Partner Perspectives

I've heard through the grapevine that there's a great charity sailing trip which is organised on a yearly basis for partners - this year is organised by Shaun Frolich, so I had a chat with him to find out some more details for you. Oh, and on the topic of sailing, I am now a qualified sailor having had my first experience of sailing a couple of weeks ago - thanks to one of our partners (NCI Technologies - thanks guys!) who took me out on their boat in Falmouth:

Hi Shaun, where are you from and what do you do?
I am from “the channel” and now at Microsoft doing some consulting / on a mission for Scott Dodds (General Manager for Small and Mid-sized Solutions and Partners). Way back in 1982 I was the founder of Bytes, then in 2002 I led an MBI team to acquire & transform traditional reseller Teksys into a Microsoft LAR (Large Account Reseller), SAM (Software Asset Management) and SI (Systems Integrator) business. Having sold Teksys earlier this year I am now applying my 26 years of partner experience at Microsoft to help evolve the relationship with the channel to leverage sales & mutual growth.

You’re currently organising The Silicon Cup, can you tell us a bit more about what this is?
The Silicon Cup is simply a one and a half day yachting regatta based in Cowes and dedicated to the IT Industry. Every year since 1999 attendees can pick from a variety of descriptions to summarise what really it is...

1. Two monstrous parties separated by a day’s sailing – excellent live music, good food &  great company
2. A brilliant team building event set on a backdrop of industry networking
3. The best “bang for you buck” team building, networking and hospitality event every year
4. An incredible hospitality event that offers an unparallel  opportunity to get close to clients, share a memorable experience with them and compete with them on your side
5. A really worthwhile event that not only good fun, good ROI (return on investment) and great value it also generates circa £50k per annum for three charities - NSPCC, DCT & JST.
6. A great way for non-sailors to safely experience what the sport is like with the comfort of a full bar close at hand!

You ran this event last year – I hear it was very successful, how many partners attended? We had a total of 850 attendees which broke down into 48 companies hosting their own boat(s), 78 different participating partners and a big bunch of partner sales and marketing people, a few press people and a whole lotta customers.

So when does it run and what’s the cost involved? This year the dates are 25 and 26 September and typical entry costs range between £3,500 & £5,000 depending on the extras. Budget entries are possible and some people enter their own boats. Jess Lang has ALL the details. If we’ve got any prospective sailors/party-goers out there – where do they go for more details? Please let Jess know – we do get requests for crew and some people just come to party!

And finally - Any great stories you can tell us from last year? Did any partners go overboard? ;-) 
Ahh so you know about that! No we have no bad gossip from 2007 and it has been a full 4 years since anyone tried to finish the event using breast stroke. We spoke to Marcia Green (Worldwide Category Sales Manager, Microsoft) at WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference) and she still maintains that despite not being a sailor or even that keen on the water she loved the event despite falling in and would love to come again if she were not posted to Seattle! If anyone wants any guidance or assistance in entering the event please send them to me, the Silicon Cup is Microsoft’s largest UK partner event and represents brilliant value on many, many levels.

Posted by Emma the Sailor

The customer satisfaction league tables for Certified and Gold partners have just been published on the partner portal. These league tables show the partners who achieved the highest level of Net Satisfaction (measured against the total number of respondents) - this is termed as NSAT, which is an industry standard way of measuring satisfaction. This is actually what we use internally to measure the satisfaction of our partners as well. NSAT is calculated as follows:

NSAT = Very Satisfied % - (Somewhat Dissatisfied % + Very Dissatisfied %) + 100

A study conducted by TNS (leading market research company) showed that businesses experience an average 12.5% gain in annual revenue growth for every 10% increase in customers who are loyal. So once you've used the CSAT Index tool, make sure you delve into your analytics to see how loyal your customers are.

Posted by Emma

Well - I haven't posted in about a month. But I've got a valid reason for it - I went on holiday, then was quite poorly, then I went to WPC. Now I'm back from WPC and fully recovered so I'm managing to find time to blog again.

