report of microsoft inspire 2017 - qbs group · just as in previous years, inspire 2017 offered...

Report of Microsoft Inspire 2017 Washington, July 9th – 13th, 2017

Index

1. Management Summary 2 2. Justification 3 3. General Impressions 4 4. What were the messages of Satya Nadella? 6 5. The ‘One Commercial Partner’ organisation - taking down the walls ! 9 6. The Microsoft reorganisation and the impact on Dynamics partners 12 7. How Microsoft distributes her Dynamics solutions – from mass to selective and back again 14 Dynamics 365 8. Dynamics 365 - the rebranding 16 9. Dynamics 365 - the availability of the Business Edition 18 10. Different propositions for various target groups 20 11. Update on Finance and Operations 23 12. Update on Customer Engagement 25 13. The first partner experiences with Dynamics 365 BE 31

14. Dynamics NAV - what’s new and next? 33 15. Industry Focused. Partner Powered! - Specialisation rediscovered 34 16. The Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the future 36 17. What’s new in CSP? 39 18. Exclusive interview with Marko Perisic 42 19. Exclusive interview with Jeff Edwards 47 20. Conclusions and recommendations 50 21. Access to the presentations 53 22. Partner Conference 2018 53 23. About the author 54

1. Management Summary

Inspire is Microsoft’s largest annual recurring event. This year with a brand new name that replaced the traditional name ‘Worldwide Partner Conference’ that Microsoft has been using since 2003. Washington DC was this year’s venue, just like in 2010 and 2014. We find ourselves amidst the fourth industrial revolution. The speed at which technology is advancing with Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and Internet of Things?, is impacting us in ways greater than ever before. These impacts spread across economies, businesses, people and policies. Everything we do is being reshaped, realigned and re-tooled. Organisations all over the world are forced to look what they need to do to transform their business models and workforce, while staying human and competitive. This is the world of Digital Transformation. At Inspire, Microsoft showed in various ways how they are prepared for this new era, and that they are leading the way with these new developments. The remaining question is if and how fast the Microsoft partners are willing and able to embrace all these changes. Microsoft is broadly perceived as being back at the top of the industry. At WPC 2014, when Microsoft was at its lowest point in terms of appearance, COO Kevin Turner had to admit publicly that Microsoft has dropped from “dominant market leader” back to “challenger”. At last year’s WPC, Tim Campo, CIO of Facebook, told the audience that “Microsoft got cool again”. This year there was no need to have a customer saying something like that – since today, Microsoft just is cool! Microsoft is in the middle of one of the most exciting phases of its 42-year existence. On the one hand, there is the industry-wide transition from the traditional on-premise delivery model to the delivery of software as a service. On the other hand, there is a huge transition within the Microsoft organisation itself; from a company perceived as defensive, always too late, and lacking vision, into a sexy company that operates on the front line of the IT innovation. At this year’s Inspire more than in previous events, the spotlights were on the partner channel. As a partner driven company, Microsoft’s successes depend heavily on the ability of her partner channels to transform as well. For many partners, Microsoft’s move to the new ‘One Commercial Partner’ (OCP) set-up was the peak of this conference. OCP is the biggest change in the Microsoft sales organisation of the last decade, and it will have a substantial impact on the way Microsoft co-operates with her partners. So, Dynamics partners need to find their way in this new model as soon as possible.OCP was also one of the important drivers behind the re-organisation that Microsoft announced just before the start of Inspire 2017. The expected impact on the Dynamics partner channel is that substantial numbers of managed partners will lose their position and need to find business support elsewhere. Those partners that keep their position as a managed partner will most likely be managed by a Microsoft employee. Not by a Microsoft Dynamics employee anymore. In FY18 and beyond, the Dynamics products are absolutely mainstream! Microsoft presented the 4 main themes in their value proposition that they will push in all markets around the globe. These themes are: Modern workplace, Business Applications (including Dynamics ERP, Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365), Infrastructure & Application and Data & AI. From a high level, digital transformation relies on those four areas to empower employees, engage customers, optimise operations, and transform products.

Much stronger than in previous years, Microsoft emphasized the importance of specialisation and verticalisation as a success factor for the partners’ business. Inevitably, this must be accompanied by higher marketing investments at the partner site in positioning and lead generation, but most definitely in product management! Until recently, these subjects were considered by Microsoft to be more of a tactical nature. At this event, however, they were important topics in the vision keynote presentations!

In the weeks before Inspire, Microsoft decided to re-brand her Dynamics 365 product lines. The new branding now is ‘Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Sales or Marketing Business Edition (or Enterprise Edition)’. It’s important for Dynamics partners to align and get used with this new branding as soon as possible.

Regarding the Dynamics solutions family, there was not much product news except for Dynamics 365 Marketing, Business Edition. Dynamics partners must wait a little longer before the can lay their hands on this solution. That is quite like the (localized) availability of many other parts of Dynamics 365 Business Edition.

Regarding the “stand-alone” Dynamics ERP products, Microsoft re-confirmed that both NAV, GP and SL will continue to be further developed, updated and supported. However, there was only one session in the whole event dedicated to these product lines; fewer than in previous years. Many partners felt that this non-verbal communication was symbolic since everybody understands that Dynamics 365 is the way to go!

For the Microsoft Dynamics partner community, there’s still plenty of reflection and work left to be done after Inspire 2017! Licensing income is under increasing pressure and market demand for services is decreasing under the influence of the cloud. Partners that haven’t started their cloud transformation process yet are now really at risk of being caught out. Many partners must re-invent themselves. Partners need to ask themselves the following questions:

• Am I a VAR or an ISV?• Active locally or internationally?• Horizontally positioned or vertically?• Macro-vertical or micro-vertical?• Do I have my own IP that I can monetize?• Or am I aiming at volume?• How can I expand my existing range into a ‘Microsoft stack Solution?• Build own practices for these additional workloads or co-operate with other partners?• And what does my Dynamics 365 agenda looks like?

We’ve said it many times before at this same place: life of a Dynamics partner is that of a dancer on the volcano - never a dull moment! But one thing is certain: the recently started Fiscal Year 18 will be a particularly challenging year for Microsoft and its Dynamics partners!

Interestering links: Overall Inspire 2017 video-blog analysis by Michael Hartmann and Guus Krabbenborg

The Inspire 2017 QBS landing page

2 | REPORT Inspire 2017 © QBS group

https://youtu.be/B81whMGpnZA

http://www.qbsgroup.com/gl/all-you-need-to-know-from-microsoft-inspire-2017.aspx

2. Justification

This report describes the outline of Microsoft’s product and partner strategy for the new financial year (FY18) and beyond, as presented during Inspire 2017. Inspire is the new name for the international partner event that was previously called Worldwide Partner Conference. This conference took place in Washington DC from July 9th – 13th, 2017.

Just as in previous years, Inspire 2017 offered visitors a wealth of information! For this event, there were 9 plenary keynotes and over 500 breakout sessions, roundtables and regional sessions.

QBS group attended Inspire 2017 with a team of 8 employees. All of them had the assignment to write a contribution focused on a specific domain. Nevertheless, this enormous range of sessions turned out to be so broad that it was impossible for us to provide a complete, detailed overview. For this reason, this report is limited to all the keynote presentations, supplemented by the many breakout sessions that we attended with our team. In addition, we made intensive use of the available presentation decks and recordings of other interest-generating sessions that we couldn’t attend ourselves. Naturally, we also selected the most important Dynamics sessions!

Just like during WPC 2016, we had organised interviews with two Microsoft executives. These interviews gave us the opportunity to raise questions that go beyond the content presented to the audience, and to focus on the aspects that matter specific for Dynamics partners. The end result is two exclusive and highly relevant pieces of content. The first interview we had was with Marko Perisic, General Manager for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics SMB. Marko is responsible for the product strategy and product development of the Dynamics 365 Business Edition and all Dynamics SMB products, including Dynamics NAV. The second interview was with Jeff Edwards, Director for ERP Channel Strategy and Programs. Jeff is responsible for setting strategy and supporting marketing, training, incentives and branding programs for the worldwide Dynamics ERP partner channel. As a Microsoft veteran of already 10 years in this strategy role, he oversees all the major trends in the partner channel like no other. We hope that this approach again will be perceived as a useful addition.

Wherever possible, we also place the content of this conference in the perspective of the developments at Microsoft in the recent months and years, and provide relevant commentary. We think this provides the reader with a sensible picture of the activity in the market and within Microsoft’s range, and particularly with a view of what this means for the partner channel and for you as a partner business.


Inspire 20179 plenary keynotes and over

500 breakout sessions, roundtablesand regional sessions

3. General Impressions

During this year’s edition of Inspire, there were many highlights and observations on a variety of topics, the following are some that stood out:

About Inspire and the keynote sessions• Microsoft continues to have great optimism and self-confidence about the near future! Microsoft is completely

back in business!

• Attention paid to the enormous speed in which new Microsoft innovations come to the market.• The continued focus in content from market shares, rankings and numbers of single category products

(‘inside-out’) towards vision, integrated solutions and customer value (‘outside-in’).• The continued broad mindedness to other suppliers as the ‘new normal’. With demonstrations on iPads and the

emphasis on cross-platform and cross-device solutions becoming the ‘new normal’.

• The focus on Digital Transformation as the umbrella above all the Microsoft solutions.• Lots of attention for LinkedIn.• Women took a key role in delivering almost all the Microsoft demonstrations in the keynote sessions

(and they were all very good!).• For the very first time in the WPC/Inspire history: customers got to be on stage, demonstrating their own

solutions to the partners and explaining the qualitative benefits and ROI.

• Microsoft Dynamics at the centre of many sessions and new innovations, with Dynamics 365 as the main event!• Limited news on products what may be normal in a SaaS world where the update frequency is much higher.

On partner transformation• The continued acknowledgment that a serious cloud transformation by the partner channel is crucially

important to Microsoft, but also that partners will still need considerable support for this.• Microsoft’s continued attention to its partner’s profitability.• The continued attention to marketing as a key domain for all Microsoft partners.• The focus on verticalisation and the repeatability of selling and implementing solutions – this year even in the

keynotes! - and the need for product marketing that comes with that strategical choice.• The continued importance to partners of “packaged IP” and volume to survive in the cloud.• The focus on ISV solutions and apps: “IP is more important than ever before”• The strong positioning of the CSP program in all sessions.


Some trends and small observations• The focus on Artificial Intelligence and the benefits that this brings to customers.• The active use of LinkedIn profiles in the registration processes for Inspire.• The ongoing effort in the packaging and bundling of former point solutions. Evident on this occasion with the

announcement of Microsoft 365.• The continued messages that Microsoft brings Enterprise grade solutions in an affordable way to the

midmarket and SMB companies.• Microsoft’s continuous search for the perfect partner sales roles.

On Dynamics 365• Business Applications (including the Dynamics solutions) classified as one of the 4 high-level priorities for

Microsoft on Corp level for FY18.• The new approach to start offering simple and cheap business solutions that small companies can use as a

build-up to more professional solutions, like Dynamics 365.• The continuous confusion around the two versions of Dynamics 365 (Business Edition and Enterprise Edition)

due to poor communication.• The effort that Microsoft employees have with the new branding of Dynamics 365.• The trend that some Dynamics ISVs decide to go direct with their cloud solutions and thus bypassing their

resellers.• AppSource is now also available for services.• The growing volumes in mergers and acquisitions in the Dynamics partner channel.

On Dynamics NAV/GP/SL• There was only 1 session out of some 500 that had a focus on Dynamics NAV/GP/SL.• The upgrade frequency of Dynamics GP is reduced to once a year. Previously every 6 months• No comments at all about migration options to Dynamics 365 for NAV/GP/SL customers, nor about the business

future of GP/SL partners.

And finally, the silent corner• Nothing publicly said about the reorganisation and the lay-offs within Microsoft.• No reference at all about Microsoft’s position and ambitions in the market for mobile.

5| REPORT Inspire 2017 © QBS group

4. What were the messages of Satya Nadella?

The first keynote on day one of WPC/Inspire is traditionally reserved for the Microsoft CEO. Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s third CEO in the company’s history back in February 2014 as the successor of Steve Ballmer. From the beginning, he appeared to be the right man in the right place. Since Nadella started, Microsoft has changed from a company perceived as internally focused, proprietary, arrogant and always too late, into an open-minded company with a vision and a never-ending stream of appealing and innovative solutions. In the 3 and a half years since Nadella’s start, the Microsoft shares have almost doubled in value (from $ 37,84 in February 2014 to $ 72,66 on August 18, 2017 – up 92 percent). So, similar to the past three years, the partner community was very much looking forward to his third WPC keynote as CEO.

