Microsoft is working to build solutions for almost all industries to be fit for operational success now and in the near future – a future that we can scarcely imagine. With its various platforms and plethora of certifications, the company enables businesses and individuals alike to fully participate in a digital world.
Microsoft certification exams train participants from a wide range of industries on Microsoft’s various solutions, including Microsoft Azure, Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics, and Microsoft 365. These solutions are supporting and boosting various industries:
- Automotive
- Financial services
- Government
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Energy
- Defense and Intelligence
- Manufacturing
- Media and communications
- Education
Avanade, a global professional services company, holds more than 32,000 certifications within its organization. “At Avanade, we’re deeply committed to protecting our clients’ data security and privacy. We invest significant resources in our people, processes and technologies to protect our clients.” Bob Bruns, Chief Information & Security Officer, Avanade
Industry leaders are acutely aware of the need to prepare their organizations for the new automated world. They are keen to get their staff trained on the platforms that will enable their organizations to flourish, but it can be challenging to know which certifications would enable that goal as there are so many.
Fortunately, you can’t really go wrong with any of Microsoft’s certifications, as all of them could apply to all industries.
“We want to be a reliable partner to our customers. To be a partner that offers all services and solutions in the field of digital communication. Our guiding principles are Team, Trust, Agility & Customer Experience. We passionately experience these principles, within our teams. We believe that further development, learning new things and participating in work depend on all of us.”
“That is why our employees participated in training with Semos Education on Microsoft Azure and Data Analytics, increasing their technical skills and knowledge in cloud technology. Microsoft training does more than just build technical skills. It prepared our employees for roles they need to fill. Microsoft training and certifications include problem-solving and critical thinking, as well as technical specializations, hands-on experience, and practice requirements, which help them skill up for our company’s digitalization mission.”
“We have experienced that these certified employees provide added value above and beyond the cost of training and certification. Tech professionals with a growth mindset put energy into learning and using new skills, and those who are certified are more likely to believe they can learn difficult skills.” Telefonos de México SA, Media & Communications Industry | North Macedonia
Here we provide you with an overview of how Microsoft’s certifications have so far been applied in different industries:
Automotive
Ø Azure
Businesses can leverage advanced data insights to drive business strategy and ensure traffic safety. These certifications prepare businesses for automation of traffic and how to use the information provided by IoT-enabled devices and vehicles. They are AI-102, AZ-104, and DP-090.
Ø Microsoft 365
For business solutions, the following certifications teach participants how to connect people and information in intelligent, highly secure ways: MS-900 and MD-100 + MD-101.
Ø Dynamics 365
Businesses that provide mobility services can develop their own apps with the knowledge gained from the PL-200 and MB-240 certifications. These certifications will enable businesses to deliver proactive, predictive services by connecting smart products with empowered technicians.
Ø Power Platform
These certifications are a big win for businesses in all industries. The platform enables citizen developers to improve business efficiency and innovation. PL-100 certification teaches how to develop hundreds of apps that support functions across all business units, and PL-400 certification enables the development of advanced custom solutions unique to each organization.
Financial services
Ø Microsoft 365
The following certifications will enable financial services to deliver differentiated customer experiences, improve employee collaboration and productivity, manage risk, and modernize core services systems: MS-500 or MS-203 or MS-700 or SC-300 and MS-100 + MS-101.
Ø Dynamics 365
Build a culture of transformation with cloud technologies. With PL-200 and MB-230 your business will be equipped to save time, reduce costs, and increase both employee and customer satisfaction all while reducing time-to-market with new capabilities.
Ø Security, Compliance and Identity
Anything to do with finances involves security, compliance, and data protection issues that must be understood and adhered to in order to accelerate innovation and achieve sustainable growth. All businesses will have to master this aspect of their operations. Certifications that will help with this are SC-900 + SC-200 + SC-300 and SC-400.
Healthcare
Ø Power Platform
If your business knows how to use Power Platform, it will be able to deliver better experiences and patient care while gaining deeper insights.
With a PL-900 certification that allows low code and no-code app building, healthcare professionals can take their services to the next level. For instance, healthcare providers can build an app that shows a patient’s lab results plus a list of next steps for patient care. Furthermore, with technology such as RPA nurses can extract legacy applications into shifts, combine this with other Excel files that are ingested into Dataverse. The nurses can use this data in Shifts (Teams) and Dataverse to create PowerApps that can automatically generate and visualize the shifts in real-time optimizing nurse staffing.
According to Microsoft’s annual Healthcare review, hybrid ACR grew 88% in YoY in FY 21, with an average QoQ growth of 20%. Decentralization of data and computing capabilities, yet a robust Data Fluidity between these environments is a key to successful hybrid engagements. The challenge faced by this radical hybrid cloud adoption is the lack of cloud and hybrid skills in application development, security, data management and compliance.
Manufacturing
Ø Dynamics 365
Manufacturing success is dependent on a resilient and secure supply chain.
Supply chains (inbound and outbound) act as buffers between fluctuations in supply and demand, trying to ensure a steady production flow at the plant. For long, inventory was the only mechanism available to create these buffers. With more global sourcing of materials and thus longer lead-times, more frequent changes in product design and demand as well as greater trade volatility and tariffs, this is no longer sufficient. Better methods to anticipate disruptions, reduce effects and be able to recover quickly are needed.