This year's WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference) was fantastic and it was great to meet so many of you. I've got all the photos from the parties and so thought I'd share some of them for you to laugh at - there are some great 'pink wig' photos! It's surprising how many of you willingly wore a wig...without me even forcing you to!

The photos are online on the portal, and here's one of Nicola Young and I posing by my new car...

Posted by Emma

Big congrats to the 4 UK partners who were winners for the 2008 Microsoft Partner Programme Awards!

• Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Active Directory Partner of the Year: Oxford Computer Group
• Data Management Solutions, Business Intelligence Partner of the Year: Information Management Group
• Licensing Solutions, License Delivery Partner of the Year: Bytes Technology Group
• Security Solutions, Infrastructure Security Partner of the Year: Eurodata Systems

This is a great achievement for the UK winners who can now use the press release, logos and banners to showcase themselves as one of our most innovative partners. You can view more information about the awards and the full list of winners and finalists online.

Posted by Emma

So I thought I'd already blogged about this, but reviewing the blog it's become obvious that I just did it in my dreams. On 30th May we made a few changes to the competencies and specialisations on the partner programme. We now have 16 competencies in total - which includes 3 new competencies for Business Intelligence, Unified Communications and Hosting. The Business Process and Integration competency also had a new change to SOA and Business Process and the MBS competency had the requirements changed.

You can read a full summary of the changes on the portal.

How these new competencies affect partners:

• Partners will be automatically migrated to the new competencies if they were part of the former specialisations.
• The next time a partner signs into the Microsoft Partner Programme after May 30, their membership status will reflect the change.
• Partners will retain access to most of the resources they hold in their current specialisations until their anniversary date.
• For partners re-enrolling in the Unified Communications competency after May 30, 2008, they will need to meet the updated exam requirements for the IM and Presence and/or Messaging specialisations.
• For partners re-enrolling in the Hosting Solutions competency after May 30, 2008, they will need to employ or contract with two people who have passed Exam 70-501: Windows Server 2003 Hosted Environments – Configuring and Managing, in addition to the existing requirements for the current Hosting Solutions specialisation.

Posted by Emma

Tim Kimber (remember him from when he tried to high-jack my blog?) is running an Office Live event here in TVP in a few weeks. I've got a bit of feedback that my readers, you, like to hear about events that are coming up - so here are the details:

Title : Office Live Small Business Seminar
Date : 27 June 2008
Venue : Microsoft UK, Thames Valley Park
Cost : Free of charge (lunch provided)

This one-day seminar is your opportunity to learn more about the latest version of Office Live Small Business. Through a series of eight modules with live demonstrations, you will learn how to manage Office Live Small Business public websites and business applications, leverage the power of web services and manage business level data.

You can register online. Let me know if there are any particular events/topics areas that you want me to find out information on and I'll go dig about...

Posted by Emma

Today I had lunch with Dave Overton and two of our SBSC partners (Gareth Brown and Vijay Singh) - we were having a good old natter about all things SBS - and Dave mentioned that he's screenshotted (I know that's not really a word...) the entire installation process for SBS 2008. So if you're interested, you should take a look at his blog.

Posted by Emma

I've just received word that the public preview of SBS 2008 has just gone live. You can read more about this here and you can signup for the public preview here.SBS 2008 is the next release in the SBS product family - and it looks really great. If you're interested, you should take a look at the 5W/50 videos which have 5 videos on SBS 2008 - I've just watched the first video which includes some good demos on how administration has been simplified in 2008.

Posted by Emma

I'm all for looking for better ways to keep my Outlook under control. Today I was searching for a script to allow me to automatically accept particular meeting requests, in the meantime I came across a good tip for managing automatic meeting responses.

Most of us probably find that we send out a lot of meeting requests, my inbox particularly gets a lot of acceptances/declines etc in it. I could just setup a rule to send all responses to deleted items - however I'd like to see when someone declines, or when someone writes something in the body of the response. Thanks to this blog post, I've now setup a rule which automatically removes all acceptances, but leaves the declines and commented responses in my inbox. Just another way to make me more efficient :-)

If you want to setup the rule yourself, Michael details the easy steps here.