Just like in previous years, Nadella started to re-confirm the huge interest that Microsoft has in working with partners: “Microsoft has always been a partner led company and Microsoft will always be a partner led company.” The share of the total Microsoft revenue that is partner related is still far greater than with any of the other leading worldwide IT vendors. Some indications:

• Microsoft has over 600,000 Microsoft partners worldwide• All together these partners employ 17 million people• Microsoft has more than 64,000 cloud partners today – more than AWS, Google

and Salesforce combined. Microsoft is adding more than 6,000 partners eachmonth. Among them a lot of net new partners who came from other vendors

• For every US dollar of Microsoft revenue, there is $9,01 of revenue in the Microsoftpartner-ecosystem

Nadella also took the time to reconsider Microsoft’s mission: “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” He reconfirmed that this statement is key in all major decisions made within the company: “that is the North Star that defines every choice we make. How we show up with customers, the products that we build, everything that we do is defined by this mission.”

The Microsoft CEO has shown before that he is a pretty modest personality who is not easily excited and – despite his technical background - is very customer focused. Nadella proved that impression once again stating “we don’t celebrate our technology, but the success that customers achieve with it.”


Intelligent cloud and intelligent edge Today’s world is dominated by Digital Transformation, a wave of business innovation fueled by cloud technologies like the Internet of Things, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and data. Driving our customers’ businesses forward through digital transformation has opened an estimated $4.5 trillion market opportunity.

Nadella presented the market for Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge, where ‘multi-device’, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ‘server-less revolution’ plays an important role. This future market contributes to that estimated total value of $4,5 Trillion. With that overall figure being twice as high as the current market for Mobile & Cloud. Which of course, Microsoft is eager to win a big share of that market together with her partners.

Enabling Digital Transformation For the Go-to-Market themes for FY18, Microsoft first looked at the desired outcome for customers. These can be summarized in 4 groups:

• Empowering employees• Engage Customer• Optimize operations• Transform Products

This, in simple terms, is what customers want to get out of the digital transformation that is delivered through the three Microsoft Clouds; the Productivity cloud, the Data cloud and the Business cloud. The value proposition will then sit in 4 key themes that Microsoft will push in all business markets around the globe:

• Modern Workplace• Business Applications• Application and Infrastructure• Data and AI

Microsoft 365On the product side, Microsoft 365 was announced – an “intelligent, secure solution to empower employees”. This basically is a bundle of Office 365, Windows 10 and the Enterprise Security and Mobility suite. Most of us still remember the times where Microsoft was not even allowed to think about any bundling of Windows and Office, since the US Department of Justice would see that as a market domination. Arguably the market share of Windows on PC’s and Laptops is still super high, but the competition has moved to other dimensions, such as collaboration or Artificial Intelligence. In today’s markets, the PC operating System and key productivity tools are more likely to be seen as commodities. This again is a good example of how Microsoft is bundling solutions that before were marketed and sold as ‘stand-alone’ solutions.


Artificial Intelligence The other main theme was around democratising Artificial Intelligence. If you think about ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence and even relational databases, Microsoft has a track record of bringing enterprise technologies down to the SMB market. The same now happens with Analytics and AI. We already see that connection for Dynamics 365 Business Edition, where you can connect Dynamics 365 to the Cortana Intelligence Suite and to Azure IoT. This will enable scenarios that two years ago, would only be economically realistic in the corporate and enterprise market. Surely, this is a great opportunity for Dynamics partners to differentiate themselves, and stand out as one of the first partners who can enable these scenarios in the SMB market.

Microsoft Relationship Sales Microsoft performed a good demonstration of ‘Microsoft Relationship Sales’ – a smart bundle of Office 365, Dynamics 365 for Sales, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Azure. Yes, another example of smart packaging! As soon as Microsoft, and her partners are able to combine the new Microsoft 365 with the power of LinkedIn and Dynamics 365, the result will be a real game changer!

Dynamics 365 as transformation enabler Satya Nadella ended his presentation explaining that the world of Business Applications is changing rapidly, and that has a big impact on Microsoft partners as well. This all starts with the current customer transformation, which leads to revolution in technologies and platforms at the customer side. That, in turn, requires a totally new Go-to-Market approach for both Microsoft and the Microsoft partners. The message that Nadella gave the audience was that Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the one solution that enables this new world.

Interesting linksMicrosoft’s resume of Nadella’s keynote

The full recording of Satya Nadella’s keynote Linkedin Profile Satya Nadella


5. The ‘One Commercial Partner’ organisation - taking down the walls !

For many years, Microsoft was a siloed, product-driven company. The products were developed, marketed, sold and supported in a relative isolated way, by groups of people that were focused on making their one product successful. During the first 10-20 years, Microsoft did all that with great success - no doubts about that! But by the time that their customers started combining the various Microsoft products and needed integration, the organisation did not evolve fast enough. Was that due to the size of the Microsoft organisation? Was it the culture? Or was it the leadership? We will never know exactly. What we did all observe was that Microsoft for years did not really realise her full potential.

Sub-optimisation Not too long ago, Microsoft Office had better integration with SAP’s ERP solutions than with their very own Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions. Not too long ago, Microsoft sales people responsible for databases hoped that Dynamics NAV partners would lose deals to competitors so that they could sell their SQL Server databases rather than losing against the NAV-based C/Side database. Not too long ago, many Microsoft partners had two Microsoft partner sales contacts. One for Dynamics and one for the rest. There was a similar story for support. Even 10 years after the acquisitions of Great Plains and Navision Software, Microsoft failed to integrate the Dynamics activities into the organisation. These are just a few of many examples where sub-optimisation ‘within the silo’ prevailed over the company-wide interests.

Leadership change Microsoft has been talking about taking down the walls for a long time. However, the Steve Ballmer leadership did not really seem able to achieve this, despite several attempts including some profound organisations changes. His last attempt was in July 2013 – the biggest reorganisation in company history. The objective: One Microsoft. However, Ballmer decided to keep Dynamics unchanged as a separate entity. Then came the Leadership change in February 2014. Microsoft, widely judged as a sleeping giant, appointed Satya Nadella as the successor to Steve Ballmer. One of Nadella’s first battles was fighting and ultimately even demolishing the walls between the departments. This was what he said about that battle during WPC 2014:

“In order to accelerate our innovation, we must rediscover our soul – our unique core. This will be a continuous journey and this is what I spend most of my time on.” Finally adding: “Compared to this transformation, technology is the simpler thing.”

Biggest change in last decade At Inspire, Microsoft announced the new ‘One Commercial Partner’ (OCP) organisation. Basically, it’s a new Go-to-Market model and a new field organisation that is even more focused on partners. In a nutshell, partners are no longer managed by workload or by pure revenue volume, but rather by engagement outcome.


Ron Huddleston

”For many partners, Microsoft’s move to the new ‘One Commercial Partner’ (OCP) set-up was the peak of this conference.”

OCP - already widely abbreviated - is made up of three parts:• Does the partner want to build capabilities or solutions, then they work with the ‘Build-with’ team

(partner management, recruit, develop IP, launch, grow)• Partners that want to integrate into the Microsoft marketing approach, they can do this with the ‘Go to Market’

team (offers into markets and capacity requirements)• Partners who want to get sales leads from the Microsoft account teams and sell together need to work with the

‘Sell-with’ team (channel management, territory success).

This is the biggest change in the Microsoft sales organisation of the last decade. The program means Partner-First, not just Partner-Led anymore. It promises to be a major shift in the Microsoft organisation since it’s the heart of the Microsoft growth strategy. So, it’s massively important for Dynamics partners to find their place in this model and connect to their new contact person(s) as soon as possible.

Product, field and then partners Nadella’s switch to One Microsoft started in the development domain. Integrated ‘stack solutions’ like Dynamics 365 and the newly released Microsoft 365 prove that the development teams are working more and more in an integrated mode. The ‘365’ solutions being the result. The second step is the Microsoft sales organisation. Which is exactly the change we see now with OCP. Finally, this project can of course only become really successful if the Microsoft partner channels embrace the One Microsoft approach as well. So, that will be your challenge in the near future.

Understanding the reorganisation In the weeks before Inspire 2017, there were lots of publications about the reorganisation of the global sales and marketing operations at Microsoft. The goal is to focus better on cloud software rather than the traditional desktop and server solutions. This is a move that possibly every traditional vendor has to make. These articles talked about a reduced headcount of some 3,000 jobs especially in the field sales organisation. Seventy five percent of that number will be outside the US. Remarkably - during the keynote sessions at Inspire, not one of the Microsoft executives shared their observations on this reorganisation. However, in the corridors and on the grapevine it was of course the conversation of the day.


• ISV• Systems Integration• Managed Services• Channels

Industry & horizontal workloads & solutions

Programs & Incentives

Partnerspecialization

Customer segmentation

Enterprise

Small, Medium, Corporate

Sell-withChannel management

territory success

Enterprise Channel Manager

TerritoryChannel Manager

Cloud Solution Architects/Partner Technical Architects

Partner management Recruit, Develop, Launch, Grow

Build-with

Partner Technical Strategist

Partner Development

Manager

Go-To-Market

Partner Market Advisor

Partner Channel Marketing Manager

Offers into market andcapacity requirements

Technical

OCP is of course an important determinant for this re-organisation. Microsoft wants her sales people to be able to pitch, offer and co-sell the full Microsoft portfolio, rather than just a point solution. They also want them to have more industry-specific expertise. At the end of the day, this is nothing less than a logical motion. As an example - when Microsoft bundled Word, Excel and PowerPoint into one integrated Office solution years ago, they didn’t continue with specific sales employees for Excel either. Of course, this sets quite different requirements to the level and skill sets of the Microsoft sales people going forward. Which largely explains this loss of jobs. Second aspect here is that in a Cloud world, the cost of sale must come down to stay financial healthy. Microsoft executives informally told us that there will be many new job openings for presales specialists and for (often younger and cheaper) inside sales people. This number of new jobs is said to be about the same as the number of layoffs, so that would mean no net loss in headcount.

”Microsoft is implementing changes to better serve our customers and partners,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC. ”We are taking steps to notify some employees that their jobs are under consideration or that their positions will be eliminated. Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time-to-time, re-deployment in others.”

Microsoft said its goal isn’t to cut costs and the move is instead a change in how Microsoft handles sales. To put this in perspective: Microsoft had 121,567 employees as of March 31, 2017. So, a loss of 3,000 jobs is less than 3 percent. Still, of course this is always a painful process for the people involved.

The impact for Dynamics partners Because of OCP, there is no longer the role of a Partner Sales Executive (aka PAM). In addition to this is the fact that Dynamics finally is “mainstreamed”. These two facts combined have a substantial impact on Dynamics partners. With exception of a few roles in the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, and in the time zone teams, there will no longer be partner roles that are dedicated to Microsoft Dynamics. Therefore, many Dynamics partners will become “unmanaged”, even the larger Dynamics partners. These partners need to find specific Dynamics business support elsewhere – most probably in the field of SMB Distributors and/or Cloud Solution Providers. In this changing landscape, Dynamics partner communities like those around SBS Group in the US and QBS Group in EMEA will become even more important. Not only to exchange ideas and align on business, but also to support each other in case of challenges with the Dynamics solutions. As well as preparing for the upcoming opportunities with Dynamics 365. Those partners who keep their managed position will, from now on, most likely be managed by a Microsoft employee. Not by a Microsoft Dynamics employee anymore.

Interesting linksLinkedIn profile Ron Huddleston

Ron Huddleston’s blog on One Commercial PartnerSeries of 3 articles with Ron Huddleston on Redmond Channel Partner


https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronhuddleston1/

https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/one-commercial-partner-putting-partners-first/?utm_source=Direct)

https://rcpmag.com/articles/2017/07/13/qa-huddleston-inspire-1.aspx

6. The Microsoft reorganisation and the impact on Dynamics partners

With the introduction of the One Commercial Partner program, the biggest change in Microsoft’s organisation of the channel is upon us. For a couple of years we have been hearing the term ‘streamling’ of Dynamics. With Dynamics 365 we have seen that the product got streamline. We now start to understand what ‘streamling’ looks like to the Microsoft sales model.

At Inspire 2017, Gavriella Schuster (CVP Worldwide Channels and Programs) presented in her keynote session the Microsoft vision as “the biggest change to the sales model in over a decade”. She also repeated the message of partner specialisation: “Understanding the customer context is key to partner success.” She encouraged the audience to build a scalable and repeatable operating model and to have an open mindset for innovation and learning.

The current changes in the Microsoft organisation have been driven by three recurring questions from sometimes confused partners:

1. How do I engage with your field organisation?2. Why are you so complicated, Microsoft?3. How can we sell together?

1) How do partners engage with the Microsoft field teams in FY18 and beyond? It starts with the Partner Sales Executive (PSE) today. These PSEs have incredibly diverse workloads. For many years, partners (and even Microsoft people) have thought that the PSE was sort of a Super hero. But was that always realistic?Another perception was that the PSE was more of a “Scorecard and Revenue checker”. That sort of conversation did not reallyhelp grow a partner’s business. For these reasons, Microsoft announced at Inspire that it will split the role of the former PSE intwo parts: A Channel Manager on the one hand and an Account Manager on the other hand.

