This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Figure 1: Example demonstration of the value of storing model inference results in Azure SQL DB. We performed a query to retrieve a video frame that shows young Fred (FI) with his mother Fifi (FF) and close family members.
Introduction
Organizations often sit on a treasure trove of unstructured data, without the ability to derive insights from the data.
We experienced this situation while working on a co-innovation project with the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), MediaValet, and the University of Oxford. JGI had digitized and uploaded many decades of videos of chimpanzees in the wild and wanted to enable primate researchers to use this data for quantitative scientific analyses. To this end, we built a no-code active learning solution for training state-of-the-art computer vision models. This solution allows researchers at JGI to index and understand their unstructured data assets, it allows them to join them the unstructured data with other, structured data sources, eventually enabling statistical analysis for scientific enquiries. For example, how does the social network structure change over the first few months after a new chimp was born?
In this blog post, we provide an overview of the use case, challenges, and solutions. Briefly, to enable active learning at scale, we implemented PyTorch dataset classes, which load image data from Azure Blob Storage and annotations from an Azure SQL database. Model predictions are written to the same database. The Azure SQL database can then be used for gaining new insights, using quantitative analytics (see Figure 1).
Challenges
We faced several challenges while working on this project. The largest challenge was that there is only one person in the world who can reliably recognize the over 300 individual chimpanzees by name: the famous wildlife cinematographer and scientific advisor Bill Wallauer. Over the course of several years, he spent many months living in the Gombe National Park, filming chimpanzees in the wild.
The second challenge was the sheer scale of the project. We had to store annotations for over 30 million video frames in such a way that they could be used for machine learning. At the same time, the annotations needed to be accessible to primate researchers, to enable scientific inquiry.
The third challenge was to build a no-code solution that would allow JGI staff to annotate and train deep learning models without requiring expertise in computer programming and machine learning.
Minimizing data labeling costs with active learning
To address the challenge that only Bill Wallauer can reliably recognize the over 300 individual chimpanzees by name, we needed to build a no-code solution that would maximize the returns on every data label he provides. That is, the brute-force approach of crowd-sourcing data labeling, to get as much labeled data as possible couldn’t be applied here.
Active learning is a machine learning technique that tries to minimize required labeling efforts by strategically selecting those samples for annotation that are expected to benefit the model the most. In this context, the goal is to find an optimal policy of selecting samples for annotation to maximally increase model performance on a validation set. Active learning is a relatively new technique in machine learning, and we will cover this and related topics in depth in future blog posts.
Azure SQL Server and Database enable active learning at scale
Another challenge we faced was the large scale of the project. We had to find a way to efficiently store data annotations, so that they could be used for model training, inference, and allow primate researchers to perform quantitative analysis.
A common approach to training deep learning models is to store annotations in JSON format or CSV files, for the annotations to be loaded into host memory at the beginning of training. We quickly reached limitations in terms of speed and memory usage with this approach. There are several workarounds for more advanced use cases. We decided to use Azure SQL DB for this project, which immediately alleviated all concerns around increases the dataset size. There are some very real advantages to using Azure SQL DB for a project of this scale:
Memory limitations on the training host machines used for model training and inference are no longer an issue because there is no requirement to load the annotations for the entire dataset into memory
Speed! We found that our implementation scaled extremely well as the dataset grew, because Azure SQL DB had no issues handling a dataset of this size.
Finally, the same SQL database we are using for training and inference can also be used by primate researchers for quantitative analytics.
Azure ML enables the automation of model training and monitoring
It was our explicit goal to build a no-code solution that would empower JGI staff and volunteers, without requiring expertise in computer programming and machine learning. We were able to achieve this goal via a set of Azure ML Pipelines, with triggers for automatic execution in response to well-defined events. These pipelines automate data ingestion, model training and re-training, monitoring for model and data drift, batch inference, and active learning.
