Entrepreneurial to the core

He remembers the challenge of driving public relations, brand identity and the overall market for the products within his sphere in Scotland, and is rightly lauded by the company for his role in the successful outcome of several strategic projects ‘in the enterprise and public sectors, including the IT programme to support the formation of the Scottish Parliament’.

His keen understanding of how to launch into new markets and manage scale (a key skill in his business world view) landed him back in England as the UK group director of Microsoft Services Organisation.

Under his guidance, this division grew from 100 people to 550 and its revenues lifted from £10 million to £65 million. Growth has continued since – in all its different guises this arm ensures over 700 businesses and partners ‘fully exploit Microsoft's enterprise server technologies’. The Government’s Gateway project – the ambitious online venture that enables individuals, organisations and businesses to register for government services – is one of the notable developments Baker led.
In 2002 he made the move to general manager of Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners (SMS&P), where again he worked his magic to ensure the mighty Microsoft was able to reach the four million-odd SMEs in the UK.

‘This department had always been the second class citizen to the ‘business’ side of the group,’ he says, ‘but we just did our thing, breaking into new areas by carefully considering our marketing strategy and thinking hard. When we came in, it was all about licensing. But licensing is actually the end state. Of more importance is to understand who you’re working with to ensure you sell a solution and a strategy that supports the growth and efficiency of that end user.’

Pastures new for Baker
It was from his position as head of SMS&P that he ascended to the hot seat in the UK, a post he will leave at the end of this month for an as-yet unannounced position within the organisation. He will leave many legacies from his short time in charge, with the reinvigoration of the entire UK Microsoft Partner Programme and the array of innovations in the SME space in the UK likely to stand out.

For those unaware, the ‘partners’ in this programme are the third parties who actually sell the Microsoft product. Says Baker, ‘We architectured the whole programme to ensure there were high barriers to entry. Partners must satisfy customers, they must be clever and they must have deep knowledge.’ Of course, Microsoft works with them to improve their ‘skills’ to ensure opportunities open up and sales improve to the mutual benefit of both. There are around 30,000 partners in the UK, of which 2,300 are certified. At the top of the scale is an elite 400 that have attained a gold certificated status.

Another invigorating programme at the SME level that Baker is keen to flag up to Business XL is Microsoft’s small company incubation interests. Just recently the group announced two new intellectual property agreements with British companies – Skinkers and Vimio. These ventures, he says, ‘will bring major innovations to the market through the use of Microsoft’s cutting-edge intellectual property’. They are the first spin-offs of Microsoft research developed in a European lab and are apparently ‘a major step forward in Microsoft’s strategy of sharing its R&D with talented entrepreneurs throughout Europe’.

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