Reginald Albert worked as a field seller at Microsoft for over 20 years, where he had a front row seat to see how teams, customers, and partners use Microsoft technology to power their work. When looking for his next role at the company, he wanted a challenge.

He got one.

As the director of Services Business Operations in the company’s Worldwide Commercial Business division, Albert led the company’s project to modernize the tools used by Microsoft consultants.

These Microsoft project managers and consultants work on a range of customer projects from migrating services to Microsoft Azure to optimizing the deployment of a Microsoft product. They required multiple tools to plan projects, track spending, and fulfill customer contracts. They also had a business process outsourcing team that would copy data across these systems and track financial revenue using Microsoft Excel.

Now, the tools used by Microsoft consultants are being moved to SAP, an enterprise resource planning software, on Microsoft Azure.

I wanted to shift from selling Microsoft products to connecting field sellers and project managers with the tools they need to empower customers to drive transformation with Microsoft products.

– Reginald Albert, director of Services Business Operations

“We wanted to simplify, integrate, and stitch together these tools and systems into a seamless experience for customers who need support and consultants who are offering their services,” Albert says. “Weaving them all into SAP was a way to help customers get the most out of their Microsoft products and services.”

Microsoft consultants in the field support thousands of customers, and they can track project delivery, invoicing, and revenue with a modernized customer resource management solution. It also ensures that the engineering team can monitor service health using Azure-based dashboards that connects all the data in one place.

“I wanted to shift from selling Microsoft products to connecting field sellers and project managers with the tools they need to empower customers to drive transformation with Microsoft products,” Albert says.

“Moving to SAP reduces operational costs and enables consultants to make real-time decisions on which projects to pursue,” says Jeremy Heber, the engineering lead for this project and principal program manager in Microsoft Digital who supported the engineering efforts on this project.

Having the Microsoft consulting services business on SAP makes it easier to create a single customer invoice for customers using Microsoft products and services across lines of business. It also empowers employees to spend more time with customers.

“By simplifying administrative processes, employees can manage their projects hands-on and view all delivery information on project and customer in one place,” says Tara Kelly, a senior global program manager in Microsoft Business Operations.

By running on SAP, the Microsoft consulting services team has real-time visibility into business performance and operations. This enables teams to determine if they have the resources to expand customer projects when requested.

“If someone needed us to extend the project, we didn’t know if we had the resources to do so,” Heber says. “Now that we’re using SAP, we have the most current data to make real-time decisions to build our relationships.”

[Learn strategies for migrating SAP systems to Microsoft Azure, how to build an agile and trusted SAP environment on Microsoft Azure, and how Microsoft Azure telemetry tools provide insights for business processes that use SAP.]

Learning from each phase of deployment

Moving these tools to SAP required a process transformation from engineering to employee adoption that occurred over the span of a year and a half.

“We onboarded a few countries, learned from the pilot, and added more functionality over time. In each wave, we addressed bugs and optimized performance,” Heber says. “Now, we’ve watched adoption numbers climb every quarter.”

Kelly says some roles changed when the tools consultants use moved to SAP.

“It was time for project managers to learn the new system,” says Kelly, who oversees the global services operational team in Dublin that does billing and invoicing. “Project managers and consultants use SAP to validate billing and customer invoices, which empowers Operations employees to focus on high-impact work.”

Currently, 96 percent of customer contracts, including most new deals, come through SAP. Heber is proud of this number, but he’s even more proud of the team that made this happen.

“There were a lot of technical, budget, and prioritization challenges, and it was amazing to see employees from multiple organizations come together to collaborate,” Heber says.

From an end-to-end deal perspective, Kelly says that the new SAP ecosystem provides opportunities to leverage AI and machine learning to replace operational manual validation or transactional processes.

The final stage of the project?

Fully retiring the legacy system and adding new contracts onto the SAP system.

“We’re nearly there in retiring the system and being truly modern, meaning there’s minimal manual work done on the backend,” Kelly says.

Success hinges on education

Like any project that involves modernizing legacy systems, it came with its challenges.

“If you change one system, you have to undo the web of interconnected applications,” Heber says. “It was a huge project, but it’s making a difference for the company.”

As we moved our tools onto SAP, we knew that employee behavior wouldn’t change overnight. We brought the project managers, senior leadership, and operational support team along to ensure that they bought in.

– Reginald Albert, director of Services Business Operations at Microsoft

Heber says that the business had originally planned to move the project management tools from the old system to SAP in one year. That shifted quickly once leadership realized how complex the process would be. It took over four years to complete the feature development, compared to the typical seven-year timeline for SAP implementation at other companies. The team kept to their timeline, all while being adaptive to business and market changes and government and tax regulations.

“Once we dug into existing processes, it was like an onion,” Heber says. “We were always learning more about how contracts with clients were processed and billed. Now, we’ve built in the time and capacity for things we’d learn along the way.”

When you move legacy systems, it’s not just a lift and shift. For this reason, Albert says, it’s important to educate users before a tool’s deployment and create relevant readiness material. For example, Albert says his team set up a recurring global call where project managers could share their feedback and pain points.

“As we moved our tools onto SAP, we knew that employee behavior wouldn’t change overnight,” Albert says. “We brought the project managers, senior leadership, and operational support team along to ensure that they bought in.”

Kelly says that employees in Business Operations, who set up contracts for Microsoft consulting services and manage billing, were invited to use the tool that they’d be supporting. This has made the migration more successful.

“When you’re working on a big project you can incubate it, but you also have to transition it to run,” Kelly says. “Our employees in Operations were invited to play with the tool in a testing environment, and they were champions of the various features and functions once it went live.”

When it comes to the work Kelly’s team in Business Operations has done to ensure that new deals are correctly processed, Kelly is nothing short of beaming.

“I’m proud to be managing a team that had such flawless delivery and execution, even when faced with challenges,” Kelly says. “My team inspires me to see what lies ahead.”

Visit SAP’s website to learn more about its offerings.

Learn strategies for migrating SAP systems to Microsoft Azure.

Find out how to build an agile and trusted SAP environment on Microsoft Azure.

Check out how Microsoft Azure telemetry tools provide insights for business processes that use SAP.