“I ordered my coffee from an app, picked it up without ever standing in line. I check into my flight on another app, I sit on a plane and worked on Wi-Fi the entire way, as its another day at the office,” says Gavriella Schuster, Corporate VP, One Commercial Partner Channel at Microsoft as she describes her trip to Microsoft Inspire.
We all have experienced this routine at one time or another during our trips. And we have grown accustomed to it, expect it to work flawlessly every time but rarely think about what makes it happen behind the scenes.
During her trip to Inspire this year, Gavriella said her trip to Starbucks and Delta airline was made possible by 97 different Microsoft partners working with each other to deliver those amazing customer experiences. What an incredible story!
The magic happens when partner teams and technology come together to create a seamless, flawless, and impeccable experience for the end customer.
Gavriella in her Corenote at Microsoft Inspire 2019 in Las Vegas says,
“A partnership is a relationship built on commitment, integrity, and trust.”
Creating these amazing customer experiences required those 97 Microsoft partners to work together collaboratively to build and launch joint solutions to market. Starting this week at Inspire, Microsoft launched a new P2P program to support Satya Nadella and Microsoft’s vision to “democratization digital,” in addition to existing programs - Azure Marketplace and Microsoft Co-Sell.
Azure Marketplace
The Azure Marketplace has 12,000+ applications and services on its platform. It does approximately $90M of business per month, enabling services and is delivering 350,000 leads a month to those solutions, out to their partners.
Microsoft Co-Sell
Microsoft has identified and invited key ISV and SI partners to the Microsoft Co-Sell Program. This program enables Microsoft Salespeople to sell Microsoft Partner’s solutions that are part of the Co-Sell Program to customers directly on Microsoft paper. Microsoft has sold $9.5B of partner solutions through this program.
The Co-Sell model provides collaborative and customized solutions, however, it’s a selective program for top partners. The co-sell program is the “mountain top,” where every partner wants to be, but how do you get started?
Enter the Microsoft P2P program powered by WorkSpan
This week at Inspire, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Partner-to-Partner (P2P) program. The P2P Program fits nicely between the high volume Marketplace and the collaborative, but exclusive Co-Sell program.
The P2P program is designed to facilitate joint go-to-market activities between partners in the Microsoft ecosystem to accelerate each partner’s time to market, increase sales, and grow joint revenue.
The program enables Microsoft Partners (software, services, SI, MSP, OEM, hardware) to list their solutions on the P2P Program to allow Microsoft CSP Partners (resellers, distributors) to sell to customers.
CSP partners can find a solution, express an interest to sell the solution, and then collaborate (“sell with”) the solution owner to close business with each partner’s shared customer.
Microsoft’s P2P program is open to all Microsoft partners and is designed for scenarios where partners find an appropriate solution (or collection of solutions) from other partners, collaborate with each other to align and optimize, and then work together to jointly sell the new whole solution to their joint customer. It’s collaboration and co-selling at scale.
With this Microsoft P2P program you can drive results like:
- Increase your profitability by 10-20% by selling solutions from one or more of Microsoft’s partners
- Achieve 3 times faster time to market leveraging pre-built joint solutions
- Close deals up to 6 times larger by including solutions from one or more of Microsoft's partners
- Reach more customers by co-selling with other Microsoft partners for 3 to 5 times larger joint pipeline
The bottom line - gain access to solutions from Microsoft and Microsoft's partners that today result in $8 Billion+ annual sales.
By leveraging partner-to-partner programs on Microsoft, powered by WorkSpan a SOC2 certified platform you can facilitate joint go-to-market activities between partners in the Microsoft ecosystem to accelerate each partner’s time to market, increase sales, and grow joint revenue.
Mayank has always believed in the importance of data, analytics, and applications in helping people make better decisions. Prior to founding WorkSpan, he founded Big Data pioneer Aster Data Systems, acquired by Teradata in 2011 where he served as Co-President of Teradata Aster division. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and B.Tech from IIT Bombay.
