Industry Conversations podcast by Microsoft: 5 episodes showcasing our industry impact

By Shweta Anand, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Industry Product Marketing, Microsoft.

May 9, 2023

Content type
Partners

The pace of change and the sheer speed at which the world is redefining what’s possible presents new and powerful opportunities for organizations. In the face of so much change, Microsoft’s commitment to businesses has taken on a new urgency. That’s why Microsoft Industry Clouds was built with powerful, integrated, and uniquely tailored solutions. To show how some of these businesses have found success, we bring their stories to you with a new podcast from Microsoft: Industry Conversations. This series features subject matter experts from both Microsoft and organizations that have made use of the benefits of the cloud for their industry.

The discussions in each episode of Industry Conversations cover how technology can benefit people—their workflows and their efficiency. In the healthcare industry, for example, there’s been a realization that staff needs digital tools to make their lives easier, not be a further burden.

“Right now, the staff, when they look at technology, I think the current experience has been it’s adding more work.”—Dr. David Rhew, Microsoft Chief Medical Officer, Industry Conversations healthcare episode.

The series also touches on the implementation of industry clouds, with a discussion in the “Bridging Industries” episode about how partners provide the expertise to make the goals of any business possible.

“Partners can help to digitize manual or redundant processes, connect the distributed hybrid workforce, and reach customers in new and innovative ways.”—Julie Sanford, Vice President, Partner GTM, Programs and Experiences at Microsoft.

One of those partner organizations, Backbase, works with financial services customers to help in their transition to an industry cloud. Jeroen Unger, Backbase Partner Manager, assists banks with their end-to-end digital experience implementations for customers, “rather than a broken process or a customer needing to go into a branch office or submit paperwork,” he says. “Making that digital end-to-end experience is really crucial.”

Here is an overview of all five episodes:

Bridging Industries:

Our series launches with two Microsoft leaders—Kees Hertogh, Microsoft General Manager for Global Industry Product Marketing, and Julie Sanford, Vice President, Partner GTM, Programs and Experiences at Microsoft. The two define industry clouds, their benefit for any type of organization, and share some customer and partner stories from several industries.

“We knew we needed to help our customers to be more agile, get faster time to value, and be future-proofed for their business,”—Kees Hertogh, General Manager for Global Industry Product Marketing, Microsoft.

Listen to Episode 1 Bridging Industries.

Sustainability:

Sustainability is top of mind across all industries. One company, Anglian Water, has adopted the Get River Positive Initiative, a firm commitment to act now to protect and revitalize rivers in the eastern United Kingdom by 2030. As a utility that must keep clean water flowing to more than 6 million customers, Anglian Water is using data and the cloud to develop models to better understand patterns that will save water today and enable planning for the future. Host Rosie Mastrandrea, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft welcomes Dr. Robin Price, Director of Quality and Water at Anglian Water to talk about how that initiative is using data alongside what might be considered radical partnerships—with farmers, landowners, river groups, and other global leaders to lead the change. These partnerships can help with conservation but also provide insights to predict and alleviate risk.

“Flood risk is not something that is coming. Climate change is something that is here, the impacts will be felt through water.”—Dr. Robin Price, Director of Quality and Water, Anglian Water.

Listen to Episode 2 Sustainability.

Financial Services:

“Customers expect the same level of great digital experiences that they do in their personal lives in terms of entertainment or social media,” says Ashley Nagle Eknaian of Massachusetts-based Eastern Bank in this episode focused on the financial services industry. This roundtable, hosted by Dave Morehouse, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft, also features Ashley’s Eastern Bank colleague Carlo Guerriero and Backbase’s Jeroen Unger. Their discussion provides a deeper view into how technology developed specifically for banking provides tools to improve customer experience, cybersecurity, and communications.

Listen to Episode 3 Financial Services.

Healthcare:

It’s not just COVID-19 or economic conditions that have forced healthcare workers to do more with less—this is an issue that’s been going on for decades. In this episode, host Jenn Roth, Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft speaks with Dr. David Rhew, Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft, on alleviating the burnout that has only grown in recent years.

“One of the things we saw early on with the use of technology was that we are adding more tasks for clinicians, they were having to enter things into a computer on a keyboard, and they were doing more administrative tasks. What we’re now realizing is that we have to start taking a closer look at how technology, in particular AI, can help streamline some of those processes.”—Dr. David Rhew, Chief Medical Officer, Microsoft.

Listen to Episode 4 Healthcare Part 1.

Healthcare:

When Diana Nole joined the team at Nuance Healthcare Solutions three years ago, she saw how technology was actually standing in the way of the doctor-patient relationship.

“I was astonished when I learned how much time a physician actually has to spend on administrative burden.”—Diana Nole, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Nuance Healthcare Solutions.

In this episode, host Jenn Roth and Diana talk about how Nuance’s Dragon Medical One and DAX ambient listening tools use AI, amplified by the power of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. These tools reduce administrative burdens and empower clinicians to spend more time taking care of patients and less time on paperwork.

Listen to Episode 5 Healthcare Part 2.