By riding the massive wave of corporate digital transformation, extra revenue has been successfully generated via Microsoft's Cloud for Dynamics 365 and Azure.
In 2017, an approximate 95% of the $100bn of Microsoft’s total revenue was generated through partners, which shows that the business of the company depends strongly on collaborations.
Microsoft has carefully created a new “co-sell” program, which allows Dynamics 365 and Azure to move into more of the world’s largest corporations. The methods introduced by this new program include marketing events and financial rewards. Service providers, resellers, and system integrators are also allowed to create unique solutions that are made increasingly visible to end users. The program is also designed to ensure that the company’s Cloud services and products are up to par with the advertised standards.
In order to encourage Microsoft’s salespeople to share leads with partners, individual sales personnel are given extensive financial incentives when they successfully close a deal. The technology giant is also allowing corporate customers to self-develop Azure IP and resell their in-house work to end users.
According to Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice-president and leader of One Commercial Partner business at Microsoft, the new trend of the company and its partners engaging heavily with clients is inspired by the plans for the world’s largest organisations to fully embrace digital transformations, which allows more of Microsoft’s Cloud services to be applied to the daily operations of these corporations. Schuster also added that the change in the way the sales team at Microsoft operates and engages with customers represents a major transformation of the entire company that goes hand in hand with the “one Microsoft” vision of CEO Satya Nadella.
According to Schuster, the company previously initiated a pilot plan of approximately 500 partners, which created $1bn revenue for partners in 2017, and also $6bn in the customer pipeline. The company took the success of the pilot program and extended the program to 543% more “co-sell” partners – the company now has as many as 9,000 certified partners working on bringing more Microsoft Cloud products into various corporations.
Based on a Microsoft-commissioned study by research firm IDC released in January 2018, digital transformations of corporations create a huge opportunity of $20 trillion for Microsoft over the following five years.
Microsoft plans to scale this exciting opportunity by developing boutique specialists, niche markets, and cottage industries. The company is placing extra focus on the Fortune 500, which Microsoft predicts to be the main leaders in corporate digital transformation. These organisations also tend to be more challenging for partners to reach and get into, which is an issue that Microsoft hopes to resolve.
Microsoft is not only working hard to improve its Cloud services, but the company is also focused on bringing its new technology to increasing numbers of end users. If you’re considering unlocking this potential, contact our team at WM Reply today for some tips on how Microsoft’s Cloud services and products could help to digitally transform your organisation.