Welcome to the newest addition in the Rev-Tech Revolution podcast series, where we combine our 10 plus years of CRM data operations experience and all-star guests to explore how organizations drive revenue through cutting edge Riva technology
Today’s episode is hosted by Ken Lorenz, Riva’s VP of Sales. He will be talking to Lori Lamkin from Microsoft Dynamics365, about how to personalize customer relationships in a remote world, how CRMs have evolved over time and the difference between product promises and product truth.
Guest: Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Applications
Lori is a strategic and visionary organizational leader and product owner who brings diverse ideas and people together to build innovative products and services in fast-moving, high-growth environments. As an energetic and hands-on change agent, she motivates high-performing, cross-functional project, and development teams to deliver quality products. A dedicated people developer, she mentors top performers to foster productivity, empower confidence and maximize customer and business value.
In he current role, she l
“It really helps you not worry about at the end of the day, having to write everything down or thinking, okay, what did I say I would do with that customer? And all of this just helps the seller be this genuine, this authentic and engaged and personal experience with their customers. And that makes them more productive and closes more deals.” – Lori Lamkin, Microsoft Dynamics365
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Introduction:
Welcome to the Rev-Tech Revolution Podcast, where we combine our 10 plus years of data integration experience and All-star guests to explore how organizations drive revenue through cutting-edge, Riva technology. Today’s episode is hosted by Ken Lorenz, Riva’s VP of sales. And he’ll be talking to Lori Lamkin, from Microsoft Dynamics 365, about how to personalize customer relationships in a remote world, how CRMs have evolved over time, and the difference between product promises, and product truth. All of this and more on the Riva Data Revolution Podcast.
Ken Lorenz:
So, Lori, I got to ask, what was life before Microsoft for you?
Lori Lamkin:
Before Microsoft was in college at The University Of Washington studying math and computer science. And I had a side hustle, which was working for the power company, Seattle City Light doing some power forecasting at the time. So, dabbling a little bit in the whole programming world while I was finishing my degree.
Ken Lorenz:
That’s great. So how did you land at Microsoft?
Lori Lamkin:
In 1990, it was this emerging high tech scene. I was interested in computer science and I’d met a couple of people that had been employed there and they were just really intelligent and felt like they were going to do something here with the world.
And the information at your fingertips was our phrase at the time. And it eventually became PC on every desk. And so basically I started out by helping customers with their programming questions for Fortran and C, on the phones and I did that for about a year. And then they asked me to be the manager of the team, which was great and scary.
And I was worried about losing all my technical chops and I really jumped in and never really looked back because I found a real passion in growing people. In addition to rallying folks to be inspired to get something done that has an impact together.
Ken Lorenz:
That’s really cool. I’ll share a little bit about my background as well. I’m a developer by background as well. I had my heart set on doing AI research out in Berkeley and made a hard dog right into accounting software in 1990 instead. I was part of the old great Plains Crew, was actually a partner back in the early nineties. So my history goes back to the old great planes for dos product version sucks. That takes you back a while.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. And I had the Microsoft Fortran product which definitely goes back a while. I’ve had ambitions of being a programmer was what I thought I wanted to do is be an engineer writing code. And I quickly found that a passion for not just growing people, but really defining product.
So, I stuck with Dev tools for a while and went into the product team, building the compilers. And so I spent a good chunk of my career there. And then in team foundation server or Azure DevOps, as it is now called building collaboration software for development teams. And so that was the bulk of my career has really been in developer tools. So we share that in comments.
Ken Lorenz:
Absolutely. Tell me a little bit about Dynamics 365 and why people would use it versus other things that are on the market. What makes Dynamics 365 CRM so great?
Lori Lamkin:
My feeling is that CRM tools since forever have really been about tracking your work and keeping a system of record so that your company can understand the activity and can understand the state of the business. And it’s been less about keeping the actual seller engaged and productive or providing an amazing customer experience.
