Photo of Jatin Mohanty and Rhonda McKearney, Microsoft Ireland Operation Ltd.

Microsoft transforms Payment Solutions with in-house innovation

The challenge

Inefficiencies and laboured processes in its Payments Solution Desk processes left Microsoft facing heightened risk. Business decisions were taking longer, deadlines missed, and deals lost.

The global treasury and financial services department needed to make decisions faster to manage risk and find suitable payment solutions for customers and partners.

The Payment Solution Desk was having to reach stakeholders from different time zones to manually collect information by email and phone in a time-consuming and costly process. The process involved manually updating information into an Excel file connected to a Power Bi report to share with different stakeholders. On average, it took over 15 minutes to put an email together for each deal. Moreover, staff found it difficult to translate and read the non-English language deals and comments. The Payments Solution Desk also faced compliance issues related to the storage and sharing of sensitives data.

The solution

The Payments Solution Desk was overhauled with a Pipeline Revenue Forecast comprising four different pillars that connect sales and accounts receivable data. The solution depended on robust data gathering and governance processes overseen by a prioritisation process that settled on the key requirements and resources for success.

Best practice and innovation

The first party solution involved compliant business process automation using Low Code, No Code Microsoft.

Key innovations include:

• A single data source to drive PSD engagement with the field.
• A single report with pipeline data enriched with GTFS processes’ data.
• Seamless navigation and interaction between Apps (Power Bi to Power Apps).
• Centralised comments and status storage that integrate with both apps (e-mail and report).
• ‘Click to email’ generates content automatically (quick and easy edit).
• ‘Click to Microsoft Teams’ generates content automatically for quick chat with the deal owner.
• An average of two minutes to put an email together in a consistent way.
• Reduction in number of meeting and attendees.

Key benefits

• Cost savings.
• Process efficiencies.
• Increased automation.
• Risk mitigated.
• Improved visibility.
• Errors reduced.
• Manual intervention reduced.
• Increased system connectivity.
• Exceptional implementation (budget/time).