Forging a Modern Microsoft Alliance with Lucy Bourne

Lucy Bourne [00:00:00]:

I think if you're a large scale partner with really well established enterprise huge customers, I think there's value to having vendor focus. The opportunities that you're getting passed from Microsoft or the ones that you're sharing and you're hoping to receive back, they're going to want to know that there isn't a prospective competitor that's also being catwalked into that account. On the other side of the spectrum, if your scale up, I don't think it's outside the realms of possibility to potentially have a practice that focuses on another vendor. However, I do think there needs to be a really solid narrative that you're playing back into each vendor that says this is why we choose Microsoft and this is when we choose Microsoft.

Neil Benson [00:00:40]:

G' day and welcome to Practice Leading, a podcast for emerging and curious practice leaders of Microsoft partner businesses. If you're anything like me, with an unquenchable thirst for improvement and zero tolerance for bs, you've come to the right place. Hi, I'm Neil Benson and this is my personal invitation for you to join me on my own journey of discovery. Together we'll learn from innovators and investors, executives and entrepreneurs, business leaders and business coaches that have already left their stamp on the Microsoft community and those that are exploring new and smarter ways of building their businesses. Whether it's groundbreaking innovations, hiring high performing teams, or the sheer force of will to disrupt our industry, each episode is a masterclass from the trailblazers who have already achieved significant success. Find Practice Leading on YouTube or visit practiceleading.com and learn from the mentors you wish you had earlier in your career. Today I'm learning from Lucy Bourne. Lucy is the co Founder and Director of Oka Studio in the uk.

Neil Benson [00:01:44]:

Oka Studio, which just happened to celebrate its second birthday as we were recording, helps Microsoft partners level up in their Microsoft alliance by helping them with their marketing, sales and in the day to day operations of their Microsoft practice. Lucy is a former Partner Development Manager from Microsoft and she dives deep into what it takes to thrive in your alliance with Microsoft. As you'll hear in this episode, it's an area where I'm really struggling wrestling with partner center, trying to figure out whether a solution designation is worthwhile or missing out on the recognition in deals where we weren't, the invoicing csp. Lucy cuts through all of that, helps me focus on helps us focus on what matters most in our Microsoft alliance and the steps we need to take to succeed. Stick around if you want to learn whether focusing on a Vertical or horizontal niche is going to be worthwhile. The two sets of opposing characteristics alliance management teams need to have and the approaches available for partners to market to prospective customers and to Microsoft sellers and heaps more besides. Here's Lucy Bourne from Oka Studio. Lucy, welcome to Practice Leading.

Neil Benson [00:02:49]:

It's so great to have you on the show.

Lucy Bourne [00:02:50]:

Thank you so much for having me, Neil. I'm really grateful to be invited and yeah, delighted to have this conversation with you.

Neil Benson [00:02:55]:

Well, I wanted to have you on because I've been reflecting on superware's Microsoft partnership and it could be better, it could be a lot stronger, we could be a lot further along and we're just bumping into all sorts of challenges and I thought, who else can offer some advice, a shoulder to cry on? So thank you for having us on the show. For those who don't know you and your work, do you want to give us a quick intro bit of background?

Lucy Bourne [00:03:18]:

Absolutely, sure. So delighted to be here. As I say, my name is Lucy Bourne and I am a co director here at Ochre Studio. I set the business up two years ago yesterday actually with my partner Lee Baker, and Ochre has a sole mission which hopefully will help with the shoulder to cry Arnill and that is to support Microsoft partners creating a better, stronger relationship with Microsoft, establishing a solid sales go to market and value proposition basis, or expanding on what you already have and scaling your practice. So we tend to work with partners that are at one end of their journey or the other with their relationship with Microsoft. They're either a really efficient sales engine that's generating a bunch of opportunity, but their practice development is creaking and they're finding it hard to find the right people or they're at the other end of the spectrum where they've got incredibly strong technical capability, their delivery is brilliant, their customers are very happy, but Microsoft don't know they exist or the market don't know they exist and most of their opportunities are coming from their network. So you'll be pleased to know that we find both ends of the spectrum and hopefully that gives you comfort. In terms of my history, before setting up Oka, I looked after the business applications channel here for Microsoft in the uk.