Microsoft wants to help partners either “Build-With” or “Sell-With” the business. Microsoft are therefore creating two with-partner motions: a ”Build with” motion and a ”Sell with” motion. The conversation with the Account Manager will become more about “what is your 3-year plan?” For the Channel Manager, the role will be to understand the available solutions and the ideal market.

The Channel Manager is an entirely new role within Microsoft. The view is that the Channel Manager will be the ultimate networker. He or she will know all of the partner’s sellers and the right customers to connect them to. They will be responsible for developing an understanding of an industry and the opportunities within it. They will be measured on customer success with and through partners. They will work with any partner as long as they have the right industry competencies.

The Account Manager should, over time “become the Partner Development Manager 2.0.” These employees will no longer be measured and incentivised on license sales or Microsoft revenue, but will be measured on Partner Success. That is a very interesting move!


2) “Why is Microsoft so complicated”?Microsoft is going through its own internal Digital Transformation processes to simplify licensing, offers andGo-to-Markets.

In addition, Microsoft wants the partner channel to know and understand about the 4 core solutions in their Go-to-Market. These we have seen earlier in this report:

• Modern Workplace• Business Applications• Application and Infrastructure• Data and AI

Of course, we’ll have to see what these ambitious plans on the simplification of Microsoft will ultimately yield. The truth is that we have heard messages such as this one at every WPC/Inspire event for the last 14 years.

3) How do partners show up better together to the customer?Are partners and Microsoft employees aligned in terms of performance incentives? Today the answer is probably no.So, Microsoft are going to align the subsidiaries (or field) with partners.

From now on MSFT incentives will be driving:1. Office 365 total contract value2. Azure Consumed revenue3. ISV Embed SKU – all up incentivisation

So, what does this mean in practical terms for partners in the subsidiaries and in particular Dynamics partners ? The ‘blueprint’ for resource allocation in the subsidiaries has been completely re-drawn. In real terms, this means that the PSE and PTS roles who were 100% focused on the Dynamics performance and revenue KPIs are now aligned to the four core workloads.

The Channel Manager role will be 100% industry and segment focused and the portfolio of partners for the Account Manager will not be aligned to workload either: it’s covering all four of them. The one exception is the Go-to-Market motion, which is aligned to workload.

In effect, the net result for Dynamics SMB partners is that the majority of those managed today by a PSE or PCDM (Partner Channel Development Manager) will no longer be directly managed by Microsoft. The exception to this will be in the instance where partners have additional workloads to the ‘Business Applications’ workload. This is a major shift!

Conclusion Microsoft has invested heavily in the last 15 years to build institutional knowledge and capabilities to support a wide and varied Dynamics SMB business across all subsidiaries around the world. With the disbandment of the Dynamics SMB teams, this structure and knowledge is lost. The long-term effects are not known at this stage.

However, the Dynamics SMB Distributor program that Microsoft launched with the likes of QBS Group in 2013 seems to have gained in importance to Microsoft and to the Dynamics channel as a result of the organisational changes. At the very least, all Dynamics SMB partners should investigate the Dynamics SMB Distributor program.


7. How Microsoft distributes her Dynamics solutions – from mass to selective and back again

Ever since the acquisition of Great Plains and Navision Software in the early 2000’s, Microsoft has been juggling with the distribution of her Dynamics solutions. This all had a significant impact on the size and character of their field teams, and on the extent to which partners were managed.

Every Corner of Every Street In the few years after the acquisitions, it was Microsoft’s ambition to have a Dynamics partner company on‘every corner of every street’. There was a lot of focus on finding and adding new partners. Even the smallest subsidiaries had sales driven employees with a clear recruitment target. This approach included intensive attention for new and existing Dynamics partners from the Microsoft field organization. With large numbers of so called Partner Account Managers (PAMs), who were Microsoft employees that helped partners run and grow their businesses.

From quantity to quality In 2010, Microsoft introduced a new version of its partner program, called Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). This new program prophesied a complete different strategy. One where there would be a much smaller number of partners with a much larger average size. So, the focus switched from quantity to quality. Raising the bar was the mantra. There was even an official statement on the ideal size of a Dynamics partner practice. This statement suggested that the size should be 80 employees and for them to have all necessary competencies on board. Nothing bigger as that would introduce the risk of eroding the entrepreneurship in the channel. The average size in those days was around 20 employees. However, the widely-expected flow of mergers and acquisitions among partner companies was left out.

At that time, Microsoft also changed her ideas around partner management. Each individual partner no longer had their own Microsoft contact person. Many smaller partners got ‘un-PAM-ed’. Microsoft started focusing on those partners with the biggest license revenues and the ones with the most revenue potential. A direct consequence of this was a significant decrease of the number of PAM’s.

Introduction of the Master VAR In 2012, Microsoft concluded under-performance from the unmanaged partners of the Dynamics channel. The lack of attention from Microsoft did not help these partners’ sales results. The obvious result was that Microsoft stood to lose ground at the lower end of the market. Not just with customers, but also with partners since competitors started recruiting them. To stop this loss, Microsoft introduced the “Master VAR” concept. They appointed ‘Value Added Distributors’ around the world, responsible for supporting these smaller Dynamics partners with tasks such as training, marketing, sales support and order processing. This allowed the Microsoft field teams to focus on managing the big partners plus their Master VAR. As a result, the number of sales people decreased even further.

Interesting observation – there are only a limited number of successful Master VARs; and in some countries and regions, this concept is still not implemented today.

From PAM to PSE In its attempt to optimize its sales growth and cost management, Microsoft decided in 2013 to suspend the role of the Partner Account Manager. The newly defined role of Partner Sales Executive (PSE) took its place. The idea behind this change was a move away from the ‘hand-holding’ of partners towards a more sales driven approach. The PSE would directly contribute to the growth of revenue and market share. For example, PSEs had to spend at least 90% of their time on sales-related activities.

Interesting observation – the number of PSEs was again smaller than the previous number of PAM’s. Some PAMs started working for the local Master VAR. While others switched to the high-end market teams within Dynamics AX.


From PSE to PCDMClearly, the move from PAM to PSE didn’t bring Microsoft the expected outcomes. Without any doubt, one of the main reasons was that the PAMs were never selected based on sales skills. So, it was no big surprise that in 2016, all PSEs went through the process of a new role change again. This time to the 4-letter acronym PCDM, which stands for Partner Channel Development Manager. A new name for a new task. Not recruiting new customers anymore but instead building a new partner channel for a new solution, called Dynamics 365.

Microsoft wanted to recruit large numbers of new Dynamics 365 partners. Both from their existing partner channels and from competitors. So, 7 years after the introduction of the MPN program, we returned to a quantity approach strategy. Yet again we saw the number of PCDMs became smaller than the previous number of PSEs.

Welcome in the CSP world! These days we live in a completely new world! One that is dominated by the Cloud Solution Program (CSP). One where distributors (for short disti’s) play a very important role. Dynamics 365, for example, can only be bought via CSP. Most of the Master VARs have also turned their business models towards CSP. So, 16 years after the acquisition of Great Plains and Navision Software, Microsoft moves her Dynamics business to the domain that is traditionally controlled by the disti’s.

Remarkably most of the quality requirements that we’re introduced with the MPN program in 2010 have completely gone. More importantly, Microsoft looks at every opportunity to engage all sorts of partners in selling Dynamics 365, their new flagship solution. No matter what the partner’s background, be it Dynamics ERP or CRM, Office 365, Sharepoint, Azure or competitive solutions, Microsoft aim to recruit them. The circle is complete – Microsoft is back at a quantity approach.

Impact for Dynamics partners The question of course, is what these changes mean for the average Dynamics partner. At the time of writing this, it’s not clear what the detailed impact of the recent re-organization is. Many of the Dynamics partners that we’re directly managed by Microsoft in FY17, will not have that same status in FY18 again. So, these partners need to find themselves a way to get another form of business support. Especially in these days of significant, disruptive changes. The general expectation is that many of these partners will explore the possibilities that the former Master VARs can offer them.

Secondly, the partners that will continue to be managed in FY18, can expect a Microsoft contact person. No longer a specialised Microsoft Dynamics contact person.


8. Dynamics 365 - the rebranding

In the weeks before Inspire 2017 started, Microsoft decided to re-brand her Dynamics 365 product line. Before we dive deeper into the What? and How?, it might be helpful to first get some context. The initial branding ideas With the introduction of Dynamics 365 at WPC 2016 last year, Microsoft expressed the ambition to turn the world of business applications upside down. After all, that world consisted for many years of separate solutions for back-office (ERP) and front-office (CRM). Dynamics 365 was, and still is, a solution intended to go far beyond that traditional breakdown. ”Reinventing Business Processes” was the title of the famous blog that Satya Nadella posted on LinkedIn on July 11th, 2016. No more giant implementations of monolithic, closed business applications. No more information silos. “This has been the dream of the industry”. Nadella used firm terms to show that Dynamics 365 is a solution from a completely different order. One that didn’t exist until that moment. But, how do you brand something that is completely new successfully in a world where your partners, customers and prospects still think and talk in the traditional way. That’s not an easy job! During DIRECTIONS EMEA 2016 in Prague we interviewed Jennifer Dorsey and Lotte Cordt Ihlemann from Corporate Marketing. They explained that Microsoft wanted to avoid the acronyms ‘ERP’ and ‘CRM’ for two main reasons. First and foremost, these terms are perceived worldwide as “poisoned” since for many people they relate to complex, costly, long lasting and often painful implementation processes. Secondly, ERP and CRM stand for data silos, separated operations and moderate cooperation. Would you agree? Which then poses the question of how best to describe this solution by staying away from all those negative associations. And by making it clear that you are offering something completely new? What is the term that comes up in your mind first when you think of a solution that combines ERP and CRM in one solution? The reaction in the market Microsoft selected Dynamics 365 as their overall brand. Underlying that with two different versions: Business Edition for the SMB market and Enterprise Edition for the larger companies. They choose the terms ‘Financials’ and ‘Operations’ basically to express the ERP domains in these two editions without using that acronym. However, that caused direct confusion in the market! After all, ‘Financials’ gives the impression that it is just ‘accounting’, where ‘Operations’ suggests that this is limited to ‘supply chain’ only. Besides, why use two different terms to express “ERP functionality”? On the CRM side a similar story – however, less controversial. Rather than using that universal three letter phrase, Microsoft decided to start using the words ‘Sales’, ‘Marketing’ and ‘Service’. Probably the biggest pain for both Microsoft and the partners was in the fact that prospects still use ‘ERP’ and ‘CRM’ as their main keywords when doing research. So, the challenge is to position Dynamics 365 as a ‘Suite’ type solution with all its benefits and at the same time attract stand-alone shoppers of ERP and CRM solutions. The new branding Effective July 1, 2017, Microsoft renamed Dynamics 365 for Operations and Dynamics 365 for Financials to achieve three goals:

• To better represent the breadth of financial and operations capabilities available in both apps• To bring consistency to the naming approach across the Dynamics 365 brand• To increase focus on the Dynamics 365 brand rather than individual app names


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reinventing-business-processes-satya-nadella

The new branding now is ‘Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition’ and ‘Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition’. So, the term ‘Financials’ is replaced by the more common term ‘Finance’. Now the two former names of the ERP parts are combined: ‘Finance and Operations’.

At Inspire, Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Business Edition and Dynamics 365 for Sales, Business Edition were referred to as the customer engagement applications. Partner reactions The new names accomplished at least one goal - they unify the brand. But in terms of impact, the choice is not setting the world on fire. Most partner reactions could best be described as disappointment. One partner asked on social media if it was a late April Fool’s joke, while others complained about a change that is even longer and more cumbersome than the current naming. The term ‘Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition’ alone is already 57 characters long including spaces. Not to mention the fact that most partners are used to adding their own solutions brand names to the generic product names. How should partners use this very long name in for example website URL’s, tweets and product descriptions? Most likely, people will soon start creating abbreviations. What would they look like, and would these contribute to a great, easy-to-remember universal brand? At Inspire, we observed that the Microsoft people had to get used to this new branding as well. Many slides still talked about ‘Financials’ and ‘Operations’. Some slides talked about ‘Financial & Operations’. Another issue is that many Microsoft employees tend to forget to indicate about which Dynamics 365 version they talk or write. Mixing up Business Edition and Enterprise Edition messages has already caused a lot of unnecessary confusion. It will probably take some time for us all to get used to this new terminology.


