Holistic digital transformation approach spotlights frontline workers

PHAT CONSULTING stands for “Pairing Humans and Technology,” and the team at PHAT believes that all employees, both information workers and frontline workers, deserve to benefit from the positive change that the long-time Microsoft partner provides. About seven years ago, PHAT noticed that companies were more willing to incorporate frontline workers in their digital strategies, and it began to expand its portfolio to address frontline workers' challenges and opportunities. Today, 80 percent of its engagements incorporate frontline worker use cases or business opportunities, such as Microsoft Teams for communicating company news and building better connections to internal resources or Power Platform to automate actions like vacation requests or shift planning. “When we look at frontline workers that have been in an organization for 10 or 20 years, this is the first time they are able to leverage these technologies to communicate and tackle and solve complex problems together in their field of action. It is beautiful to see,” said Nils Mönkeberg, IT & Sustainability Consultant at PHAT CONSULTING.

PHAT's frontline worker expertise is built, like all of its projects, around people. “We build our projects around storytelling and positioning people at the center of the project. We want to speak in the voice of the people we are helping with these technology solutions,” said Mönkeberg. While taking a project-based approach to engagements, PHAT delivers solutions quickly and then gets direct user feedback as part of a cyclical process that ensures the end product meets frontline workers' needs.

PHAT builds long-lasting relationships with most of its customers because in addition to implementation, its project teams want to foster and develop communities that can continue to find and grow value from these solutions. This not only includes identifying early adopters that become champions, but also holding trainings based on skill level so that workers can advance at their own pace. “The communities we build are long-lasting. Today there are hundreds of thousands of people communicating through frontline worker solutions that we built years ago,” continued Mönkeberg.

Social welfare nonprofit empowers innovation for information and frontline workers

One of PHAT's customers is a global nonprofit supporting children and youth that has dozens of facilities and more than 200 sites in Europe. The organization wanted to digitally transform its operations so that all workers - including frontline daycare providers, educators, and social workers - would have the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate using a common set of tools and processes. Based on direction from its Microsoft account team, the nonprofit reached out to PHAT CONSULTING for help with implementing a holistic solution that would meet its goals for harmonizing operations across the organization.

Starting with a series of workshops to help align organizational vision with a technology strategy, the team at PHAT CONSULTING outlined a comprehensive, phased plan for modernizing their workplace with Microsoft 365 over a period of four years. After an initial phase centered on foundational IT readiness and strategy, Phase 2 involved implementing Microsoft Teams as a central platform for communication and collaboration that would serve as the interface for additional technology integrations. These technologies included the Phase 3 rollout of Microsoft Power Platform, which enabled the creation of customized apps to automate onboarding of new workers and eliminate manual paper processes, along with Microsoft 365 security tools to streamline access and secure data. This project is now in Phase 4, which is focused on further streamlining operations with automation driven by Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI services.

As part of this final stage, PHAT used Microsoft Copilot Studio to build an agent that helps educators train on providing guidance to young people dealing with challenges. The agent takes on the persona of a teenager to chat with the educator, providing feedback at the end of the conversation about what was good and what could be improved in future interactions. “This use case is just one example of what is possible in this new agentic world that Microsoft 365 opens up,” said Meike Müller, Managing Director at PHAT CONSULTING. “Teams becomes the UI for how frontline workers facilitate their workplace interactions, including with AI agents.”

User adoption key to driving customer success

A critical component of the engagement with this client was focused on training, given that many of its staff have chosen to work in the nonprofit industry for the human connection rather than sitting behind a computer. PHAT created a broad set of trainings for 3,900 employees and 1,300 volunteers that differentiated between beginner and advanced lessons. Three-hour sessions on “Working in the Cloud with Teams and OneDrive” provided general introduction to Microsoft 365, while one-hour deep dives like “Tasks, Planner, and To Do” and “OneNote and Outlook” helped users drill into specific app functionality.

PHAT trainers also ensured that agendas and materials evolved based on attendee feedback, focusing on use cases that were relevant to their daily working life to foster motivation to click into these technologies. “This training program was a best practice for bringing Microsoft 365 into an organization. It really allowed us to enable the workforce at different levels and on different topics so that people learned to like and embrace the technology,” said Mönkeberg.

AI a catalyst to bringing digital innovation to frontline workers

The rapidly evolving generative-AI capabilities available in Microsoft 365 Copilot are only increasing the appeal of solutions that address frontline worker needs. “AI is key to bringing more frontline workers into digital work,” said Mönkeberg. “The business use cases for frontline workers are becoming very clear.”

The PHAT team is uncovering new use cases where AI can drive value, including helping a wholesale customer automate the processing of damaged goods received – known as “debt on arrival” (DOA). With a combination of Microsoft 365 F1 licenses and Azure AI services, PHAT CONSULTING is able to create a solution that will allow a warehouse worker to fill out the necessary DOA paperwork by simply taking a photograph of the damage. For sales-oriented customers, PHAT is also working to integrate AI agents with point of sales (POS) solutions to simplify and reduce administrative burdens around appointment booking. “In Germany, frontline workers are largely working in silos and not digitally integrated with their organizations. It is our mission to change that, and Microsoft and AI will help us reliably deliver that better future,” concluded Mönkeberg.

"Teams becomes the UI for how frontline workers facilitate their workplace interactions, including with AI agents."

— Meike Müller, Managing Director, PHAT CONSULTING

"AI is key to bringing more frontline workers into digital work."

— Nils Mönkeberg, IT & Sustainability Consultant, PHAT CONSULTING

PHAT CONSULTING brings innovation to frontline workers with Microsoft 365