Lucy Bourne [00:04:32]:

So my responsibility was to help specifically Dynamics and Power platform partners to create IP, launch it on AppSource. I owned AppSource for the UK, so it was my responsibility to make sure that they were launching their capability effectively, but also to support services partners in scaling their practices and growing their relationship with Microsoft. So oddly enough, my day Looks very similar at Ochre as to what it did at Microsoft. Before that I was a part of the pre sales team at Hitachi Solutions where I had the pleasure of working alongside people like Chris Huntingford, Will Dorington, Kyle Hill. Learned a huge amount about describing the value of a solution and selling value over function and feature. And then before that was part of a scale up Dynamics practice that landed Power Platform into loads of its customers when it was just Project Sienna. Right. So way back when.

Lucy Bourne [00:05:20]:

So yeah, 16 years in this industry and delighted.

Neil Benson [00:05:24]:

And does oka help Azure partners, Modern work partners or do you just focus on business applications these days?

Lucy Bourne [00:05:30]:

Our heritage is business applications and about 60% of our team is kind of from that background but we have expanded quite rapidly into Azure, Modern work and security partners as well. So yeah, no we cover the full gamut of Microsoft solutions.

Neil Benson [00:05:45]:

So whenever I got started in the UK, launched my little Microsoft partner business 2006, David Braun was my partner development manager and it seemed really pretty easy in those days to get started. I remember getting a gold competency in months with probably three or four staff, a couple of certifications, maybe a customer or two and that was it. It seems a lot harder these days. Do you think it is getting harder or is that just me getting older and grumpier?

Lucy Bourne [00:06:11]:

Oh no, undoubtedly it's getting more complicated and you know, look Neil, I can completely empathize. When I was at my first partner we were the same, you know, five people gained a competency with generating opportunities for microso days I will say getting a solution designation, the capability that's taken over from these gold and silver competencies is more challenging but with that gives more opportunity to identify as unique within the Microsoft partner ecosystem because it is that much more complicated. Gone are the days where you could have kind of two customer deployments and some certs. These days you know there is a full gamut of certifications your team need to have. You do need to have really successful deployments and also show growth in those deployments of your capability as well within certain solution areas. What I will say is whilst it's harder to attain, the reward is far greater. So there is much more opportunity to receive funding from Microsoft. Once you've attained a solution designation or indeed a specialization, the next layer up of the blue tick if you like and if you are able to build that kind of machine if you like into consuming those bits of funding from Microsoft, what we've found is it's much easier to to retain a solution designation that it would have been in the old days.

Lucy Bourne [00:07:26]:

So, yes, there is the legwork up front. You have to almost be Rain man to work out what it is that you're missing and, you know, have a real solid understanding of how to kind of claim your partner association or associate yourself to your customers. But once you've kind of got that methodology in place and the best practice in place and you've attained it, I would say it's. It's much more beneficial to have these days than ever used to be.

Neil Benson [00:07:49]:

Yeah, you made a point there about the number of partners that had a competency and it was getting ridiculous. Like 90% of partners are gold. There's no differentiation from the small ones to the big ones, the ones who invested a heap to the ones who invested nothing and just getting started. So, yeah, it's maybe for the best. It's just frustratingly hard to get started. And if you're not familiar with partner center, it's like a black box. It's really hard to navigate around and figure out what you're missing and call the right neighbors and show the bike connections. And we're finding that pretty tough.

Neil Benson [00:08:16]:

Friend of mine works in a pretty large European partner business. Probably. Yeah, regional partners. I don't think they're global, but they're big. One in Europe. He's got six people in his alliance team, I presume, doing a bit of marketing, Microsoft relations. Do you think every partner needs to have an alliance manager and where do you go to find one? Because it seems like a big overhead for a small business to have an alliance manager and the big ones go, Crickford, put somebody like that in place.

