The Partner Channel Magazine Winter 2017
The more things change, the more things stay the same. Now that we've had a few months after the Dynamics 365 product launch, this issue takes a look at this concept in a variety of ways; Whether that's how you treat customers or implement tried and true best practices in marketing.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. Now that we've had a few months after the Dynamics 365 product launch, this issue takes a look at this concept in a variety of ways; Whether that's how you treat customers or implement tried and true best practices in marketing.
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TPC INTERVIEW<br />
KIRSTEN<br />
EDMONDSON<br />
Wolfe<br />
SENIOR DIRECTOR, INDUSTRY PRODUCT MARKETING, C+E<br />
Kirsten Edmondson Wolfe leads industry product marketing for Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise (C+E) organization.<br />
In her role, she works with other Microsoft business groups to ensure that, where relevant, one Microsoft is<br />
represented in the industry solutions that are brought to market. Her team has experienced great change in the last<br />
year, developing industry solutions for AppSource (appsource.microsoft.com) as well as interacting with Microsoft<br />
engineering to keep particular industry needs in mind during product development cycles. <strong>The</strong> <strong>Partner</strong> <strong>Channel</strong> sat<br />
down with Kirsten to talk about the structuring of Microsoft’s industry focus, learn how <strong>Partner</strong>s can engage in the<br />
software as a service (SaaS) app world, and get her take on this year’s buzz term, digital transformation.<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Partner</strong> <strong>Channel</strong> (TPC): Industry Summit in November featured presentations from you and Wendy<br />
Curcuri, general manager of U.S. industry. Can you share how your teams complement each other?<br />
Kirsten Edmondson Wolfe (KEW): My team is focused on working with engineering and ISVs to create vertical<br />
SaaS apps. Wendy and her team lead the sales motion in the U.S., focused on industry-specific solution selling of<br />
the new vertical SaaS apps.<br />
While there is still a sales motion around Dynamics 365, what we’re trying to do is build that muscle for Azure<br />
Advanced workloads – including Cortana Intelligence, Power BI, and Internet of Things (IoT) – with integrations<br />
into Dynamics 365, creating cloud-based solutions that business decision makers can consume out of AppSource.<br />
TPC: I’m sure you and your team have gotten very good at thinking like an app since you took on this<br />
endeavor. Can you walk me through an ideal scenario of a SaaS app?<br />
KEW: Of course. Here’s the scenario: What happens if you take the customer service functionality in CRM (now<br />
Dynamics 365) and inside that, leverage the power of Cortana Intelligence Suite and Power BI, utilizing data from<br />
LinkedIn? Now if your customer is a bank, they can understand how to best deliver service to their customers and<br />
make sure they’re offering them the right products at the right time.<br />
That’s where we’re trying to go: Giving our customers deeper insights into their business, to drive better<br />
outcomes. We’re starting small, but our goal is for <strong>Partner</strong>s to embrace this philosophy and come to us, asking how<br />
they can get involved. Microsoft Dynamics <strong>Partner</strong>s are great candidates for creating apps because they’ve always<br />
been business processes based with what they did historically with basic CRM and ERP.<br />
We’re focusing on five major vertical markets (manufacturing, healthcare, retail and consumer goods,<br />
government, and banking and capital markets) for the SaaS apps, knowing that there are a lot more industries out<br />
there, but we don’t have capacity to do it all at first.<br />
14 WINTER <strong>2017</strong> | THEPARTNERCHANNEL.COM
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