In this episode, James Mastan of Audienz talks about The Business Transformation Playbook for the Azure Marketplace how to effectively go-to-market from the perspective of sales, marketing, operations, and other non-technical factors. 

When organizations decide to sell their solutions through the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace, it isn’t unusual for them to start by thinking about the technology behind the solution. There are many types of solutions in the marketplace and this can be a natural place to start focusing.

However, when our team engages with a potential marketplace partner such as Audienz, we start with a business conversation because we have come to understand that the success of a solution depends heavily on factors outside of the technology involved.

Episode Links

Audienz Marketing
Practice Areas
Email marketplace@audienz.com

Guest

James Mastan

A business and marketing leader focused on data and performance-driven, collaborative, entrepreneurial marketing and product strategies excelling at driving high ROI and tangible business results.

Follow James on LinkedIn.

Hosts

Paul Maher is General Manager of the Industry Experiences Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

David Starr is a Principal Azure Solutions Architect in the Industry Experiences Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

This episode explores amazing technologies and techniques that add tremendous value to organizations looking for new and better ways to bring product to market and discusses simulations of real-world situations in the Azure cloud.

Andy Byers, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Ansys, talks about product simulation priorities: more demand for compute, closing the loop between operations and engineering design, and autonomous simulation.

He also shares how working with Microsoft solves for the computing power needed to run simulations, what integrating their products into the Microsoft Azure Marketplace as sellable offerings means for Ansys as a software vendor, and how their partnership with Microsoft has been beneficial to them thus far.

Show Transcript

Guests

Andy Byers has always been energized by learning modern technologies and has an impact across many fields in his role as Director of Strategic Partnerships at Ansys.

In this role, he helps architect and drive strategic alliances between Ansys and others organizations to unlock new engineering capabilities for shared customers.

Follow Andy on LinkedIn.

Diego Tamburini is the Principal Industry Lead for Azure Manufacturing in the Microsoft Industry Experience team, where he focuses on developing technical content to help manufacturing companies and software developers deliver their solutions on Azure, at scale. 

He also champions partners who deliver manufacturing solutions using Azure.

Follow Diego on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Hosts

Paul Maher is General Manager of the Industry Experiences Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

David Starr is a Principal Azure Solutions Architect in the Industry Experiences Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

In this episode we hear how Microsoft and its partners are focused on helping financial services organizations meet the demands of today. Specifically, the guests discuss how Microsoft is helping with the COVID-19 situation, including things like fraud detection and enabling employees.

Additional topics include how Microsoft is empowering customers with high performance computing and large data volumes to help update legacy risk models to factor in today’s new risks. Further, we hear about the power of Microsoft’s three clouds that underlies the ecosystem of Microsoft and partner solutions.

Show Links

[Transcript]

• Blog Post: Agility, continuity, and risk management for financial services 
• Blog Post: Business continuity in financial services
• Microsoft Financial Services Industry Blog
• Microsoft in Banking and Capital Markets
• Microsoft in Insurance
• Azure for Financial Services
• M365 for Financial Services

Guests

Bill Borden

Corporate Vice President for Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft

Bill leads development and execution of Microsoft’s global financial services strategy, including the prioritization of banking, capital markets and insurance industry solutions and their alignment to Microsoft’s worldwide digital platform and partner ecosystem.

Bill on LinkedIn

Bill Borden's Blog

Nick Leimer

Principal Industry Lead for Azure for Insurance in the Microsoft Industry Experiences Team

Nick recruits partners, ISVs, start-ups, and other influential organizations in the insurance industry to accelerate adoption of the Microsoft Cloud+ AI platforms. One of his core missions is to amplify how our Microsoft cloud solutions meet the business enabling needs across the globe through speaking at conferences, authoring blogs, use cases, whitepapers, and social media posts.

Nick on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Karen Bailey

Financial Services Lead for Banking, Capital Markets and Insurance on the Microsoft Industry Experiences team.

