Microsoft Teams Phone and Rooms at Kingfisher, Revolutionising Retail Communications

Matt Sheldrick, M365 Product Designer at Kingfisher, a multi-national retail group with renowned brands including B&Q and Screwfix, shares how the organisation has embraced Microsoft Teams to revolutionise collaboration.

• How Kingfisher deployed video capabilities in all meeting rooms and even stores
• The importance of quick, efficient and robust room setups
• The transition to Teams Phone and streamlining communication, focusing on flexibility and local presence
• AI adoption and automation enhancing productivity

Thanks to Logitech, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support.

Transcript

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Matt Sheldrick: I didn't think we'd be here, but actually we've got these really great user cases and there's so much great kit in the market. That we, we can just deploy rooms really easily. You know, the Neat board install into the rooms took us less than an hour, which is amazing.

Tom Arbuthnot: Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week, we have a great customer journey story all around Teams, both Teams Phone and Teams Rooms. It's Kingfisher, you might not know the brand, but they have around 80, 000 employees and 1, 900 stores around the world. And brands like Screwfix and B& Q that you might know.

It's really great to hear a conversation of how innovative they have been, particularly putting video everywhere in their organization, including in the actual retail stores. So many thanks to Matt for taking the time to jump on the podcast. He's a great at explaining the whole journey. And also many thanks to Logitech who are the sponsor of this podcast, really appreciate their support of Empowering Cloud.

On with the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We always love to get a customer perspective on the podcast and this should be a really good one. Matt's previously spoken at the London User Group and now on the pod. Hey, Matt, how you doing? 

Matt Sheldrick: I'm good, Tom. Thanks for having me. 

Tom Arbuthnot: No, thanks for coming on, mate.

It was a great story at the user group. So thanks for offering to do the podcast as well. Um, so maybe we could start, you could give us a little bit of an intro to yourself and your role and Kingfisher is quite an interesting org. So like talk about some of the brands in the group and how all that hangs together.

Uh, 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I started my kind of IT journey being a kid, you know, taking apart PCs and any kind of tech and Being the general nerd. Um, and then I moved into, you know, doing my college and I went to Bournemouth Uni, um, to do my degree, and then I moved into Kingfisher, PLC as a graduate. So I joined Kingfisher as a nice grad, fresh outta university.

Um, and then I, I went around a number of different Teams. And really, really found my passion in end user services where I am now as an M365 product designer. So essentially that means I look after the Microsoft 365 suite. I look after everything, not Dynamics, we'll keep that out, but M365 entirely. But also look after the collaboration side.

So meeting room experiences, booking panels, um. Or, or anything kind of collaboration, audio visual wise. We also look after that as well. Um, so Kingfisher is, is probably a brand no one knows, but actually people probably know B&Q and Screwfix in the UK. So we have B&Q and Screwfix and then we have Castorama and Brico Depot in France and Romania, Spain, Poland. Um, we operate 11, 12 head offices, 80,000 colleagues. Um, across European and, and, and European continent and, and Asia. So we're really big DIY home improvement.

Tom Arbuthnot: Huge, huge and diverse user base. And also you've got the challenges of retail and frontline. You've obviously got back office workers, but you've also got different brands within there, which is fun in, in the M365 world as well.

Matt Sheldrick: Yes. So it's all in a single lovely tenant, um, that, that we help look after. Um, like I said, they're all really unique, so they all have different unique needs and, and, and wants, right? B& Q is a very different, if you've been to B& Q in the UK, it's very different from going to a Screwfix. And that feeds into that frontline worker experience, so it's, it's, it's a really big organization.

And then you go out into Asia, which is our sourcing offices, right? And that's a whole different kind of, uh, setup. For the guys there. So it's yeah, it's really diverse, really interesting time for retail because it's always changing. Retail is really pushing forward. You can see big companies go back into e commerce that go back into retail because there is a really interesting experience there.

Um, so yeah, I think you see us opening different kinds of stores. Screwfix, I think, is 900 stores in the UK, um, which is crazy to think about. Um, and then you have different kinds of big box, small box, you know, we're always trying to experience different sizes to meet like the customer needs. So there's, there's always a lot going on in retail to innovate.

Yeah, really exciting place to be 

Tom Arbuthnot: and you guys are pushing the team's technology right into the retail. So we'll get into the details later. But you know, that's really interesting. It's not your classic, a lot of retailers. It's like we use Teams on the back end and we something else on the on the retail side.

