Investment Insights from Silicon Valley

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Investment Insights from Silicon Valley Investing involves risk. The value of an investment and the income from it may fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the full amount invested. February 2014 Investment Insights from Silicon Valley www.rcmtechnologytrust.co.uk Walter Price Lead Manager, RCM Technology Trust With over 40 years of experience of investing in technology companies, Walter Price has witnessed the technology sector improve user productivity through the revolution in semiconductor design, the birth of the personal computer and the arrival of the internet. Based in San Francisco, giving him close proximity to many of the world’s most innovative companies, he heads up the Global Technology Team which manages US$4 billion* in assets. argue that personal computing is likely to be a growth area, for Technology in the news the time being it seems to have stabilised. Microsoft should also Microsoft has long understood the necessity of shifting its be a beneficiary of a loosening in corporate spending. business from its weakening core markets to newer and At the moment, we have a relatively conservative price target on higher growth areas. To date, its execution has been erratic; Microsoft, but if it can establish itself as a solid competitor to there have been ill-judged forays into the mobile phone world, Amazon in cloud computing, move away from mobile phones for example. However, Microsoft’s turnaround has taken a leap and generate stronger growth, it could easily attract a rating of forward with the appointment of Satya Nadella, who becomes double its current 10x earnings. Chief Executive Officer this month, replacing the outgoing Steve Ballmer. Buybacks Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and has a good track record in the Buyback levels in the US market reached record highs at the end areas where the business needs to focus: cloud computing and of 2013 and the technology sector has firmly participated in the enterprise technology. He put Microsoft’s search business on a trend. Notably, Apple has launched a $14bn buyback programme, more solid footing, which at the time had appeared to be a which has attracted criticism and approval in equal measure. daunting - if not impossible - task. The most successful technology Some suggest the money could be better spent. Others would businesses have tended to have users of technology as leaders - like to see more, though billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn – The late Steve Jobs is perhaps the most high-profile example. one of Apple’s biggest shareholders - has now dropped his Nadella is an engineer who understands technology, rather than proposal for Apple to extend its buyback programme even being simply a financial manager or sales person. As such, he also further. commands the respect of the developers in the group. In general, we like buybacks if they are meaningful, shrink the We expect Nadella quietly to forget the episode where Microsoft company and add to earnings. We don’t like those merely tried to be a mobile phone company and focus on the right areas designed to compensate for share options. Apple’s share buyback of key growth markets. Investors should forgive companies these programme has added around 5% to earnings and as such is kinds of mistakes, just as they forgave Google for buying welcome. That said, for the time being it has moved the stock as Motorola. much as likely to do so and Apple really has to focus on new The Trust currently has a position in Microsoft, as we have already products. started to see improving earnings at the group: the group’s There are three main product areas: TV, services and the enterprise business is performing well, and while we would not forthcoming larger-screen iPhone. The latter could see strong *Source: Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH as at December 2013. This is no recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any particular security. Investment Insights from Silicon Valley demand especially in Asia where Apple has established new sales people and will reject it if it goes too far. LinkedIn hasn’t yet carrier deals and may positively surprise the markets as a result. It worked out how to achieve this balance. may provide some growth when, at the moment, markets are In general, there are two main areas where companies pricing in almost no growth at all. Many larger companies such as disappoint: there may be poor execution, or a fundamental issue Apple are trading on low multiples relative to the wider market. If in the business. Twitter, for example, recently hit its earnings there is any growth at all, there could be a re-rating in the shares. targets, but without growing its user base. In other cases, it may The Trust did not hold Apple for a long time, and this contributed be that costs are needed to sustain high revenue growth. We are to relative performance during the sharp decline in Apple’s more tolerant of the latter than the former. It is difficult to shares. We now have a small holding - 2-3% of the fund versus its generate high revenue growth without a company growing its 10-12% weighting in the benchmark - and are waiting to see how sales force, for example. With LinkedIn, we believe the recent the next round of product development will be received. rout could be a buying opportunity. LinkedIn disappoints Emerging trend - security Just as expectations are too low for some technology giants, they Department store Target saw the credit card details of 20 million are too lofty for some companies considered ‘high growth’ by Christmas shoppers stolen over the period from 27 November to investors. LinkedIn is now wrestling with this problem and its 15 December. The