Why would a sports fan or music fan choose to attend a live event rather than watch the game from home or listen to their favorite band on headphones? For AEG, a global entertainment company that owns and operates 100+ facilities across four continents as well as produces concerts, festival, and special events, the answer is simple: it’s the experience. More to the point, it’s the whole experience—not just the event itself, but also everything else surrounding it, from ticket purchases and event access to the pomp and circumstance during the event, all for the express purpose of delivering a more visceral and unforgettable experience for fans. To achieve all of these things—as well as simplify the business side of producing and hosting a larger-than-life event—AEG relies on Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Power BI, and Azure cloud to analyze and share massive amounts of data across its diverse business units, and utilizes Surface devices and the new Surface Hub to enable employees to meaningfully interact with this data. Watch this lively video to see how Microsoft technology is helping AEG not only deliver singular experiences to fans, but also redefine the business of entertainment in the digital age.

Customize and expand your remote collaboration with @Microsoft Teams, keeping your team engaged, connected, and secure. Subscribe now!

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While innovation has supplanted cost savings as the primary driver of cloud migration for many businesses, moving to the cloud needs to make sense for your bottom line. Learn about the unbeatable costs offers and benefits of migration to Azure cloud.

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How do we, as human beings, make decisions? While most people would like to believe that they take a rational, calculated approach by considering all the variables, research shows that we go with our “gut feeling” instead about 95 percent of the time. In his Forbes article entitled “Making Choices With Data And AI,” author Mark Robinson discusses the proper role of AI in human decision making. AI shouldn’t be making decisions for us, he contends, but rather, guide us by interpreting the data at hand and presenting the facts and variables surrounding a given choice—effectively balancing out our “gut feeling” with rational objectivity. Read the full article to learn how AI-assisted decision making can help guide your business toward greater growth and success by mitigating human bias in choice.

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When it comes to choosing a customer relationship management (CRM) system for your business, your options have never been more abundant. Established vendors are releasing new features and functionality at an impressive pace, while new vendors are entering the market just as quickly.

Solutions range from systems designed for large enterprises and SMBs to decentralized mobile workforces, and everything in between. All of this choice is giving rise to two very important questions: how to you determine which CRM solution is right for your business, and more important, how do you get business users to make the most out of the system—and out of your investment? In her article for CIO magazine entitled “8 CRM implementation best practices,” author Jennifer Lonoff Schiff addresses those questions and CRM in general, distilling feedback from CRM vendors, users, and experts into eight suggestions for maximizing the effectiveness of a customer relationship management system. Read the full article to learn what these experts and industry insiders had to say.

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It’s no secret that teamwork is one of the key ingredients to a successful business. But in today’s interconnected, wireless world, teams don’t necessarily need to be in the same location to make teamwork work—that is, as long as each team member is equipped with the right tools for collaborating and communicating on a project. So how do you determine which tools are right for your organization and teams, and what should you look for when evaluating prospective solutions? Read this Lifewire article, “The Benefits of Online Collaboration Tools,” to see what author Gabriela Warren feels are the greatest benefits of adopting such tools and, by extension, what features you should look for when shopping around.

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Microsoft Teams continues to invest in experiences that will make it easier for teams to communicate and collaborate. This article by Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, informs how new capabilities reflect commitment to two things: building the very best online meeting experience for customers and bringing technological solutions to traditionally underserved professionals, including Firstline and healthcare workers.

The latest features include new integration between Teams and RealWear head-mounted devices, real-time noise suppression during meetings, booking apps, pop out chats, the raise hand feature, and more

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There are many new features that developers don’t know exist with Microsoft Azure SQL. Learn why Azure SQL is a post-relational, cloud-native database with these ten simple points, including complete storage control, complete monitorability, and full insights.

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No longer just science fiction, AI has the potential to radically change just about every aspect of modern life, especially business. From automating simple tasks to more complex feats like uncovering insights from massive volumes of unstructured data, AI is fast emerging as one of the centerpieces of digital transformation, not least of all for its ability to assist with critical business decisions. View the infographic to discover seven ways how AI can help drive better decisions for marketers, and for businesses in general.

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If customers are the lifeblood of business, then customer relationship management (CRM) is the daily checkup to ensure that the heart is still pumping steadily and that the entire body is in good health. Metaphors aside, CRM describes the processes, tools, and activities that companies employ to understand their customers and respond rapidly to their ever-changing needs and preferences. Given the importance and widespread use of CRM across today’s businesses, it would be natural to assume that CRM implementation is a fairly straightforward and routinely successful process—but rarely is this the case. This raises the question as to why—and more important, as to what your company can do to ensure that your CRM efforts pay off. In this infographic, we address those questions by distilling input from vendors, users, and experts into eight best practices that your company can follow to help deliver a successful (and ultimately, fruitful) CRM implementation.

View: 8 best practices for a successful CRM implementation