But you're really pushing even room systems right through to the retail stores, which is really interesting. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. I think that's that's something really unexpected to come out of all of this. And I think it shows the people's desire to collaborate in a hybrid way, even, even more than that, that was driven primarily through COVID.

And I'm sure lots of companies have the same challenges during COVID. Then we see, even after COVID, there's still such an appetite to, to keep adding meeting room experiences to nearly any kind of site that we have across the globe. So it hasn't slowed down. Um, we've just had a number of meeting rooms at the end of the year.

More demand. We do them in distribution centers, we do them in head offices, we do them in stores. Um, 

Tom Arbuthnot: To talk us through what that looks like in your Teams journey. Did you start on the Lynk Skype road and come to Teams? Was Teams the first deploy? 

Matt Sheldrick: Yes, so we started our journey Probably around 2019, 2020, we, we had a couple of telepresence systems, so Cisco telepresence, and we had a number of media lines, polymedia lines, and then the primary experiences, those are selective experiences, was, was, um, spider phones, right?

Audio only, spider phones, there's no screen in the room, it's purely a. Audio only experience. Um, that's driven by like you said, Lynk slash Skype, and actually that's interesting to be where we are now, where every room in Kingfisher is video. So we started at this really cool, interesting spot of really selected hardware, really bespoke hardware and mostly an audio only experience for most colleagues.

And we ended up in that in that really great space of video only. What, what, what we did to transition that though was, you know, kind of years of work with all sorts of different colleagues that have been in the team. to achieve what we now think is a pretty great experience. I think we had such a great partners in Logitech, in Neat, in Yealink, all the partners have been amazing to us to help us innovate and to help us bring these rooms to life.

Tom Arbuthnot: It feels like your team were very diligent on the choices you made in terms of kit and what worked for you and, uh, you know, you talked a lot in the user group about standards and driving standards as well. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. I think the You know, one of the biggest things we want to do is de complex. We wanted to make something just really easy for people to use and we found some of the media lines and the telepresence, they were driven also by um, CBIs, they're driven by interop services.

And actually, you know, we found that actually could we find, could we find a different solution that was even more reliable that that could deliver an even simplistic experience to users? And around that 20, 20, 20, uh, two, well, 20 19, 20 20, that experience of Skype the room. Skype room was coming out, right?

Microsoft was experimenting with them. There's a few different partners. There's Yaelink. There was Logitech. Crestron, there's a few different partners. We tried out internally. And we looked and we, we, we really liked some of the Logitech stuff. So we actually replaced during COVID, which is an interesting time to replace anything.

Um, we replaced the media lines and the telepresence with Logitech. Um, so we did rally plus kits for around 20 rooms. Um, and we kept the trios in place. So it was kind of a, still, it was a small video experience, primarily audio only, but actually during those port, you know, those, those pauses during COVID where.

You know, we went under lockdown, we couldn't get to the offices or it's very select individuals in the office that actually let us test the kit longer, which was quite interesting. So we got longer term feedback. Um, and so, you know, no rollout is perfect. So we took, we took that feedback from the colleagues and then we really tried to push out and then we tested, we broke things, um, you know, not every meeting room survived the deployment to all the users.

So we, yeah, we, we tried to, to really innovate, to really push forward and make it really simple. So I don't know if anyone remembers the platform in 2020. It was, it was an interesting time. Um, but as the platforms evolved, the kits evolved, it's become this really great reliable experience. I think. We've got a number of rooms where, you know, colleagues gave us feedback.

Colleagues also like to touch the kit. So it's things like, you know, do we remove the PC from the room, maybe and maybe move it away from someone's feet. The rally cam people like to go up to the rally cam and give it a twist. Um, so there's all those little feedback, right, that, that we took and Logitech at the same time innovating.

And then we, we moved from that kind of place of okay, we, we feel comfortable with the kit, we feel comfortable with the platform. We're getting really good feedback around. It's just really simple. We just, you just click the join button and it just works, which is just what we want, right? So we did this, this great rollout, and then we pushed even further.

We took those lessons learned. Um, and then we, we, we pushed into, you know, rally bars and rally bar minis and, you know, all sorts of different places where we didn't think we would end. So then we ended into, uh, over 250 rooms in our head offices. Now that's our. Video enabled, MTR enabled, we've got a mixture of BYOD and MTR.