theft was particularly troubling in its sales forecasts disappointed the markets at the start of the year. sophistication. It was highly organised, rather than a lone hacker The company had attracted an ambitious valuation of $25bn, and showed the vulnerability of large organisations to increasingly which implied an extremely high growth rate. It still grew complex fraud. By January, Target had already introduced new strongly, but its suggested growth is now around 40% per year security systems and was calling on other retailers to bring in Chip rather than the 50% per year expected by the more optimistic and PIN, common in the UK, but rare in the US. analysts. Incidents like these are becoming increasingly common and The recruiting business of LinkedIn is robust, but has seen some security will be a big growth area for 2014. Companies need to slowing of growth. It has recruited for Google and Microsoft, but spend on security to retain competitiveness as customer other companies have been slower to adopt Internet recruiting. dissatisfaction grows. Companies such as Gemalto and FireEye are The problem for the group now is to find a way to use the poised to be key winners from this trend. Both are now important database of contacts on the site for marketing. This is a delicate positions in the Trust’s portfolio. process because people do not use LinkedIn to be besieged by All sources Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH unless otherwise noted. This is no recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any particular security. Investing involves risk. The value of an investment and the income from it may fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the full amount invested. Competition among technology companies may result in aggressive pricing of their products and services, which may affect the profitability of the companies in which the Trust invests. In addition, because of the rapid pace of technological development, products or services developed by these companies may become rapidly obsolete or have relatively short product cycles. This may have the effect of making the Trust’s returns more volatile than the returns of a fund that does not invest in similarly related companies. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. The value of an investment and the income from it may fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the full amount invested. The views and opinions expressed herein, which are subject to change without notice, are those of the issuer and/or its affiliated companies at the time of publication. The data used is derived from various sources, and assumed to be correct and reliable, but it has not been independently verified; its accuracy or completeness is not guaranteed and no liability is assumed for any direct or consequential losses arising from its use, unless caused by gross negligence or wilful misconduct. The conditions of any underlying offer or contract that may have been, or will be, made or concluded, shall prevail. A security mentioned as example above will not necessarily be comprised in the portfolio by the time this document is disclosed or at any other subsequent date. This is a marketing communication issued by Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH, an investment company with limited liability incorporated in Germany, with its registered office at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 42/44, D-60323 Franfkurt/M. Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH is registered with the local court of Frankfurt/M under HRB 9340 and is authorised and regulated by the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin). Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH has established a branch in the United Kingdom, Allianz Global Investors Europe GmbH, UK Branch, which is subject to limited regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority (www.fca.org.uk). Details about the extent of our regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority are available from us on request. RCM Technology Trust PLC PLC is incorporated in England and Wales.
Recommended publications
  • Microsoft Buying Linkedin – Smart Move Or Dumb Move?
    Better Business FocusFocus DecemberJune 20162015 Paul Sloane Microsoft buying LinkedIn – Smart Move or Dumb Move? for $6B in 2007. It was an attempt professionals and it is the essential Microsoft’s core PC business of office to take on Google in online tool of all recruitment companies. applications and Windows operating advertising and it failed. In 2012 However, LinkedIn’s growth has the value of the business was slowed and it is losing money. Is it systems was in decline so it needed written down to zero. In 2008 in tomorrow’s success or new sources of revenue. It splashed another attempt to take on yesterday’s? Microsoft has paid a out $26bn to buy social media Google Microsoft offered $45B huge premium for the business business LinkedIn. Will this move add for Yahoo. Fortunately for and shareholders must be worried value for Microsoft shareholders or Microsoft the bid was rejected that it will add to the company’s and the company dodged a bullet. litany of failures. destroy it? The omens are not good. Yahoo’s online advertising business is worth very little today. © Copyright, Paul Sloane Business leaders love to flex their muscles and use shareholders’ But Microsoft is not alone in this About the Author: funds to buy other businesses. folly. Google themselves splurged Paul was part of the team which This is despite the evidence that $12B on Motorola’s mobile phone launched the IBM PC in the UK in most acquisitions do not fulfill business which they then sold 1981. He became MD of database their stated aims and many lose three years later for less than company Ashton-Tate.