Lucy Bourne [00:08:42]:

Oh, several really good questions there, Neil. Firstly, I would absolutely attest to the fact that they've probably got an incredibly well functioning team and depending on their size and scale, I would say it probably isn't over egging the cake. Secondly, for scaling practices or those that are smaller, deliberately so, I would say it's not necessary to have a dedicated head, but absolutely to allocate an individual that's already as part of your business or perhaps a fractional capability, you know, cheap plug for ochre. Sorry about that. And there are other organisations, organizations out there not dissimilar to us, to use them as the opportunity to have a focus on alliance. And with that, I think one of my key kind of tips for partners that are scaling or trying to build a more solid relationship with Microsoft is to ensure that you do have that focus, to allow for the differentiation to shine through. We see alliance as two key areas. The first Half is really the programmatic side of things.

Lucy Bourne [00:09:36]:

Have you got the solution designations, the specializations? Are you programmatically coding, you know, adding your co sell opportunities into partner center? Are you associating your customers, are you associating your team with their certifications? That kind of stuff can be specifically, you know, project managed almost. And so if there's a member of your team that's kind of really methodical, able to complete a finisher type, that is the roles and responsibilities for the programmatic side of the alliance relationship. The other side, very much the other end of the spectrum. That's the relationship side. That's the who do I need to know? What do I need to say to them? What do they care about? What moves the needle for them and how do I communicate with them effectively? That should absolutely be like a real storyteller, relationship builder, salesperson, account manager. And so if you are a scaling practice and you're looking to allocate individuals within your team to those two roles, you know, you're really going to need to identify the personality types I would say before you kind of give them the roles and responsibilities.

Neil Benson [00:10:36]:

Some massive light bulbs just gone off there. Sorry. Because I am so tired of the first half of that job. The checking the boxes, filling in the forms, making the connections, telling people deep porn Seaporin things are that's not me. The second part I love. So okay, stop trying to do both. I find something better to do the.

Lucy Bourne [00:10:55]:

First book, that's it. And I would say, you know, it's kind of one of those stretch projects where a developer, a program manager, a product owner is going to just absolutely eat up. And it can be the kinds of things they schedule into their year. They understand the ramifications of timeframes and if this then that and that really is where you want them to own, you know, the partner center stuff basically I would agree with you Neil. That is absolutely not my bag whatsoever at all. I understand why it needs to be done and I will do it and I can do it, but it's not, you know, what comes most naturally to me. Whereas the other side of the spectrum, much, much more so in terms of your other question around where to find individuals, if you are at the point where you think you could get a dedicated individual into your business to manage alliance, that is tough, you know, and if you look at Glassdoor, I'm just going to use GBP prices. But the latest kind of average salary for an alliance manager, Microsoft alliance manager specifically is £103,000 a year, right it's before you've even paid any, you know, loaded costs or benefits or anything like that.

Lucy Bourne [00:11:59]:

So it's big and it's an absolute, it's very much a commitment that you're going to have to be certain is going to return you a value to your business in terms of like the middle ground. I do think there's opportunity to take on individuals that haven't had an alliance role in the past and train them, you know, and bring them up to speed. And quite a lot of what we do here at Oka is kind of what we call knowledge training transfer, you know, not dissimilar, I'm sure to what you do to some developers and your teams on projects. Right. It's the do share, watch, observe, make sure that they're bringing things on in the way that you'd anticipate. We see account managers do really well with that. We see pre sales people do really well at that because they understand the product, but they also understand the value of relationships and value. So, you know, I would say think outside the box.

Lucy Bourne [00:12:42]:

If you're looking to take on a dedicated alliance manager and you'll find someone with the right skill set.

Neil Benson [00:12:46]:

Great. Love it. What are three or four things that successful partners are doing that everybody should be doing but probably isn't? Are there any patterns that you've seen?

Lucy Bourne [00:12:54]:

I would leave you with just one. I'm going to do the most important one first and that is focus, focus, focus. So many partners we speak to say we can deliver all areas of the business application stack to all kinds of industries and I don't doubt that you can't. And I really, I understand the value and the joy of working with all sorts of different industries in all sorts of different regions doing all sorts of different things. I get it and I used to do it myself and I loved it. A variety is the spice of life. But whilst I'm not advocating for you to turn away inbound work that's across all different industries and all different areas of the business application stack, what I am saying is you outwardly need to be projecting as if you are specialists in one particular area or two or max three. Right.