Um, but everything is video. So, like you said, setting those standards, um, was really important. And one of them is every room has to be video enabled. So there's no audio only experiences, it's all video only. 

Tom Arbuthnot: I love hearing that, because that's how you set a culture change in place. It's not, oh, sometimes I can do video and sometimes I can't.

If it's always there, it becomes more video is the default, I think. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. And that, that was That was the one of the two driving principles, right? The driving principle is simplicity. Just wanted it to be just more simple for people to use and to enable video. Cause you know, having only 20 rooms of video before COVID and having 250 rooms with video after COVID is an interesting place to race.

It's totally different landscape. Um, and even though we've seen people come back to the office, actually, there's such an appetite for hybrid working still. Um, and actually generally. You know, you'll find you don't need that flight to Europe, right? You don't need a flight to Paris. You just jump on the Teams call in a room that does really well.

So, yeah, we've done this really big meeting room journey over the last four or five years that, that we've had loads of help with everyone from like facilities. Um, to, to other teams like, you know, networks is the foundation of these rooms. They don't work without really great networking. So, so it was a massive team effort within Kingfisher to just get these rooms into a really great place where people come up to us and they give us really great feedback.

You know, the feedback we get. Is, is, is, is amazing and we're always looking for more, but we've had some really great feedback on the rooms. Really great experience. So it's about kind of what do we do next 

Tom Arbuthnot: So Matt you've been doing quite a lot of innovative stuff around rooms. You share stuff with me in the past.

What would you pick out some of the more interesting things you've been doing in the Teams room space? 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. I think, um, we've been working with our partners to do some of the latest and greatest tech. I mean, we've worked with Logitech and we've installed a number of sites. Um, so we've had some really great feedback around people feel that's more immersive and from the far end, people love it.

So the Logitech site's been a really great addition. Um, we're working with Neat to get some of the sensors as well. So really excited for some of the sensors with the Neat boards. 

Tom Arbuthnot: So you've seen value in that multicam for the remote end, like being able to frame multiple people and get that kind of more detailed picture.

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, and I think the really interesting user case for us is also some of those longer rooms. So we've got quite a few boardrooms that are 12 meters, 15 meters. And currently they've got, you know, some quite expensive, quite advanced. You know, people remember the Eagle Eye Director 2, which is an amazing camera by Polly.

Um, people love that camera. It's got amazing range. And actually the site, what's interesting is with the site is you bring the camera to the people. So actually I'm begging Logitech to give me a date on when they're going to allow us to do two sites. 

Tom Arbuthnot: They did talk about it at release, didn't they? The idea of daisy chaining.

So that is a potential. 

Matt Sheldrick: The daisy chaining I think for us would actually enable a lot of boardroom scenarios and a lot of rooms that have longer range cameras don't need them anymore. Um, and you improve the experience for remote participants as well. So it's kind of a win win and you get a mic pod built in as well, which is also great.

So it's real interesting there. We've done a lot of tech around, um, digital whiteboarding. So digital whiteboarding is a really interesting one for us. So the Logitech scribe content cameras, and we've also worked with Dell. Uh, Dell have like a number of interactive screens that are kind of built for that kind of MTR purpose.

So we've got some mobile MTRs with these big interactive Dell screens, which is really cool. So it's really trying to understand. the future of a whiteboard. Some people just love a post it and a pen and they just want the whiteboard, but we're trying to figure out kind of what, what does that mean? What, how, how can we improve that part of the collaboration experience?

Um, Neat boards of course, surface hubs of course, they all fall into that, that category. So it's kind of. Do you have an all in one unit? Do you have a Dell screen added to maybe one of the screens in the room? And that's interactive. Do you go to Scribes? There's, yeah, some interesting choices around whiteboarding, um, we're trying to explore.

Um, and then we've got some really big rooms in Kingfisher, so we've got some really big auditoriums. Um, you know, from 100 people to 250 people.

Tom Arbuthnot: So what have you done for kit there? Because that's an interesting use case, right? Because everybody gets the, like, I can put a board or a bar in a 15 person room.

But like, what do you do for the auditorium? 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, the auditorium is a tough one because like I said, it's such a big room. It's mic coverage, it's lapels. So, so we've got our one over in France, which is, we just renovated it. So it's got a number of, we've redone all the speakers. We've got new amplifiers, new DSP feeding into a Logitech.

