2019 Microsoft NZ Partner Award Finalists

This is the 12th year for the Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards. The awards are designed to recognise Microsoft Partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions for their customers during the past year. This year there are 12 categories, take a look at the full list of finalists here.

Says Theta CEO Rob Lee:

“We are proud to a be a finalist in the Microsoft Partner Awards, an event which celebrates the best solutions created on Microsoft technology by partners for their customers. Last year we were finalists in three categories and this year we’re finalists in four, so we’re feeling very happy about that! The announcement is another indicator of the growing strength of our strategic partnership with Microsoft. Congratulations to all finalists.”

Our award finalists

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Engaging Customers

FAQ Bot

FAQ Bot is an AI chatbot product developed by our Innovation Lab. It can instantly answer up to 80% of routine questions that otherwise place a load on customer service staff - freeing them up to work on higher-value interactions – while also offering marketing and sales teams a new way to proactively engage with customers. With its affordable pricing, it’s been a hit with businesses both big and small who are seeking new, effective ways to interact with their customers digitally.

Find out more at faqbot.nz

Business Applications

The Skills Organisation

We worked with Skills to implement a cloud-based solution on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. As a result of this, Skills now have improved process automation, reliable financial data and improved financial control; shifting their finance team’s role from that of transaction processing to one of business analysis.

“Knowing that we now have a single source of the truth with great control, the team can now focus on analysis and process to support reducing costs and maximising revenue growth.”

Scott Bitchener, CFO at Skills Group

Azure Migrate

Holmes Fire

Holmes Fire wanted to run faster, less expensive fire simulations using high-performance computing (HPC). This would help them deliver better design alternatives and services to more customers, allowing their business to scale. Using Microsoft Azure Batch, part of Azure High-Performance Computing,  a new Fire Dynamics Simulator tool was created that helps engineers improve complex building designs at a lower cost, unleashing growth potential for Holmes Fire.

“The idea of this increased efficiency would have been a dream in an ethereal future just three years ago,” says Sam Mulholland, Chief Information Officer at Holmes Group. “But we’ve been able to use Azure to give our problem-solvers a way to solve things that we wouldn’t otherwise ever have considered.”

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Optimising Operations

Craigs Investment Partners

We worked with Craigs to design and implement an advanced analytics capability in Azure. The new platform has allowed Craigs to undertake a range of increasingly valuable advanced analytics and machine learning tasks that the business has been asking for. As a result, they’re providing deeper insights for their customers and internal stakeholders.

“Moving our Analytics platform to Azure opens up a lot of options for us and is transforming our capability to provide accurate and timely data to our customers and business users.  The Azure ecosystem is now so rich that it greatly accelerates our ability to facilitate data-driven innovation within Craigs.”

Stuart Prendergast, Head of Information & Communications Technology at Craigs Investment Partners

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Congratulations to our finalists, and we look forward to the awards night on October 17th 2019.