astro posted on September 02, 2010 08:20
Cindy Bates will be giving the Microsoft Keynote at SMB Nation Fall 2010 in Las Vegas, October 22-24, 2010!!!
I recently spent time with Cindy Bates, vice president of the U.S. Small and Medium Businesses organization at her Lincoln Square office in Bellevue, Washington (just a short eco-commute from the main Redmond campus). I wanted to learn more about the new role for this long-time Microsoft executive. I’ve watched her success over the past several years with great interest and my compliments for her ability to navigate a Fortune One $62B enterprise with SMB nimbleness and finesse. The ten-year Microsoft veteran has accepted new responsibilities with this appointment. Cindy has responsibility for a multi-billion dollar business and US SMB is responsible for 40% of SMB WW revenue. Her Microsoft career started in the business development M&A area and she then joined Darren Houston in starting the SMS&P organization.
FACTOID: Understanding organizational alignment. SMS&P is still the overall customer and partner organization that sits below EPG (or very large enterprise customers and partners segment) and the SMB organization is a child entity to SMS&P. This was clarified for me in our meeting.
How is it that Cindy is so SMB successful? The answer is two-fold: past and present. Cindy comes from a family-run small business, so she grew up with that “table talk” (we discuss and emphasis the importance of learning “business speak” from “table talk” in our Pocket MBA program). And in the present, she asks her team “how can we help small and medium businesses thrive and grow?” Before I delve deeper into the SMB organization, I suggest you refill your coffee and watch this video snippet HERE of my in-person interview with Cindy Bates. I’ll see you back here in two minutes.
OK – time for a Pocket MBA lecture on the SMB organization. I decided to use PowerPoint to create an organization chart – with a twist! I focus on the SMB players I think you need to know about (Martorano, Waldo, Waldrop especially).
So what’s the net of this SMB roll-up at Microsoft? I believe it is the latest attempt to bring order to the chaotic small business opportunity by having a cohesive strategic and “feet on the street” entity inside Microsoft’s USA subsidiary. There is literally only one throat to choke now!
References. No academic exercise is complete without full citation and references.
• CRN story: “Microsoft Creates New SMB Division To Take Its Cloud Effort To New Heights”
• Redmond Channel Partner magazine reported on Cindy’s appointment in its August 2010 issue HERE.
• If you are interested in tracking Microsoft organization charts and changes, consider reading Directions on Microsoft HERE.