And so with Dynamics 365 sales, we’re really looking to turn all of that upside down and just really say, we believe if your sellers are productive, then they are developing great relationships with customers and they’re closing more deals.
So how can we really focus on the seller productivity on their collaboration with their peers and their customers to get things done and really take all of the taxes away on the tracking and whatnot and use data AI and our office suite to really help you just be very productive, independent of where you’re working and using AI to help you be even more effective than you would be face to face.
And so you can see that in several of our new features that we’ve had in the past year or so in dynamic sales with sales accelerator, helping you prioritize your work, helping you get context on each customer you’re going to interact with. You can see it in our conversation intelligence features where we’re transcripting your calls and running AI over it and create auto capturing action items and things like that you’ve committed to.
So, it really helps you not worry about at the end of the day, having to write everything down or thinking, okay, what did I say I would do with that customer? And all of this just helps the seller be this genuine, this authentic and engaged and personal experience with their customers. And we think that, makes them more productive and closes more deals.
And so that’s just the heart and soul of what dynamic sales is all about. And it’s integration with the journey orchestration capabilities can really make customers have an amazing experience with the brand and the company, not just with the seller experience and their productivity, but really as they interact through marketing campaign mail or in the website or any interaction they have with the company.
So, that’s a lot of passion and excitement from me to boil it down and say, it’s because we can really focus on the people, the customer and its experience end to end for every human and digital interaction it has with the company, and for each human that interacts with the customer. They are prepped up to speed and extremely productive. And I think this changes the whole game of CRM tools and capturing all that for the system of record happens in the background and isn’t something that’s the primary focus or tax you have to do.
Ken Lorenz:
Wow. That was a lot to unpack. And you’ve given me bunny trails to go off in a lot of different directions. Let’s pick one of those directions as a starting point. So one of my good friends and a pretty famous author is a gentleman named Tony Hughes. He’s written a number of books, combo selling tech sales, et cetera.
And one of the things that he talks about is for the modern seller, not being overrun by the Cyboards, right? Because lot of what you just talked about with AI and next best actions and things of that nature, really helps support a seller’s ability to be their best and have true human interactions at the same time, the amount of people that are leveraging the technology stack without that human element is very noticeable, right?
How does the work that you’re doing ensure that people are able to leverage the technology to be better? I almost said better humans but…
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah.
Ken Lorenz:
To be the best part of themselves.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. The best authentic, genuine and connected selves they can be with their customers is how I think about it. And I would say these promises have been made in the CRM space for a while next best action and having all this data but what happened was, it just bombarded the seller with data.
It’s like, all of a sudden I’m in the cockpit of a seven forty seven and paying attention to all these bells and dials and whistles and buttons is not actually helping me get my job done. It’s just distracting me from having a conversation with a customer. That’s like, hello, I’m over here. And I think that’s where the AI has really progressed just in recent years to help wino down the data into what’s really important at that moment in time.
And then I think we’re just on this precipice of where some of these promises that have been made in CRM can actually become reality where next best action is actually useful for you. And it’s actually connected to the individual customer versus just a sequence sales play.
That’s very generic supposed to work for customers in general and you as a human are trying to go, okay, is that actually helpful or not? So, I think we’re really at a point in time where we can enable people to have just the data they need and the recommendations they need, and then they can imply their own intuition and knowledge to say, that is a good recommendation, I’ll take that. And move the conversation and forward.
I think the industry has changed and that the technology has matured to a point where these can get delivered on, and of course, Microsoft is just known for great AI capabilities and skills in the industry. So, we’re able to really push the bleeding edge and really deliver on some of these really hard to figure out scenarios.
Ken Lorenz:
So, let’s go down the bunny trail for a minute about customer journey. And that’s something that I know I face on a daily basis, both as a sales leader and as a company that’s focused on providing technology that supports the customer journeys. So, I’m thinking about it in two ways on an everyday basis. I know you’re starting to do a lot of work there and really focusing on that. Can you talk a little bit more about directionally where you’re thinking and how lives can get improved that way?