Other Applications
Here we demonstrate how to use Azure SQL database and Azure ML to enable active learning at scale for a particular use case, but the same principles can be applied to a wide variety of applications, which can be found across industries:
Worker Safety. Supervisors have the suspicion that a particular kind of worker behavior leads to accidents. They have a very large repository of video footage and records of work accidents. They would like to investigate whether they can find evidence in these videos that certain kinds of behaviors have indeed historically led to accidents.
Public Safety. Public employees suspect that a particular type of traffic intersection is associated with an increased number of traffic accidents. Employees have historical GIS data on traffic accidents and footage of traffic cameras. They train a model on categorizing intersections and join that data with GIS data on traffic accidents.
Manufacturing. A manufacturer suspects that a particular kind of manufacturing defect leads to warranty claims later. The manufacturer has a large dataset of images from manufacturing pipelines. Investigators train a model to recognize the anomaly and join the data with warranty claims to test their hypothesis. Based on their findings, they can start a product recall to avoid costly warranty claims.
Predictive Maintenance. Acoustic sensor data on manufacturing machines are hoped to provide a signal that is predictive of outages and other equipment failure. Operators would like to know whether it is possible to join this unstructured acoustic data with maintenance records to perform predictive maintenance.
Related Tools and Services
Azure ML Data Labeling. Data Labeling in Azure Machine Learning offers a powerful web interface within Azure ML Studio that allows users to create, manage, and monitor labeling projects. To increase productivity and to decrease costs for a given project, users can take advantage of the ML-assisted labeling feature, which uses Azure ML Automated ML computer vision models under the hood. However, in contrast to the approach described here, Azure ML Data Labeling does not support active learning.
Azure Custom Vision service is a mature and convenient managed service that allows customers to label data and to train and deploy computer vision models. In contrast to the approach discussed here, the focus is on developing a performant model, rather than understanding and indexing very large amounts of unstructured data. Like the Azure ML Data Labeling tool above, it does not have support for active learning.
Video Indexer is a powerful managed service for indexing large assets of video data. It currently offers only limited options for customizing models to understand the subject domain of the dataset at hand. It also does not offer a straightforward approach to use the generated index for secondary analysis.
Conclusion
This blog post represents the first of a series of blog posts on combining Azure SQL Database and Azure ML to index and understand very large repositories of unstructured data. Future blog posts will offer more depth on the topics touched upon above. For example:
Writing a PyTorach Dataset class for SQL
Implementing Active Learning at scale with SQL DB and Azure ML
Optimizing SQL tables and queries to increase training and inference speed
Ensuring AI fairness
Gaining scientific insights after all unstructured data has been indexed
We also welcome requests in the comment section, for other topics you would like us to cover in these future blog posts.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The Microsoft Finance and Operations (Dynamics 365) mobile app, the associated mobile platform, and related mobile workspaces are deprecated effective June 2022. Existing assets will be supported through October 2024. New mobile Finance and Operations experiences should be built in Power Apps, using virtual tables from Microsoft Power Platform to access finance and operations data.
What’s happening to the Finance and Operations (Dynamics 365) mobile workspaces?
Some of the existing mobile workspaces will be replaced. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Timesheet mobile app is already available as a replacement for the Project time entry mobile workspace.
Replacement experiences are planned to be released in 2023 for the following mobile workspaces:
Expense management
Inventory on-hand
Asset management
Invoice approval
Purchase order approval
Replacement experiences are not currently planned for the remaining mobile workspaces:
Note that the Warehouse Management mobile app, which is not built on the Finance and Operations (Dynamics 365) mobile app, is not impacted by this deprecation.
What’s next
Here are some additional things we encourage you to do now that the Finance and Operations (Dynamics 365) mobile app has been deprecated.
Stop building new mobile experiences in the Finance and Operations mobile app.
