Microsoft’s Commitment to Information Workers

The new world of work will transform the way individuals work, by providing them with rich tools that help them peer through the haze of data and content to find what is relevant to them and to their work. Individuals will more clearly see how their work connects not only to their company, but to the entire value chain, and the organization will be able to look back through these rich relationships of information to better understand how to make the organization functions even more productively and effectively.

We can imagine that at the executive level, insights gleaned from business intelligence will help leaders better manage people and processes because they will know precisely what is important, and how various parts of the organization contribute to success. The new world of work will see software play an important role in replacing the complexity of the workplace with context sensitive views that help individual contributors, managers and executives pay attention to those things most important to their success, and give them better ways to take meaningful action.

The new world of work promises to bring clarity to chaos and create new prospects for innovation by helping reveal new opportunities for partnerships that cross company and industry boundaries, and make the most of the skills and insights of the workers employed within the enterprise.

In a new world of work where collaboration, business intelligence and prioritizing scarce time and attention are critical factors of success, the tools that information workers use must evolve in ways that do not impose additional burdens of complexity on workers who already feel the pressure of ubiquitous access and ever-rising expectations of productivity.

Microsoft believes that yet another advance in information worker productivity will come from integration, simplification, and a new breed of software applications and services that extend human capabilities by automating low-value tasks so people can focus on providing higher-value analysis of complex data.

The best and surest way to achieve these benefits is through a designed approach to software development that leverages our learning and experience as the enabler of information worker productivity over the past quarter-century, and is responsive and accountable to our customers.

Microsoft has been there for the information worker over the past 25 years and will continue to put Information Worker empowerment at the center of its product philosophy in the years to come. We believe firmly that the promise of the digital workstyle and coming advances in smart, simple, pervasive and trustworthy technology points us onward to a more human-centric world of innovation and productivity.