Lucy Bourne [00:13:40]:

I'm not saying close everything down, but in order to be memorable and remain in the hearts of minds of Microsoft sellers, even members of the market, you know, the public, you need to be appearing to be serving one industry or a couple of industries with a specific thing. And I think that's even more important in the business application space than any of the other Microsoft solution areas. Because of the breadth of the capability. Right. You know, one minute you could be talking contact center, the next you could be talking field service, the next you could be talking talking low code applications for HR or any other. And I know I can see you smiling and I can. Sure. There's probably a day in the life for Neil Benson.

Lucy Bourne [00:14:17]:

Right.

Neil Benson [00:14:17]:

Well, tell you a funny story about that. I went to a networking event recently along with a buddy and I met a IT director. He just stepped out of his role to look after his wife and he was taking six months on, he was going to find a new role. And he asked me what I did and I said we build amazing applications for financial sector organizations and public sector organizations. We have that focus on two verticals. And my buddy's like elbow me going, don't say that. Just say you've got the best Microsoft business applications team in Brisbane because you don't know what sector he's going to turn up in, but he knows you're in Brisbane. So I think there's marketing and that focus is critical, but when you meet somebody at an event, turn around and focus on them.

Neil Benson [00:14:54]:

Make yourself relevant to them and their situation right now.

Lucy Bourne [00:14:57]:

Absolutely, absolutely. I very much like to come back to the. Absolutely. Not restricting partners from having that kind of more tailored conversation, but when it comes to kind of investing in outbound marketing and going to find the next job, you know, in order to be relevant, you've got to be able to speak the vocabulary. You'll know this, you know, in your financial services experience if you can't talk about onboarding a customer or KYC checks or mortgage approvals or whatever. Even specifically within financial services, I would argue there's six or seven focus areas you won't have that relevance. And it's going to be hard for you to empathize with the CTO that has been a CTO of a investment bank for the last 20 years if you haven't got that kind of content, that vocabulary. So.

Lucy Bourne [00:15:40]:

And it's specifically the case within the Microsoft world because if you're looking to use Microsoft as a channel for generating more opportunities, you know, they're going to want to know why you're relevant to their space and have the confidence in positioning you to their customers.

Neil Benson [00:15:55]:

So yeah, yeah, great advice. So the flip side of that would be are there any major mistakes that you see partners repeating all the time apart from trying to be everything to everybody other, you know, repeating mistakes that particularly scaling up partners trip over?

Lucy Bourne [00:16:08]:

Yeah, I would say the biggest mistake we see is not Giving, you know, back to probably what we started this conversation with, not giving enough focus to the programmatic side of things. You know, giving the partner center job to someone on the edge of their desk and not giving them the space or time to learn and think about it or you know, equally not giving them the KPIs or the OKRs to actually go after it and see it as value and then like leading on from that. I'd say alliance isn't kind of a one time activity. It's a muscle that you build over time in the same way you would do leadership or sales or you know, demand generation or project management. It can't just be a, okay, we've got that solution designation, let's wait for the leads to come in or we've got that specialization. Let's just wait for the money to come. You know, it is a muscle that needs building and there's no harm in starting small and focusing on one area and building it up. But definitely don't take the foot off the gas and don't take the foot off the gas too soon.

Lucy Bourne [00:17:04]:

We see quite a lot of partners go, well, I did that for six months and I saw no benefit.

Neil Benson [00:17:07]:

Ah, okay, takes a while and keep investing. Do you see many partners succeeding because or despite their polyamorous right. There are partners with multiple software vendors and they've been Amazon AWS partner and a Salesforce partner and a Google partner and a Microsoft partner. Can those partners be successful as a Microsoft partner or do you see most successful Microsoft partners just doing Microsoft stuff?