Begin planning for converting your existing mobile experiences to Power Apps. You have some time before the end-of-support date, but it’s never too early to start getting ready!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Although the pandemic exposed our supply chain fragilities, there are other factors that will continue to disrupt our supply chains for the foreseeable future. Geopolitical tensions between world superpowers are forcing companies to change how they trade, source, and manufacture goods, so redesigning your supply chain networks or setting up new supply chains to gain resilience is a common theme we will continue to see over the next few years. Global economies are inching towards recession partly due to the prolonged and ongoing pandemic which will increase cost pressures on businesses, and we all know gaining resilience while reducing costs is just extremely difficult. It will require us to improve our agility and pivot and adapt to changing customer and business needs.
Increase resilience with a predictive supply chain.
Manufacture and operate sustainably with minimal waste.
Transform work with advanced warehousing and robotics.
Microsoft’s supply chain experts will also deliver the must-have insights, strategies, and frameworks for chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) and supply chain leaders to think big, make bold moves, and drive real impact within their organizations1 on June 6, 2022 at 4:00 PM Eastern Time in the Southern Hemisphere II auditorium.
We hope to catch up with you and your teams at the event. Register and attend our session (see details below) for cutting-edge thought leadership about supply chain technology solutions.
Microsoft: CSCO’s role in digitally transforming supply chains with a composable approach
With growing supply chain complexities, leaders need a clear digital transformation strategy that drives visibility across the entire value chain, improves flexibility to meet customer demands, and decreases operational costs. In this session, we will share a new approach to deploying transformative supply chain technologies bespoke to your business by adopting composable characteristics without having to replace your existing supply chain solutions. The composite architecture enables accelerated time-to-value through better interoperability and data harmonization to create a resilient supply chain.
Let’s look at some of the benefits of a composable enterprise.
Composability enables circular manufacturing to advance sustainability initiatives
It’s paramount for enterprises to operate more sustainably. Most organizations have a goal to reduce and offset carbon emissions, including Microsoft. One of the ways to operate sustainably is to drive circularity. Essentiallyinstead of throwing away goods at the end of their life, finding ways to reuse or recycle them to reduce carbon emissions. To achieve circularity, businesses can customize their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to orchestrate new business processes. A composable system allows you to use low code to customize them easily.
Our own Microsoft Circular Centers have a unique process to optimize warehouse routing and management system to process decommissioned servers from Microsoft datacenters. There were no reverse logistics solutions that were suitable for the circular centers out of the box. By leveraging the low code Microsoft Power Platform solutions, Dynamics 365 was extended to build a reverse logistics solution that helped reuse, resale, and recycle the decommissioned data center assets. This is one of the ways that puts Microsoft on the path to achieving its sustainability goals by 2030. The outcome of this program has exceeded expectations. Our pilot circular center has been able to reuse 83 percent of critical parts and has reduced carbon emissions by 145,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
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The future of business applications is composable. According to Gartner, “those that have adopted a composable approach will outpace their competition by 80 percent in the speed of new feature implementation.”2 A composable business consists of modular building blocks that can be rapidly connected and orchestratedallowing organizations to adapt operations and processes to changing market conditions, new business opportunities, and unpredictable disruptions. Composable ERP solutions are, among other things, cloud-based platforms that scale without limits, leverage a modern open system architecture to reduce implementation time, and usually incorporate low-code/no-code interfaces to improve usability and customization.
One of the companies reaping the benefits of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Solutions is Tillamook. Tillamook County Creamery Association is a farmer-owned cooperative based in Tillamook, Oregon, founded in 1909 and owned by about 80 farming families. While best known for its cheese, it has introduced more new dairy products in the past five years than in the previous fifty. At the same time, Tillamook has expanded nationally, and its products can now be found across the United States.
To support its growth and expansion, Tillamook needed a modern solution to scale and enter new distribution and sales markets. This led them to migrate to Dynamics 365 apps for Finance and Supply Chain Management. Tillamook had just begun its ERP modernization journey when the global pandemic disrupted demand and supply almost instantly. Yet despite being live for only four months, once COVID-19 spiked demand for groceries as people ate more at home, Tillamook was able to leverage the flexibility of Dynamics 365 to adapt quickly to new business needs.
