Behind Simform’s Global Finalist Recognition at the 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards

We are happy to share that Simform has been named a finalist for the 2026 Microsoft Innovate with Azure AI Apps and Agents Partner of the Year Award (POTYA). The winners and finalists were selected from more than 4,500 nominations submitted worldwide across categories. For our Microsoft practice, this is one of the most significant milestones in our journey and a moment we are incredibly proud of.

We have spent years building this relationship through joint customer work, Microsoft specializations, co-sell motions, and closer alignment with Microsoft teams. Each step has expanded the kind of work we can take on together. Being recognized at this level gives us a strong indication of what those investments are now producing for customers.

The nomination is based on our work with Meriton, where agentic AI is now part of their field operations. The significance of that work goes beyond the agents themselves. They have to operate within existing systems, controls, workflows, and the realities of how technicians work in the field.

That is what makes this recognition especially meaningful to me. It reflects the momentum of our Microsoft partnership and the kind of AI work we are now taking on together: systems built to operate inside the realities of an enterprise, where success depends on far more than the model itself.

The Innovate with Azure AI Apps and Agents category sets a demanding bar for what qualifies as meaningful AI innovation. Microsoft looks for advanced solutions built with Microsoft Foundry, applied to a specific customer problem, and backed by evidence of measurable business impact. The evaluation goes into what changed for the customer, how the technology enabled that change, and whether the results can be demonstrated.

It reflects the standard enterprise customers are beginning to expect from agentic AI. They want to know which business processes will improve, what responsibility agents can safely assume, and how performance and control will hold up as usage grows.

It also signals where the Microsoft AI ecosystem is heading. The opportunity for partners is expanding from building capable AI applications to engineering systems that can change how businesses operate, with measurable outcomes and the foundations to support wider adoption.

Simform’s Microsoft practice now brings together Azure Expert MSP status, Microsoft Solutions Partner designations across Cloud & AI Platforms, AI Business Solutions, and Security, ten specializations, and more than 400 Microsoft certifications.

Those capabilities matter because enterprise AI programs rarely stay within the boundaries of their initial use case. An agent may be the starting point, but its success can depend on application modernization, data engineering, identity, security, integration, and the systems that must keep running after deployment.

For customers, the breadth of our Microsoft practice creates four practical advantages:

• One partner across the full AI journey. Customers can bring strategy, engineering, cloud, data, security, and operations into one coordinated program.
• Earlier alignment with Microsoft. We can engage Microsoft teams while an opportunity is being shaped, bringing platform choices, architecture, and available funding programs into the discussion before major decisions are locked in.
• Continuity from design to operations. Engineering decisions, governance requirements, and business context can carry through deployment and ongoing support, reducing the handoffs that slow complex programs.
• A foundation for expansion. Enterprises can extend established architecture and governance practices into additional workflows while adapting each solution to its own business requirements.

That broader capability gives us the scope to address the dependencies that often become visible only after an AI initiative is underway. It also allows us to engage customers earlier, when the most consequential technology and operating decisions are still being made.

Texas Air Systems, a Meriton subsidiary, operates in an environment where field information needs to move quickly from job sites into the systems that support project management, approvals, expenses, and billing.

Its technicians work across installations, inspections, service visits, and maintenance activities, often with limited connectivity. Capturing accurate information on site was essential, but doing so could not add more administrative work to an already demanding field schedule.

We built an offline-first field operations platform around those requirements. Technicians can capture timecards, notes, photos, receipts, punch-list items, measurements, and reports while on site. The application syncs when connectivity returns, and supervisors use a web portal to review submissions and approve records.

Microsoft Foundry powers the agent layer. Different inputs are routed to task-specific agents that convert field information into structured records. Voice notes and media support report and punch-list generation. LiDAR scans provide site measurements and 3D outputs. LLM-based OCR supports expense processing, while geofencing helps with timecard workflows. The resulting information connects back into Procore and the customer’s wider operating environment.

Keeping those agents dependable required a consistent approach to orchestration and control. We used ThoughtMesh, Simform’s reusable agentic AI accelerator, to standardize tool access, guardrails, approval flows, and monitoring. Microsoft SSO, role-based access, and human review help preserve accountability as agents take on more of the administrative workload.

The operational gains are measurable. Reporting effort has fallen by up to 80%, while manual expense logging effort has decreased by 60%. Supervisors receive more complete information earlier, reducing the reconciliation required across subsequent approvals and billing.

Those results were achieved by integrating AI directly into field and back-office workflows. The platform also provides a foundation that can be extended to Meriton’s wide network of 23 subsidiaries.

Our work with Meriton demonstrates what agentic AI can achieve within a defined operational workflow. Extending that capability across an enterprise brings a different set of decisions into focus.

Teams need to determine which responsibilities agents should assume, what authority they require, and when a person must approve or intervene. Business processes may need to change as work moves between employees, agents, and existing systems. Data quality, access controls, and governance must support those decisions, while the experience needs to make sense to the people using it every day.

These decisions shape the enterprise operating model. They cannot be settled through agent engineering alone.

Simform’s Agentic Target Operating Model (ATOM) provides a structured way to address them. It helps organizations redesign workflows, define decision rights, establish the context and controls agents need, and preserve human accountability as AI takes on more execution.

For customers working within the Microsoft ecosystem, our Frontier Enterprise Envisioning Demo (FEED) helps translate those choices into practical scenarios. It shows how data, agents, automation, and employee experiences can work together across the Microsoft stack, allowing business and technology leaders to assess an AI-enabled workflow before committing to a broader program.

This is how we bring experience from production engagements into new enterprise AI programs. The operating model, architecture, and controls are shaped around each customer’s requirements, informed by the engineering and delivery lessons we have already learned.

As I look at the next phase of our Microsoft partnership, the opportunity is to make successful agentic AI execution more repeatable across enterprises. Every customer has different workflows, systems, and operating constraints, but the engineering discipline, governance practices, and operating-model decisions behind dependable AI systems can provide a stronger starting point for each new program.

This is where our combined capabilities can make a difference. We can help customers establish those foundations earlier, apply what we have learned from production, and extend agentic AI into more business functions with greater confidence.

Being named a Microsoft Partner of the Year finalist sets a higher bar for what we do next: combining Microsoft’s platform capabilities and ecosystem reach with Simform’s engineering depth to make agentic AI delivery more predictable, scalable, and valuable for customers. That is the next chapter we are looking forward to build with Microsoft.