Rob Smithson is a Business Group Lead for Business Applications at Microsoft in the UK, looking after Dynamics 365 and Power Platform from a marketing and operations standpoint.
We caught up with Rob to find out what excites him about the Microsoft ecosystem, his thoughts on the community and how our report can help guide professionals and employers to make more informed decisions.
Watch and read the full interview below!
What recent developments within the Microsoft ecosystem you are most excited about. And also, within the same question, should partners and customers and professionals closely monitor any particular trends?
I think Microsoft is currently very well known in the market for investing in AI. Copilot is definitely priority number one for our company at the moment. Within Business Applications, that manifests itself in a number of different ways.
We have the Copilot for Sales and Service, but we also have Copilot Studio, which enables customers and partners to build their own Copilots, either internally for employees or externally for customers. And those investments are things that we are incredibly excited about.
They’re driving a lot of interest in Microsoft products at the moment. We’re having some amazing conversations with customers, including customers who previously might not have spoken to us, which is really, really exciting. And I think the partner ecosystem is seeing the benefits of this investment as well.
I’m seeing a lot of investment in programs that are starting to come through, and our partners are key to making those successful. And partners who are investing in their team’s understanding of AI, the skills and certifications that come with that, as well as reusable assets or investments in IP that enable customers to move to a Generative AI world quicker.
They are the ones currently winning, so we are seeing a lot of momentum, success, and excitement within our ecosystem at the moment.
What value do you think a report like our Careers and Hiring Guide holds for organizations and professionals within the Microsoft ecosystem? And what's the best way to leverage insights like these for strategic advantage?
I think that report helps organizations decide how to deploy their staff, think about who they’re going to invest in when it comes to recruitment, and where it makes sense to train and develop people. I also think it is quite an attractive report for people who are maybe working in a different ecosystem.
Maybe they work with a competitor’s technology, and they’re intrigued by Microsoft’s investments in AI and are looking for a career change or to switch to a different technology. I think that the report helps them understand not only the opportunities but also their worth in the ecosystem.
So I think at the individual level it is quite a good tool for folks to move into our ecosystem, which we always encourage. But I also believe for organizations and customers who operate within the Microsoft ecosystem, it allows them to benchmark against their peers, perhaps see, you know, what type of investments they need to make in people to get the best talent.
We have talked to several professionals who have told us that they liked training in Gen AI. Both professionals and organizations are clearly very excited about all the new possibilities that this unlocks, particularly within Microsoft. How much of this has already come to fruition and, on the horizon, what should you be paying closest attention to?
I think that we at Microsoft are offering quite a bit of training in terms of resources at the moment. So we have a number of different programs to train people either from scratch, if they’re perhaps doing an apprenticeship or have graduated university, and they’re looking to add AI skills to their repertoire.
There are different programs for them to access that via Microsoft. We offer customer and partner training as well to get customers comfortable with the technology that they are going to deploy within their organization. But I think the real opportunity here is for people who want to be proactive about AI.
A lot of people ask me that question: How can I be on the front foot with this? How can I get myself into a position where I’m seen as valuable in the world of AI? And I think those are the people who are doing their research, they’re reading about trends, they’re looking at media that’s talking about different products that are coming around and the direction of travel that Generative AI is opening up because everything is moving incredibly quickly.
Where we were six months ago is not where we are now, and it won’t be where we are in another six months. So I think people who are open minded, maybe looking to reskill, maybe looking to add skills to their repertoire, is certainly something that is going to stand them in good stead as AI comes in incredibly rapidly.
Over half of the hiring managers that we speak to believe there still is an IT skills gap that exists in the Microsoft Cloud community. 36% are considering the increased competition as their biggest challenge. What can organizations do to minimize the disruptive impact that the skill gap has on their strategic objectives? And what proactive steps can professionals take to capitalize on those?
So I would wholeheartedly agree that there is a skills gap. You know, we see that every day. It’s something that we try and address ourselves. And I know a lot of our partners and even our customers try and address it through different ways and different tactics. I would encourage organizations to invest in training.
I do see a trend still where the same people move between organizations and that’s just moving talent around. I think we need to inject new talent into our ecosystem, and one of the most reliable ways to do that is to invest in training people.
I also think that there’s an opportunity to recruit people with parallel skills or overlapping skills, maybe in other technologies or in other industries. We’ve seen some success where some of our finance partners have recruited from HR and accounting teams within industry.
So, definitely, I would encourage people to recruit into our ecosystem, bring in new, fresh talent, but also invest in training proactively, particularly now. I think that where the gaps occur, some of that can be filled with technology, particularly as AI becomes more and more commonplace.
AI can certainly handle some of the more mundane aspects of technology delivery, but it will never replace many of the people skills needed in a services organization. That’s why it’s important to invest in training to enable the next generation to fill some of those gaps quickly.
So when we've done our analysis for this year's guide, we've definitely observed a rise in respondents holding at least one Microsoft certification. In your opinion, what is it about the Microsoft ecosystem that attracts these types of learners? And are the certifications still the best way to accelerate their development?
I think answering the certifications question first, it’s a great way of signaling to the ecosystem that you are of a certain standard, that you’ve passed the required training and test to be able to get that certification. And those people that have got those, have earned those, you know—it’s a good milestone for them in their career, but it’s also a good benchmark for the ecosystem to see where they’re at and what they’re capable of.
I think people choose to invest their careers in the Microsoft ecosystem because they see us as a long term player. They are looking for somewhere to invest many years of their career and they know that Microsoft’s going to be around for the long term. They know that we work with companies across a variety of different capability areas and products and that enables them to potentially have choice where they take their career in the future.
And then within the last 18 months, I think people see the investment we’re making in AI and they’re excited about how they can take their career to the next level. So I think there’s three or four different reasons why people want to be in the ecosystem and I see that interest certainly rising.
What direction is the Microsoft community headed and what predictions do you have for the next three years inside that ecosystem?
So we’re seeing obviously a large scale shift towards AI capability. So even our partners who maybe didn’t have some of the Power Platform skill sets that are going to be very prevalent when it comes to Copilot Studio and some of those products that sit within Power Platform, they are looking to invest in practices to develop skills and people and capabilities in that area.
We’re seeing interest from partners who perhaps were Modern Work or Azure partners who are looking to move into the Biz Apps ecosystem to try and offer customers a bit more of an end to end capability. We are seeing interest from partners who are working with competitor products at the moment who are looking to move into the Microsoft ecosystem.
And we’re also looking at a number of mergers and acquisitions that are going on, which is actually consolidating some of our partners and making the landscape a little bit more consolidated. And generally what I’ve seen when that’s happened in the past is that there’s a real opportunity now for folks who want to come in and invest in new practices to start building a capability from scratch.
And they can often do that using apprentices. They can do that through work with Revolent, for example, where they can reskill folks from different industries and bring them in. But there’s a real opportunity for people to invest in a practice within the Biz Apps and other Microsoft product areas at the moment and see that grow and build and see a lot of success.
So I would encourage inward investment into our ecosystem, for sure. But I would also encourage partners who are looking to grow their skill sets and grow their capabilities around AI to continue to do that.