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. I think what’s happening is, companies are really caring. They’re noticing that customers who feel more connected to the brands they engage with, feel more known, have more loyalty, and therefore repeat their purchases.
So, really it starts with the metrics from different companies, changing from number of sales or deals close to customer lifetime value and repeat purchasing and subscription business models and things like that have really pivoted that.
And then it becomes okay. We care less about just the blitz of a marketing campaign and getting people to click than we do about the impact that it has on that person now and ongoing. And so when I think about what’s changing is the expectation that it’s no longer acceptable to have this megaphone style blasting communication that you just delete in your inbox.
And I think with COVID, this is just accelerated as people feel isolated and have less interactions face to face and do so much of their work and so much of their purchasing digitally and also alone that the more they can feel that human connection in their life, the better they feel about the company and the better they feel about making those purchases and they return.
So, to me that meant we need to change from this megaphone style, take a segment of customers, throw them through some workflow, and then hope for a great result to something very different, which is event based. And I think this turns it all upside down, instead of it being you and a whole bunch of people that are also the same demographic, it really becomes, I know you individually and you are taking this specific action right now and we can respond.
And so the journeys become very customer led versus a predefined workflow, and they become personalized on a level instead of a segment, it’s an individual. So, that it means as I walk into a store and I’m a loyalty card member, I can get a special offer for something that matters to me. And it’s like just creating this experience where you’re like, wow, I need that. And that’s really helpful for me.
And I feel special with this company. So, I think that’s what consumers are starting to expect and that’s translating from B to C, to B to B as well because we all experience this in our lives so it translates across. And I think this event based journey orchestration really helps the customer lead that experience and for you to give relevant responses and interactions back based on those customer actions.
Ken Lorenz:
Got it. It’s funny a lot of businesses in the tech world had a little bit of a panic moment when COVID arrived and we realized you weren’t going to be able to meet with our customers at trade shows, we weren’t going to be able to meet face to face, and so there was a bit of a lull there. I think what occurred pretty quickly afterwards is people took their travel and expense budgets and invested it in technology great for us in the technology world, right?
But I think what it caused at least from our perspective and I’d like to get your perspective on this too, is that it made it harder for people to be viewed as unique as sellers and truly connected with their customers. Because now you’ve got all these tech stacks that everybody’s trying to use and the amount of email that comes into my inbox, that’s just totally junk and not anything that resonates with me is unbelievable. And so it’s even harder to stand out. Are your customers telling you the same things?
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. I think that when COVID hit, every business had to send an email out to everybody that ever did business with them to say, Hey, we’re still in business, we’re still here for you, here’s how you do it now. And that continued the conversation digitally and then as consumers, we just get overwhelmed with a bunch of digital communications so standing out is super important.
And I think the way you stand out is not just having it be classic marketing interactions. It’s the interactions you’re having inside and application you’re using of the companies and inside the mobile app, it’s interactions you’re having through the people that you were talking about the seller or the people in the company also are part of the journey and that the emails or the SMSs or the mobile pushes or all those things that you’re getting from the company are really tailored to you.
And they’re not just coming at 4:00 AM, or something like that, where you’re not even reading it. It’s come a long way to really go, okay, you clicked on this last time, I know what time you’re active. And if you think about something like meal delivery, it’s like, Hey, getting a reminder that there’s a special at a period of time where I normally do my ordering from a restaurant I’ve done in the past, with the specific items I’ve used in the past really starts being actually useful.
Click here to reorder is a lot useful to me versus just another thing to delete in my email. So that’s how do you stand out? It’s by people building that trust over time and continuing that trust by having very focused and personalized interactions that are meaningful.
Ken Lorenz:
So you mentioned being able to reach out and what made me get thinking immediately is a lot of the constraints that the industry has put on us. Things like GDPR, castle, et cetera, and putting a limit to a certain degree on how to reach to people we don’t have a relationship with.
