Even small improvements in a person’s day-to-day effectiveness can add up to significant value for an organization and greater employee happiness. Today, most of us don’t have the tools and information to help us make better decisions about our scarcest resource at work: our time. But, similar to how fitness trackers help us understand our health in our personal lives, innovative new solutions are emerging to objectively measure and prioritize our time at work. Giving people access to real data and objective, personalized feedback can lead to a virtuous cycle of improvement for both individuals and their company.
The hardest part about this is accessing and making sense of the real behavioral data that would give people these insights. Office 365 and the Office Graph offer a wealth of data and a powerful machine learning platform. By harnessing this data – while maintaining strict privacy controls – customers can create these personalized feedback loops that help people answer questions like: How can I improve my emails to ensure my communications are impactful? Am I spending my time focused on my priorities? Do I have the right people and expertise in my network to accomplish my project?
Today, to help people answer these kinds of questions and many more, I am thrilled to announce that Microsoft has agreed to acquire VoloMetrix, a pioneer and leader in organizational analytics. This acquisition will combine VoloMetrix’ experience, technology and track record of success with Office 365 and our previously announced Delve Organizational Analytics.
I am excited about this big step forward in our company ambition to reinvent productivity and business process, and how it will deliver new value to our customers with organizational analytics. We expect to launch an early preview program for Delve Organizational Analytics within the next month, and general availability of the initial release of the integrated Office 365 service by the end of this calendar year.
Ryan Fuller, CEO and co-founder of VoloMetrix, provides his thoughts in a blog post here.
Rajesh