“There’s been this thing with ERP over the past few years where you avoid customizations to the software so that you can take upgrades. That’s a thing of the past with Dynamics 365. You can modify the system to meet your unique business processes, adjust the logic and configure, and it still takes the updates seamlessly. We have some unique processes here with our complex supply chain, and we’ve been able to modify the system and still take those upgrades.“Travis Pierce, Director of Information Technology, Tillamook.
Enhance visibility with digital supply chain solutions
Today, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers can use the right digital supply chain solutions to build or enhance the real-time visibility required to move from reactive decision-making to predictive and proactive decision-making. To maximize operational efficiency, product quality, and profitability, they need to unify data across order fulfillment, planning, procurement, production, inventory, warehousing, and transportation.
Supply chain leaders know that the earlier potential disruptions and constraints are identified, the more successful the measures to adapt and overcome them can be. Modern improvements in technology, such as applying AI and machine learning to complex data sets, are giving businesses the insight and agility to deploy processes and systems that generate and proactively shape customer demand. These solutions also allow companies to sync and balance supply to demand by continuously optimizing production operations and distribution networks. With real-time, end-to-end visibility across the supply chain, organizations can sense, predict, and adapt to constraints and disruptions at the earliest possible opportunity.
Take the Supply Chain Visibility Guided Tour to see how a retailer can enhance supply chain visibility using Dynamics 365. The composable architecture of Dynamics 365 enables businesses to incrementally add functional capabilities that will make their supply chains more resilient without having to replace their legacy systems.
See you at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium XPOTM 2022
Supply chains continue to evolve through the current post-pandemic shift. As they do, Microsoft is committed to empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. We hope you will join us at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium XPOTM 2022 by either catching our session or engaging with one of our supply chain experts. If you are unable to attend this year but are interested in learning how to start optimizing your supply chain, you can get started with a demo today or check out our webinar Create Agile and Digital Supply Chains with Dynamics 365.
GARTNER and SUPPLY CHAIN SYMPOSIUM/XPO are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In September 2020, we announced that the next version of Exchange Server would be available in the second half of 2021 via a subscription model and that it would include support, product updates, security updates, and time zone updates. Unfortunately, 2021 had other plans for Exchange Server. In March 2021, we confronted a serious reality: state sponsored threat actors were targeting on-premises Exchange servers.
We strongly believe that close partnerships with security researchers help make customers more secure, so we also launched a security vulnerability bounty program for Exchange Server and other Office Server products via the Microsoft Applications and On-Premises Servers Bounty Program. Individuals across the globe can now receive monetary rewards for submitting security vulnerabilities found in Exchange Server, as detailed on the program web site.
While we continue to focus on security, we are now also ready to share our long-term roadmap for Exchange Server.
Roadmap Update
We have made changes to our Exchange Server roadmap since our September 2020 announcement, and today we’re excited to share those updates with you. We know that customers and partners have reasons to run Exchange Server, and we are committed to supporting them.
We have moved the release date for the next version of Exchange Server to the second half of 2025. The next version will require Server and CAL licenses and will be accessible only to customers with Software Assurance, similar to the SharePoint Server and Project Server Subscription Editions. We will provide more details on naming, features, requirements, and pricing in the first half of 2024.
We will maintain the current support dates for Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016, and Exchange Server 2019; however, we plan to support the next version of Exchange Server beyond October 14, 2025. We are moving the next version of Exchange Server to our Modern Lifecycle Policy, which has no end of support dates. We plan on continuing to support Exchange Server as long as there is substantive market demand.
Two of the main challenges in previous versions of Exchange Server with respect to upgrading to the next version are that (1) the next version has historically had greater hardware requirements than the previous version, and (2) customers always had to move mailboxes from the old version to the new version. We are addressing these challenges in the next version by introducing the ability to do an in-place upgrade from Exchange Server 2019. This means that you may not have to acquire new hardware or move mailboxes, and that upgrading to the next version will—by design—be much easier than previous upgrades.