Uh, base base unit and Dell compute, um, and that's powering the MTR experience plugged into a number of projectors, a hundred inch plus projectors across the room with mics everywhere, lapels, uh, multi, multi rally cams. So it's, it's. It's, it's quite interesting because again, it comes back to what spoke earlier is trying to make it really simple.

How do we do really big rooms, but really simple is really hard when you get into the world of DSPs and ceiling mounted microphones and speakers. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Well, that's something where Teams has really matured over the last few years of where things like, um, Biamp and Shure and, and Sennheiser where you can do structured audio, multiple seating times, multiple mics and, um, like I've seen the lapel and I think I don't think Shure's, they have certification, but their handheld mics that are going to be certified as well or the proximity mic. So, um, it's, it's, yeah, it's nice from a, from our own experience. It's the same old.

The experience on Teams, which is nice. It's not something weird for that. That's scenario. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. And it's, it's interesting because like you said, you've got the Shure experience, which we do have as well in our new London office, which, which is, you know, uh, Crestron, AVX, One Beyond cameras, it's got Shure microphones.

So it's got some really great kit in it. And it's almost how can we also replicate that in other sites, but then try and even make it more simple and reduce the complexity. And like you said, the fact that you can have multi camera just, just on the tap panel, right? You just click the panel and you can set the multi camera, you know, just smaller things like that kind of you move from that production space into a more standard space with.

Kind of anyone can pick it up and use it and that's been a real driver for us is really big spaces. How would you just make it really simple? Because that's how people are going to get the best out of it because they can, it comes back to you. I want to join, I want to click my button and join the meeting and it just works.

That's what we want to get to. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, if you can give the presenters in those auditoriums the confidence that that piece is being handled there they can get on with doing their job, which is presenting the content and engaging again rather than fussing over where do I need to be? Are the cameras right?

All that good stuff. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. And I think we've seen famous. Concerts and all sorts of things not quite go as planned right at the beginning. The audio is not working. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It really knocks you off your game. Like if you're presenting like I speak a fair bit and like if the AV is going, it's really tough.

It's a real test of a presenter to hold it together and not lose it completely. Like, um, so yeah, if you want to, you want to give them the best opportunity to shine. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. So that's, that's the challenge. So hopefully we can rise to that challenge and meet it. Awesome. We've got some really great partners, some really great contacts who've really helped us like define this journey and define the technology we have.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I hear from my friends on the partner side that you give, uh, you guys are giving some good feedback and some, you know, really push the kit in different scenarios. And talking of that, talk to me about taking rooms into the actual retail stores, because that's really interesting. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. So, so it's, it's an interesting requirement.

So when, when we started this journey, I never thought I'd deploy into a store and we're now, uh, five stores now that have meeting room equipment. So we have different user cases. So. We have, um, so we call like opco's, we actually call the operating companies, we call them banners. So our banner Screwfix operates in Ireland and in France and in the UK.

So they are different entities, uh, with different leadership. And what we've found is they're, they're really keen to not have to enable like, you know, big head offices and stuff and, and, and different, like, you don't want to have to. Purchase a giant head office and fill it with kit and fill it with chairs and furniture.

Actually, they've actually used the stores to be the, the boardroom meetings. So, so these stores actually enable the, the board to come over to Ireland, to France and have their collaboration, have their hybrid meetings. 

Tom Arbuthnot: I love the culture of that as well. It's like, actually, this is our business. Like let's be in the business, not away from the business, just from a cultural point of view.

That's really cool. 

Matt Sheldrick: A hundred percent. And you'll find. It's a massive goal for us to be in the stores with colleagues. So you, you, you know, if you ever meet anyone else from Kingfisher, they generally would have worked at least a day in a store. Um, we've got some colleagues who, you know, who've been here for 20 years and they started off in stores and they've won, they've worked in stores for 10, 15 years before they entered head office.

So the store culture is embedded in everything we do. And absolutely. So we've got this really cool boardroom in context of trying to use the stores and collaborate with the stores and have the boards closer. And then we've got different scenarios like regional managers. So kind of the regional guys who look after 50 stores, 70 stores.

