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Microsoft and London Business School Driving Customer Engagement:

A Digital Solution

The Public Sector Course

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Executive summary

It’s 2016 and Microsoft faces a challenge

Additional challenges are the acquisition and development of soft skills, and delivering this kind of professional development at scale.

Microsoft partners with London Business School to design and deliver an innovative, online learning solution.

What they sell

How they sell

Who they sell to

The result is The Public Sector Course.

The company’s new strategy prioritises front-end mobile products and services with cloud-based back-end.

To engage customers and optimise sales, its public sector sales force must accordingly embrace a shift in knowledge and approach.

To sustain and drive this business transformation in the public sector, Microsoft needs its sales team to adapt to significant changes in:

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Executive summary: Impact

The Public Sector Course has already trained some 1,500 Microsoft employees

In addition to knowledge and skills acquisition that aligns to strategic business goals, Microsoft reports that its sale employees:

Apply the knowledge acquired to close deals

The Public Sector Course ranks today among Microsoft’s highest ever in completion rate, relevancy and overall satisfaction.

Have acquired nuanced interpersonal skills

Are building strong relations with customers

Exchange ideas across a globally dispersed, diverse cohort

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The challenge: Building knowledge,

developing skills, delivering at scale.

In 2016 Microsoft is making the transition to a “Cloud First, Mobile First” business model. This shift translates into a number of training challenges for the company’s public sector sales force:

Microsoft needs to find a solution that delivers the business acumen, the differentiated soft skills and the wide-scale applicability to drive knowledge and capability uptake across its entire public sector sales team.

The hunt begins for a learning partner that can rise to this challenge.

Acquiring new knowledge and skills

that align to new products and services.

Mastering a raft of collaborative, interpersonal and relationship-building

skills to engage better with public sector customers.

Delivering the training at scale to

a 30,000-strong global workforce.

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Partnering with London Business School

Microsoft is looking for a partner with the deep expertise and experience to deliver the specialist knowledge and skills their employees needed.

A partner with the innovative vision and the flexibility to help them design a scalable solution to these learning needs.

London Business School is chosen by Microsoft to lead the professional development of its public sector sales force.

London Business School offers:

Deep expertise and understanding of the

issues Microsoft is facing

1. 2. 3. 4.Faculty experts in public sector

A global approach A reputation for world-class innovation

and excellence

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A lot of our faculty are involved very much on a hands-on basis, in the public sector. And this enables them to understand and deal with the issues that Microsoft’s people face all the time.Professor Sir Andrew Liekerman Dean, London Business School

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An alternative to the classroom approach

With more than 30,000 diverse and geographically dispersed employees in its global public sector and technical sales cadre, Microsoft needs a learning solution that can scale to meet its objectives.

The traditional classroom approach will not be an option.

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“ I was surrounded by people who made leadership inspiring. There was no fluff. I got the tools, the methodology and the framework. I immediately stepped back from my projects and became a full-time CEO – concentrating on creating a sense of purpose, listening to people, explaining my ambition.”

Frank Jensen CEO, Søren Jensen

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The Public Sector Course

Together, Microsoft and London Business School create The Public Sector Course: a customised programme, tailoring a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) model for Microsoft’s public sellers specifically.

The programme platform is co-designed by Intrepid Learning to deliver social and collaborative interaction possibilities as well as the global scalability that Microsoft needs. Specifically, the programme aims to empower participants to build trust and credibility with customers.

For the first time in the company’s history, public sector sales training is delivered 100% online.Microsoft can now upskill their sellers regardless of where they were in the world.

And it does this:

Across 150+ countries

Reaching 1000s of participants simultaneously

Enabling them to engage with the content and with

each other

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A seven-week learning journey

Delivered via an online 7-week MOOC modality, with content rolled out weekly, The Public Sector Course is built on:

¢ An intuitive interface for learning

¢ Video lectures

¢ Online discussion forums curated by faculty

¢ Gamification through badging and leadership boards

¢ Social features including “liking”, sharing, bookmarking, and asset-level feedback

¢ Exploration of key themes: macroeconomics, public sector finance, stakeholder management, innovation, value proposition and digital transformation.

¢ Case studies with specific relevance to Microsoft customers

¢ Applied learning via missions: guided real-world assignments directly tied to the job

¢ Peer review of final assignments

An innovative, intuitive and user-friendly experience that delivers the flexibility of “any time – anywhere” learning.

And the deep expertise of London Business School’s renowned faculty.

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Faculty expertise, discussion forums, “missions” that directed the learning back into the business – and we even had senior Microsoft stakeholders sharing insights that were in line with what our faculty were saying over the seven weeks of learning.

Sarah Curshen Client Director London Business School

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“ I was surrounded by people who made leadership inspiring. There was no fluff. I got the tools, the methodology and the framework. I immediately stepped back from my projects and became a full-time CEO – concentrating on creating a sense of purpose, listening to people, explaining my ambition.”

Frank Jensen CEO, Søren Jensen

Personal impact

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Business impact

Microsoft’s public sector sales team measures all training through course evaluations, during and after training.

The impact to date has been highly significant:

¢ 1500 public sector sales professionals trained to date

¢ 75% completion rate – one of the highest completion rates at Microsoft

¢ One of highest satisfaction rates the company has seen

¢ One of the highest relevancy scores in terms of applicability of content

¢ A significant proportion of participants using final assignment to engage clients and close deals

¢ Internal relations boosted with international employee interchange extending from Britain to Oman to Bahrain to Mexico

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At Microsoft, our culture and mind-set are focused on learning and being insatiably curious to understand our customers’ industry challenges. Our partnership with LBS is helping fuel this mind-set with relevant content our team can apply to their day-to-day work with customers. We know this program is having an impact – it ranks among the highest in completion rate, relevancy, and overall satisfaction. We’ve had more than 1,500 employees take the course and we look forward to extending this and creating new online programs.

Toni Townes-Whitley Corporate Vice President Worlwide Public Sector Microsoft