Lucy Bourne [00:17:30]:

Oh, it's such a good question, Neil. I probably talk about this three or four times a week at the moment. There's two sides to this coin. I think if you're a large scale partner with really well established enterprise huge customers, I think there's value to having vendor focus. And the reason I say that is because you know, the opportunities that you're getting passed from Microsoft or the ones that you're sharing and you're hoping to receive back, they're going to want to know that there isn't a prospective competitor that's also being catwalked into that account. On the other side of the spectrum, if your scale up or you're even, you know, fairly substantial, 150 seats, that sort of size and scale, I don't think it's outside the realms of possibility to potentially have a practice that focuses on another vendor. However, I do think there needs to be really solid narrative that you're playing back into each vendor that says this is why we choose Microsoft and this is when we choose Microsoft. Again, that might be industry related, that might be size and scale of customer related or opportunity, whatever it ends up being.

Lucy Bourne [00:18:33]:

I think you need to be able to have that really solid story that goes, we only talk Microsoft in this industry. My only caveat to that is I have seen partners succeed in multiple vendors if they're on a journey from one to the other. Let's take automation as an example. You know, UiPath Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, we're seeing many of those partners see value the Power platform and see value in AI. You know, the RPA partners are probably the most ready to talk generative AI, I would say argument. Arguably they've talked about how their capability in the past RPA has replaced individuals, has replaced, you know, time and has increased output of an organization and that's ultimately what AI is doing. And, and those kind of robotic processes match that. And those partners, the Blue Prism ones, the RPA we're seeing, they're not investing as much in their partner ecosystem as they used to be.

Lucy Bourne [00:19:28]:

So when they were growing, those vendors, they were growing and they were getting investment from private equity firms, they were throwing money into the partner ecosystem that's not there. These partners are also seeing value in the wider low code stack that Power platform offers and they are migrating that way. And what they offer into the Microsoft ecosystem is the benefit of competitive understanding. They know how UiPath license, how blue Prism license, they know how they take their solution to market and they can use that insight not, not only to the market to talk about why Power Platform over those vendors, but they can use it to talk to Microsoft about, you know, you should be thinking about these things because these guys are too or they're not, or here's where they succeed, here's where they don't.

Neil Benson [00:20:05]:

We've got no designs to do anything else. But I do remember working at Slalom in the US and we were in a big Microsoft customer service opportunity and we were fourth demo out of four in a week and my director decided to change up our strategy and demo Salesforce Service Cloud instead. They were a big Microsoft shop, but they did have pockets of Salesforce around the place as well. So we thought, look, I've seen three Microsoft customer service demos. We're just going to be up against the three other partners. Why don't we do something different? And when Microsoft found out, they went through their roof, it was very badly handled on our side. And yeah, understandably, they got pretty upset. So like I said, have a good story, have a Good narrative around why you support multiple vendors.

Neil Benson [00:20:44]:

And when you choose one over the other, when you propose one over the.

Lucy Bourne [00:20:46]:

Other, it is challenging, isn't it? Because the customer success person inside me always thinks it should be the best solution for the customer. Right? It should be. But then, you know, in many ways they do the same thing. Right. And there's generally the similar functionality across all these competitive spaces. It's just about how you implement it effectively. So, you know, in many ways I think they're often, you know, one vendor can do all things to most customers. So actually a bit of focus would help.

Lucy Bourne [00:21:16]:

I can only imagine what the Microsoft sales representative was thinking when he found out about the slalom thing. I imagine he did go through the roof.

Neil Benson [00:21:22]:

No. Yeah, it was pretty messy. And we didn't win with Salesforce either, by the way. It was a lost cause.

Lucy Bourne [00:21:28]:

Oh, good practice for Salesforce by though.

Neil Benson [00:21:32]:

Imagine a partner who's got everything in place. They've got a good alliance manager, good pipeline of opportunities coming in and they've got a little bit of budget left over to invest in something else. They could, I imagine they've also got an app or two or they've done repeated a couple of projects in a certain subsector and they've built up a little bit of intellectual property. They could bundle that up, create an app, publish it on appsource with that budget. Or they could invest in something like the partner awards and getting a consultancy to help them write a good case study and implement that and try and win some awards. What are some of the discrete investments that partners can make that really move the needle for them?