With MB-300 + MB-320 certification, course participants will learn to improve end-to-end supply chain visibility and profitability through intelligent planning and execution, demand sensing, and traceability.
The focus for manufacturing is not only on product excellence. Workers need upskilling to match an I4.0 environment, customers have diverse and expanding needs, demand more agility and force the producers to offer services on top of the physical product.
Media and Communication
Ø Azure
Azure capabilities can empower media and entertainment organizations to deliver personalized experiences, be more creative, optimize the digital media supply chain, and engage and monetize audiences. Certifications that will benefit these industries are AI-900 for content production, AZ-204 for site traffic management, and DP-203 for data storage.
Ø Microsoft 365
The MS-700 certification will enable media and entertainment organizations to deepen audience engagement with personalized, connected, and immersive experiences across all channels, platforms, and venues. This certification is a great place to start for organisations looking to enable creativity and collaboration from anywhere.
Retail
Ø Power Platform
“Our industry will change more in the next five years than in the last 50” L’Oréal. Microsoft customers in retail can use PL-200 and MB-230 certifications to learn all they need to know about evolving customer needs so they can gain actionable insights and achieve deeper engagement across all channels. Empower your employees to improve productivity with task automation and embedded tools.
Energy
Ø Azure
The next-generation workforce will need the skills and technologies to help energy companies transform into sustainable energy providers. The AI-102 certification is aimed at achieving that goal. Here organisations will learn to combine data and codify them into AI solutions that promote operational advances like predictive maintenance. Most importantly, having AI-102 certified skills will help Energy companies achieve a 50% increase in automating operations with edge, AI, ML doubling prescriptive and predictive maintenance by 2025.
The Azure Data Scientist Associate certification, DP-100, will ensure that companies will be able to automatically identify and respond to safety hazards in near real-time.
Consider the PL-100 to boost your organizations Intelligent Process Automation and Low-code platforms to transform your HR, legal, and finance business units.
“In the energy industry, one of the main guidelines is reliability, and the Microsoft certification is what confirms to us with a high degree of probability that our employees are trustworthy people and that they have all the necessary knowledge to do their job well, in line with expectations and best practices.” Gen Energija, Slovenia a Kompas Xnet customer.
Government
Ø Azure
The industry of industries. Governments work on such a scale that they need their own unique platforms and portals to deliver secure and reliable services. Microsoft’s AZ-104 certification will help you prepare for exactly that, enabling governments to use the Microsoft Azure Government cloud, SQL Server, and a full Microsoft technology stack for their technology development purposes.
Case Study: City of Copenhagen (DK) is closing their data centres and moving their ‘250 system’ to the Azure cloud before September 2021 creating an “IT Center of Excellence”. This means around 1,000 servers, 1,300 SQL Servers consolidated on Azure. The motivation for this is to support innovation, gain the needed agility to face the city challenges to become carbon neutral by 2025.
Ø Microsoft 365
It’s incumbent on governments to promote citizen well-being, enable positive societal change, and continually improve government services. These objectives can be achieved through a workforce that’s empowered to deliver services with the help of custom-developed technology.
Both MS-600 and MS-700 certifications are indispensable for this purpose. Workers will be able to send and track documents timeously, and cities will be able to keep running through the enablement of remote work.
Ø Dynamics 365
Governments are the key fundament to changing the lives of our most vulnerable citizens. The PL-200 and MB-240 will help governments improve efficiency through process automation, streamlined communications, and on-the-go access to critical information using Dynamics 365. This will help government achieve their asset management and efficiency goals.
Case Study: With 1,2m tickets opened per year, City of Milano elected to use Dynamics 365 to manage all citizen interactions across all channels (physical, phone, mail, web, or app). AI and chatbots complement the Intelligent Service, keeping the citizens aware of the City changes and making the Directors aware of the City pulse, sentiment, and priorities.
Defense and Intelligence
Ø Azure
AI is central to defense and intelligence capabilities. The technology improves mission effectiveness and enables a range of military functions, including intelligence collection and analysis.
AI-102 certification will help save months of development and enable IT specialists, to build restricted cloud while maintaining compliance with data sovereignty regulations.
Ø Dynamics 365
Several Microsoft Dynamics certifications can be useful for defense organizations.
PL-200 (a Power Platform certification) plus the following Microsoft Dynamics certifications will enable the integration of platforms and design solutions: MB-230 or MB-240 or MB-300 plus MB-310 or MB-700 or MB-800.
These integrations will provide comprehensive insights into operations, training, equipment inventory, finance, medical information, and increase collaboration and reduce administrative burdens on personnel.
Concluding Thoughts
This “short” overview should give organizations in the various industries a point of departure to a clearer understanding of how Microsoft solutions can help them achieve their operational goals. All these certifications, and others, have helped organizations across industries become full participants in our brave new digital world.
You can review the latest Microsoft certifications here and if you’re ready to take the next step and get your team certified you can visit our Online Skills Plan Builder, designed to help you fill in the gaps. If you think your team already has what it takes to get certified have them complete this quick role-based self-assessment and see how well, they score.