Microsoft Surface in the Retail Environment

Ever heard of Microsoft Surface?

According to the website, Surface is a revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, helping people interact with digital content in a simple and intuitive way. With a large, horizontal user interface, Surface offers a unique gathering place where multiple users can collaboratively and simultaneously interact with data and each other.

One of the areas that Microsoft Surface can be used is in a retail setting. Microsoft Surface can connect customers with more and richer product information and create collaborative sales engagements right inside retail outlets, connecting the physical store, sales staff and digital content. For example, Surface recognizes mobile devices, allowing customers to download product information, compare products, cross-sell related items, and select add-on features.

Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content. Leave the mouse and keyboard behind. Surface lets you grab digital content with your hands and move information with simple gestures and touches. Surface also sees and interacts with objects placed on the screen, allowing you to move information between devices like mobile phones or cameras. The result is a fun, social and exciting computing experience like you’ve never had before.

Microsoft Surface provides tremendous potential for businesses to improve communication, and be more efficient in how they deliver information and services to their customers. The intuitive and approachable interface is easy to learn and the familiar software platform makes it easy to manage, too. The multi-touch and multi-user capabilities create an incredibly collaborative experience, where sharing and exploring information is easier than ever.

The video below show the Retail Solution for Surface from Avanade and Accenture.

There are so many possibilities for Microsoft surface in different retail settings. To find out more on how Avanade can enable your environment with Microsoft Surface, please feel free to call us in the Calgary office at (403) 476-1473 or email us.

Digital Marketing - How to reach your audience

Avanade, in conjunction with Accenture, have created the Digital marketplace offering that utilizes the Microsoft product suite.

The concept behind Avanade's Digital Marketing is getting personalized, targeted information to your audience.

In addition to the delivered content, tracking clickthrough rates and utilization rates, allows an organization to monitor their marketing spend to see if it is being used efficiently. The solution also helps an organization understand who is visiting, where your audience is coming from and how they are converting. This will help clients get a better grasp on their overall online presence.

The video below is an overview of the Avanade Digital Marketing solution.

If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you with your online presence, please feel free to contact us via email or on the phone at (403) 476-1473.

How to Reduce IT Project Spends By Up To 50%

The attached slides show how an IT department can reduce the cost of an IT Project by up to 50% without impacting the overall quality of the project.

Reducing IT Project Spend by up to 50%

View more presentations from Chris Hamilton.

If you would like to see how you can reduce the costs associated with your IT projects by up to 50%, then please feel free to contact Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or click here to send an email.

Top 6 Reasons to use Total Solution Financing From Microsoft to Pay for an AX Implementation

If you are looking at implementing the Microsoft AX software package, you should really look at utilizing Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Finance. Below is a list of 6 reasons why you would want to consider financing.


Top 5 reasons to finance your AX implementation:

1. You can finance the AX Software
2. Your company can finance the Service to implement the AX software
3. Also include financing the Hardware to implement AX
4. Finance any 3rd party software required to implement AX
5. You can also finance any Microsoft related software that will be used in the implementation
6. Finally - Terms from 24 months to 60 months

3 other reasons to finance your AX implementation:

Gain a competitive edge. Many companies are reconsidering their technology investments because of uncertainty in the business world. But now is precisely the time to be proactive and invest in your company's future—because stalling technology investments in the short term can cripple the long-term growth of your company.

Improve your cash flow. Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Financing transforms large "cash up-front" technology investments into affordable monthly payments. You get the benefits now but pay over three to five years. That means you can keep cash reserves and invest in other critical assets or preserve capital for emergencies.

Make things easier on yourself. Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Financing makes the process of financing your technology investment easy. For example, you'll talk financing with people who understand your business. Avanade understands the details of your implementation project and the concept of software and services as intangible assets.

If you are considering an AX implementation and would like to find out more on how to finance the implementation, please contact Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or email us.

Most Companeis are Wasting Up to $500 per Desktop: How to Create a Difinitive Software Library and Drive Cost Savings

Most medium to large companies typically don't have a clue how much software they own or how much it is being used. It would surprise most CIO's and anyone who manages software for companies that companies are overspending by up to $500 per desktop on software that isn't required.

One way to address this issue is to create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that inventories all the software a company owns, the costs and the utilization rates. The unfortunate part is that most companies don't know how to do software rationalization and usually if they do, they only gather a fraction of the total software that companies use. Avanade offers a service, called ACA Accelerate, to help companies create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that is extremely accurate.

The premise behind ACA Accelerate is to collect information on the current state, which is done through a proprietary process, and then figure out a future state model for the company. The current state will show the current software inventory (including versions) with associated users. A cost is assigned to each software title and this will help a company create a dollar figure on the current state.

Once the current state is know, then the future state can be modelled by consolidating software titles, versions, functionality and such. When the final model is created, then a definitive software library is created and the total costs can be applied to the list. This is were you will find the savings that be achieved.

Typically Avanade will see up to $500 in hard cost savings through the software audit that can be added straight to the bottom line of a company when a company goes through the ACA Accelerate process.

An example of the cost savings on a single software package would be Adobe Acrobat Professional, which retails for $200/desktop. Avanade worked with a company that included Acrobat Professional as part of the standard Desktop Image. Could you imagine if your company were over 10,000 employees and you were paying $2M per year for a piece of software that 90% to 99% of your organization doesn't require or could be replaced with a free piece of software that accomplishes the same functionality. This would help drive significant savings for a company.