Posted by Emma

"So, what's been updated this time?" I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you :-) We've got info on the new Visual Studio and Windows Server, as well Live OneCare, Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Search Server 2008/Search Server Express. As usual, there's the new MS Hardware, and there's an new product version guide - which essentially shows you a roadmap of MS products for 2008.

I've been creating this book for around 2 years now, so I'm looking to do a review of it to see what can be changed to make it even better. With that in mind, I've got a survey running to gather partner feedback - and I'm offering up an Xbox 360 as a raffle prize for those who complete the short survey. So, go do it! www.microsoft.com/uk/gearup

Posted by Emma

Today the portal team launched a new design for the partner portal - the aim being to make it easier to use and find information. Take a look and let me know what you think. There's also something else new today, and that's the launch of Partner Library. The aim of Partner Library is to have one place where you can read articles about how partners are developing and growing their business through various resources on the programme.

In addition to these new things, there's also a new member to the team! Alex Smith has now moved on to look after our web development partners, and Ed Anderson has taken over as the new portal lead. I'll be grabbing Ed shortly to grill him for this blog - so if you've got any questions you want me to throw at him, email them over.

Posted by Emma

I was running on of my MSPP Kickstart courses this morning, and I was running through how you see what certifications an MCP has using the Partner Membership Centre, and then I thought of something I wanted to share with you.

Although you can see what certifications an MCP has using the membership centre, you can't see the exact exam numbers that the MCP has done. You may want to validate that the MCP has done what they say they've done - if you go here, you can search the MCP directory - you need to have their Transcript ID and Access Code (which you can get from the MCP).

Posted by Emma

Yesterday I got myself a brand new UC phone - I am VERY impressed with it! Although this phone is meant to increase my productivity, I'm pretty sure my productivity has dropped as I've been busy playing with it since I got it! The phone connects via the net, and it is connected to my Communicator so it shows me all of my colleagues - which means I can see at a glance whether someone is free or busy, look up others in the company address book and then call them by touchscreen...all without my laptop being present. It's very cool.

Along with this I downloaded the new version of Communicator (2007) - this is very neat. It connects with my phone, so when someone calls me it appears on my laptop screen allowing me to answer either on my laptop or on my phone, route to my mobile or route to voicemail.

I'm currently on a conference call, connected via Communicator and a headset (no phone) - the quality is even better than a normal phone call. I've also had a few calls come through while on the phone which I've been able to review who was calling - then either IM or route to my mobile.  AND, I've also managed to arrange some social activities to make the most of the sun...  :-)

Posted by Emma

Can you spare 1 minute to give me your feedback on this blog? The blog is undergoing a bit of development, and I want to make sure it matches your need. I've created a really easy survey - all you need to do is click through, give me your thoughts, and then I'll make sure to incorporate them in the blog development. Thanks!

View Survey

(If that link doesn't work, you can also complete it here)

Posted by Emma

AKA SBSC (ooo, acronyms). SBSC has been around for a while, yet I'm still surprised to meet partners who haven't heard of it...and when I tell them, they immediately want to join it. So I thought I'd dedicate my Friday blog post to talking about SBSC. This programme is designed to support partners who are selling to small businesses. Once signed up you get access to a dedicated resource page with lots of benefits and SBSC specific content.

I find the SBSC community the most vocal of our partner communities - whenever I go to an SBSC event I'm never without someone who wants to chat to me. Which is great! To me, one of the best bits of SBSC is the network these guys build up - they all seem to know each other and help each other.

It's actually surprisingly easy to sign up as an SBSC:

1. Join the Partner Programme as a Registered partner (or above). If you are Registered then you must also have the Action Pack subscription.
2. Employ one individual who has passed one of the following exams: 70-282; 74-134 or 70-631. From May there will also be another exam to choose from - the exam is 70-236 (TS: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring).
3. Employ one individual who has passed the online SBSC sales and marketing assessment

You can find out all about it here.

Also, some blogs you might want to read if you're interested:

Dave Overton

Chris Parkes

Posted by Emma