Um, they all want to come together and try and collaborate better. So there's, there's a number of B& Q stores where. We've now strategically placed Neat boards in them. Um, really great solution. Just really simplistic. There's no, you know, nothing that someone could rip the cable out. No PC to mess around with, right?

Just a really simple install on the wall that can provide really great collaboration for those regional managers who are knowledge workers. They are head office workers, but they're on the move. You know, they live and breathe stores. They look after these stores 

Tom Arbuthnot: and the same, the same technology in the store as they would have potentially in the office side.

And also the same, you know, user experience of laptop to Teams room, which is kind of the goal, isn't it? 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. 100%. You know, the, the, the colleagues can book exactly like a room in head office says it's in their outlook calendar. And, and, and it's just like that. They send the invite to the room and that's it.

They can join it straight off the Neat board. So it. I didn't think we'd be here, but actually we've got these really great user cases. And there's so much great kit in the market that we, we can just deploy rooms really easily. You know, the Neat board install into the rooms took us less than an hour, which is, which is amazing.

Um, and it's been such a great partner that we can enable stores to do this. And that's how much, and that's, I think it was also how far the platforms come. I don't know if. You know, five years ago you said, let's put an MTR in a B&Q store. Right? Like, 'cause the platform has evolved so much in five years.

Tom Arbuthnot: No, you did. Yeah. The, the platform, the manageability and the all in one nature of those, um, MTROA boards as well. Like you say, there's nothing to unplug or knock over or break. It's all one, one network cable, one power cable. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and there's no desktop support, right? There's no IT colleagues around.

So in our head offices, we have a dedicated AV engineer. To support our colleagues and actually, you know, stores are very far away from any head office. They are, you know, in the middle of the country and there's no way you're going to reliably get someone there the same day. So it's, you've got to pick something that is, that is going to be as reliable as it can be, um, for those colleagues.

Tom Arbuthnot: What does your manageability look like? Cause you've got multiple countries, multiple banners. Like, is that all one ops team? Is it different countries? What's that look like? 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. So, so it's primarily based, um, out of the UK. Um, we've got two AV providers, um, who we've partnered with, who help support the rooms on site and remotely.

So the AV partners will help look after making sure the rooms are updated. Making sure they're in all the correct portals, as there are many portals for us to look after. Um, making sure the settings are right, the day to day checks, so they're doing all that great work. And maybe where we don't have those direct AV consultants, like in Asia, for instance, we don't have them.

We then, we partner with the local desktop Teams to assist us in, in making sure those rooms are in a good spot. But the great thing is, is there's always a load of collaboration there with. With us highlighting, we see the alerts coming in through MMR or through the Neat Portal or Logi Portal, uh, or TAC, depending on where, where you pick your poison.

Um, and, and, and it's great collaboration throughout the whole thing. And, and you can remote onto any of these devices, right, which is amazing. So a lot of the work is, is we try and do it in the UK. Um, so, and, and all those portals support you, right? You can schedule the updates, get the firmware in, you can do all that good stuff.

I'd love one for all that rules them all. Um, I'm sure every IT admin would. 

Tom Arbuthnot: There's a request to the product team if they're listening in to the pod. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. There's the request, one portal to rule them all, but yeah, this is a great collaboration between all our different AV partners and local IT to make sure the rooms are up and running and working really well.

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And, uh, like that's your rooms journey. Talk to us about voice because you've gone to Teams for voice as well, I believe. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah. So, so we started, um, I think many people in the UK will know that analog lines are, are being decommissioned by BT. Um, so we really started when that was announced, we started looking at, okay, what, what's the next thing, right?

I think everyone would admit VoIP, right, is the big thing. It's the next thing and obviously, and Teams is a no brainer for us. We've deployed Teams to 86, 000 people, um, in the business across, you know, multiple countries and continents. So, so Teams for us was a relative, you know, easy one to pick. Um, in the UK, we went for direct routing.

So, we've got direct routing set up with our partner BT, um, for, for several hundred. Users we found when we're doing our move from kind of on prem calling the traditional calling to Teams Many people didn't need their desk phone. Many people didn't need their number. So we saw a reduction in people with that functionality.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's a common story actually is rationalizing down, particularly if you're dealing with, you know, like say you're a regional store manager. I guess you're mostly dealing with other people on Teams as well and inside the organization. Um, so that's interesting. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, it's been some interesting requests around, um, you know, people, um, by using example in Ireland.