9. Dynamics 365 - the availability of the Business Edition

In July 2016, Microsoft launched the concept of Dynamics 365 at her Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. As a refresher, Dynamics 365 was announced to become available in two editions:

• The Business Edition for the SMB market (10 to 250 employees)• The Enterprise Edition for larger companies (250+ employees)

The Enterprise Edition consists of the former Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM with additional products like Field Service Management, Project Service and the recently announced Retail and Talent solutions. This edition was directly available in all countries and in all localisations that were already available for Dynamics AX. The Business Edition The Business Edition had a different start since it was a net new product. From the very beginning, this edition was meant to be made up of ‘Project Madeira’ on the ERP side and the new Sales and Marketing applications on the CRM side. Both apps were planned to be derived from Dynamics CRM Online and were scheduled to be launched in 2017. The ERP/Finance Function Complexity for the international roll-out of the Business Edition was and still is a fact that Microsoft, for the first time ever, will bring a fully localised “fit to finish” business solution to the market. The focal point of that localisation is in the ERP domain where we talk about finance, taxes and other specific local legislation and habits. This is what Microsoft’s Marko Perisic said about this process in our WPC 2016 interview: “Traditionally it was the partner channel who delivered this last mile to make a solution work well. Once Dynamics 365 is available in a country, while you will be able to consume additional partner IP through AppSource, you will not require any partner IP to run the solution. Well, that’s a pretty big change in our model! So, it’s not just development capacity that we need, but much more highly specialised localisation knowledge and capabilities. Where of course, these resources will differ per country.” The CRM Function When Microsoft wanted to start the delivery of the Dynamics 365 Business Edition back on November 1st 2016, there was no SMB solution for CRM available. As a workaround, partners could sell the Enterprise version of Dynamics CRM at an SMB pricing level. However, it took Microsoft some additional months before that interim solution became available. There is also confusion around the extent in which users of that interim solution can migrate easily to the final SMB solution. The initial planning When we talked to Paul White during the last WPC in Toronto in July 2016 regarding the roll-out planning for the Business Edition, he was very clear in his answers. “The solution was scheduled to become available in North America (US and Canada) from November 1st, 2016. The next step is to start in 4 European markets in calendar year 2017. The Sales and Marketing parts of Dynamics 365 Business Edition are scheduled to become available worldwide in 2017. The reason for that is that we don’t need to localise these parts” Finance & Operations At Inspire we could see that there is a delay. Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations, Business Edition was launched in the UK market in July 2017. Microsoft plans availability in Denmark and The Netherlands in Q4 of calendar year 2017. So, that makes three countries in total for 2017 and not four. Rumour has it the German localisation is far more complex than Microsoft assumed upfront. Many partners were disappointed to see that there were no formal announcements regarding the availability of Finance & Operations in additional countries in the first half of 2018. This is all still “To be Decided”.


The Sales appAdditionally, there is still no sign of the Customer Engagement applications for the Business Edition. At Inspire, Microsoft showed the slide below that says that the Sales application will become available in 11 of the most important Dynamics countries around the globe in Q4 of this calendar year. What is still unclear is whether this is limited to these 11 countries.

The Marketing appFor the Marketing application of the Business Edition, we will have to wait until the first half of calendar year 2018. The slide below shows us the 7 countries where the General Availability of the Marketing application is planned. Strangely – the UK and Canada are not on that list. That is unexpected since Canada and the UK are frontrunners for the localised Finance & Operations version. So, it has already been a long wait and, unfortunately, that wait is still not over.


Finance & Operations Sales MarketingUnited States General Available General Available Preview

Germany General Available Preview

United Kingdom General Available General Available

France General Available Preview

Canada General Available General Available

Italy General Available Preview

Spain General Available Preview

Australia General Available

Netherlands General Available General Available Preview

Denmark General Available General Available Preview

Japan General Available

Business Edition Availability 2017 Q4

Finance & Operations Sales MarketingUnited States General Available General Available General Available

Germany TBD General Available General Available

United Kingdom General Available General Available TBD

France TBD General Available General Available

Canada General Available General Available TBD

Italy TBD General Available General Available

Spain TBD General Available General Available

Australia TBD General Available TBD

Netherlands General Available General Available General Available

Denmark General Available General Available General Available

Japan TBD General Available TBD

Business Edition Availability 2018 H1

10. Different propositions for various target groups

Over the years, Microsoft has been struggling with the positioning of her Dynamics portfolio. As with all things in life, the overall positioning had its ups and downs over time. Solutions were positioned higher or lower in the markets depending on aspects like the economy, the Microsoft managers in charge and/or the positioning of the competition. With all these changes over the last 10 to 15 years, Microsoft never really succeeded in making a connection with the real low-end of the ERP and CRM markets. So why should they consider doing that now, you might think? Well, in the 15 years that Microsoft has been active in the markets of business applications, they did not really leverage their dominant market position with Office and Productivity solutions in general. We should not forget that there are over 100 million users worldwide of just Office 365. So potentially that could be a great springboard to upsell ERP- and CRM-type of solutions. Business apps for small business In the past months, Microsoft announced a series of small, ‘out-of-the-box’ point solutions, focused on small to midsized companies who work with Office 365. For example, Business Contact Manager, a CRM solution with a limited feature set specific for small businesses. BCM is an add-on for Outlook that can easily grow into a professional edition of Dynamics 365. At Inspire, three new apps were added to that list:

• Microsoft Connections – A simple-to-use email marketing service• Microsoft Listings - An easy way to publish your business information on top sites• Microsoft Invoicing - A new way to create professional invoices and get paid fast

Office 365 Business Center brings it all togetherMicrosoft also announced the new Office 365 Business center. Office 365 Business center is a central location which brings Bookings, Connections, Listings and Invoicing together allowing Office 365 customers to have easy access to their business apps and data in one place. It also comes with a unified dashboard which allows them to view key metrics from all the business apps, including total outstanding invoices, the number of appointments scheduled, the impressions across Facebook and Google and the number of new subscribers and sent campaigns. The Office 365 Business center also comes with an activity feed where customers can see the details of what’s happening within each of the apps. It also provides suggestions on what actions to take next, such as alerting them that a payment is overdue, it’s time to resend an invoice and more. Because the new business apps are built to work together, customers don’t waste their valuable time setting up connectors or transferring data manually. Office 365 Business center will be rolled out in preview to Office 365. First Release customers in the coming weeks and it will be generally available before end of calendar year 2017. All powered by Dynamics 365 The interesting thing for Dynamics partners is that these apps are using the same development platform as Dynamics 365 Business Edition. This means that those Office 365 customers that use these apps can relative easily upgrade to a professional Dynamics 365 edition once their demands grow bigger, their customers demand more and/or their organisation becomes more complex. So, you can create your future leads out of these Office 365 customers!


Catch the customer in an early stageNow that the strategy from Microsoft around business applications is becoming clearer and clearer, one thing is eminent. It is easier and more important to ‘catch’ a customer as early in their growth cycle as we can. When companies are small, they might just need a Surface with Office 365. As the organisation grows the need for more complex IT systems grows as well, and with the Microsoft stack today you can help the customer at any point! So, think twice - can you afford to have no interest in Office 365?

How to seize that opportunity?The question now is how you can get your hands on those leads? If you already have an Office 365 practice today, that question is simple to answer. If not, this might be an extra argument for you to start building an Office 365 practice. If both situations are not relevant for you, there’s always the option of starting a co-operation with other Office 365 partners. Another suggestion is to re-think and adjust your current positioning messages. Think about your website and your sales pitch. Even if you’re not interested to step in this business, your prospects will love the idea that they can start small and cheap and grow their solutions over time with the same vendor without great efforts and reinvestments.


The overall positioning In Washington, Microsoft positioned the range of her Dynamics 365 BE options like this:

It’s time for making choices! Most partners were already familiar with the difference between a volume, standardised product based approach of Dynamics 365 on the one hand and the traditional project based approach on the other hand. With the introduction of these Office 365 apps, Microsoft has now added a third category in this series. Look at the labels! Companies can start with “Out-of-the-box”, move to a more professional platform based on ‘Easy onboarding” and finally make the step to a bespoke solution based on “Extensibility”. All that on the same platform! For Microsoft partners this of course means that they must select the right solutions for the right markets and fight the right battles. It’s crucial not to forget to also design the right business model for each proposition, since they all require different sales and marketing motions.

Interesting linksLanding page on Business Apps for Office 365

The five stages of company growth and how Dynamics helps you master them


https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/07/10/new-business-apps-in-office-365-business-premium-help-you-run-and-grow-your-small-business

https://blogs.business.microsoft.com/en-gb/2015/12/09/the-five-stages-of-company-growth-and-how-dynamics-helps-you-master-them

11. Update on Finance and Operations Since the announcement of Dynamics 365 at last year’s WPC/Inspire, we have seen many name changes, product roadmaps and ideas around the availability of the platform. Even though Microsoft Inspire is not the main event for detailed Dynamics related news, we were expecting some new insights and updates. When watching the Vision Keynotes, we could see that Dynamics 365 is becoming a core product to fuel the growth of revenue, create customer loyalty and a fundamental part of enabling Digital Transformation. A topic that would be echoed in many of the sessions! During session CE120, with the long-winded but to the point title ‘Expand your business using Microsoft Dynamics 365, Business Edition: Applications strategy and roadmap’, SMB Director Kristi Hofer, explained that her team was very happy that Business Applications’ was selected as one of the 4 big bets for Microsoft for FY18 and beyond. However, that also means the adoption by partners of the Microsoft stack, since that is Microsoft’s distinctiveness. What business solution customers want. Kristi was also clear on the direction of the future solutions Microsoft will develop. The slide below gives a nice summary of that. The focus in product development will be on purpose-built applications, that are simple to try (think trials), buy (think transactions) and use (think user friendliness). Delivered by strategic partners that are willing to invest and who focus on delivering high quality in everything they do. Coupled with simple and transparent pricing and licensing. In other word: risk reduction. The slide is also very clear about what Microsoft does not strives for.

For many partners, it is almost a given to increase the number of products that they are offering to their customers. With the adoption of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition naturally comes the adoption of the Sales and Marketing apps, Office 365, PowerApps and Flow, Power BI, etc. Those partners that still haven’t made up their minds about this should now really hurry to get their strategies clear, and act.


Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations BE – the value pillarsIn our Directions EMEA 2016 business report, we had already reported on the three value pillars that underpin the marketing messages of Dynamics 365 BE. At Inspire, we saw how Microsoft further elaborated that, as shown in this slide.

Comments is this session included:

• Currently, D365 F&O BE gets a new release every single month. This means that the product can be improved very quickly

• On ‘better decisions’ – some Dynamics partners have already started building vertically focused PowerBI solutions on top of their vertical solutions

• On ‘start and grow easily’ – the function ‘configurable and extensible’ is new and works with App Designer. This function increases the flexibility and helps partners to cover the last mile to a complete solution

Interesting links The recording of this session (CE120)

Dynamics 365 July 2017 update


https://myinspire.microsoft.com/sessions?p1=eyJzcGVha2VyIjpbXSwidGltZXNsb3QiOltdLCJkYXkiOltdLCJyb29tIjpbXSwibG9jYXRpb24iOltdLCJzdGFydCI6IiIsImZpbmlzaCI6IiIsInBhZ2VudW1iZXIiOjEsImNhdGVnb3JpZXMiOnsiYXZhaWxhYmxlIHJlc291cmNlcyI6WyIxMTA1M2JlOC1lOGZiLTRjNWMtYTBjMy1hZGNkOTE2ZmU3MTYiLCIxZWFkNDZmZS03MzgwLTRlZTktOGIzNy0yZDkxMjViNjVkOTciLCIyNTI2M2FmZi1mMGE5LTRkY2ItOWU4YS0wMzE4NWEyZGEyY2QiXX0sImtleXdvcmQiOiIifQ%3D%3D


https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2017/07/10/microsoft-dynamics-365-july-2017-update

12. Update on Customer Engagement

At Inspire ‘17, we all gained some new and deeper insights in to the features of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement – the new overall name for what we used to call ‘CRM’. More specifically, the sections relating to Sales and Marketing. Here’s a high-level overview.

Dynamics 365 for Sales and Marketing BE – the value pillarsAt Inspire, Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Business Edition and Dynamics 365 for Sales, Business Edition were referred to as the customer engagement applications. The Dynamics 365 concept offers organisations the possibility to use the same platform for both Sales and Marketing. However, most companies today use different platforms with poor or no integration. Microsoft explained that these two apps can help companies to bring their sales teams or individuals and their marketing teams or individuals closer together. That’s a great need in the market since success in today’s digital world is almost impossible without a tight cooperation between these departments.

In blue at the left side of the slides you see the three core value pillars that underpin the marketing messages of the Sales and the Marketing apps.

The Sales app in the Business Edition is a limited version of the Sales app in the Enterprise Edition. Unfortunately, Microsoft did not unveil exactly what these limitations are.


Dynamics 365 Sales, Business EditionThe first question is how Dynamics 365 Sales Business Edition compares with its Enterprise Edition counterpart. Well, that is positioned in the slide below.

