Microsoft Positions its Products as People Friendly

Published: March 22, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Without a doubt, one of the main reasons businesses adopt technology is to become more efficient, and historically, this has meant eliminating jobs. Walk into any major American grocery store, and you will see customers using barcode scanners to check out their own groceries--an example of how rapid advances in technology has reduced the need for expensive labor-intensive positions. This is why the new "People-Ready" marketing campaign by Microsoft, which sells technology that helps businesses run more efficiently and sometimes eliminate jobs, is such a curiosity.

Last week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft will spend $500 million over the next four years to promote its software--specifically the upcoming releases of Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn," SQL Server, Microsoft Office 2007, and Exchange Server 12--using the new People-Ready brand. The money will provide a boost to advertising, marketing, and sales activities of Microsoft and its 640,000 business partners that service the medium-to-large-size business (MLB) segment of the marketplace. People-Ready ads have already been run in the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and TV ads are expected to follow during the NCAA basketball tournament.

During his speech at the Impact People Forum announcement in New York City, Ballmer made a passionate case for the role of human beings in a workplace that has become increasingly computerized and interconnected, or in Ballmer's world, a world that is becoming "increasingly flat." Ballmer said people are the "heart and soul" of businesses, and that the sooner they realize this, and "really believe and act fundamentally with deep conviction that people are their number one asset," the sooner they can become a "world-class, people-ready" business.

What separates the standard MLBs from the world-class, people-ready MLBs is dealing with the exceptions, according to Ballmer. The means doing well with the routine side of business, the "never-ending cycle of discovering insights, figuring things out, making decisions, sharing goals, collaborating in teams, [and] taking action" he says. "But at the end of the day . . . it's not just about the standard processes for all of those things. World-class people-ready businesses do very well on getting that extra insight, making that extra special decision, handling the exceptions in the operational process well."

Of course, Microsoft wants to sell businesses the software that gets the most out of their employees, including "Joe the financial analyst, and Suzie the order entry clerk," Ballmer says. In fact, Microsoft has about 110 such "personas" that its developers use to "drive innovation that really is people-ready in every sense," Ballmer says. (One wonders if a "Steve the CEO" is among these 110 personas, and how much the new people-driven theme is a reflection of Microsoft's own experiences and business practices.)

Ballmer made a point of stressing the revenue-building aspects of its new people-oriented approach to writing and selling software, and not cost-cutting, which has been a primary driver of software sales since the economic recession following the bursting of the technology stock bubble in 2000. "As I travel the world and talk to business executives, the real heart and soul theme that I'm hearing these days is, how do I drive growth? Not just, how do I cut costs, but how do I drive growth?" Ballmer said. "And in every sense, it's only people that will facilitate that objective in all businesses."

This is a very important point, especially considering the fact that salaries and wages continue to be the number one cost of doing business in most industries (the oil and gas business is one notable exception). Microsoft is making the point--and rightly so--that if you treat people as a cost-center that needs to be kept in check, and don't invest in their development or give them tools to really help them excel at their jobs, then you should expect to receive a less-than-100-percent effort from those individuals, and the business will then not be a "people-ready" business.

But perhaps the biggest benefit Microsoft stands to gain with its People-Ready campaign is distinguishing itself from its biggest rival in business software, IBM. "It's a very different vision compared to IBM, which views people and IT as non-strategic assets to be outsourced and replaced by consultants," said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, in a PressPass Q&A. "We think that people are more important than processes, than systems, certainly than permanent outside consultants."

Despite the warm fuzzy feeling that Microsoft is imparting with its new People-Ready campaign, don't be fooled into thinking the software giant has gone soft. Microsoft gets about $30 billion of its $40 billion in annual revenues from businesses whose livelihoods depend on making financially sound decisions, and it's still going to make plenty of money selling software and systems that make businesses more efficient, and in some cases, eliminate people's jobs. This is the nature of the IT business, and while People-Ready may succeed in softening Microsoft's public image as a ruthless monopolist determined to be dominant in both the desktop and the data center and positioning itself as a people-friendly alternative to Big Blue's cold business machines, it still very much wants to win.