Um, they wouldn't pick up like a UK number. So we've got a great team that's called site services that goes out and literally builds these stores, right? They're responsible for getting stores from nothing to open open day. And when we're building stores in Ireland, maybe we're building stores in France.

Um, they prefer a local number, right? Because if you see a international number, so it's kind of how can we meet those requirements with Teams? How can we help them with that? How can we provide really quick calling capabilities to a team for maybe a short period of time? Maybe there's. Investor relations, for instance, or, um, supply chain, right?

Who they don't need a mobile all the time. They don't need an expensive iPhone, but actually require the calling. And that's where Teams stepped in. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Matt Sheldrick: And you'll find, you know, most of our logistic teams in the UK and supply teams all have a Teams number, um, to be able to talk to their logistic partners and colleagues across the globe.

So it's a really great solution for us. It's deployed incredibly easy. Um, hopefully no one sees that, you know, there's an SLA on the ticket, um, but it's, it's such a simplistic process, um, that we can provide and BT have been a great partner for us and we're looking to expand it as well. Um, we've just recently moved to E5 licensing SKU, so that opens up some possibilities there with everyone with a phone system license.

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh yeah. 

Matt Sheldrick: Um, so now we can really open this up to, to nearly every colleague in the UK. 

Tom Arbuthnot: So, so have you been doing any physical, uh, IP phones or is it mostly being soft client and mobile client? 

Matt Sheldrick: It, it, it's been an IP phones. I think there was a, a, an interest for some colleagues to keep IP phones, um, but we did try and we did try and really encourage people to, to, to move away from them, to be really flexible.

Um, and. We did settle on, we have, we have a few phones around, some, some kind of Yealink MP56 phones that, um, that help with the kind of case of security, reception, those kinds of user cases, but generally most teams are very happy with. Direct calling into the Teams client. It's just more flexible. Um, you know, you do the auto attendance.

You do the call queues. And it works. It works great. So, we've seen some demand for Teams Premium around the calls app, the Queue app, sorry. 

Oh yeah, Queues, I was going to ask actually, because it feels like there's some good use cases in retail for value to be had there from things like auto attendance and the Queues app.

Yeah, definitely. We have, we have a team in Screwfix that deal with HR requests and HR issues and et cetera from the Screwfix stores internally. Um, and they've been deployed both for Teams number and a number of, uh, call queues and auto attendants. And then also they're really keen. They're on the preview calls for the Queues app, which they loved.

Um, so they've been using that now for a little while and really good feedback from that. They've really enjoyed it. So it's definitely something, definitely a great selling point for that license sku. And it's also something that's got some great functionality into it as well. Like the real time reporting, which the guys can't get enough of reporting in that user case.

They love the reporting. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, 

Matt Sheldrick: so. Yeah, it's been it's been a really great addition to them. They've really enjoyed it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And I don't want to leave the pod without getting onto the Copilot journey. We talked about this a while ago. You're doing, uh, uh, you're going down the Copilot road. What are you doing and what value are you seeing there?

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, I think that the Copilot has been, it's been a great journey for us. We started at the early access program last year. So we had around 300 licenses and worked with Microsoft to deploy them into the business. There's a real drive this year. Um, so we have, you know, even more than the 300 licenses.

We're probably around a thousand licenses now in the business. So it's a significant uplift. Um, we're really seeing it drive value in that purchasing. We see lots of people from purchasing, from logistics, supply. Um, they've really they've really seen the user cases for that and they're really encouraged by it really seen the automation I think we're also seeing the power platform combined.

So we've seen like Copilot studio and bots as well as a massive is being used massively in Kingfisher.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's like a force multiplier, isn't it? It's like I can build these line of business scenarios and I can now AI enable them and it can do some of the steps for me. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. It's, it's the power platform has been massively upticks and part of that is bots people.

It's interesting. People have, have kind of gone, they've looked at the power platform and gone the Copilot studio. The bots is the most, they've gravitated to that first versus doing say like flows or apps. It's the bots they've gravitated to. And then they're adding on, you know, SharePoint lists, et cetera, to power those bots and looking, you know, pointing at the intranet.