Lucy Bourne [00:22:07]:

I think you touched on a lot of them there, Neil. I think case studies absolutely are the most important. And one of the pieces of advice that actually a fabulous chap in our team always gives, Nigel Ridpath, is one piece of content. Is a one piece of content. Right. So if you're investing in like let's say a video case study with an exciting customer where you can get some incredible visuals of, I don't know, drilling or whatever it ends up being, I don't know, I can't think of any good examples other than that. I think use that content, create long form video, create long form written text because you don't know quite how the consumers are going to buy, create short and put them on YouTube or Instagram or whatever. We know that 80% of B2B buyers now are millennials.

Lucy Bourne [00:22:52]:

Right. So they're going to be consuming con. Yeah, I mean it's huge, sir. And I Got that? I don't, I can't take any credit for that start. That was Sam Bush from the Ambush on Air podcast she presented at the RESCO event I was at last week and, and I took some incredible knowledge from that, you know, so if we think in the mindset of a CTO or a CIO or a buyer that we are trying to position to, we have to go out and find them where they are. And so investing in that content, like a case study to tell the social proof of not just why Microsoft, but also why you, that should just be reused and reused and reused in multiple different ways. And you know, AI is here to help us rebuild that content, right, like this. We've got the tools in our armory to make that easy for ourselves.

Lucy Bourne [00:23:33]:

So there's definitely that. And I think social proof, no matter what formatting comes in, is so important. And you know, leading on that, when we think about focus and we think about being laser onto one area, let's take that CTO that you met or the IT director that you met at that breakfast. When he lands a job, which he will, and he gets in contact with you because he was blown away at that network and meeting where he met you, you discover what industry he's in and it's undoubtedly the case that you'll have a reference in that space because you've got such breadth in that capability. I would almost suggest getting a speaker from that customer at a roundtable. Super small factor, you know, six or seven people for a lunch. Yes. It's going to cost you the lunch and a couple of bottles of wine.

Lucy Bourne [00:24:15]:

Bring in someone from that space where they've had a really good experience with you with their implementation of Dynamics or Power platform and get them to speak at that lunch, you know, and it's really intimate. It gets them the opportunity to speak about their journey, the good, the bad, the ugly. And they can really empathize with the journey they've been on. So those roundtables just provide so much value. And if you can get a Microsoft speaker there, great. If you can get an industry specialist that's, I don't know, bought and sold a business in that space as like an after dinner speaker as well. Great, brilliant. Take loads of photos, put it all over LinkedIn, you'll get a huge amount of value out of that.

Lucy Bourne [00:24:48]:

Write a bunch of blogs out of the content that was spoken about. That kind of thing works really well.

Neil Benson [00:24:53]:

I love that idea. We have two flagship customers, multi million dollar, multi year engagements. Both of them have a no case Study no logo sharing policy makes me cry. But I could definitely take the CIO from each organization and invite them to lunch with three or four peers in the industry and organize a conversation. That's easy. There's no logo sharing there, no bridging anybody's policy. They can declare the lunch on their gift registry if they have to do that. Love it.

Neil Benson [00:25:19]:

Great idea. Thanks, Lucy.

Lucy Bourne [00:25:20]:

No pleasure. I've got like a ton of these ideas, but I do think just getting that social proof out there is valuable in whichever format works best for you because there is nothing, like you say, nothing more frustrating than, than not being able to talk about who you're working with. That said, what I will say is what you can share internally within Microsoft is the concept of a win wire, which you may or may not have done for those which talks about, you know, the value of the opportunity from a licensing perspective, why you guys won, how quickly you closed the deal, why you won it over competitive vendors, over competitive partners, and just share that internally. And I think communicating into Microsoft is almost as valuable as communicating outside of the organization, assuming you're saying the right thing at the right time. I mean, it's the 2nd of June, right? We're less than a month away from the end of Microsoft's financial year. Now is not the time to be doing that.

Neil Benson [00:26:05]:

But Microsoft becomes a very strange zoo in June. You know, unless I've got a deal to close, I don't touch them. It's just.