ACA Accelerate is approximately a 6 week process and the cost for the service will easily be covered by the savings. The outcome is that it will drive software compliance and provide a hard cost savings for a company.

A few other major benefits include:

• Report Functionality: the process delivers a great report with graphical representations of key metrics. This is great for telling the savings story to other key individuals in your company.


• ACA Accelerate is also great for a Windows 7 upgrade as it identifies software that should be retired, potentially re-written, virtualized, etc. The savings can be used to pay for most or all of a Windows 7 upgrade.


• ACA Accelerate can do hardware too, which is ideal for any upcoming Windows 7 upgrades to see if there are any peripherals that need to be replaced prior to the upgrade.


• Drives software license compliance.

If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you create a definitive software library and drive hard cost savings up to $500 per desktop, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or Email Us. Avanade Inc. is a global company with 63 offices Worldwide.

Microsoft Online: How Hosted Exchange Reduces Costs by 30% and Greater

In case you have been under a rock for the last few months, you probably have heard that Microsoft has jumped into the cloud computing world through a service called Business Productivity Online Suite or BPOS.

According to Microsoft, BPOS is:

“a set of Microsoft hosted messaging and collaboration solutions including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. When your company subscribes to one or more of the services, it connects to the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications with the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services. Because Microsoft hosts the services, it reduces your company’s need to maintain IT services on site. Many organizations today are moving to this "software-plus-services" model, because it decreases the need to manage hardware and software.”

Basically, it a hosted model, or “Software as a Service” (SaaS), of several Microsoft stacks that take the headache out of managing them internally at your organization.

Some Statistics on SaaS:

• By 2012, 20% of enterprise market e-mail seats will be delivered via SaaS and similar models versus 1% of enterprise seats in 2007 (Gartner)
• Solution providers say that software giant Microsoft—and not Google—will be their biggest competitor for managed and hosted software and services over the next 24 months (Gartner)
• The worldwide enterprise e-mail and calendaring market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2007 through 2012, with regional differences being evident (Gartner)

• Hosted business e-mail market segment will grow at an average annual growth rate of 26% between 2007 and 2011 (Radicati)

Cost Estimator on Seat Basis:

Microsoft has a great tool for helping people discover the costs associated with their BPOS offering. The links are:

Canadian Costs: http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx?lang=en-ca
US Costs: http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx?lang=en-us

Cost Analysis for 500 Seats of Email only:

Over a 6 year period, a company may see a $580,000 reduction in costs.

In this scenario, specific to hosted email or hosted exchange, the total cost of ownership for a 6 year on-premise solution is $1.2M or an average of $200K/year. With Microsoft's hosted email solution, the cost is $620K over 6 years, which is $103K/year or a savings of just under $97K per year. This is a 49% cost savings.

BPOS/Microsoft Online Benefits:
There are numerous benefits to going with a hosted model as opposed to on premise. Some benefits include:

1. Total cost of ownership reduction – often 30% and greater
2. Elimination of future implementation costs
3. Reduced capital costs
4. Reduced patching, security and upgrade costs
5. Reduced software license costs
6. Decreased upfront investment
7. Improved security and data privacy
8. Improved compliance

The bottom line is, BPOS or Microsoft online can had a significant impact on helping reduce costs on a service that is non-core to most companies. It is an option that really should be explored.

If you would like to have a free Cost Analysis for your organization, please contact Avanade at 403-476-1473 in Calgary or email us here .

Top 10 Reasons for Using a Client Relationship Manangement (CRM) System

If your company is not using a Client Relationship Management (CRM) software or a CRM system, then you are probably missing a good opportunity to increase revenues and reduce costs.

There are numerous benefits to properly implementing CRM software and I have gone through several web site and compiled information into a top 10 list.

Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Use CRM Software:

1. Revenue increases of up to 41% per sales representative - That's $410,000 additional on every $1M in quota.
2. Decrease sales cycles by over 24% - If you average sale takes 4 months, this is like adding 1 additional sale per year.
3. Lead conversion rate improvements by over 300%
4. Increase customer retention improvements by 27% - This can have a significant impact on adding to the bottom line - less costly to maintain a current client then to get a new one.
5. Decrease sales and marketing costs by 23% - Huge impact on the overall performance of a company.
6. Improve profit margins by over 2% - This also has a significant impact on the overall performance of a company.
7. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%
8. 65% of a businesses revenue is generated by loyal repeat clients - Understand what clients are your best clients and get to know them and their spending habits - Upsell them!!!
9. 80% of sales leads are lost, ignored or discarded - Just because someone didn't buy in the past doesn't mean that they are not interested today - Follow up.
10. 73% of organizations have no process to requalifying or revisting business leads - Gain business that you didn't have before.

An interesting piece of information that IDC reported is that ROI from CRM is between 16% and 1000% and that half of all companies surveyed see between 50% and 500% on ROI.

The whole concept behind these figures is that you adhere to a process to manage sales and by managing this process, the benefits will follow. Key to making a CRM system work is to understand what you want to accomplish and implement CRM to meet your goals. Over 50% of all CRM implementations are deemed to be a failure due to the fact that there was not a proper implementation to meet the objectives that were desired. So just implementing CRM alone is not the answer. Determining what you want to accomplish and mapping it out is where you want to start.

If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you leverage the power of CRM for your organization, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com .

Avanade offers a hosted model in addition to a client server model.