Argano

CIOInsights is on a constant quest to identify the emerging players in the Microsoft Partners and showcase their expertise, products, services, and solutions in solving impediments and overcoming market complexities. Through the Two-page profile, our aim is to allow the readers, your prospective clients, and business partners to develop a thorough understanding of Argano and its value proposition in Microsoft Partners. The profile will illustrate the functionality of your solutions and services, along with insights into the company's strengths, vision, and roadmap.

For the following questions, we are looking for insightful responses that paint a picture of the role played by Argano in addressing customers’ needs within the Microsoft Partners landscape.

After covering all the questions, please share your views and opinion on any other topic that we may have missed and that you think the readers should know about.

1. What should be the storyline of this article?

2024 trends/AI/Power Platform and D365 Bus Apps

2. What are some of the trends that you expect to impact as a Microsoft Partners Solutions this year and how are Argano planning to leverage these trends and evolve?

While we know certain trends will impact the work we do, we believe our approach is somewhat trend-proof as we focus solely on driving innovation through high-performance operations.

This means we’re always seeking to leverage innovative methodologies and technologies that, in turn, create a platform for innovation for our clients, and deliver specific business outcomes: integrated and optimized processes, increased automation, greater agility, and new revenue streams.

That said, we’re also keeping our ear to the ground, determining which trends will carry a lasting impact, and we believe 2024, much like 2023, will be a year for generative AI. We have been deep in AI for years—with predictive analytics, machine learning and the like—but with generative AI, we continue to charter new territory.

For example, our solution experts are deploying Generative AI Copilots within Business applications, using conversational experiences to make agile planning decisions based on events like changes to purchase orders, the news, weather, etc., and allowing client service representatives to interactively inquire into disparate case management knowledge bases to identify and communicate high quality case resolutions.

Additionally, our analysts are on the ground with Microsoft Fabric, which we are excited about as it could potentially change the nature of data and analytics from a workload heavy on architecture and engineering into one where more effort is spent on analysis. 

In addition to AI, Argano has been building our low-code services and teams, empowering clients with the tools and skillsets they need to build their own apps, obtain — and share —actionable data more quickly, create workflow automations, chatbots and virtual agents. With Power Platform, we help clients make possible what they previously thought was impossible.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is at the core of it all. It is our experience in the development and delivery of Dynamics solutions, in helping clients understand and fuel high-performance operations that enables the framework and paves the way for successes in leveraging AI, Power Platform, and other tools in the Microsoft stack.

We have always been builders of digital foundations: now, we continue to build onto it – helping clients innovate, drive revenue, and enable continued growth.

3. In your interactions with leading company decision-makers, what sense do you get of the challenges they face now in the Microsoft Partners space and how are Argano effectively addressing these issues?

For the most part, challenges remain the same, but they are amplified. There is more competition, more regulation, more global uncertainty, more supply chain issues, etc. We start with outcomes: what goals are our clients looking to achieve? What roadblocks might stand in the way and how do we overcome them? 

When you “build backward,” from the business objectives —whether it is reducing risk, increasing efficiency, expanding market share, etc.—it gives context to challenges, and makes them easier to conquer through a well thought-out and strategically aligned roadmap. 

Additionally, this approach makes choosing the right technology an easier undertaking. For example, if a client is focused on automation, we may begin with Power Platform. If it is revenue, then we may look at one of Microsoft’s marketing automation and sales solutions. Supply chain issues we would solve with a combination of Dynamics and data and analytics. In any case, starting with outcomes at the onset of a transformational initiative helps our clients gain more clarity and directly address the challenges that might get in the way.

4 “The right partner for Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM, Azure, and Power Platform.” Please elaborate on the statement and walk us through it based on its keys, methodology, features, and benefits involved.

What we mean by “right” is providing clients not simply with Microsoft technology, but with strategic direction that aligns with clients’ long-term goals. We provide more than simply “implementation services” and serve as a business advisor, helping clients focus on, and achieve, long-term success, not just solve a problem.

We continually look at the bigger picture.  Argano comprises consultants who are subject matter experts focused on both capabilities, such as supply chain management, commerce, and AI, as well as on specific industries. Combining our solution expertise with industry best practices, we connect clients with both the latest tools and thinking.

