The People-Ready Business

The People-Ready Business

Case Study

Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Employees Empowered with Easy Access to Relevant Training
Microsoft Sales, Marketing, and Service Group (SMSG) staffers need to understand the latest Microsoft® products to better sell them and support customers. Microsoft created a Web-based tool called Role Guide, which outlines relevant training courses, and an executive scorecard that provides quick views of SMSG readiness for specific needs. Using these tools, employees are better able to keep track of their training requirements, and management is able to monitor companywide readiness for new product launches.
overview

Country or Region

United States

Industry

Manufacturing—High Tech

Customer Profile

Based in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services, and Internet technologies for personal and business computing.

Business Situation

The Microsoft Sales, Marketing, and Service Group (SMSG) needed to help employees find the training they needed to succeed and also help management assess field readiness for product launches.

Solution

The SMSG team used Microsoft® software to create Role Guide, a job-tailored training guide, and an executive scorecard that gives management an instant view of field training readiness.

Benefits

·  Increased field efficiency and relevancy

·  Improved new-product launch readiness

·  Better resource alignment

Situation

The Microsoft Sales, Marketing, and Service Group (SMSG) provides sales, marketing, consulting, technical support, and customer service for the company, helping customers and partners implement Microsoft® solutions quickly and cost-effectively. SMSG includes approximately 30,000 people—roughly half of Microsoft’s employee base—located all over the world. As SMSG grew in size and geographical coverage, it became increasingly confusing for employees to know which training courses they needed to take to be both successful and compliant with company requirements.

Microsoft offers hundreds of educational courses, spanning technical skills, management and organizational training, and workplace issues. Some courses are required, some elective, some offered in classrooms, some online. However, it was not clear to employees which courses they needed to take, by what date. Also, training requirements varied by geography: an account manager in Singapore might require different training than an account manager in Chicago. Employees spent time sorting out these issues, often missing needed training and taking time away from selling and helping customers.

“We’d yell over the edge of the cubicle, ‘What’s the link for training again?’ or we’d send around a bunch of e-mail messages because we knew we had to complete the training by a certain date but we couldn’t find it. It was a hassle,” says Marshall Thompson, Business Development Representative for Microsoft Corporation.

“Our planning process did not clearly prescribe the training that SMSG employees should take in each role and geographical location,” says Jeremy Nelson, Group Manager at Microsoft. “Plus, we had learning content scattered across a number of Microsoft Web sites. Employees could scroll through online course catalogs, but there was limited guidance on which courses they needed to take to fulfill the requirements of their positions.”

Executive Biography

Frank Holland is Vice President of Operations at Microsoft, responsible for Microsoft’s supply chain solutions and sales readiness. Before joining Microsoft in 2000, Holland worked on supply chain systems, operations, and customer relationships at Accenture. He earned his bachelor of science degree at Cornell University.

A different but related problem was management’s inability to get a high-level view of whether SMSG employees had taken training courses required to prepare them for new-product launches. Specifically, leading up to the launches of the Windows Vista™ operating system and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, management wanted to be able to measure the implementation and effectiveness of training prepared to help SMSG field staff come up to speed on the new products. They wanted to be able to track and measure the level of readiness for individuals, teams, countries, segments, and regions, as well as to have a single global readiness score for the entire company.

“The main focus of the salespeople is to spend time with our customers,” says Dennis Pollett, Director of Business Operations for SMSG Readiness. “If we can minimize the amount of time they spend in training, we maximize the time they spend with customers. We wanted to know that field personnel had taken the required courses and that they understood the training and were able to transfer it to their jobs. We’re a metrics-driven organization, and we wanted a quantitative way to look at field readiness for specific products and competencies.”

Solution

To solve the first problem—helping employees understand which courses to take—SMSG worked with field leadership and internal learning organizations over the course of several months to create a planning process that details learning roadmaps for each SMSG role in each location. The training team then used Microsoft software to create an online tool, called Role Guide, which makes these learning roadmaps available to employees over an easy-to-use, Web-based interface. Employees simply select their job title and location to see a list of required and elective courses for their particular job, descriptions of those courses, and links to learn more or to register.

“Using Role Guide, employees have a job-specific lens through which they can view Microsoft’s many training courses,” Pollett says. “They have a one-stop shopping center for training, as well as a clear list of training requirements.”

To solve the second problem—management’s inability to measure field readiness—the same team used Microsoft Web and business analysis technologies to create a second tool, called the Field Readiness Index (FRI). The FRI is a business intelligence scorecard that quickly shows training compliance across the company.

