Case study · Microsoft
Communications for a 5,000-person sales division
Communications Manager for Microsoft's Industry Solutions Delivery (ISD) division across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).
01The problem
Microsoft's Industry Solutions Delivery division employed around 5,000 people across EMEA. It had corporate messaging coming from above and regional needs pulling from below, and no single voice of its own. When I arrived there was no weekly channel to its people.
The division's Vice President had public appearances, quarterly updates, and a full calendar of events to communicate through, and needed a communications partner rather than a postbox.
02What I did
I launched a weekly newsletter for the division's 5,000 sales staff and owned content strategy for its intranet, spanning corporate and sales content. I ran the quarterly business update process, collecting stories and results from every area of the division and editing them into one executive voice.
I advised the Vice President directly: scripts for public appearances, briefing materials, and liaison with event teams for speaking engagements. The advisory work covered business priorities, communications strategy, and crisis and issues management. The Vice President was also an accessibility champion at Microsoft, and I wrote the blogs and briefings that supported that role. I wrote for names more senior than mine too: sales-contest emails issued under the EMEA Sales Director's name, and the Women in Sales Awards winner email issued under the name of the President of Microsoft EMEA.
I was embedded in the sales organisation itself, producing collateral for the sales team's direct use and editing the material they produced. I ran a quarterly sales contest between EMEA territories, wrote the campaign emails that kept it moving, and delivered targeted email campaigns using audience segmentation.
The campaigns I'm proudest of were the people ones. I ran the communications for the Women in Sales Awards programme across the division. I led marketing communications for an accessibility awareness campaign that recruited partners and customer organisations across EMEA, and my launch post in Microsoft's company-wide community was seen by more than 14,000 people.
03The results
Nominations for the Women in Sales Awards rose 400% year on year, with more nominees and finalists than the two previous years combined. Engagement initiatives I built reached 90% participation across the division. And for eighteen months, 5,000 people had a single weekly voice that had not existed before.