Lori Lamkin:
Yep.
Ken Lorenz:
What do you see in your roadmap that will help sellers do a better job of being able to reach out in a meaningful way?
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. If you already have the relationship or you’ve had an interaction and the person is known to you, you have a huge jump start. And I think that we have some great technology at Microsoft to go continue to unify all of the disparate information that you have across many different data silos already on your customers, that can help build a more fuller picture.
And we call that customer insights. And I think that to me, all of this stuff we’ve been talking about with data and AI and all that, it’s all incomplete if you have incomplete customer data. But what you’re talking about is, okay, now I want to reach out to new customers and all of the cookie list world and all of that is really coming.
And the great thing is that, we have been working on this problem for some time to try to figure out how from customer behavior analysis, in an anonymous fashion, we can identify cohorts of people, run experiments on them in terms of what’s most affective, and can self do deep learning through machine learning to really be able to figure out, okay, here’s the best experience for them.
So to me, the fact that we have all of this AI and self-learning in our journey orchestration, is going to go through the roof in terms of importance, because you’ll know you’re going to have to be discovering about the customer through their journey, trying to figure that out.
And also just the AI in terms of cohort analysis that we’ve learned through many things and at Microsoft through what we’ve done in Bing and what we’ve done in IE, we can bring this to bear to this domain on when cookies are out the window.
So, I feel very lucky to be part of a company that has a very deep research team, in a very deep AI expertise that has been trying to clear the path for this, for us all to make it work in the business world, is really the challenge that I have and I’m excited because I can see how we can do that.
Ken Lorenz:
It’s definitely an exciting time. One of the assets that Microsoft has, that I think is a crown jewel is LinkedIn. And when I think about LinkedIn’s place in the world relative to understanding who knows who, not just my relationship with you as a customer, but my potential relationship with your relationships. Can you comment at all about where Microsoft can help that technology weave in and make us more effective?
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. There’s so much opportunity here. The key for us that Microsoft is making sure that as customers are part of the LinkedIn community membership, that their privacy and their value of being part of that community, doesn’t go away. And we’re very careful about how we use the data at all. And I think what we look at is, more permission based and an aggregate trends to make sure that you can go reach out to new leads or get warm introductions based on your network, like you were saying, who knows whom.
And we have a little bit of that right now with LinkedIn sales navigator. That’s part of dynamics 365, one of the sales offerings we have, and we’re actively working with LinkedIn right now to brainstorm some of these new scenarios around how we can help with this network browsing and network introductions in a really focused jobs to be done way, but then also really make sure we’re respecting the member data first because that’s what people expect.
And that’s what we stand for as a company, is that trust and privacy that people expect from Microsoft. So, we’re trying to balance those two things, and I think we have a few really great scenarios that we’re actively looking at to pile on top of the sales navigator work we have today.
Ken Lorenz:
Awesome. That’s fantastic. It seems like almost every major software company, everybody is going vertical or focus on specific industries. What’s dynamic sales plan for focus on specific industries. I know as an example, there’s been some focus lately on financial services as an example.
Lori Lamkin:
We have several industry clouds across Microsoft, and we’ve mentioned one in financial service. There’s the healthcare cloud, there’s the manufacturing cloud coming. We believe that we have great products that fit the persona for the seller, for example.
And then we believe that we can tune that even more and provide some more additive. I want to say complimentary functionality, that’s really specific. So, in the financial services segment, it’s really not just about looking at your various clients and their portfolios, but looking at a loan application process, that can be just already part of the experience.
So, we are going after these industry scenarios one by one, and we have quite a number already in market today. And I think that these just build on top of each other. And you start with what you think is going to make the most sense for you if you want those more custom scenarios. I think they’re great alternative that are very tailored for your industry, non-profit healthcare, financial services, et cetera.