    [Show full text]
  • Steve Ballmer, Founder, Usafacts and Former CEO, Microsoft Presents Usafacts’ Annual Report and Analyzes National Demographic Data
    Steve Ballmer, Founder, USAFacts and Former CEO, Microsoft Presents USAFacts’ Annual Report and Analyzes National Demographic Data. Steve Ballmer, Founder, USAFacts Former CEO, Microsoft Tuesday, April 30, 2019 1 DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN: Steve probably doesn’t need a big introduction, but I’ll give him a little introduction. Steve is a – grew up in Detroit and in Belgium. And at Detroit, he was valedictorian of his high school, Detroit Day School. STEVE BALLMER: Country Day. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Country Day School. And went to the – he was a national merit scholar. Went to Harvard. At Harvard he was the manager of the football team, also on the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Advocate. He was in the same class as some other prominent people – Bill Gates, John Roberts, among others. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in applied math and economics. From there, he went to Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeff Immelt, who later went on to run General Electric. He then went to Stanford Business School. And in 1980, he dropped out of Stanford Business School to join a small startup that had 30 employees then – Microsoft. And then in the year 2000, he became the CEO of Microsoft, and was the CEO of Microsoft for 14 years. He’s now retired from that position, involved heavily in philanthropy and in basketball, among other things. And so why don’t we just start with a basketball question, which is this: With seven minutes and 31 seconds to go – [laughter] – in the third quarter of the second game of the playoffs, your team was down by 31 points.
    [Show full text]
  • CEO Steve Ballmer Vows to 'Kill' Google
    866-536-8614 | Contact Us www.peakpositions.com Microsoft (MSN) CEO Steve Ballmer Vows to 'Kill' Google. Original publisher: CNET News, SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive "like wolves," according to documents filed Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals. The allegations, filed in a Washington state court, represent the latest salvos in a showdown triggered by Google's July hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee to oversee a research and development center that Google plans to open in China. Lee started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft. The tug-of-war over Lee - known for his work on computer recognition of language - has exposed the behind-the-scenes animosity that has been brewing between two of high-tech's best-known companies. Ballmer's threat last November was recounted in a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said he met with Microsoft's chief executive 10 months ago to discuss his decision to leave the company after six years. After learning Lucovsky was leaving to take a job at Google, Ballmer picked up his chair and hurled it across his office, according to the declaration. Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled. Before joining Google, Schmidt was a top executive at Sun Microsystems Inc. and Novell Inc., a pair of tech companies that Microsoft has previously battled. In a statement Friday, Ballmer described Lucovsky's recollection as a "gross exaggeration.