Some general characteristics of Dynamics 365 Sales, Business Edition are:• Simpler and more streamlined, especially for smaller businesses• A redesigned user interface, which will be available in the upcoming Enterprise version as well, in one form or

another • A new Dashboard experience (see slide below)


AutomationRemove complexity by automating processes and configuration experiences and promoting best practice

CompetitionOffer a feature set that competes against a crowded field of small business solution providers

SimplicityStreamline features and focus on intuitive, simple user experiences

Dynamics 365 Sales, Business edition

+Dynamics 365 Office 365

Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition

Dynamics 365 Business edition

Better TogetherLeverage Office 365, and promote One Microsoft story

• And, a responsive design, providing a cross-platform app!

All very promising, but the real potential jewel is the Dynamics 365 Marketing app.


New dashboard experiences

Providing sales reps and managers with useful and important information at a glance

Responsive Design

Dynamics 365 Marketing, Business EditionWe talk about a marketing application in the Business Edition. But how is that possible as there is no marketing application available in the Enterprise Edition? Here’s an attempt to explain this, starting in the recent history. Originally, Dynamics CRM had a marketing application for larger organizations called Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM). That was a full and comprehensive suite to handle enterprise marketing campaigning. With the move to Dynamics 365 however, this version would and could not scale as was anticipated. Honestly, most SMB companies (as well as some enterprises) preferred to use ClickDimensions. Or even (multiple) separate solutions. On top of that there was the social media challenge. How to best include these channels in your marketing strategy? Even ClickDimensions failed to fulfill that need. For certain, MDM didn’t reach that bar. So, Microsoft advised enterprise organisations to use the Adobe Marketing Suite because of their strategic partnership with that company. In turn, Adobe moved a significant portion of their online infrastructure over to Microsoft Azure. Deal done! So here we are. Question - Is Adobe the best of all choices? Well, for enterprise customers it’s certainly a solid choice, but for SMB companies it’s not! Now what do we do in the SMB markets? Well, we struggle that’s for sure. We use a range of solutions such as Mailchimp, HubSpot, EventBrite and merge that with a bit of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. We need to do something and the old CRM solution is not helping here. Or is it? Well, with the upcoming Dynamics 365 Marketing Edition it will! Marketing will hold tons of new functionality to handle the modern statement that ‘Marketing is the new sales’. These are the key functional areas that Microsoft presented:


SERVICES

LEAD MANAGEMENT

MULTICHANNEL CAMPAIGNS

EVENT MANAGEMENT

EMAIL MARKETING

REPORTS & DASHBOARDS

MARKETING PAGES & FORMS

Customer Insights Marketing Services Other Services

Functional Areas and Services

You can do lead scoring, multichannel campaigning, and use all the customer insights already in CRM. Email marketing is incredibly easy, with a template gallery and a WYSIWYG editor. You also get a very, complete event management solution in the package (which originally was in MDM).


Easy Email Marketing at ScaleRich template gallery for easy setup

Drag/drop block, HTML editors

In place preview

Inbox preview via Litmus

Embedded analytics

Heatmap, geo-map

Multichannel Campaigns Made Simple

Simple drag and drop design

View edit marketing content in place

Embedded content designers

Event driven automation

Easy visualization of journeys

In place insights

The Enterprise versus the Business EditionMicrosoft has still not finally decided about this, but there will be limitations within the Business versions as opposed to the Enterprise ones.

The general expectation is that these restrictions will be much criticised once available. So, we have to see how this eventually will work out.


Business Edition Restrictions

Capability

Number of Custom Entities#

Workflows*

Number of accounts

Number of Apps from appsource that BE customer can add

# Third party apps are restricted to use only those standard entities which are used by the first party app that the customer has licensed (e.g. Dynamics 365 for Sales BE, Dynamics 365 for Marketing BE). The same restriction also applies to solutions built in house by customers.

# Customers can create their own new custom entities within limits of # of entities

* Custom entities and workflows used by standard apps do not count against the customization limits that the Business Edition org is entitled to.

Unified Service Desk is not available to Business Edition customers.

Outlook client is not available either

13. The first partner experiences with Dynamics 365 BE An interesting session at Inspire was the Dynamics 365 partner panel. Three US and Canada based partners sat together on the stage, talking about their first experiences in marketing, selling, implementing and servicing Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Edition. The full one hour session was meant to have many Dynamics partners in the room (a lot of them coming from Europe!) asking practical questions. So, this chapter is a summary of all those questions, the discussions, the answers and, of course, the main learnings. The line-up This was the line-up of the partners:

• InterDyn Artis (www.interdynartis.com), a Dynamics ERP and CRM partner since 1998. Sold 10 new D365 licenses

• Bond Consulting Services (www.bondconsultingservices.com), a Dynamics GP partner since 1999, who added Dynamics CRM in 2009. Sold 5 new D365 licenses

• Quartet Service (www.quartetservice.com), a former Office 365 partner. Sold 50 new D365 licenses, of which 5 for Finance and Operations.

What have these partners learned? Out of all these conversations, we have selected the most important observations, successes, failures, answers and advices: On mindset

• “We’ve seen the turnaround in the market from resistance against cloud to resistance against on-premise in less than 18 months”

On sales and marketing

• “We take maximum advantage of the strong Microsoft marketing power”• “Many D365 leads eventually end up as leads for NAV, GP, CRM and/or PowerBI” • “We focus on disqualification rather than on qualification! A good qualification question is whether or not the

prospect already uses Office 365” • “Compared to our traditional Dynamics project business, the win-rate in Dynamics 365 is lower due to the large

volumes of leads on the one hand and our ruthless qualification process on the other hand”• “The product demonstrations are just high-level and they are performed by our sales people to save cost”• “We do all we can to standardise and shorten sales cycles in order to lower our sales cost”• “The most popular USPs for D365 are single sign-on, the Outlook connector, the integration and the low price”

On implementation • “As a start, we have implemented Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations internally. That was great learning

for all of us! • “Most implementations are delivered remotely. We have only done the implementations onsite when the

customer was located nearby”• “We offer our implementation services in three packages – think bronze, silver and gold”• “For the implementation, we offer 20 to 40 hours fixed price, based on a tight plan with a clear task allocation” • “The majority of our customers comes from the low-end of the market. These people expect self-service and it’s

hard to sell implementation time to them” • “Our implementations are often done by one single resource. Most of the time that is a consultant who also

takes care of the project management”• “Several of our new customers did the implementation themselves”


http://www.interdynartis.com

http://www.bondconsultingservices.com)

http://www.quartetservice.com

On ordering and billing• “We have added a credit card facility to our website to streamline the ordering and payment processes.

We call it the ‘Netflix experience’ and customers seem to like it” • “We’ve created template documents for the ordering that can be completed by the customers themselves”

General observations• Most of these partners have no special focus on a specific vertical market yet. One partner reacted with

“but we do both ERP and CRM”. Another partner said, “it’s important to know and understand AppSource very well”

• The average number of users for the ERP domain is around 10. Most of these partners add the number of users of Financials, CRM and PowerBI for one together. The number of users in the average CRM deals seem to be higher than in the ERP domain.

• Unfortunately, there was not enough time to ask them what prevented them offering and selling to bigger companies with more users

• All these partners use younger, cheaper employees compared to the ones in their traditional activity. Often people who recently left college or university.

• All partners express the implementation time in hours, not in days • On the average, the websites of these partners look up to date. It may be a good idea for partners to spend

some time to study those websites and get inspired by both the good, the bad and the ugly. • Initially, Microsoft had some 50 partners from US and Canada in their early adopter program. Most of them

were mainly interested in the D365 Sales and Marketing apps. These partners used the Dynamics Learning Portal for the functional and technical training. During the early adopter process, a considerable number of these 50 partners decide to opt out.

• Microsoft didn’t want to share with the audience what the total number of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations customers was.


14. Dynamics NAV - what’s new and next?

Inspire is a massive event with over 17,000 attendees and an enormous content offering. The event literally offers over 500 different parallel sessions, demos, discussion groups and round-tables. However, there was only one (1) session dedicated to the Dynamics NAV, GP and SL product lines. Much fewer than ever before. This session was facilitated in a fairly small room, that was completely overbooked. All seats and pitches were occupied 15 minutes before the start of the session, leaving a long line of unlucky partners outside. Many partners felt that this non-verbal communication was symbolic since everybody understands that Dynamics 365 is the way to go! Microsoft started the session by summarising the importance of these three product lines, that they all together represent some 200,000 small and midsized companies worldwide. A customer base that big, that many competitive vendors would commit a crime to get acquire. These were the most important aspects from this session:

• Microsoft reconfirmed that both NAV, GP and SL will continue to be further developed, updated and supported• For all these solutions, Microsoft showed the well-known roadmap overview slides that predict ongoing

development until 2019 and beyond • Microsoft decided to decrease the pace of new versions of Dynamics GP from 6 months back to 12 months

due to complaints from both partners and end-users. An interesting move in a cloud first world that moves completely in the other direction!

• The next version of Dynamics NAV has the codename ‘Tenerife’ and is expected to be launched at the Directions events this fall

• Reconfirmation that Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition share the same code base

• The Microsoft development teams have made a start with an agile development approach. Partners were advised to do the same

• Advice to focus on PowerApps, Power Flows and PowerBI – also known as the ‘Power Suite’• PowerBI was positioned as the real game changer. Underpinning that message, Microsoft shared the insight

that poor reporting facilities is the number one reason why Dynamics GP customers leave that platform • All the three development teams for NAV, GP and SL are now part of one R&D group, headed by Marko Perisic• Microsoft showed the audience a list of 42 API’s, that are available for partners. More API’s are expected to

become available soon• Much time was spent on the new development environment. The goal is to make that attractive for new

and young developers. The interesting question about what that new environment means for the existing developers - was not discussed

• Remarkable - nothing was said about the upgrade or migration path for existing NAV/GP/SL customers to Dynamics 365. Same story about the future of GP and SL partners

• The presentation ended with these three key takeaways:

1. Huge opportunity for ERP in SMB2. Ongoing commitment for existing products3. Significant investment in enabling partners


15. Industry Focused. Partner Powered! - Specialisation rediscovered

It was at the Worldwide Partner Conference in 2004 when Microsoft worldwide introduced the concept of specialisation – often expressed as verticalisation. Until that moment, Dynamics partners operated in the market as allrounders. Using the – by that time - unique flexibility of the Dynamics solutions to automate various business processes in different sectors and industries. Customisations were developed, implemented and supported and maintained in the long-term on a 1-on-1 basis. Based on huge services efforts, high complexity and a quality level that did not always meet the expectation levels. As you can read in the exclusive interview with Jeff Edwards, specialisation has penetrated broadly in the Dynamics partner channel over the last 13 years. Today, many partners have embraced the 1-to-many model. Meaning that they develop IP for a group of similar companies once, that they sell, implement and support many times. Often cross-borders. However - there are substantial regional differences in the acceptance of this strategy, as Edwards explains. On top of that we can see that ERP partners are on average far more specialised than their peers in the CRM partner channel worldwide. So, there is still a substantial part of the channel that have not bought in to the specialisation message yet! At Inspire, Microsoft made a bold move into industries and specialisation. In the keynote session on day 2 Toni Tunes-Whitley, CVP Industry was on stage. In our observation, this is the first time in many years that Microsoft had a Corporate Vice-President for Industry specialisation. However, we know for sure it was the first time in those 13 years that the person responsible for Industries had airtime on the main stage at WPC/Inspire. Toni started with this quote: “To understand a customer, you need to understand their industry!” She also introduced the one-liner ‘Industry focused. Partner powered!’


The key industries Microsoft is focusing their marketing initiatives and sales force around the 7 key industries shown in the slide below:

Of course, there are many more industries out there. And many Dynamics partners are active in industries that don’t belong to these seven. Two remarks on that:

1. the local subsidiaries are free to create their own policies around the specific industries they want to support. We have already seen examples of subs that selected a larger number of industries.

2. Even if a partners’ industry or specialisation area is not in the list of your subsidiary, they can still benefit from the investments that Microsoft will make in mindset, structures and generic content.

Big change for Microsoft For Microsoft this is a huge change, since all their messaging and customer communication so far has been centered around workloads and products. For Dynamics Partners this is fantastic news. It documents that Dynamics is one of the key investment areas - not only from the product development side, but also from the marketing investment side. We can expect that Microsoft will create customer demand for Dynamics 365 and provide scenarios and value propositions that partners can pick up and integrate to generate more leads and more cross sell opportunities. Good news for Dynamics partners! So, the Microsoft sales teams will be organised around these industries and so will their marketing. For most Microsoft Dynamics partners, this is extremely good news since most of these partners already have some sort of industry focus. However, for those partners that have not specialised or verticalised yet, the message is to make haste in order not to be left behind!

