For organizations already invested in Microsoft 365, the foundation for the digital workplace is incredibly powerful.
SharePoint provides content and knowledge. Microsoft Teams supports communication and collaboration. Microsoft Entra manages identity and access. Microsoft Graph connects data and context. And Microsoft Copilot is bringing AI into the flow of work.
So, what’s missing?
For many organizations, the challenge isn’t adding more technology. It’s turning all of that technology into a connected, intuitive employee experience.
The foundation and the experience are different things
Employees don’t think about the workplace in terms of platforms and systems. They think about what they need to accomplish.
Where do I submit an IT request? What did our CEO announce? How much vacation time do I have left? Which AI tool can help me with this?
The answers may already exist somewhere across Microsoft 365, enterprise applications, company communications, knowledge sources, or AI agents.
But employees still have to find them.
That’s where an employee experience layer can add value. Rather than replacing the Microsoft foundation, it brings together the information, services, communications, and AI capabilities employees need and shapes them around the individual employee.
Akumina is designed to extend the Microsoft ecosystem in this way, adding capabilities such as personalization, communications, engagement, search, self-service, and AI orchestration while building on Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, Graph, Copilot, and Entra ID.
From Microsoft tools to a personalized employee experience
Consider the difference between giving an employee access to everything and giving them an experience designed around what matters to them.
A frontline employee, a new manager, an HR leader, and an IT administrator may all work within the same Microsoft environment, but they don’t need the same information, communications, applications, or AI experiences.
A modern Microsoft employee experience can use employee context – such as role, location, department, permissions, and business needs – to determine what each person sees and how they interact with it.
That personalization can extend across the SharePoint employee experience, the Microsoft Teams employee experience, and other employee channels rather than being limited to a single destination. Akumina’s approach is designed to deliver experiences wherever employees work while maintaining the Microsoft foundation underneath them.
AI makes the experience layer even more important
Microsoft Copilot and the rapid growth of enterprise AI make this distinction increasingly important.
As organizations introduce more agents and AI capabilities, employees shouldn’t have to understand the architecture behind them. They shouldn’t need to know which agent to ask, which knowledge repository contains an answer, or which system owns a particular task.
They should be able to express what they need.
An intelligent experience layer can then interpret that intent and orchestrate the appropriate trusted knowledge, communications, business systems, and AI capabilities behind the scenes.
That changes the Copilot employee experience from simply providing access to AI to making AI relevant, trusted, and useful in the context of an employee’s work.
Extend the Microsoft investment instead of working around it
Organizations have already made significant investments in Microsoft technology. Creating a better digital employee experience shouldn’t require abandoning that foundation or introducing another disconnected ecosystem.
The opportunity is to make the Microsoft investment work harder.
Microsoft provides the foundation. An employee experience layer connects that foundation around the employee – bringing together communications, knowledge, services, applications, search, and AI into experiences that are personalized and accessible wherever work happens.
The future of the Microsoft 365 digital workplace isn’t about adding another destination. It’s about turning the technology you already have into a better experience for every employee.