With our H1 2022 CU release, we added some new features to Exchange Server 2019 (including one that might allow you to shut down your last Exchange server), we added the hybrid server license at no additional charge, and we’re adding even more features, as detailed below.
Investments in Exchange Server 2019
A key element of the Exchange Server roadmap is our investment plans for Exchange Server 2019, which we are excited to share with you today. Over the coming months and years, we will be adding features to Exchange Server 2019, and we’ll continue to support regulatory and data privacy requirements. Our continued investment in Exchange Server 2019 allows us to deliver improved security, deployment and management capabilities, and reliability—the attributes our customers tell us they need most from Exchange Server.
Security Investments
Exchange servers often contain the most sensitive company data, and they host the company address book, which is why it is critical to protect these servers and this data. So, we’re continuing to focus on Exchange Server security, and we’re making several security-related investments.
Modern Authentication Update
Historically, Exchange Server has used Basic authentication (also known as legacy authentication) for client/server and server/server connections. Basic authentication is an outdated industry standard, and it is imperative for organizations to transition away from it as quickly as possible, to reduce attack surfaces and needless risk.
We have been working to deprecate Basic authentication in Exchange Online, and to transition users to something more secure: OAuth 2.0-based authentication, or what we call Modern authentication. OAuth 2.0 is the industry-standard protocol for authorization.
In about 120 days, on Oct 1, 2022, we’re going to start turning off Basic authentication for specific protocols in Exchange Online for those customers still using it. If you are an Exchange Online or Exchange hybrid customer, be sure to read our latest announcement to learn what you need to do to prepare for this change.
Modern authentication enables stronger authentication features, like multi-factor authentication (MFA), smart cards, certificate-based authentication, and third-party security identity providers. Among the many benefits and improvements in modern authentication is that it helps mitigate the security issues with Basic authentication. For example, enabling Modern authentication is an important step toward protecting your organization from brute force and password spray attacks.
We’ve also enabled Modern authentication for all Exchange Server customers in hybrid environments:
In September 2017, we shared our roadmap for adding Hybrid Modern Authentication (HMA) support to Exchange Server.
In December 2017, we announced the availability of HMA for Exchange Server 2013 and Exchange Server 2016 hybrid deployments.
In February 2019, we released Exchange Server 2019 CU1, which added support for HMA.
In October 2020, we added support for Modern authentication to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer.
In May 2022, we announced that our public folder migration scripts now support Modern authentication.
In June 2019, we said that we would not be adding support for Modern authentication to pure on-premises Exchange environments, and that HMA would be our only solution for Exchange Server customers.
Today, we want to provide you with an update on that. We know the HMA requirement for cloud-based authentication in on-premises environments places a burden on some customers, and simply isn’t possible for others.
So, we are excited to announce that, in a reversal of our June 2019 announcement, we are working to add Modern authentication to pure on-premises Exchange Server environments (e.g., no cloud or hybrid). We expect to share our timeline for Modern auth support for each Outlook client later this year.
Support for TLS 1.3
We recently introduced support for Exchange Server 2019 on Windows Server 2022. By default, Windows Server 2022 uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3, which encrypts data to provide a secure communication channel between two endpoints. TLS 1.3 eliminates obsolete cryptographic algorithms, enhances security over older versions, and aims to encrypt as much of the handshake as possible.
While Exchange Server 2019 supports Windows Server 2022, we’re still working on adding support for TLS 1.3. We expect to support TLS 1.3 in Exchange Server 2019 next year.
Software Update Dashboards for Exchange Online and Exchange Server
Keeping Exchange Server current is a critical security practice, so we’re also making investments to help you stay current with the latest updates for Exchange Server.
Later this year we are introducing a new experience in the Microsoft 365 admin center for viewing the update status of Exchange servers in hybrid environments. This new experience is designed to show admins which Exchange servers need updates, and which servers are approaching or at the end of support.