Ken Lorenz:
Yeah. That’s quite burden on the development organization and understanding those industries and really getting deep. I’m assuming you’re doing the [inaudible 00:23:10] research.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. And I think the great thing about Microsoft there is that, it’s not just about CRM going the vertical to the industry. It’s really bringing to bear the full set of Microsoft assets, including teams and Azure and the office suite and all that, for a comprehensive solution. That’s not just about the customer relationship management or the finance aspects or the operations aspects, it’s really comprehensive.
Ken Lorenz:
So, you brought up teams. So I can’t help, but go down the trail for a second. So, if you’ll allow me to call us both old school, we’re both used to using email and in the phone to correspond. And what we’re seeing now are technologies like teams to be leveraged across organizational boundaries. Fast forward, 10 years from now, or even five years from now, do you see the majority of communication with customers happening over that channel versus email?
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah, I do. It doesn’t fast forward, it’s happening now. I think COVID made it start to happen where, you’re not hanging out on the golf course or taking someone to lunch, even your own book club is now through something like teams and so we see that all over the place.
And in fact, that’s why we’ve done this whole thing called context IQ, that helps just bring business data into every collaboration, experience that you are in. So that yes, send email, you can at mention a business contact or a company or an account or a lead or an opportunity. And you can get context on that’s shared through your organization, but that you should be able to from context, whether in your CRM system or anywhere that you’re mention them, be able to meet now to chat, to call all of that, and so we’re just permeating.
This is the world where productivity applications and collaboration is just in being married with the business applications. These things are just all coming together as people expect to collaborate with each other internally, as well as their customers in a bunch of different mechanisms. And so chat and video conferencing just need to happen from everywhere. And we’ve got a ton of work that we’ve done already.
That’s been announced at ignite and more coming, and I can’t go fast enough on this, but I think what I talked about earlier in the podcast, where I talked about through the conversations, we can also get the transcripts and the AI and the real time suggestions on things to bring up or help you if you get into… Imagine a seller, having a conversation and someone mentions the competitor, and then you’re scrambling looking for, okay, what did the competitor do today?
Or what’s our competitive advantage? Just coming up right there for you. We can really help just amplify the collaboration that you’re doing with customers, with the business data, and with business data relevant to what you’re discussing at the moment. And that’s where I think the magic is.
Ken Lorenz:
Yeah, it’s interesting and in our business we’re leveraging those technologies today. We’re a big Microsoft shop. We use teams heavily and we’ve implemented some additional pieces of technology stack that are adding bots to our meetings and recording meetings and starting to do the things you’re talking about.
And some of the sellers on my team are really excited about that because they get coaching in real time. And the ability to learn from each other and others can’t throw the bot out quick enough because they’re whatever right they’re concerned about it. And I think that’s a challenge, right? As this technology continues to proliferate, which is great, is getting people comfortable with the value it brings them, not just the spookiness of it.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. I think people have to be in control of what’s shared and what’s captured and recorded and so consent is extremely important. We built that into the feature set and the thing is just like you said, you said it better than I could. If it doesn’t provide value, then it’s spooky. If it helps me close more deals, I’m going to do it. It’s just helpful. So, it’s making sure that people are in control every step of the way with what’s captured and what’s shared.
Ken Lorenz:
Awesome. So, let’s take a little break and have a little fun. I’m going to take off this business topic for a second. So, I’m going to give you some rapid fire questions and don’t think too much about these. So, Star Wars or Star Trek?
Lori Lamkin:
Star Wars.
Ken Lorenz:
Mac or PC?
Lori Lamkin:
PC.
Ken Lorenz:
That’s a trick question.
Lori Lamkin:
Did I hear that right?
Ken Lorenz:
Coffee or tea?
Lori Lamkin:
Neither.
Ken Lorenz:
Neither. Wow. That’s the first time. That’s the first neither I’ve had.
Lori Lamkin:
I don’t like hot beverages.
Ken Lorenz:
Got it.
Beach or snow?
