for our clients by helping them unlock the full power of industry cloud by personalizing the solution for their business. This accelerates the time it takes to extract value from new innovations and capitalize on opportunities that will renew and grow the business.

For customers in the retail sector, we know this will provide enormous business value as they look to meet changing consumer demands. When the pandemic hit, retailers were forced to transform ecommerce and develop new retail experiences out of necessity. The industry cloud has been designed so that we can build solutions to meet these new consumer expectations. We can help businesses bring industry specific tools, such as Chatbots and AI, quickly to market as the technology has already been translated to match their industry needs.

A people-first approach with industry cloud
Industry cloud provides a platform to improve workflows and operations for employees and enhance customer experiences with your business and brand.

We take an advisory role to help our clients bring these new ways of working to life for their organization. This in turn is intrinsically linked to the customer journey, with employees acting as the customer touchpoint. For example, we know healthcare providers and their patients will have very different experience expectations to their retail counterparts, and we can personalize the cloud capabilities to meet these differences. This gives you the competitive edge when it comes to attracting and retaining employees and customers.

Technologies within the industry cloud, such as AI, provide insights into market and consumer trends that help you differentiate the experience. Some reports claim AI will be one of the top workloads running in the cloud by 2023.

Automation brought about by industry cloud also unlocks new CX opportunities. Consider the financial services sector; if a bank can free up back-office workers through process automation, this presents an opportunity to make these employees customer facing, which will add value to the banks CX ambitions.

We bring the experience lens to your industry cloud, offering a consultancy approach that brings your CX and EX to life.

Industry cloud for operational resilience
Over the past 18-months, many organizations have become acutely aware of how unfit for purpose their current technologies are. The technologies that they were getting by with pre-Covid did not have the resilience to adapt to the size and pace of change. Just think of the CFO who couldn’t close their books in April 2020, because they didn’t have remote access to their IT systems.

Microsoft industry clouds are designed to continually evolve with the change around them, increasing the digital maturity of your organization. By migrating to the industry cloud, organizations can rethink operational resilience, enabling them to build a responsive and sustainable business able to diversify revenue streams across ecosystems securely.

The power of Microsoft industry cloud, personalized by Avanade
Our clients can accelerate the value from innovation, create differentiating experiences and grow a resilient and sustainable business through a highly differentiated set of services relevant to their industry.

Find out more about the cloud and how Avanade can personalize it for your organization.