    [Show full text]
  • Microsoft to Acquire Skype
    Microsoft to Acquire Skype Combined companies will benefit consumers, businesses and increase market opportunity. REDMOND, Wash., and LUXEMBOURG – May 10, 2011 – Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) and Skype Global S.à.r.l today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services. With 170 million connected users and over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010, Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally. Microsoft has a long-standing focus and investment in real-time communications across its various platforms, including Lync (which saw 30 percent revenue growth in Q3), Outlook, Messenger, Hotmail and Xbox LIVE. Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms. “Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
    [Show full text]
  • Ballmer's Top Failures, from Tablet PC to Xbox One 27 August 2013, by Paresh Dave
    Ballmer's top failures, from Tablet PC to Xbox One 27 August 2013, by Paresh Dave Bill Gates said that Tablet PCs, as Microsoft called them, would be ubiquitous within five years. Gates and Ballmer missed the mark by failing to see the need for hand-touch technology and user-centric marketing - two key elements behind the iPad's success. Microsoft released a tablet in 2012. But people found it difficult to use, and Microsoft couldn't convince developers to make apps for the tablets despite Ballmer's appeals to the developer community. Microsoft took a $900 million loss on $19.9 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter because of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaks at a Microsoft weak tablet sales. Recently the company cut prices event in San Francisco, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. of a couple of models. It also lost out on big Ballmer, who helped build Microsoft into a technology contracts, such as with the Los Angeles Unified empire and then struggled to prevent it from crumbling School District, which plans to give all of its under his own leadership, will retire within the next 12 students Apple iPads instead. months. The world's biggest software company did not name a successor. Microsoft Corp.'s stock shot up 9 Despite not succeeding on its own, Microsoft hasn't percent in premarket trading following the news. (AP made its widely used Microsoft Office software Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) available on the Apple. That's sent many potential customers to the competition, including Google Drive. Microsoft Corp.'s tumultuous fall on the stock WINDOWS PHONE: Microsoft was early to the market during the past 13 years has largely been table in the mobile phone market, too.
    [Show full text]
  • Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Discusses His New Book, “Hit Refresh,” and His Vision for the Future of Microsoft
    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Discusses his New Book, “Hit Refresh,” and his Vision for the Future of Microsoft Satya Nadella Chief Executive Officer Microsoft Corporation Wednesday, October 4, 2017 1 DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN: Welcome, everybody, to what is our third event of our 31st season. And we’re very pleased today to have Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, as our special guest. We’ll have an interview with him shortly. Everybody should have a copy of his new book, “Hit Refresh.” I’ve read the book, and we’ll go through the book a little bit later. It’s really a terrific book, extraordinary description of how to change a bit the culture of a company and also an extraordinary personal story, so I think all of you will enjoy reading it. We’ll go through some parts of it in the conversation with Satya a little bit later. [Video presentation.] [Applause.] MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So how many people here are familiar with Microsoft products? [Laughter.] OK, everybody? OK. So on February 4th, 2014, you became the new CEO of Microsoft, the third person to have that job. Since that time, the market capitalization of Microsoft is up by $250 billion. Has Bill Gates1 or Steve Ballmer2 ever called you to thank you for – [laughter] – increasing their net worth by a great deal, or they don’t call you to thank you? SATYA NADELLA: [Laughs.] Let’s just say that as long as they call and ask me to do more on the products, that’s a good sign.
    [Show full text]
  • Introducing Microsoft's New Chief Executive Officer UWM Alum Satya
    SPRING 2014 CREATING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION TOUGHER, STRONGER, SMARTER CONCRETE Introducing Microsoft’s UWM WRENCH New Chief Executive Officer PUTS SAFETY FIRST UWM Alum Satya Nadella, BIOMEDICAL College of Engineering & Applied Science BREAKTHROUGH ALLOWS SAFER TRANSPLANTS VIA OPTICAL BIOPSY NSF CAREER GRANTS FUND BREAKTHROUGH RESEARCH Satya Nadella to lead tech industry giant, Microsoft UWM alum is seen as visionary he new CEO of Satya had slept there several nights, after Microsoft Corporation working late hours on his research. Such was T– and only the third his dedication to his goals.” chief executive officer in the famed company’s history Master’s Degree in 1990 – has strong Milwaukee A native of Hyderabad, in south-central India, ties. Satya Nadella, an Nadella earned a master’s degree in computer alumnus of UWM’s College science from UWM in 1990, after completing of Engineering and Applied his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering Science, is remembered from Mangalore University in India. as an extremely talented “I think Satya being named CEO of Microsoft graduate student who helps our students know the kind of education was one of scores of students from India they get on our campus will take them anywhere attracted to UWM’s strong computer science they want to go,” says Dean Brett Peters. “ I have always used program. In his first interview after the appointment, [Nadella] as a good Nadella, who was once described by Business Nadella says he had always wanted to Week as a member of Bill Gates’s “kitchen example of student “build things” and had developed a passion cabinet of techno-whizzes,” was about 20 for computer science as a means to success: how to years old when he began the master’s degree achieve that.
