When Microsoft was looking for a technology partner to develop its ambitious cloud-based training program for its global salesforce, it found the ideal learning technology company in nearby Seattle, Washington. Finding the right academic partner to develop the training content, on the other hand, would take the world’s leading software company a full continent and an ocean away to the renowned INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France.

To better understand why INSEAD was chosen, it helps first to understand the paradigm shift in Microsoft’s product strategy that required a complete overhaul of the skills and knowledge of its sales force.

The Future Is In the Cloud

Cloud computing is growing at a 50% annual rate industry-wide and that is good news for industry leader Microsoft, which has been at the forefront of the tech industry’s move to the cloud. In early 2013, Microsoft launched a “Mobile First, Cloud First” strategy that focused on selling cloud services incorporating mobile capabilities.

Cloud computing represents a significant shift in how companies structure their information technology needs. Instead of building an in-house IT infrastructure of hardware and software, companies are now purchasing on-demand computing paying as they go for all kinds of different applications and services based on the Internet. This transfer to Internet-based IT offerings also means that mobile devices can become an integral part of a company’s IT system.

For IT companies, however, the shift to cloud computing has not only fundamentally changed what they sell, but also to whom they sell. When clients were buying infrastructure, IT company sales forces would be dealing with the client companies’ IT managers. With clients buying pay-as-you-go cloud services, IT companies are now dealing directly with the managers representing the end-users of those services. The focus of the negotiation is no longer on technology but on the qualitative and quantitative business impact of the services.

In the past, for example, the IT department of a client company would purchase a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Today, IT sales forces are negotiating the sale of a CRM system directly with senior business leaders from such departments as finance or marketing.

As a result, Microsoft sellers must speak the language of business and not only technology. They must be able to explain how Microsoft cloud-based services and applications would, for example, improve value creation or return on investment (ROI), influence net present value (NPV) or discounted cash flow (DCF), and impact operating expenditure (OPEX) and capital expenditure (CAPEX).

Microsoft realized that to reach its 20,000 sellers scattered around the globe needed a solution that was cloud-based and mobile-friendly

Microsoft first explored launching a traditional classroom-based training program to support its new strategy but quickly realized that to reach its 20,000 sellers scattered around the globe in a timely manner or risk ceding the cloud to competitors it needed to scale the training program as quickly as possible. The solution, as it turns out, was a training program that was cloud-based and mobile-friendly!

To develop this cloud-based and mobile-friendly training solution, Microsoft needed two partners: a technology partner to design the platform for the solution, and a business school partner to design the content. For the technology component of the project, Microsoft partnered with a learning technology company based in nearby Seattle called Intrepid Learning Inc. Together they settled on building the training programs based on a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) approach an approach that is revolutionizing education in the Internet era.

Given the global reach of the new training program, Microsoft wanted a top-tier global business school whose reputation would inspire sellers to want to take the course, and whose professors would provide practical, high-value, world-class content. They found the ideal partner in INSEAD.

How INSEAD Fills the Bill

In an interview with IEDP, Chengyi Lin, INSEAD’s Director of Strategic Innovations and Online Programmes, explained why INSEAD is a good fit for Microsoft’s training initiative.

First, to emphasize that the program was truly global in scope and ambition, Microsoft wanted a business school that was not associated with a single country, and this is what INSEAD could offer. Although founded in the world-famous Fontainebleau Castle south of Paris, INSEAD is first and foremost a global business school. “This notion of global is not to be taken for granted,” he said. INSEAD is not only physically global with many campuses around the world but also has a global mindset, which is fundamentally different from a nation-bound mindset. The difference is what many multinational companies start to feel more and more, Lin said. There is an ongoing tension between the headquarters of the company, for example in the U.S., and their international subsidiaries because many local organizations are still very much associated with each country’s culture and values.

A second reason that INSEAD is a good fit with this program is the school’s emphasis on linking academic research to practical, real-world application. “Our faculty are pushed to go beyond academic research and understand business practice, which makes a difference in our teaching,” Lin said. The designers of a customized executive education program must not only ask “What is the most cutting-edge research?” but also “How can participants use this research?”

INSEAD’s real-world-focused approach is not too surprising. As Lin noted, INSEAD was the first business school in the world to offer executive education programs. “INSEAD thrives on our customized programs,” he said.