Interesting linksKeynote presentation on Industry focused. Partner powered (15 minutes)


https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/assets/2017/07/28/21/22/743301

16. The Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the future

If we were asked to use one word to encapsulate all the Microsoft messages to the partner community at Inspire 2017, without any doubt that word would be ‘change’. In retrospect – this was not the first partner event where change and transformation are the red wires. Clearly, Microsoft finds itself in a massive transformation process. That process only further accelerated when Satya Nadella came at the helm. But the key question here is how the Microsoft partners are doing in this transformation. Is your company on the right path? Or even going at the right pace? The second important Microsoft message after change is that partners should be eager to implement a full stack of solutions, instead of a single category product. As a direct consequence, Microsoft expects from her partners to invest in adding more workloads to their portfolio or cooperate with other specialised partners to do so. Again, the question is how far your company is with that? You should start adding those workloads that are most relevant for your industry. But crucially, and sorry for asking, do you have the ability to act fast enough to change? The pillars of partner success Just like at WPC 2016 , Microsoft repeated the messages around the 4 pillars of a successful modern Microsoft partner practice:

• Differentiate to stand out – so that is specialisation/verticalisation inclusive building a repeatable IP practice • Modernize Sales to Marketing – this is Marketing as the new sales • Optimize your Operation – think professional, fast and high-quality delivery and support• Deliver Customer Lifetime Value – as in creating a ‘sticky’ environment where partners focus on an ongoing happy

customer who buys more of the total Microsoft stack and stays loyal

Partner of the futureWithout any doubt, the successful Microsoft Dynamics partner of the future differs from where most of the Dynamics partners are today. This may not come as a surprise to anyone, but it’s interesting to highlight a few of the most important changes that Dynamics partners should consider:

• Offering more/all of the Microsoft stack instead of single category products. Either direct or in cooperation with other specialised partners

• Selling and delivering less ‘low value services’ like for example the integration between ERP and CRM, complex and long-lasting upgrades, extensive customisations on CRM- and ERP-related functions that for end-customers doesn’t make the difference at the end of the day

• Instead of delivering lots of these traditional services, excel at delivering all kind of new and innovative services that can help customers to survive in today’s disruptive world. Or even better: become the disruptive force themselves! Think about services around products like PowerBI, IoT, machine learning and Cortana Intelligence

• Using tools like Dynasource (www.dynasource.com) to source their projects with professionals who are competent in all these different technologies

• Offering services to help prospects and customers in changing their processes and even their mindsets The slide below shows the variety of services that Microsoft envisions for the partner of the future.


http://www.dynasource.com

Partner programs Tony de Freitas, Microsoft Director for Business Development, Channel Sales and Marketing, presented three important programs to help partners get ready for all the changes:

• Cloud SureStep• ISV Development Centers • ISV Cloud embed

De Freitas told his audience that Microsoft will raise the bar when it comes to quality demand. “It’s not just about the numbers, but also about the quality behind those numbers”, he stated. Microsoft will make some changes in the domain of competencies as well. Partners can expect that the well- known ERP and CRM competencies will merge into the new ‘Cloud business applications competency’. Another important point for partners is Internal User Rights (IUR). De Freitas said that the IUR’s for Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition are not for free. Gold and silver partners will get a 50 percent discount on the subscription price. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything on IUR’s for D365 BE. Microsoft Dynamics partner incentives Always worth considering when building your plans for changing and/or for setting up new business models is to know what the partner incentives look like. The Microsoft messages were crystal clear when it comes to rewarding the traditional on-premise licenses – these fees will be further reduced over time. In contrast to that, Microsoft promised continued investment in cloud incentives. Those partners that were not sure yet about transforming their businesses to the cloud world shortly might see this as an extra motivator to do so.


Vertical industry solutions

Change management

Digital Experiences

Connected services design

Business model centricity

Eco-system orchestration

Business insightsthrough analytics

Continuous value-based portfolio

Functional expertise

Finally, these are the Go Do’s for Dynamics partners

Interesting links LinkedIn profile Tony de Freitas

Video recording of session The Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Future (select ‘CE108’)


Online

• Continued investment in Cloud incentives• Shift towards Active Usage

• Eligibility simplification & alignment• Reduction of On Premise fees

Licensing: CSPIncentive: CSP Direct Partner, Indirect Reseller, Indirect Provider Incentive: 8% Discount: UO/BE 30% Discount: CE/BE/TM 25%

Resellers

Licensing: EAIncentive: OSU 10% on Rate Card values

Active usage

Licensing: EA/Web Direct Incentive: OSA Sell Sell-New: UO 65%, CE 26% Sell-Transition: 0% - 6%

Sold seats

On-premise

Licensing: EA, Select, OpenIncentive: CSA

Licensing: Dynamics Price List (DPL)Incentive: SPA

Incentive on new licenses

Discounts

LICENSING & INCENTIVE PROGRAM OPPORTUNITY

Licenses: 20 – 50% Enhancement Renewals: 10 – 22%

CRM: 12% UO: 25%

Go tomarket

Customer successExpertise EconomicsInnovation

Evolve operating model

Create services value across

customer lifecycle

Amplify your GTM

Establish brand leadership through

Industry focus

Take advantage of your program

benefits

Leverage THE programs

Build value on the platform

Deliver rich Business apps through IP

programs

Adopt innovation

Build capability and expand expertise through readiness

aka.ms/mpnaka.ms/appsource

aka.ms/isvresourcehub

aka.ms/dynamics365aka.ms/surestep

Partnercenter.Microsoft.com Dynamics Learning Portal

MPN Learning Paths

aka.ms/appsource

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonydefreitas/


17. What’s new in CSP?

To be successful in a Cloud First, Mobile First world, Microsoft and her partners needed not just other solutions and marketing policies, but also modernized licensing policies. That’s why Microsoft came up with the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program in the fall of 2015. It is Microsoft’s attempt to streamline the current complex multiple license models they have today. During Inspire 2017, no less than 42 sessions were CSP-related! That’s around 6 percent of the total number of sessions delivered, which gives a nice indication of the growing importance of this program. The CSP program has been set up to help partners adapt and evolve their businesses, so that they can own and manage the end-to-end relationship with their clients. While still leveraging the products that are known, wanted and needed by small business owners. In Microsoft’s words: the CSP program can help partners drive stronger customer relationships and engagements, increase their profitability and streamline their revenue and growth for years to come. For who and why? CSP is the way for partners to resell Microsoft products by working with Microsoft directly, or going through a trusted partner that is already a member of the CSP program. These two options are called Direct CSP (aka Tier 1) and Indirect CSP (aka Tier 2), but allows partners to own the billing process, and therefore owning and maintaining the customer (trusted) relationship. Microsoft does not care about how you transact, as both scenarios will give partners visibility in the revenue reports. However, the direct model can have a huge impact on your day-to-day business! Today, the program allows you to transact in 248 different countries with the following SKU’s (more to be expected): Office 365, Azure, Intune, EMS, Dynamics 365, Windows with VDA, Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business.


The value of CSP for Dynamics partnersCSP affords partners a unique capability to upsell and create new revenue streams within their customer base. Partners who have not looked at CSP and its capabilities yet, should definitely take advantage of this opportunity to transform their business. Via CSP they can easily develop Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR, the corner stone of a healthy cloud business) or add more recurring revenue by offering value-added services such as business (cloud) consulting, integration (cloud) work or app development. Partners should not forget about the managed services they can offer their clients under CSP, such as support and deployment. Because most of the potential customers already know Office and need it to run their business, partners can use this as an entry point to upsell their services. This makes the strategy simple: Go in, get the client talking and sell Office 365 as a starter; then build a relationship based on trust. Now the door is open to upsell to any other services, whether they’re your own or third-party products. CSP roadmap and investments As CSP is here to stay, what can partners expect in the near future from Microsoft around CSP and what impact will this have for a partner? Certifications Starting July 1st 2017, the following requirements will be added for CSP partners wishing to transact using Dynamics SKUs. Operations partners and Customer Engagement partners must have a minimum of 2 people certified from the currently accepted exams for the product they wish to transact on. However, Microsoft has recognized the challenge to get this done. Therefore, they will provide partners a 4-month grace period, to become compliant. Currently, the above requirements only apply to the Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition but we can expect additional requirements for the Dynamics 365 Business Edition as well! Microsoft support mandatory Starting July 1st 2017, all Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Enterprise Edition partners who want to transact licenses via CSP must maintain a Microsoft Dynamics Advanced Support for Partner plan (ASfP) or higher Microsoft plan. CSP promotions In the recent past, some of the CSP promos were only eligible for local Microsoft partners listed on the MPL (Microsoft Partner Listed). Starting July 1st 2017, Microsoft has made this available to all CSP partners transacting CSP. Direct and Indirect will receive the same promos and kickbacks. To receive these, partners need to be registered on Microsoft Partner Network (Network, Action pack or Competence). What else to expect? The changes above have definitive completion dates which were clearly communicated to the partners during the Inspire 2017 event. On top of that, Microsoft also announced some new key initiatives;

• ISVs in CSP• Support for multi-tenancy and tenant admin rights• Global Authorisation – single contract/invoice

Unfortunately, Microsoft did not release many details around these initiatives explaining what this all means for partners. At QBS, we will be watching the Yammer and Microsoft news threads intently. As soon as we have more details, we will inform our partner community regarding the impact and business opportunities they will bring.


Advice for partnersPartners should embrace this change, seize the opportunity and not be afraid to select the best possible CSP scenario. After all, it will not matter for Microsoft.

Partners who are completely new to CSP: 1. Sign up for CSP on the Microsoft website2. Understand how CSP fits in amongst other licensing options you are using today3. Develop your unique differentiation as a value-added partner

All of the above mentioned points, QBS can support in this journey and provide advice around the best CSP fit.Partners who are familiar with CSP and have already made a choice to transact as direct or indirect:

1. Grow - as you gain visibility and success, ramp up your cloud efforts accordingly. Don’t stay in one place. Make sure you can always keep growing and answer more prospects requests. Staying in one spot won’t help your business.

2. Optimise, analyse what you did, where you failed, and most importantly where you succeeded. What did you do right? What are other partners doing - good or bad? Double down and extend your lead on other solution providers who are still trying to figure out their cloud game plan.

3. Focus, ask yourself “are we doing the right things?” and “should CSP admin work be a part of our core business?” and “will this generate more business and higher profit?

Finally, Microsoft released an IDC eBook at the Inspire event, titled “Partner Choice for Cloud Success - What IT solution providers need to know about the value of Microsoft’s CSP Licensing Program and the Choice of Relationship Models”. We see this eBook as a must read for all partners who are new to CSP and as a good CSP reference.

Interesting links

The CSP landing page eBook “Partner Choice for Cloud Success”


partner tenant switch (billing date reset)

Sell anything to anyone (including partners themselves) in any market with any supported currency with unified experience

https://app.clickdimensions.com/blob/qbsgroupcom-arzmb/files/idcebook-partnerchoiceforcloudsuccess.pdf

https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/cloud-solution-provider

https://app.clickdimensions.com/blob/qbsgroupcom-arzmb/files/idcebook-partnerchoiceforcloudsuccess.pdf

https://assets.microsoft.com/IDC-partner-choice-for-cloud-success.pdf

42| REPORT Inspire 2017 © PARTNERMASTERCLASS, AFFILIATE OF QBS GROUP

Exclusive interview with Marko Perisic

“Every investment made in Dynamics NAV is a 100

percent investment in Dynamics 365 Finance

and Operations, Business Edition and vice-versa”

Marko Perisic is the General Manager for Microsoft Dynamics SMB. In this role, he is responsible for the product strategy and product development of all Dynamics SMB products, including Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Edition and Dynamics NAV. We met Marko in Washington DC for an exclusive interview. The main topics for this conversation were of course the status and plans around Dynamics 365, the localised availability of the solution, the learnings from the first few launches and the development of IP for micro-vertical markets.

“Every investment made in Dynamics NAV is a 100 percent investment in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business Edition and vice-versa”

Marko, what is your overall feeling about Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Edition? “We are in a great place today. The markets have reacted positively and a growing number of Dynamics partners have embraced the change. They have adopted our innovative new products and implemented a cloud-based business model, which is great. Also, the upgrade cycles are faster today. In terms of the products: we have managed to maintain the same code base between Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business Edition (hereafter D365 F&O BE) and Dynamics NAV. This will remain the situation going forward. Although this is a more technical statement, it is also a very important and strong strategic statement! This should put both customers and partners at ease, since it means that any investment made in NAV is a 100 percent investment in D365 F&O BE and vice-versa. That’s a great thing and everybody should know and understand this. We’ve seen a lot of consternation recently on these two products being different. While they currently are, people should feel at ease knowing that now the products will have the same codebase. In terms of the business: we had another great year with Dynamics NAV. D365 F&O BE is accelerating now with deals larger than expected. Often these deals are focused strongly on verticals and delivered in a super simplified and ‘SaaS-ified’ way. We also see a strong pipeline for D365 F&O BE. This is even before all the improvements to the products that we will announce at the DIRECTIONS events later this year. All in all, I’m very pleased with where we are today and excited about where we’re going.” What is the status of localisations for D365 F&O, BE? At the DIRECTIONS conferences this fall, we will communicate these plans in detail. It means that every single Dynamics partner in the world - be it NAV, GP, SL or Dynamics 365 - of every partner type in the channel – be it VAR, SI or ISV - in all geographies of the world will get clear guidance on what they need to do to participate in Dynamics 365. These events take place in Orlando from September 17-20 for the US partners and in Madrid for the EMEA partners from 4-6 October 2017. I strongly recommend every Dynamics partner to attend these conferences.”