    [Show full text]
  • How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate America's
    How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate... http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-m... HOME business August 2012 Microsoft’s Lost Decade Once upon a time, Microsoft dominated the tech industry; indeed, it was the wealthiest corporation in the world. But since 2000, as Apple, Google, and Facebook whizzed by, it has fallen flat in every arena it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc. Talking to former and current Microsoft executives, Kurt Eichenwald finds the fingers pointing at C.E.O. Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’s successor, as the man who led them astray. By Kurt Eichenwald PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN GLUSKOTER/EPA/LANDOV. YOU TALKING TO ME? Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer delivers the keynote address at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, on January 9. o the saccharine rhythm of a Muzak clip, Steve Ballmer crouched into a tackling stance and dashed across a ballroom stage at the Venetian Las Vegas. A 20-foot wall of video screens flashed his name as the 55-year-old Microsoft chief T executive bear-hugged Ryan Seacrest, the ubiquitous television and radio host, who had just introduced Ballmer’s keynote speech for the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show. More than 150,000 techies and executives were swarming the city’s hotels last January in the annual bacchanalia of cutting-edge gizmos and gadgets. Attendees ran from one vendor to the next, snapping up fistfuls of freebies, inhaling flavored oxygen, and rubbing elbows with stars such as LL Cool J and Justin Bieber.
    [Show full text]
  • Cloud Trends for IT Pros – X-Platform Edition
    #techsummitCH Cloud Trends for IT Pros – X-Platform Edition Marcel Zehner Founder & Corporate Ambassador, itnetX Nicolas Christener CEO/CTO, Adfinis SyGroup Marcel Zehner @marcelzehner marcelzehner.ch Nicolas Christener @nikslor adfinis-sygroup.ch IT is a steady process of innovation Some trends are very visible Shift to container Interoperability and APIs are king IT services became a commodity Automation rules modern IT Disruption Software defined everything - job killer? OSS everywhere - do I need to learn Linux? Move to the cloud - what about my data? Let's look a bit closer Trend #1 - Cross-Platform “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches“ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO (2001) “Microsoft loves Linux” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO (2014) PST tools released Top 20 list of Linux .NET Core MSSQL on Linux using Apache License kernel contributors open sourced Linux Foundation OpenStreetMap ASP.NET MVC, Contributions to Platinum Member layer in Bing Web API, Razor OpenJDK PowerShell & Chakra open sourced „We love open source“ Microsoft ♥ Linux open sourced Open Technologies Inc. 2011 2013 2015 2017 2010 2012 2014 2016 GPL contributions to VM Depot (Linux & Debian & RHEL on 1380 Repos Samba FreeBSD VMs for Azure (no forks) on GitHub Azure) Full Support for OpenSSH on Deis acquisition PhoneGap on BrowserSwarm Windows Windows Subsystem Windows Phone open sourced Visual Studio Code for Linux (WSL) Node.JS on Windows Git Support in Docker on Azure VS & TFS Marcel
    [Show full text]
  • Fine-Grained Entity Recognition
    Fine-Grained Entity Recognition Xiao Ling and Daniel S. Weld Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2350, U.S.A. fxiaoling, [email protected] Abstract organization standard, they still fail to distinguish entity classes which are common when extracting hundreds or Entity Recognition (ER) is a key component of relation ex- traction systems and many other natural-language processing thousands of different relations (Hoffmann, Zhang, and applications. Unfortunately, most ER systems are restricted Weld 2010; Carlson et al. 2010). Furthermore, as one strives to produce labels from to a small set of entity classes, e.g., for finer granularity, their assumption of mutual exclusion person, organization, location or miscellaneous. In order to breaks (e.g., Monopoly is both a game and a product). intelligently understand text and extract a wide range of in- There are three challenges impeding the development of formation, it is useful to more precisely determine the se- a fine-grained entity recognizer: selection of the tag set, cre- mantic classes of entities mentioned in unstructured text. This ation of training data, and development of a fast and ac- paper defines a fine-grained set of 112 tags, formulates the curate multi-class labeling algorithm. We address the first tagging problem as multi-class, multi-label classification, de- scribes an unsupervised method for collecting training data, challenge by curating a set of 112 unique tags based on Free- and presents the FIGER implementation. Experiments show base types. The second challenge, creating a training sets for that the system accurately predicts the tags for entities.