For our methodology and approach, the keyword is collaboration. Every client engagement begins with working together in assessing strategic objectives, establishing the KPIs that support those objectives, creating a foundation for knowledge-sharing and governance, and equipping clients to easily manage their solutions in the long-term. 

Collaboration continues post-implementation as well, as we provide change management services to help ensure rapid and strategic adoption of a solution, as well as ongoing managed services to ensure solutions are at peak performance. It’s all part of how we set clients up for faster return on investment. 

There is no enterprise-level technology Microsoft offers that we cannot support. We empower clients with cloud-based (Azure) high-performance operational systems (Dynamics) and the custom applications and integrations (Power Platform) needed to ensure optimal performance.

The benefits, in every case, are straightforward: less manual work, more capacity to innovate, new ways to drive revenue, and deeper, more immediate, actionable data.

We are all about enabling our clients to better deliver on their customers’ demands. We aim to positively impact our clients’ businesses so that, in turn, they can positively impact the world.

5. Please cite one or two case studies on how you have enabled clients to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes with your innovative array of solutions.

Three stories come to mind: Axon (a manufacturer and creator of the Taser), DCS (a 3PL partner for pharmaceutical companies), and Group O (a business process service provider).

We upgraded Axon to D365 Finance and Supply Chain, extending it with Argano One Step Consolidation, which enabled the client to more quickly process revenue from its globally dispersed organization. Their VP of IT said the project delivered a “huge productivity improvement,” and we were proud to help them eliminate manual planning and forecasting, improve accuracy, and more. 

For DCS, we tapped the depth and breadth of the Microsoft stack — most critically, Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management — and helped the client realized productivity lifts of more than 300% within weeks. The project also helped lay the foundation for a robotic “smart warehouse” that is now operational.

Group O is also a “move to Dynamics and win” story, as we migrated them from an on-premises ERP to Dynamics. It is also a low-code development success story wherein our team created a vendor and customer onboarding system that helped the client reduce onboarding times from four weeks to just three days—an 80% drop.

6. There are a number of companies out there that are vying for the top position. What are the strategies employed by Argano to thwart the market competition and what according to you are the distinct features of Argano's differentiating factors that give it a competitive edge?

We are a partner that can deliver it all. In an age where some partners must, by default, either make a client choose a system they may not want or turn away business as they cannot support a client’s preference or legacy solution, Argano welcomes all. As President of Argano 4 Microsoft, I can walk into any client engagement and tap into the broader Argano ecosystem ensuring we connect clouds, workflows, and teams with a high degree of expertise where needed. 

Additionally, there is strength that comes from being an Inner Circle Microsoft partner – with a long-standing record of collaboration. By being an Inner Circle Partner, we gain access to early product announcements, marketing plans, and overall Microsoft strategies. We have been partners with Microsoft for more than 20 years, have won multiple Partner of the Year awards, and been Inner Circle partners for most of that time.

Whether it is helping them develop and test contact center technologies, being part of the CoPilot roll-out, or partnering on countless customer success stories, we are often in lockstep with Microsoft.

Finally, there is our expertise in the latest technology. We are low-code champions, having been given Microsoft’s coveted Advanced Specialization in low code, and being a certified delivery partner for all “X” in a Day workshops (Power Apps in a Day, etc.).

With all of this, plus what we are doing with CoPilot, the competitive edge we have is more like a Swiss Army Knife than a single blade.

7. What does the future hold for your organization? Any footprint expansion plans or platform enhancement strategies that you can shed light upon?

The future is now, and it is all about AI. The things we are doing for clients right now with CoPilot are mind-blowing. We are also finding new ways to extend what we call “legacy AI,” e.g., machine learning, predictive analytics, to further our clients’ abilities and immediately capture actionable data no matter where it lives.

Our footprint is always expanding. We continue to extend our capabilities not just across technology, but the entire business spectrum. From supply chain optimization and enterprise resource planning to revenue maximization, enterprise performance and sales performance management, we enable our clients to achieve more through innovative technology solutions.

8. Is there anything more that you would like to add or highlight your product? Is there any other exciting insight you would like us to discuss in the story that we may have missed in this questionnaire?

I would highlight that for anyone who wants to learn more about Argano, start with our client stories. The stories of clients’ success show what we do best – enabling high-performance operations to drive agility, innovation, and growth. We hope that anyone reading those stories sees something they can achieve, and that those stories inspire them to partner with us to fuel their success with Argano expertise and Microsoft technology.