Karen is a passionate Business Technology leader with over 25 years of diverse experiences working to develop strategies for Digital Transformation focused on opti-channel, customer-centric and hyper-personalized experiences aligning Technology Solutions to Go-to Market Strategies, Operational Needs, Growth and Profitably strategies and sector imperatives.

Karen on LinkedIn

Transcript

Uncrowd’s Friction/Reward Index, or FRi, platform answers retail's most fundamental question, “Why do customers choose retailer x over retailer y?” It then shows exactly how to win in more shopper missions, identify safe cost reductions, and optimize operations.

The Friction/Reward index is fundamentally about showing when and why a customer will prefer you to a rival. In the era of total and easy access to competing choices, knowing where you stand among those choices is your number one priority.

• Uncrowd online
• Uncrowd's offer on the Azure Marketplace

Guests

Richard Hammond

Richard is the Uncrowd’s CEO and the leading global expert on friction versus reward. He is the author of both Friction/Reward and Smart Retail.

Richard on LinkedIn
Uncrowd on LinkedIn

Transcript

Behavioral biometrics is an emerging topic in the security sector. Users are profiled in how they use specific applications. These patterns of usage establish something like a behavioral fingerprint, which can keep your assets secure.

Banks use biometrics to prevent fraud from websites and mobile applications. What if someone found your unlocked phone, went to your banking app and was able to transfer money? If the application is trained to your personal biometric behavioral print, this transaction can be flagged.

There are many other uses for behavioral biometrics we will discuss and continue to pay attention to its use across industries as the field grows.

Show Links

The BioCatch story

Frances Zelazny

Frances Zelanzy works closely with BioCatch's CEO to conceptualize and formulate strategic initiatives while on the marketing side, she establishes comprehensive marketing strategy, including brand positioning, messaging and execution.

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Dekel Shavit

BioCatch VP of Operations & CISO

Dekel has more than 15 years of experience as a customer-oriented operations professional, building, managing and scaling Operations groups in highly-demanding technology companies.

Prior to joining BioCatch, Dekel led the Ops group at Leverate (a leading FinTech company) and was the Production Manager at DoubleVerify.

Follow Dekel on LinkedIn.

Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry.

Howard Bush

Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” 

Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Transcript

FIS is an international company with offices all over the world. Generating new ideas from around the globe could be a logistical problem—not to mention differences in languages and cultures. But FIS has a hands-on way to get innovation to the forefront: a hackfest called InnovateIN48. Contestants get 48 hours to start and finish their solutions before having them judged.

This event has helped FIS innovate in key areas. And this year, FIS challenged contestants to solve a social, humanitarian, scientific or philanthropic challenge. The theme was “Innovation Empowering Hope.” Hear how they did it in the podcast.

67 finalists. 14 teams. 48 hours. That's the InnovateIN48 hackathon.

Show Links

• InnovateIN48 home page
• FIS

Mike Silverman

Mike Silverman is the Global Head of Enterprise Technology Strategy for FIS, a global leader in financial services technology. FIS focuses on retail and institutional banking, payments, asset and wealth management, risk and compliance, and outsourcing solutions.

Through the depth and breadth of our solutions portfolio, global capabilities and domain expertise, FIS serves more than 20,000 clients in over 130 countries. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., FIS employs more than 52,000 people worldwide and holds leadership positions in payment processing, financial software and banking solutions. Providing software, services and outsourcing of the technology that empowers the financial world, FIS is a Fortune 500 company.

Follow Mike on LinkedIn.

Paul Maher

Paul Maher is the General Manager of the Industry Experiences team which is part of the Cloud and AI Engineering organization at Microsoft. Paul is a proven leader in the technology field, having extensive industry experience acquired across a variety of roles, with a passion for technology.

He is a strategic thinker, who can look at the big picture, or complex problems and distill into actionable output. Started career behind the code as a Software Engineer, through to most recently as General Manager at Microsoft. Skilled at leading, building and growing teams.

Follow Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Howard Bush

Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” 

Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.