The final reason Microsoft chose INSEAD, according to Lin, was the school’s visionary strategy on digital, to take a customer-driven approach rather than a technology-driven approach to its online education programs. Many schools rolling out MOOC after MOOC seem to focus a lot more on technology. “We should not use technology for the sake of technology”, Lin said. “Our philosophy is that online programming is a new way to strengthen business education and to help our client enable their strategic transformation. We leverage technology but our focus is on learning and on our clients.”

Design Makes the Difference

In May of 2014, representatives from the three partners including INSEAD professors and online program designers; leaders of the Microsoft Sales & Marketing Services Group Readiness (SMSGR) team, now World-Wide Readiness, which had responsibility for the project; and technology and design experts from Intrepid met at INSEAD to set the project’s parameters and ambitions. The partners settled on two interlinked courses, eight and six weeks long respectively. One course would focus on business acumen, while the other would focus on business model innovation.

They also established clear goals for the program. These goals ranged from delivering online training that was scalable, repeatable, and agile to ensuring that the course curriculum and assignments were directly linked to Microsoft’s challenge: transforming the sales force to fulfill the needs of its Cloud First, Mobile First strategy. The goals also included clear deliverables, such as a 60% completion rate. Another goal was to ensure that Microsoft’s sellers were not just taking the courses, but learning from the training.

Microsoft chose INSEAD for its strategy on digital, taking a customer- rather than technology-driven approach to its online education programs.

To achieve these ambitions, the courses were designed around filmed lectures followed up by a variety of interactions from quizzes and simulated exercises to live projects and online discussions. The video lectures were offered in 5 to 15-minute bite-sized chunks. Thus, Microsoft sellers would be able to take advantage of downtimes waiting for a plane or between meetings, for example, to participate in the training. A week’s worth of these lecture “bites” would total three hours, and all participants would have shared deadlines at the end of each week.

One highlight of the program was an integrated and guided real-world assignment, in which the participants applied the learning to their jobs each week and then uploaded a “field report” that was shared with and reviewed by their peers.

The design of the program thus laid the foundation for success by incorporating three vital elements: multi-dimensional interactions between professors and learners and, crucially, among the learners themselves; a flexible pace for learners with busy schedules who were still able to move through the course in a cohort; and action learning projects to ensure that the learning would have a real-world business impact.

Design Makes a Difference

“Design makes a difference,” said Lin when asked about the success of the program. “People will only participate if they see a benefit to their actions.”

For Lin, the gamification parts of the design the learners could earn points, and the top point-earners appeared on a leaderboard was one way to draw participants into the program. However, it was elements such as peer-to-peer interactions that were key to keeping learners engaged and motivated. “Sales can be lonely,” he explained. “It was interesting for the participants to see what other people from other parts of the world were thinking and how they had similar challenges.

Participants seemed to agree. In the first week alone of the pilot program, nearly 3,000 messages were posted in the discussion forums. Over the eight weeks of this first course, the program’s 1,000 learners would post more than 31,000 messages.

As well as gamification, peer-to-peer interactions were key to keeping learners engaged and motivated.

In sum, with its engaging lectures, a platform for interactions, and a highly flexible structure, the content was designed to specifically and continually meet the needs of the learners, and this, said Lin, kept them coming back to the program.

The numbers support Lin’s assessment. Since its inception at the end of 2014, the program has consistently maintained completion rates of about 85%, even after the bar was raised for course completion. In a post-course survey after the pilot course, 95% of participants said the course would help them improve their performance, and an astounding 99% expressed overall satisfaction.

By late summer 2016, over 5,000 learners from around the world have participated in the program. Many of them have shared with their managers and corporate leaders stories of how the specific business knowledge and acumen they acquired in the program led to successful negotiations and closed deals. Microsoft has already seen a real business impact of $50 million from the business acumen course by a survey conducted to ~20salespersonn in Europe, Lin says. And while it is difficult to measure in the short term the financial impact of the business model innovation training, there is no doubt about the qualitative effectiveness of this course as well. Today, the collaboration between Microsoft and INSEAD continues, said Lin, including a current project to design a negotiation course. For INSEAD, the school’s mandate for online education goes well “beyond helping clients such as Microsoft design training courses” he said, “it’s how to help our clients such as Microsoft transform their businesses.”