This experience provides a view of on-premises Exchange servers that is curated using data from multiple sources, such as data customers opt-in to sending to us, data in the Microsoft Online Services processing logs, and publicly available data, such as DNS records.
A similar experience is expected to be added to Exchange Server 2019 early next year.
Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service Rollback
The Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service (EEMS) we added to Exchange Server last year helps keep your servers secure by applying mitigations from Microsoft to address any potential threats against your servers. EEMS is a built-in version of the EOMT that provides protection against security threats that have known mitigations.
After a mitigation applied by EEMS is no longer required, an admin can manually roll back that mitigation. To simplify the process, we’re developing a PowerShell script that admins will be able to use to remove any mitigations that are no longer needed. We expect to release the script next year.
Deployment and Manageability Investments
We know that Exchange Server updates can be complex to deploy for some customers, especially in environments without dedicated Exchange admins or IT staff. We are working to ease these challenges by enhancing Setup to preserve custom config settings, and we’re continuing to work to improve the Hybrid experience by addressing common customer pain points.
Custom Configuration Preservation
We understand that it’s very common for admins to customize their Exchange server settings after Setup has successfully completed. For example, admins often configure client-specific message size limits. These customizations are made in web.config, sharedweb.config, and other files on the Exchange server. One of the challenges for admins is that each time a CU is installed, their customizations are overwritten by Setup. Today, admins need to backup these files and restore them after each CU.
To address this issue, we’re working on changing Setup to preserve these customizations after a CU is installed. We hope to release these changes in the H2 2022 CU or the H1 2023 CU.
Hybrid Experience Improvements
To help admins manage hybrid environments, we’re making even more changes to the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW). Today, the HCW performs several tasks, including configuring the Federation Trust, updating connectors and email address policies, and configuring endpoints and OAuth between on-premises and Exchange Online. After the wizard has completed its tasks, admins often customize the environment.
During a re-run of the HCW, most of the first-time configuration tasks are not required. But since the HCW doesn’t allow skipping steps, custom configurations made after the first HCW run can be lost, possibly leading to a bad hybrid state.
To address this issue, we’re modifying the HCW to allow an admin to choose the steps to perform and skip unnecessary ones. We expect to release an updated HCW with these changes later this year.
MEC features experts from Microsoft and the Exchange community talking about Exchange Online, Exchange Hybrid, and Exchange Server. This is a free technical airlift for IT pros that work with Exchange day-to-day, and developers who create solutions that integrate with Exchange.
Feedback Forums for Exchange Server and Exchange Online
Your feedback matters to Microsoft, and we have a lot of ways for you to share it with us. In the past, Exchange customers and partners used a platform called UserVoice for community driven feedback, but we moved off that platform last year.
Last year we also announced the Microsoft Feedback Portal, which provides a new community feedback experience from Microsoft. Built on Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Feedback is where users can go to provide feedback on popular Microsoft apps and services in one place.
Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of two new Feedback forums for Exchange:
We’re always striving to better serve our customers and partners. You can directly influence change at Microsoft by sharing your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.
Exchange Server Technology Adoption Program Open Enrollment
Today, we’re also announcing open enrollment for the Exchange Server 2019 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for customers and partners! The TAP is designed to validate Exchange Server updates by having customers and partners test deployments of pre-release builds of Exchange Server in lab, production, and development environments.
If you are interested in early (pre-release) access to Exchange Server 2019 builds, we invite you to join our TAP. You can find out how to sign up at Exchange TAP Announcement.
As we said earlier, we know that customers have reasons to run Exchange Server, and we are committed to supporting them.
Our guidance for customers who run Exchange Server is to move to Exchange Server 2019 now.
Exchange Server 2019 already includes several features not available in previous versions, including:
Support for Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server Core
Client/server connections use TLS 1.2 by default
New search infrastructure based on Exchange Online
Modern hardware support
Improvements in calendaring, client experience, compliance (in-place archiving, retention, eDiscovery), data loss prevention, and performance and scalability
Exchange Management Tools update that eliminates the need for Exchange Servers used only for recipient management purposes
The latest hybrid experience updates, including support for using MFA-enabled admin credentials with Hybrid Agent cmdlets
Soon, Exchange Server 2019 will include support for TLS 1.3, Modern authentication, and more, and it will provide the smoothest and easiest path to the next version of Exchange Server in 2025.
