Looking Back on Microsoft Envision 2016

Microsoft Envision 2016 In Review

Though I realize Microsoft Envision took place about a month ago, I wanted to take the opportunity to gather other perspectives on the event before giving my own impressions. As many of you know, this year Envision replaced what was formerly known as Microsoft Convergence. Unfortunately, I believe that most attendees opinions of Envision can be summed up by this photo I took during the event:

I actually liked the concept; moving the focus to a more C-level executive event. So from that perspective Microsoft actually did an okay’ish job putting an agenda together where the emphasis was placed more on industry and best practices. With that being said, the idea of having a number of partners and Microsoft presenting 15 minutes at a time made absolutely no sense. What were they thinking?

In Satya Nadella’s key note there was a slide talking about business processes and Microsoft Dynamics CRM was mentioned. I know that Dynamics CRM is a valuable solution and can cover business processes, however I think it was the wrong statement to use in this instance. From an overall business process point of view, Microsoft Dynamics AX should be the right answer as ERP is per definition the tool to cover all business processes on the organization, whereas CRM will only cover some processes (unless you get very creative).

Other Perspectives

Over the 2.5 days of Envision, I had several meetings with Microsoft associates, customers, prospects and partners. The overall feeling was that Envision had an interesting theme and maybe some potential, however the majority of people felt that Microsoft had failed in this event. My bet is that it will be a long time before the people who invested significant amounts of dollars in their booths will see an ROI.

Though some of the customers and prospects I spoke with liked the new format, many of the super/power users felt that they attended the wrong event.

A Message to Microsoft

Microsoft, you made a bold move but it didn’t pay off this time. You have to be better in communicating to the market; discuss with some of us partners before changing the institution called Convergence and then execute.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel...

I do think you should continue with Envision, just make sure to include more relevant speakers and involve the partner community so together we can increase the C-suite executives’ participation. And please do not forget all the super/power users that love Convergence, we need to balance this with strategy, vision and hands-on opportunities.

See you next year at Convergence - I mean Envision…