So it's really interesting to see people gravitate towards building their own bot. So we've got, we've got a lot of bots now in Kingfisher. Maybe there's bot envy now, um, is maybe a problem. But it's, it's, yeah, it's really great to see. So Copilot has been a really interesting journey. We've done a lot of now user sessions and user training around prompting because prompting is a massive part of talking to Copilot and the language you use.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I was going to ask, that feels like the thing with Copilot is it needs a lot of, um, adoption handholding. There are obviously going to be some more technically leaning people in any organization that are just personally interested and, uh, reading the blogs and putting forward. But to get, to get adoption really rolling, there's a, there's a lot of how do I drive value out of this tool, I think.

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. I think, I think we've seen that adoption and those rates increase when you do that adoption. Um, and it's, it's great to see some colleagues. So such myself. So kind of neuron, uh, divergent colleagues like myself. I have dyslexia. Um, and other colleagues who are similar actually love it. Um, because it really helps them either keep track in meetings.

So if you see like a lot of the Copilot features built into meetings, meeting summary and stuff like that. Um, people, yeah, people, all kinds of different, different ways of learning. And actually they found Copilot almost, I know some have said it's necessary for their job. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I couldn't just just meeting summaries and being able to create meeting summaries..

I don't think I could go back to like, I actually I find it I find a really miss it on the occasion where I'm on like a federated call or whatever. And it's somebody else's meeting. I'm like, Oh, I have to have to make notes or get them send me the notes afterwards. Whereas just knowing it's there, you can really engage so much better.

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I know we've got a number of colleagues who have certain disabilities and they just, yeah, they just love Copilot. It's been a massive thing for them, which is really great to see. Actually, that's not a user case I would have thought Copilot coming into it would have aided with, but actually it really does.

I know that I can spend many hours redoing my spelling on emails and actually Copilot is getting quite good at generating emails now in Outlook, but yeah there's some really great user cases for that, that maybe aren't directly like an improved process, but actually from a, from a people point of view, actually really aids their day to day anyway.

And that's probably really what it's about, right? It's, it's just, just making people, helping people with better at their jobs really, or, or aiding them in their jobs to make it a bit easier and actually give them free time to do other things. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Do you see any use cases for interpreter potentially in your organization?

Cause you're multi country, multi language. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yes, but there's definitely been some demand for, As much as we can for translation and interpretation features in Kingfisher. Um, we've got great like live captions that we can do with Teams Premium. And then that next, that next step is the facilitator, um, is facilitator agents and there's definitely, we already had an email from, from, from people really interested about it.

Um, I think it goes into preview, doesn't it? Kind of mid year. Yeah. Yeah, there's, we've definitely already discussed it. I think it's a massive opportunity. I mean, we. We have, um, a number of meetings with colleagues and especially in like offices. So it'd be really interesting to see what happens around.

meeting rooms with that, with that agent, because we have multilingual meetings. We, we, you know, we bring in, uh, translator firms and we have these really complex meeting room setups to enable that. So it'd be amazing to see what we can do on that software side. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It feels like we're on the verge of democratizing that, aren't we?

Like it's, uh, like, and then it's great if you've got a meeting that. warrants it to have that, you know, Teams can do that day for people that are not familiar, you can overlay someone signing and translating quite seamlessly from a, from a, like a partner or a, uh, a real interpreter, but potentially the AI is going to get there and make it accessible to everybody.

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. And, and the, the one feedback from the live kind of captions, like translations, um, you can't ask a question and he goes one way and he applies to the speaker, right? So actually it's, it's going to be,

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Native language in a two way can go back and ask in a native language.

And that's, yeah, that's a really cool point. 

Matt Sheldrick: So, so that's, that's, that's one of the really big user cases for us is, you know, the business language for Kingfisher is English, but of course we have so many colleagues across Europe and Asia. So, Anything we can do to like, just improve that user experience, improve the collaboration within a meeting is, is, is great.

So yes, really excited to see that hopefully get the preview. Um, and I think that's, that's one of those really value add cases for Copilot. Um, should be really great. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Matt, thanks for sharing the story. It's amazing. I love hearing, like, different use cases and certainly pushing rooms into the retail scenario is definitely the first time I've heard that.

I think you guys are really doing some, uh, great progressive work. We'll have to, um, give you a few months to do some new cool things and then maybe we'll get you back to the user group or back to the podcast or something if you're up for it. 

Matt Sheldrick: Yeah, definitely. 

No, I really appreciate it, Tom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much.