    [Show full text]
  • Remedy Exhibit
    Microsoft - PressPass All Products | Support | Search | microsoft.com Guide PressPass Home | Press Releases | Subscribe | Legal Issues | About Microsoft Search PressPass Remarks by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Microsoft News Jan. 13, 2000 New Press Releases Redmond, Wash. Products & Services International News MR. GATES: Good Afternoon, Lifestyles PR Contacts Microsoft was founded 25 years ago, and I’ve had the same job as CEO during that entire 25 year period. The vision that Paul Allen and I had of the PC becoming an empowering tool, and software Company Info playing a central role in that has certainly achieved a lot of the dreams that we’ve had. And yet, I Financial would say that today there is more opportunity for software than there has ever been. Even though Executives we have over 400 million machines out there, running the graphic interface, a very high percentage Bill Gates' Site running our office productivity software, in a sense you can say that you haven’t seen anything yet. Community Affairs Advertising The revolution ahead is one where we still feel that software will very much be at the center. And Events yet, the nature of software will be changing, software will be delivered in many cases as a service across the Internet instead of a packaged product. The way that software has been developed using Site Map things like XML, to interface, to speech systems, to hand writing systems -- it will appear in a different form than it has. When I think of how this decade will be, how will people look back at it, I think we can say that they might even call it the "software decade." It’s during this decade that the way business is done will be defined by software, the way that you share and find information will be defined by software -- even the way we think of entertainment, the way we think of music and photos.
    [Show full text]
  • Harness Technology to Cultivate Outstanding Executive Communications Times…They Keep on Changing
    Harness technology to cultivate outstanding executive communications Times…they keep on changing 1991 Mid-90s 2000 - 2013 2014 - now “We must rediscover our soul.” Satya Nadella to employees, July 2015 How did we do it? How did we do it? 1 2 3 4 5 Our North Star Mission Worldview Solution Areas Culture Changing communications landscape 2013 Now External media coverage Emails from Satya Nadella Analyst reports Communications from senior leaders in my group Stock Price External media coverage Family and Friends My co-workers Communications from Steve Ballmer My manager Top-down communication 2-way dialogue Email Social media sites All Hands meetings Yammer Video messages Microsoft Teams Employee lifecycle Candidate New Employee/ Employee Alumni Onboarding Create an atmosphere that encourages social sharing Social sharing Weekly curated email LinkedIn Elevate LinkedIn Elevate Integration into to encourage sharing web experience mobile experience company Intranet of top stories Managing communications at the CEO level Investing in our leaders AND their comms staff Public Employees (140K+) Executive Staff (200) Senior Office of the Leadership (10) CEO (10) Satya Nadella Our challenges Our challenges 1 2 3 4 5 Arming our leaders Rise of employee Listening and Rise of peer to More to be great activism turning measurement peer vs. top down personalization in a communicators into action diverse workforce Arming our leaders to be 1 great communicators 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 Rise of Employee Activism The easiest mistake any employer can make is to assume that “this could never happen here.” While it’s natural to hope and believe that’s the case, one of the fundamental lessons of recent months is that people’s voices need to be heard if their problems are to be addressed.
    [Show full text]