FRI is essentially a reporting front-end to Role Guide. SMSG management uses FRI to see the degree to which employees have completed required training, at the region, country, division, and individual levels. Managers can see at a glance (from red, yellow, and green indicators) which courses have been completed by various regions or teams, and also see a numeric score for that region. For example, they might see that Europe has taken 70 percent of its training courses toward attaining Windows Vista competency. Managers can even set alerts in FRI to be notified when important readiness metrics are reached.

Managers can drill down to see additional detail if they desire. For example, sales managers might see that their teams have completed only 40 percent of a required set of courses. They can then drill down to discover which individual team members are holding up the group’s progress, reformatting the scorecard data into chart and report form, if they wish.

Employees can also use the FRI scorecard, to quickly see how many courses they still need to take and where they stand in relation to others on their team or region. “I now have a quick way of knowing when I’m ready to talk to customers about a new product, with less time hunting around,” Thompson says. “I want to get in, get it done, and get out selling.”

“The field readiness index provides senior management with visibility into how well the Microsoft field is prepared to market and sell our next generation of products,” says Michael Smith, Director of Marketing for Office PerformancePoint™ Server at Microsoft. “It makes it very easy to empower the managers in the field to make sure they’re driving the same strategy in their teams that we as a corporation are driving.”

Benefits

Using Role Guide and the FRI scorecard, Microsoft’s hard-working, global sales and marketing personnel are able to get the training they need to be more effective selling Microsoft products and helping customers. Employees minimize wasted time, stay focused on company objectives, and see where they stand relative to the rest of the organization in meeting them. Management has a way to quickly assess field readiness for specific activities and to match customer needs with available resources.

Increased Field Efficiency and Relevancy

Microsoft SMSG employees now have a central place to find the courses required of them. “In the past, we didn’t have a single place for training readiness, and employees wasted a lot of time looking for courses and even taking the wrong courses,” Nelson says. “Forty-seven percent of sales and marketing users report that Role Guide saved them six or more hours per fiscal year, giving them significant time back to spend with customers.”

Employees use the FRI scorecard to augment training progress by getting an instant sense of relevancy. “An employee can see where they stand in the overall readiness equation,” Pollett says. “Maybe they’ve taken five courses so far. They can ask, ‘Am I doing well? Where am I compared to where management expects me to be now?’ The red, yellow, and green indicators show them instantly.”

Pollett emphasizes, though, that the new tools are about more than complying with management requirements. Field employees use them as an aid in selling more effectively. “Our salespeople want to make sure that every hour of their day is moving them closer to closing sales,” Pollett says. “Role Guide and FRI are timesavers, no doubt about it; but, in effect, they’re also money-makers to the salespeople using them.”

The tools maximize the effectiveness of the Microsoft training, too. “FRI and Role Guide in themselves don’t solve all of the challenges around developing people, but they do enable us to spend more of our energy and time on making our courses relevant and impactful. The technology is helping our training organization reduce the time and resources we spend on things other than creating better training, which is where we ought to spend every second we can.”

“Our human capital is our only capital,” echoes Frank Holland, Vice President of Operations at Microsoft. “When we equip our sellers with great products, the best thing that we can do as leaders is to help them get educated in how to sell them. Using these tools, our field can drive toward greater readiness and empowerment.”

Improved New-Product Launch Readiness

With these new tools in hand, Microsoft management was able to make training a top focus in the field leading up to the Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system launches. “We were able to set targets and monitor field readiness consumption leading up to the launches, working through field managers and leaders to turn reds to greens on the FRI scorecard,” Nelson says.

Adds Smith, “Our executives could get a quick, at-a-glance view of how the actions of every person, department, and region in the organization affected the company as a whole. A regional sales manager might discover that some teams had not yet begun critical courses, which lowered the entire region’s readiness index. The manager could then take corrective action sooner.”

Pollett says that FRI has meant the difference between hoping you’re ready and knowing you’re ready. “With the Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system launches, we had a new level of confidence that our people were knowledgeable and prepared. We approached a 90 percent overall readiness score in all geographies by launch, which was outstanding.”

Better Resource Alignment

In the FRI, Microsoft management also has a great tool to help it align staff resources to field needs. Management has the data to discover which competencies are well represented or under-represented around the world. For example, for a particular initiative or customer requirement, Microsoft may need 200 people qualified on the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 implementation. Using FRI reports, they will be able to find out if they have the needed staff and where they are located.

“Microsoft SMSG now has instant insight into the readiness of its worldwide talent base to meet a constantly changing set of opportunities,” Smith says. “More than 34,000 people in Microsoft globally are able to use this system today. Once we talk about making an entire company people-ready, that’s when we expect to see tremendous gains in performance.”

The People-Ready Business Case Study / 1