What are the most important things learned from the launch of D365 F&O BE? “First, D365 F&O BE today is a subset of Dynamics NAV functionalities. Having said that, we see that partners need to have a different Go-to-Market to be successful with D365 F&O BE. That should be no surprise since we have communicated this message to our partners from the beginning. Nevertheless, there are still partners who try to sell this D365 cloud solution in a traditional, ‘on-premise way’. These partners have not been very successful. This product is designed for either digital self-nurtured adoption or for building micro-vertical solutions. This can help partners to adapt their marketing and sales motions and keep their cost of sales under control. On the other hand, there will always be opportunities to sell projects to companies that are more complex, and probably bigger, that still want customisations and accept longer implementation cycles. That is why we are making significant changes in the D365 F&O BE product to support the full functionality of NAV and customizations, to support the project based business model, in addition to self-nurtured adoption and micro-verticals.” How important is verticalisation to become a successful Dynamics 365 partner? “I have always believed that micro-verticalisation is a long-term strategy for growth. The partners that have embraced that approach have incredible success. However, many partners still believe that going horizontal or broad will bring them more success. They assume that this will convert into a larger number of deals. But the reality is the opposite. Without differentiation, the cost of sale is much higher and the conversion ratio much lower. Partners that specialise speak the customers’ language. The top of their funnel is smaller indeed, but in return they have a lower cost of sale and a much better conversion. As a result, their business is more profitable. So, partners should not compete based on their general capabilities, but on their specialised vertical expertise.”


What is your opinion on developing vertical IP for Dynamics 365? And how can partners make their investments profitable, especially in smaller countries and regions? “The minute you start talking about developing new vertical solutions, many people think about big, multi-year R&D investments that take many years with hardly any return. We should challenge that assumption. I’m talking about building apps for micro-vertical markets based on an incremental investment approach. Partners can start fast and serve a market quickly. From there on iterate and improve. Of course, a partner might then not have all the ‘bells and whistles’ that their competition has, who have already operated in that specific market for over 10 years. They will likely lose the function & feature battle; but partners can disrupt those markets with new capabilities like Office 365 integration, Power BI, Flow and Cortana Intelligence, as long as they have minimum viable required functionality. So, offering the Microsoft stack is the way to get a position in micro-vertical markets. Let’s not forget that most of the competitive micro-vertical solutions are technologically outdated. ”It’s time to change our minds on vertical solution development.” In your opinion, what is the impact of the reorganisation on the Dynamics partner channel? “This reorganisation is absolutely the right thing to do. Finally, we have separated the product from the segments. If we want to sell to a prospect in a segment now, we want to sell as One Microsoft. Our sales people are no longer compensated exclusively on product sales, but on the consumption of the whole Microsoft stack and on customer success. Which is absolutely the right thing. The impact on D365 BE is that it pulls in D365 BE in that motion, which is great. Of course, it will take some time before this all settles down in all the geographies, so I want to ask our partners for some patience.”

What is the impact of Paul White’s decision to leave Microsoft? “My relationship with Paul was very good and I’m still in touch with him. Paul’s leaving is part of marketing reorganisation since we organise no longer by segments but by function. Within these functions, there are multiple people focused on the SMB segments and on the BE segment. But not in this single person role anymore. As a result, Paul’s role is divided over several other people. In terms of Paul himself - he had opportunities to stay on board. However, that would have required even more travelling from the UK to the US and he wasn’t prepared to do that. That’s the reason why he started to look for opportunities outside of Microsoft. We now have a new leadership team with Alysa Taylor which is fantastic. All top of class from all over the world, who are focusing on making this business successful.” In your opinion, what technologies should partners invest their money? “We use many different products and technologies in D365 BE. Some are more micro opportunities where others can have a broader impact. The combination of PowerApps,

Flow and PowerBI, helps partners to really differentiate themselves from others. Partners tell us that PowerBI often makes the difference in product demonstrations because the prospect gets it immediately. There is a similar story for Flow as a workflow configuration engine. Sometimes it’s even easier to lead with those than with the ERP conversation. I think that these products are absolutely the stars in the show and where partners should put their

money. The other one is of course Office 365. Showing the Office 365 Outlook integration in demonstrations with email shows that Dynamics is really part of the powerful Microsoft stack. It’s a powerful thing since it solves the key issues customers are facing every single day. I believe that partners who don’t demo with Office 365 and fail to show the value of PowerApps, Flow and PowerBI are going to be at a disadvantage over other Dynamics partners. Beyond that, there’s a lot of different technologies in Microsoft like Azure cognitive services, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. But I don’t think these are the areas where Dynamics SMB partners should put their focus on right now.” We are making sure we embed those technologies within the Dynamics 365 stack.”


It’s time to change our minds on

vertical solution development.”

Every now and then there are rumours about Microsoft going to sell direct. What are the current thoughts around selling Dynamics 365 directly? “I want to make one thing very clear: this business has been successful and will be successful with our partners. This business cannot be successful without our partners. Local partners have far more knowledge about individual prospects and customers than we as Microsoft will ever have. We absolutely have no intention of displacing our partner channel to go direct to customers with Dynamics NAV and D365 BE. Having said that, we do want to truly live with the Build-with, Go-to-Market and Sell-with motions that Ron Huddleston talked about in his keynote. We do want to have a close relationship with partners and customers as we build solutions with them. We want to have a close relationship within the markets where we market into via the partners. When we sell, we want to have a close relationship with the customer that we sell to via the partners. The fact that we will build capabilities into our sales teams to reach out to customers directly, doesn’t mean we’re going to do that without partners.” Are there any new or other Microsoft programs you want partners to focus on? “What we are trying to do, is not to introduce more programs but consolidate the number of programs. All programs are good, no doubt about that. But there are simply too many programs and too often they are siloed! The reorganisation and the introduction of One Commercial Partner must provide programs with more focus and they have to be long-term programs.”

About Dynamics NAV – are there plans to improve the communication to the market, like providing a roadmap and better website content? “We see a very exciting future for Dynamics NAV. We will have very exciting announcements for NAV that we will do at the two DIRECTIONS events. Our teams are working very hard on this as we speak. This, of course, should be an extra reason for partners to visit DIRECTIONS.“ What are the final Go Do’s that you would like to advise to Dynamics partners? “My first advice is to come to the DIRECTIONS events this fall in Orlando and Madrid. We will make new major announcements for both NAV and Dynamics 365 and their future. For every Dynamics partner who takes his or her business seriously, these events are really Must Attend events. Secondly, I would like partners to recognise that there are multiple business scenarios available today. Both in technology, products and propositions as in Go-to-Market strategies, like digital and micro-verticals. In the recent past, partners had just one product and one Go-to-Market. It will be beneficial for all of us if partners would take the time to consider and investigate all the various possibilities before taking their strategic decisions. Of course, they can continue to do what they have always been doing. But there are also significant market opportunities in other directions that are worth considering.”

Interesting linksLinkedin Profile Marko Perisic


https://www.linkedin.com/in/markoperisic/

Exclusive interview with Jeff Edwards

“If you’re an ERP partner not selling

CRM, and not having

a focus on verticals in

2018 – I don’t know what

you’re doing”

At Inspire 2017, we had an interview with Jeff Edwards. Jeff has been working for Microsoft since 2000 and has been the Director for ERP Channel Strategy and Programs since 2007. We talked about the partner transformation process which has happened over the years. Then we discussed the positive changes, and current challenges for both partners and Microsoft. Lastly of course, we also asked him for his best advice for you as a Dynamics partner going forward.

Jeff Edwards: “If you’re an ERP partner not selling CRM, and not having a focus on verticals in 2018 – I don’t know what you’re doing”

Jeff, what are your observations around the partner transformation process in the SMB market? “Well, let me start with the positives and cover the challenges afterwards. First of all, our best SMB partners have really embraced the Microsoft stack. They’re no longer single category ERP or CRM partners since they also implement solutions like Office 365 and CRM. And they offer Power BI, creating dashboards for their clients. The introduction of Dynamics 365 Business Edition will further increase that number of partners due to the attractive pricing and the smart packaging. The NAV partners who are not broadening their portfolio will be at risk – both for new business and their existing customer base. A year from now, if you’re an ERP partner not selling CRM – I don’t know what you’re doing.” So, can you tell us more about the second positive? “My second positive observation in the transformation, is the degree of specialisation or verticalisation. Today’s prospective customers are not interested in conversations with partners that start with “so tell me, what does your business look like? What are your problems? What do you want to achieve?” And then build, support and update that bespoke solution. I don’t think people are willing to pay for that anymore. Besides, it’s often too complicated, takes too much time and the risks are too high, with never-ending costs of keeping up with new releases. Companies like Forrester and Gartner confirm that the market wants as much out of the box as possible. If you really want to do a customization, it should only be because of a specific competitive advantage. Not because “we do things different”. The customization should have a specific customer benefit.”

So, that’s a big change for a partner! Basically, they must move away from expensive sales and pre-sales processes and employees. The ones with long RFIs, several product demonstrations and multiple Proof of Concepts to win a random new customer based on customization skills at a discounted price. They also should move away from one-off customizations and intensive consultancy projects, towards repeatable vertical products, improved digital demand generation and product marketing to become successful in their selected markets. Also, the owner of this future-proof partner need to have a different skill-set.

I’ve seen 12 years of nominations for our Dynamics partner awards. Over time, these nominations have become so much better and vertically precise. Our best partners have made huge progress in both business knowledge and business outcomes. A significant majority of the partners that do 80 percent of our business is fully verticalised. The top 20 percent of our total channel has made astounding progress. The next 30 percent is doing okay. We also see some differences in regions and solutions.

In Europe 50 to 60 percent is fully verticalised. But the partners in the North of Europe are doing better than the ones in the South. Whereas US partners are still less specialised than partners in Europe. CRM partners all over the world are still less specialised than their ERP colleagues, but they reform fast! When it comes to IP, you don’t have to build it all by yourself. AppSource will be very helpful in this process. Partners should definitely consider combining their own IP with IP from ISVs.” And finally, your third positive aspect. Which one is that? “My third and last positive is the cloud acceptance all over the partner channel. I see a complete mental acceptance of the cloud today. However, reality is that in many countries or regions the infrastructure is not always sufficient. We see that the lead time of the transformation of our own business to cloud gets shorter all the time. To illustrate that; I think Microsoft announced CRM Online in 2009. It took us about 6 years before the cloud license revenue surpassed the on-premise license revenue. With Dynamics AX that transition time was two years. I expect that we will reach that turning point with NAV within 24 months.”

Partners should definitely consider combining their own IP

with IP from ISVs



So that brings us to the challenges. Which are the most important ones that you see? “Challenge number one is the switch from customized projects to standardised products. Partners aren’t doing a great job at that. The critical part probably is that it needs a different set of skills in terms of product management, release cycles, document and test. Plus, the discipline that needs to come with that. Many partners have yet to take steps in this area. My second challenge observation is the switch from a sales motion to a marketing motion. I think that we all have bought into the idea of this new buying behavior based on anonymous research. Yet, most partners are still poor at marketing. Many partners have been hiring marketing people recently, but rarely of the right level. Most of these new hires are young and have limited experience. Partners should focus on senior marketers and should give this person a seat in their leadership teams. Just like they do with their sales manager. Our top partners already do this, like Power Objects, Socius and LS Retail, but that’s only something like 10 percent of the channel. That’s a disappointing amount. Partners that don’t improve their marketing will continue to be relatively ineffective in their sales at a way too high sales cost. The third challenge is the expansion of the footprint of partner solutions. As I said before - our top partners have embraced the Microsoft stack, but for the total channel, the progress is at too slow a pace. As a result, partners will miss deals,especially if they plan to be successful with Dynamics 365. A solution like Office 365 won’t bring a partner a lot of money but in return it delivers account control. Do you want to be the IT strategy and solution provider for your customers? Then you simply need to offer the most important parts of the full stack. Either direct or as a white-labeled service via partners. I see sort of an end-point in this cloud SMB business where partners are deep solution providers - micro-vertical, meticulously focused, offering the full Microsoft cloud stack via a kind of a portal. I don’t think that these partners necessarily need to be 100 million dollar companies with venture capitalists and IPO needs. They can be 10 to 30 million dollar companies and they will be very profitable.”