Upgrading to Exchange Server 2019
You can use the Exchange Deployment Assistant (EDA) at https://assistants.microsoft.com/exchangedeployment to upgrade from Exchange Server 2013 and/or Exchange Server 2016 to Exchange Server 2019. The EDA is a web-based tool that asks you a few questions about your current environment and then generates a custom step-by-step checklist that will help you deploy Exchange Server 2019, the smoothest and quickest path to the future.
Before you deploy Exchange 2019 in your organization, you need to do some careful planning, so be sure to carefully review the information provided by the EDA.
If you are planning an Exchange hybrid environment, be sure to review Exchange Server hybrid deployments and the accompanying information.
Scott Schnoll Senior Product Marketing Manager Exchange Online / Exchange Server
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This June 6 to 7, 2022, we are excited to attend and exhibit in person at the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference. The conference provides a forum where leading finance professionals gather to network, share best practices, and prepare their teams for an autonomous future. Today’s chief financial officers (CFOs) allocate 80 percent of new investment dollars for digital growth.1 Clearly, despite the challenges of the past two years, organizations continue to invest heavily in digital transformation.
Changing market and environmental conditions, varying from recession threats to technology innovations like the digital twin, impact finance professionals and the organizations they lead. To remain competitive and successful post-pandemic, CFOs need exposure to fresh thinking and timely insights in order to digitally elevate their platforms and drive the finance function forward to an increasingly autonomous future. This year, a central aim is to help CFOs leapfrog ahead on their digital journey by understanding what successful teams are and are not building, buying, and borrowing in the market.1
At the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference, Microsoft will showcase how Dynamics 365 Finance helps organizations bring the future of finance into focus. We will cover how to:
Adapt faster by designing a digital roadmap that stays ahead of evolving business models.
Work smarter by balancing maximum profitability with accelerated growth.
Perform better at your business innovation and transformation initiatives.
To see how successful organizations are using digital platforms to innovate and grow, register to attend our June 6, 2022 session from 11:45 AM to 12:15 PM Eastern Time (details below).
Microsoft: The CFOs role in balancing business model innovation with growth acceleration
With global market volatility threatening profitability, CFOs must drive growth and innovation initiatives while accelerating margin improvement. Successful CFOs are continuing to push the limits of business model innovation across the entire operations experiencefinancial (the way you capture value), operational (the way you deliver value to your customers), and organizational (the way you align people to impact). Join us at our event session to hear how top business model innovation trends and technology can help you embrace disruption while keeping the focus on financial excellence.
The strategies we cover will also require solutions that reinforce decision-making with real-time data, predictive analytics, and additional AI capabilities, all of which help:
Future proof your business.
Innovate across the entire operations experience.
Facilitate and propel new business model trends.
Predict and gain insights through AI-driven analytics.
One way that Microsoft is helping organizations leverage AI to improve business insights for finance leaders is through our recent acquisition of Suplari. Suplari’s AI capabilities allow companies to:
Make comprehensive enterprise spend data and insights available to all.
Unlock new financial insights to help with strategic procurement decisions.
Get up and running with predictive insights in weeks, not months.
You can speak with Microsoft executives at our booth to discuss how Dynamics 365 drives digital growth and initiatives while accelerating margin improvement. Also, scan your badge at the kiosk to participate in the Microsoft Surface Headphones giveaway.
See you at the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference
We hope to see you and your team at the conference and that you check out our session and visit our booth.
If you are unable to make it this year but are still interested in learning strategies that help you realize new product and service-based revenue streams, check out our comprehensive e-book, The Futurist CFO’s Guide to Business Model Innovation.
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