Lori Lamkin:
Beach.
Ken Lorenz:
All right. We’ll stop there for the moment. There might be more later, but I always love understanding people’s answers to those questions and the Mac PC one was definitely a trick question.
Lori Lamkin:
And the beach one too. Look at my background.
Ken Lorenz:
I Know. Well, that’s great. Lori, is there anything that you think about, or that wakes you up in the middle of the night that you wish could be different? And I know that’s a really open-ended question purpose.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I wish that we weren’t having a world war right now. That definitely keeps me up at night. I have a team in Prague, a lot of people employed from former Eastern Bloc countries and Russia as well, and this is incredibly painful and hard on them. And my heart goes out to what’s happening in the world. And so that definitely, I wish I could do something more about it than just donations. So, I think that’s a pretty serious note in terms of in see the world of CRM, if I had a magic wand, I’d say, I wish that customers could tell product truth from product promises in this space. I’m relatively new to the CRM space.
Like I said, I came from Dev tools. You can’t tell developers that you’re building something and not have it work. You will be ousted out of the whole credibility space. And I was pretty surprised to come to CRM and see all the stories of what they say works and then really what it’s not really working.
And I see this across the whole space, and I just feel like, how can we help customers identify the product truth pre-purchase so that they know that with it being said, it’s really what they’re going to get. And I’ve been really thinking that through because trials and demos and all that stuff can be a little hard for people to get the full flavor of it. And so we’re looking at things like, how can we offer not just trials, but forever.
You can have access to these features just in limited quantities. So you can really get a flavor about how it works for your business, and if it’s really valuable, or if you have done false promises or you can really get a feel for the truth that we have to offer because I am very proud of that.
And I think people deserve that. And so I wish the industry would pivot to be able to vet that out, to be able to really call on when promises have been made and not kept. And really hold us all of us vendors to the standard of deliver what you say, and don’t tell me it works that way. If it doesn’t really work that way, because I think it’ll make for better products from all of us and better experiences for all companies and in the end for their customers.
Ken Lorenz:
Not to be selfish on that particular topic, but I think if more companies had that same attitude, customers evaluating our technologies would have a much easier time. I think they feel like they have to put in a tremendous amount of effort to truly validate, are you telling the truth because so many companies have been burned in the past with promises. So, hats off to you on that one. I completely appreciate that comment.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. And I think that what happens is, we try to create these detailed ROIs, but it’s really easy you to keep checking those boxes and it’s still not getting at, is this really going to provide value to my organization and my business. And I think nothing goes further than actually using the value. And so I’m hoping that something that we can elevate all of our games here in the whole business.
Ken Lorenz:
In my personal perspective, I think there’s too many situations where the technologists and a customer are buying to a set of requirements without truly understanding the business value that the business is trying to get to.
And there’s a lot of reasons that happens and I think as we’ve become more sophisticated in our technology purchases, and technology spend, there’s something being lost and in making sure that value is there. And so, I think truth in really demonstrating the value was achieved are really critical.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah. And this is where I feel I’ve lived this in the world of developer tools. In the past, you would go and collect a bunch of requirements, spend a couple years building this big thing and then throwing it out and to your customers and they would go, well, that wasn’t exactly what I wanted. And then you’d go, okay, let we collect another set of requirements and you take two years and you do that.
Lori Lamkin:
And it feels a little bit like that’s the mode that CRM is in, it’s like I get a bunch of requirements and then I take a while to implement it and then I throw it out there. And I think we could be a lot more on the continuous improvement mode that really, you take things in chunk, you make incremental improvements, it’s not disruptive on people’s day to day productivity where everyone needs to be retrained.
We have to be careful about that, but that they see value in every improvement. And I think we can get there and I think that can help people really receive value more regularly and more quickly because they can swallow it in smaller chunks as well.
Ken Lorenz:
Well, and that’s critical, right? And I’ve seen this in my career. I’ve been in the ERP and CRM space for a long time. And inevitably you’ll speak with a customer that says, I want to change out my CRM because of outgrown it.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah.