To expand their solution footprint, partners can consider a merger or acquisition. What is the status of these M&A activities in the channel? “The M&A market is here now! Within almost all of our top-partners, everyone talks to everybody. Either as a potential buyer or as a potential seller. However, buyers are not prepared to pay premiums. Often the sellers end up being disappointed about the price that is offered. That is mainly because the owners focus more on the money they need for their retirement, rather than what the value for the buyer is. I see two important trends. First is that partners understand the need for critical mass, both geographically and skill wise, to be a more complete provider for the full Dynamics 365 solution, or even for the full Microsoft stack. Secondly, ERP partners buy CRM practices. Clearly this gives them an easy sale at a low cost to upsell CRM to their existing ERP customer base. In general I see that recurring revenue is the game changer. So, I expect prices in M&A for traditional project businesses will decrease, where the market value of subscription based businesses will further

increase.” An alternative scenario for M&A is Partner to Partner co-operation. Why is that relatively unpopular? “First, P2P co-operation needs trust. The investments you need to make in order to build that is substantial. As a result, there’s not much ROI on the short term, say the first 6 months. So, the initial lift of co-operation is heavy and you need to maintain the discipline and be patient afterwards. Secondly, most partners don’t succeed in co-operation at scale. Maybe we should start thinking about making P2P co-operation into an official competency. In the recent past, we had tried to stimulate co-operation in an

analogue way. Maybe we should try this again in our digital world with AppSource and Partner Finder. Another good idea is to have CRM and ERP partners dating with each other at events like DIRECTIONS US and EMEA this fall.”

Challenge number one

is the switch from customized

projects to standardised

products. Partners aren’t

doing a great job at

that.

In your opinion – what is the ideal size of a successful Dynamics 365 partner today?“So, that’s an interesting question! A few years ago, the ideal size of a Dynamics partner business was calculated on 80 or more employees. That size allowed a partner for example to have a proper marketing department and someone responsible for methodology and quality. However that was based on a traditional project business. With the partner channel switching now to pre-packaged, vertically focused products, this size question becomes relevant again! We definitely need to think about that, but these are my first thoughts. Marketing and a product management approach drive scale, where sales, consulting and custom development do not. So, the partners that have already made the switch can now grow their business relatively easy without hiring loads of extra people. On the other hand, there is the need to embrace a bigger part of the Microsoft stack that will lead to hiring additional skill sets.”

So, what is the actual status of Partner requirements? “We are reintroducing certification requirements for Dynamics 365 in the SMB market. This will come sometime in the next calendar year. We expect CSP to be the key channel for this product. You can see that we have changed the Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition requirements where now, certifications are required to sell the product in CSP. We do not want an unqualified channel to sell Dynamics 365, and we do not want unqualified partners to offer the subscription at a low cost just because they have invested nothing in marketing, sales or technical expertise. You can expect to see higher requirements for both the Silver and Gold Competency, and the right to sell in CSP. As always, we want a qualified lead to go to a partner that has the best chance of winning the deal, AND successfully implementing the software and ensuring customer success. ”

Finally, what are your ‘Go Dos’ for the Dynamics partner channel?“Well, there are many things to do if you’re a Dynamics partners today! Some kind of structured approach will be very helpful. I would recommend our Dynamics SMB partners to focus on these four areas:

1. Get ready for Dynamics 365 Business Edition and the cloud world in general

2. Let go of your single category approach on either ERP or CRM and embrace the full Microsoft stack

3. Focus on vertical markets. If you’re in a macro-vertical market today, consider going deeper to the niche or micro-vertical level

4. Improve your marketing! Hire a product marketing manager, and think in terms of doubling your investment in time, money and dedication”

Interesting linksLinkedIn profile Jeff Edwards


https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-edwards-384aa2/

20. Conclusions and recommendations The interesting question that most Dynamics business owners will ask, of course, is how can I, as a Microsoft Dynamics Partner, use and put into practice all these changes, trends and new insights that were presented at this year’s Inspire event. That is why we offer you a series of solid business recommendations once again this year. Some more strategical, some more practical. As far as we are concerned, these topics would fit very well on the agenda of your next management meeting. 1. Validate your strategy! The endless stream of Microsoft innovations, the constant new possibilities in Dynamics 365, the rapid changes in market demand and the continuous changes in partner policies force every Dynamics partner to take a serious look at their business model. What does my SWOT analysis look like today? How can I earn money tomorrow? Is that business model still viable in the coming years? What distinguishes me from other partners? Will that distinctiveness be relevant next year to the markets in which I want to be active? ‘Change or disappear’ is today’s name of the game! So, make sure you don’t get left behind! Recommendation: Check every 6 months with your Management Team and/or Board whether your company is still on track from a strategic standpoint. Consider having outsiders present for this. After all, outsiders have no emotional bonds with your company and earlier defined goals. It allows them to see more and to express themselves more sharply. 2. Start your own Digital transformation now! Evaluate your current position in the market. In particular, look critically at the current culture (outside-in!), and at the attitudes and processes within your company. There’s a big likelihood that a certain degree of complacency has found its way into your company’s DNA over the course of the years. Recommendation: Plan for your own digital transformation. This may just be the biggest and most important change that you will encounter during your working life! Install a transformation manager and involve some young, ‘born in the cloud’ employees. Throw the windows wide open and have the courage to approach business issues and your internal processes differently. Think out-of-the-box. Start using the full Microsoft cloud stack yourself! Implement Office 365 to achieve better productivity. Upgrade to a cloud version of your Microsoft ERP system. Implement the Dynamics 365 Sales app, as that CRM module in AX, NAV or GP is not the professional tool that you need to survive. Be fast in your thinking, in your doing, in experimentation, in failure, and especially in learning! Capitalise on the learnings when you start delivering this cloud stack to your customers. 3. Define your own D365 agenda In the recent past, most Dynamics partners had, more or less, a one scenario business. Microsoft had one solution, that could be marketed, sold, implemented and serviced in one way. In today’s market, there are many different options in both products, deployment and marketing & sales motions. It’s important for every single partner to define their own D365 agenda. Recommendation: Define your own D365 agenda. What do you want with your IP? What is your sales model? Do you completely switch to cloud or run hybrid for a while? Where do you find your leads? Which workloads do you want to add? For which one of them would you like to invest and deliver directly? Which workloads would you prefer to start a cooperation?


4. Expand your solution set Microsoft is clearly looking for partners that can deliver more than just one product out of the Microsoft stack. Just like more and more prospects do. Ideally, you’re able to cover the full D365 solution as a basis with some of the new technologies on top of that. Not expanding your solution may weaken your position in new business sales and might put your customer base at risk. Recommendation: Take a strategic decision on the basic elements of D365, being Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Office 365 and Azure. Either become a direct provider (via build or buy) or choose for cooperation with other specialised Microsoft partners. If you choose the latter, decide if you want to build the pre-sales skills and capacity for those solutions yourself or if you ‘outsource’ all these roles. Secondly, consider which of the new technologies are important for your target market. Select the most important ones and start investing in people and skills. Finally, consider the use of DynaSource (www.dynasource.com) for finding missing skills on a project basis. 5. Improve your specialisation/verticalisation Much stronger than in previous years, Microsoft emphasized the importance of specialisation and verticalisation as a success factor for the partners’ business. Be aware that with the introduction of Dynamics 365, the number of direct Microsoft Dynamics competitors will double, triple or even quadruple. That makes the need to specialise even higher! Inevitably, this must be accompanied by higher marketing investments and more marketing competencies at the partner site in positioning and lead generation. Recommendation: Analyse your Go-to-Market strategies. Get specialised if you’re not specialised today. Investigate the possibilities to focus on a micro-vertical market if you’re already a player on a macro-level today. Attend specialised training courses and spend time and money to improve your specialisation. 6. Make product marketing more important Partners that specialise need as a logical next step a person who takes responsibilities for the vertical solution. That is your product manager. That job doesn’t stop with technique and functionality. In an ideal situation, this person is the bridge between the market and your developers. Topics on the agenda of your product manager are the size of the addressable market, spotting business trends, prioritizing change requests, creating a roadmap, following competition, understanding why you win and why you lose deals, etc. Without a person responsible for product marketing you might focus too much on your product, leaving a lot of potential money on the table.

Recommendation: Consider appointing a product manager as soon as possible.

7. Find your way in OCP For many partners, the move to the new ‘One Commercial Partner’ set-up was the peak of this conference. OCP is the biggest change in the Microsoft sales organisation of the last decade! Dynamics partners now need to find their place and their new contact persons in this model as soon as possible. The expected impact on the Dynamics partner channel is that substantial numbers of managed partners will lose their position and need to find business support elsewhere. Recommendation: Analyse what the position of your company is in the new Microsoft sales model in this new fiscal year. Get clear whether you will have a position as a managed partner. If so, find out what the background and agenda of that account manager is. If he or she can support you with all the specific Dynamics related challenges. If not, enlighten yourself about the possibilities to connect with SMB Distributors who are specialised in Dynamics. Bear in mind it is possible to combine your Microsoft managed partner status (for topics like Cloud, Azure and Apps) with a connection with a SMB distributor who supports you with your Dynamics business!


http://www.dynasource.com

8. Rebrand your Dynamics 365 communicationIn the weeks before Inspire, Microsoft decided to re-brand her Dynamics 365 product lines. As described in more detail in this report. It’s very important for any Dynamics partner to align and get used with this new branding as soon as possible. Using the outdated branding on your website, for example, doesn’t really give a good impression. Recommendation: Check all your D365 communications on your website, in your company pitches, in quotation documents, brochures and whitepapers, company LinkedIn profiles, etc. Reconsider the branding of your add-ons and services to align with the new branding. Instruct all your employees on how to use the new branding effectively. 9. Visit DIRECTIONS 2017 Finally, go visit the DIRECTIONS events this fall. These evens offer you a great opportunity to learn everything you possibly can learn on Dynamics 365 Business Edition – both the ERP and the CRM domains. There will be loads of content for all the various roles you have in your company today; from Leadership to development and from sales and marketing all the way to support. There are two versions of this event – one in the US and one in the EMEA region. If you consider yourself as a professional Dynamics SMB partner, you simply cannot afford to miss these events! Recommendation: Register for one of these events today if you haven’t done so already! Consider who else to bring from your Leadership team, since there’s a lot to learn and understand. Warning! Don’t wait too long to because you’ll run the chance that both events are sold out early.


http://www.directionsna.com/

http://www.directionsemea.com/

21. Access to the presentations

Microsoft provides access to the keynote presentations and the many hundreds of sessions. All the three keynote presentations are fully recorded (about 2 hours each). For the breakout sessions, both the video recordings and the PowerPoint slidedecks are available for download. The good news is that you don’t need a password to get access to all this content! This link brings you to a landing page from where you can find all this content. You can use the filters and navigation tools on the left side of the screen. For a quick overview, Microsoft created a landing page with a set of interesting high-level pieces of information such as video summaries and blogs. That page also includes the full video recordings of the three keynote presentations, delivered by the top Microsoft executives. Just visit https://news.microsoft.com/inspire2017/#event-news

22. Partner Conference 2018

The 2018 edition of Inspire will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada from July 15th until 19th. It’s the first time ever that the worldwide Microsoft partner community visits this city.

Check this Microsoft promo-video for Inspire 2018. Again, next year you can count on our report service as we will write another business report for Dynamics partners on this new Inspire edition.


https://news.microsoft.com/inspire2017/#event-news

https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/assets/2017/07/13/21/39/735166

23. About the author

Guus Krabbenborg has been active in the world of business software for over 30 years. He held various sales and management positions at Philips, Digital Equipment and Navision Software. He was also co-founder and co-owner of Dutch Dynamics partner DBS Business Solutions. Guus is co-founder and partner in QBS Group. This company is the Value Add Distributor for the Microsoft Dynamics SMB partner channel in Europe, Middle East & Afica. Today, QBS serves over 400 Dynamics partners in 17 countries all over Europe. In addition, Guus is co-founder and partner in Partner Master Class. This Partner Development Centre provides business training and partner business coaching to Microsoft Dynamics partners all over the world. Guus is an experienced Microsoft watcher. He has visited WPC/Inspire since 2004 and wrote business reports about all these editions. This report is his thirteenth consecutive report. He also publishes reports on the events DIRECTIONS and eXtreme365.

For this report, Guus worked closely with a team of colleagues. This report contains substantive contributions from Juan Carlos Collet, Michael Hartmann, Arjen Jansen, Will Mcintee, Sven Noomen and Nelson Tavares da Silva. A special thanks to Mark Blackmore from our UK team for reviewing the text and improving the quality. Finally, many thanks to Daniëlle Hulst from our Marketing team for a great lay-out job. Guus can be reached by email at [email protected]

Guus Krabbenborg

• Co-founder and partner in Partner Master Class

• Co-founder and partner and partner in QBS group

• Publicist• Presenter• Microsoft watcher


mailto:[email protected]

report of microsoft inspire 2017 - qbs group · just as in previous years, inspire 2017 offered...

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