I recently hosted an IAMCP webinar on the Microsoft Partner Portal and there were a number of questions that time did not permit me to answer during the event, so this blog looks at those questions and tries to address them.
Q1. Why are consulting service offers limited to only Azure, Dynamics 365, or Power Platform services?
Answer. You can also offer services around Microsoft 365. That said, these are all based on Microsoft Cloud solutions.
Q2. There are a number of areas where there are issues with the portal. Microsoft seem to take a long time to fix these.
Answer. To get a full answer on this one, you’ll need to ask Microsoft directly.
Q3. Is it possible to invite external people to work with you in the Partner Center?
Answer: If you are non-technical (like me!) and only have the occasional guest then I would set them up with an email address on your domain. If you are more technically capable and have a number of third parties it is worth considering whether Azure AD B2B might be the right solution.
Q4. We sell very few licences but influence a lot of licence consumption. How do we get recognition for competencies and rewarded?
Answer: The key to recognition and reward is to have the correct partner association with each licence. The LSP (or LAR) will typically be TPOR (Transacting Partner of Record). If you are DPOR, CPOR or have set up PAL then you will be recognised and rewarded in line with the customer workload. The Microsoft New Commerce Experience (which is now being used for new Azure customers) takes this approach further with Partner Earned Credit.
Q5. I assume you would have had to enter that customer as an opportunity for you to get the insight?
Answer: The customer insights tab lists those customers that you are associated to – generally partner of record. It does this automatically, so you do not need to enter your customers in the portal. If you did not get the customer registered at the time of installation then you can ask your customer to retrospectively register you.
Q6. There are inaccuracies in the customer insights data.
Answer: This is not uncommon – this tool is far from perfect. However, it does give you a quick guide to which of your customers are best aligned to Microsoft’s key sales plays.
I hope this helps. If you want a further chat on the partner portal, please feel free to email me on carl.savage@rhs-europe.co.uk or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Carl Savage, Director at RHS Europe