Ken Lorenz:
And I always ask the question, well, why did you outgrow it? What didn’t you keep up with? And the reality is business changes.
And if the company’s not continuously reinvesting in helping that CRM wrap around new business processes changes in the business, yes, of course you’re going to outgrow it so that incremental ability to continue to improve the value on a daily basis becomes critical.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah, that’s right. And I think that means a little bit of operating differently to be able to absorb the value on some periodic basis that isn’t huge chunks and hugely disruptive on the people trying to be productive is important. It should you delightful and regular so…
Ken Lorenz:
So fun part number two, not rapid questions.
Lori Lamkin:
Okay.
Ken Lorenz:
Flip the tables. What questions would you have for me about the industry?
Lori Lamkin:
Okay. I’ll play this back. I’ll give you the interview, Mike.
Great. I love it. Okay. So Ken, what has been the most disruptive thing you’ve seen and changed through the whole CRM space over the years?
Ken Lorenz:
Wow. Great question. Really great question. To me, probably the biggest disruption that I’ve seen really revolves around making that shift that you talked about of it being a system of record, to it being a system of being able to help me actually do my job. I go back to the… Before it was called CRM, but it was all about the system of record.
It was all about management being able to peer into the business and understand what was happening and what people doing their job, were the activities there. I think that is changing to a certain degree. I think there’s two pieces to making that fully change. One is the technology itself and the work that you’re doing and your teams are doing.
But I think it’s also incumbent upon the customers to really think differently about how they leverage the technology to help and their teams better serve customers, right? I can take your technology today and implement it in my sales team and do a top down management view only.
And I can make my sellers just as miserable as they were 20 years ago, right? And so I think it’s really incumbent upon customers to think about what’s the paradigm shift, how do I better support the customer journey? And then I’ve got to have the technology to support it obviously.
Lori Lamkin:
That’s great. That feels very much aligned. You and I will get along very well because I’m really excited about. I feel like I’ve come to this space at the perfect time when it’s right for this disruption. I think it would’ve been, it just makes it so exciting to be a part of that transformation that is driven both by the business need, but also the customer expectations that is going to end up making the business people so much happier in their day to day job, because their tools will actually help them.
Ken Lorenz:
Yeah. When we speak to customers about digital transformation and we see it, we’re primarily in financial services, but when we speak to them about services, what that really translates to, and [inaudible 00:37:44] principle here, it’s about being a customer centric view of the world versus a product or service centric view of the world, right?
And to me, that’s what digital transformation is all about what companies are trying to do. It’s not inherently about the technology. It’s about how do we get closer to the customer and obviously help that customer consume our products and our services. But I think the world was very much product and service focused first and customer centric last.
Lori Lamkin:
Yeah.
Ken Lorenz:
Well, great.
Lori Lamkin:
It’s so great to see it focused on the people. Now, I have a lot of passion for that and in my career and as you could see, I start my passion to grow into the management ranks and then to go from developer tools to developer collaboration. And then I feel like I’ve come to CRM and it’s about collaboration again, right? I seem to be hitting the trends right where my passion is aligning. So I feel very lucky to work on this stuff when it’s needed in the industry.
Ken Lorenz:
Absolutely. Well, so we’re getting close to the end of our time. 45 minutes is just flown by, which is fantastic. Is there any last things that you would want to get out there in the world?
Lori Lamkin:
Well, what I would say is that, I really think we’re on a brink of a big change here. I think that people’s expectations are changing and they need more from the products that they’re buying and using every day.
And I really hope that we can meet that promise and deliver real product truth that helps people be collaborative, and not overwhelmed by data, but really tuned to what their customer wants at the moment that it matters to their customer, helps them be more effect with the technology then without it. So that’s what my hope is for the customer engagement application suite here at Microsoft and its impact on the industry.
Outro:
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