What Is a People-Ready Business?

"People Ready" is the Microsoft philosophy of business success: An organization is best able to grow and succeed when it recognizes that people are its most important asset and empowers them with the right tools and technologies to drive the business forward. Microsoft software and solutions can help make your business more people-ready.

When individuals realize their potential, your company realizes its potential.

People Drive Business Success

Focus on Business

Your people are the heart of your business.  Give them the tools they need to succeed.

Focus on Technology

Technology can transform an organization.  Use it to accelerate returns on your biggest investment – your people.

Businesses Thrive by Empowering People

Develop Relationships

Attract loyal customer with great service.  Attract new customers and foster loyalty by providing great service.

Drive Innovation

Profit from your employees’ creativity.  Develop new concepts and add value to existing products and services.

Improve Operations

Save your work force time and effort.  Streamline processes, minimize costs, and delivery faster.

Build Connections

Build flexible connections and reach customers, partners, and suppliers. 

Learn More About the People-Ready Business

To be as productive as possible, your employees need access to up-to-date information, the moment they need it. Whether separated by a department or continent, members of your staff must be able to work together efficiently on high-priority documents and projects.

 A software solution that makes information easier to locate and share can help your employees:

• Access critical files and data when working remotely

• Receive instant notification of changes to shared files

• Quickly find information on their computers and the Web by using a single search tool

• Easily create customized intranets that feature a home page, a document library, and permissions that are unique to individual users

People-Ready Overview:  People Make the Difference – Get the Vision

What is a people-ready business?

A people-ready business is a business that knows people are its most important asset.

A people-ready business believes that people, more than processes, systems, machines, location, or outside consultants, are the ultimate drivers of business success.

A people-ready business invests in, and creates a culture around, a shared value system - an organizational infrastructure that empowers and enables its people to drive the business forward.

It gives people the support, resources, and mandate they need to act intuitively, respond decisively, and invent brilliantly.

When individuals realize their potential, your company realizes its potential. That realization is what separates what we call a “people-ready” business from an ordinary one.

Is your business people-ready?

The best way to find out if your business is people-ready is to put these questions to yourself and the people around you:

• Do you have the information you need to make an intelligent, informed decision every time you need to make one?
• Can you work with groups around the world and exchange ideas as though you were all in the same room?
• Can you interact with customers, solve problems, and create loyalty and satisfaction with instant answers and up-to-the-minute information, all with a few mouse clicks?
• Are you able to work as efficiently and effectively on the road as you can at the office?

The answers could very well depend on the software you use, the technology partners you’ve chosen, and the core infrastructure on which your company runs.

Businesses do not make decisions. Businesses do not meet with clients, close deals, or develop new products.

People do.

Empower the people that make up any business with the right tools, the right information, and the right opportunities, and businesses will tend to exceed and excel. Companies that do this, and do it well, we call "people-ready."

A people-ready business:

• Treats people as its most important asset.
• Realizes knowledge is the currency of success.
• Removes unnecessary barriers.
• Ensures that systems adapt so that people don't have to.

The results:

• Better customer experiences and increased loyalty.
• More innovative products and services.
• Improved operations and reduced costs.
• And higher value connections with partners and suppliers.

Innovative software provides the means to reach these results. Through familiar and easy-to-use software that easily connects and works with existing systems, Microsoft and Computing Solutions Canada, as well as the thousands of Microsoft partners around the world help people succeed by freeing needed information, putting it in familiar and easy-to-use tools, and assisting them in working together—at the office and on the road.

Executive Summary

Every business is different, but the outcomes that drive business success remain the same: creating loyal and profitable customer relationships, inventing and enhancing products or services, managing a business in the most efficient way possible, and building high-value connections with partners and suppliers. But it’s not the businesses that do these things.

Businesses don’t find customers, streamline operations, close deals, or invent products. People do.

• A people-ready business is a "destination workplace." The most talented and successful people and businesses seek opportunities to work at or with this company.
• A people-ready business maximizes the satisfaction levels of all its constituents. Customers, employees, and the critical partners and vendors on whom its success depends are all satisfied. A people-ready business is also a balanced organization that does not neglect one vital constituency for another.
• A people-ready business tempers its management's "force." A people-ready business balances management oversight and control, teamwork, and the constant improvement and innovation that come from empowered employees who live their lives on the front lines of the company.
• A people-ready business is characterized by vision. The ability to see and act on both opportunities and problems is central to a people-ready business.
• A people-ready business is focused on insight and action. A people-ready business is characterized by employees who have insight into opportuni­ties and problems, and the ability to act on them.
• A people-ready business is marked by speed and flexibility. A people-ready business is as concerned with removing barriers to success as it is to driving success. And a people-ready business is agile and adaptable in a business envi­ronment of constant change.
• A people-ready business is optimized for performance at the individual level. Individuals have the freedom to focus on adding value to shareholders and customers, rather than being constantly distracted.

What can you do to help your business succeed by empowering the people throughout your organization?