Lucy Bourne [00:26:12]:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The other thing I would say, yeah, I think of awards are also incredibly valuable. Incredibly valuable. As you, as you rightly commented before we joined the podcast, Neil, we as oak are not long attended and sponsored and we're part of the Digital Revolution Awards that are run here in the uk. They run a UK focused one, but also a global online awards which is focusing on excellence in Cloud or SaaS delivery projects. So it covers AWS, Google Cloud, Snowflake, Salesforce, but also Microsoft. And there is a fairly strong focus on the Microsoft element there.

Lucy Bourne [00:26:45]:

And what I would say is, and I had the pleasure of being a judge at these awards this year, the quality of the submissions is incredible. You can tell that they were all either handwritten, not chatgpt or copilot written or really well, well supported with kind of videos or blog posts or podcasts that validated their submission. As I say, many of the awards were highly contested. Many of the winners for many of the awards, the winners were also there were highly commended submissions. So yeah, really goes to highlight kind of a partner's commitment to their customer base, but also to their technical and, you know, innovation leadership. So yeah, highly recommend that.

Neil Benson [00:27:27]:

I love awards. I think there was also a great reason just for the team to celebrate if you get nominated, if you get finalist position, go for dinner and have a nice night out and celebrate just getting to that position. Whether or not you win, it's a good excuse for black tie and nice frock.

Lucy Bourne [00:27:41]:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we loved it last week. I have to say it was brilliant. Really, really fun. Good, fun.

Neil Benson [00:27:46]:

You mentioned licensing earlier. As a Microsoft business applications partner. We've been a little frustrated in a couple of deals. One with an enterprise customer who's on ea, another one who is a mid market customer who bought their CRM licenses through another csp, who they bought all their other stuff from all their Azure and Office Microsoft 365from, who couldn't spell CRM and they got all the credit for the deal and it was a little frustrating. You published a LinkedIn post a while ago saying that there's a new innovation now, that the transacting partner doesn't necessarily have to be the implementation partner and both partners can get some recognition. Can tell us a little bit more about that. It's very exciting.

Lucy Bourne [00:28:21]:

Absolutely. This is like insanely exciting. And even while I'm talking about it now, it's giving me goosebumps. That's how nerdy I am about this stuff. Right. And I will say massive shout out to my dad, Ian Bourne, who I worked with at Cloud 2020 right at the start of my career. He's been campaigning for this stuff for over a decade. Right.

Lucy Bourne [00:28:40]:

So yeah, as you, as you rightly identified, like historically who, it's a bit of a land grab, right? Whoever gets that CSP recognition to start with gets that customer. They get the recognition of the seats, they get the recognition of the growth of the seats or the consumption, and they get, you know, financial reimbursement for selling those licenses. So as of April 7th of this year, that has changed and now there is this concept of dual partner recognition or even multiple partner recognition. And this is where each partner can go on and claim partner of record for the specific workload that they have implemented. Now, what I will caveat this with is there's no financial rebate, but there is as part of this CPAW association, it will count towards your solution designation. So historically, yeah, I mean, that's game changing, right? And as you rightly said, we did this webinar to promote this capability. I want to say about two weeks after the capability landed and we've heard stories of partners gaining their solution designation since, which is just brilliant. And it puts them on a really good stead for FY26 because it means they're immediately able to go and claim funding, they're immediately able to have more eloquent conversations with Microsoft, etc.

Lucy Bourne [00:29:49]:

Not to mention you get a ton of internal user rights. Right. So many of them were having to buy their own Dynamics Licensing or Office365. The solution designation gives them that back. So I would encourage partners that have struggled to get their solution designation to look into this, and I'll happily send the link to the recording of the webinar that we did and actively go and make claims for workloads that they have deployed into their customers from. The rule is that it's from January the first this year, so you can backdate some of these claims. You can go and say, you know, we've been working on those from January. You do have to submit what's called a proof of execution, which basically is some kind of document, a statement of work, or an msa, or even an email that demonstrates that it was you as a partner that did that implementation.

Lucy Bourne [00:30:36]:

We've seen these approvals kind of turn around within 24 to 48 hours. They do. They can take up to five to seven days, depending on if there's a debate. But it's really quite satisfying seeing those associations drop into a partner center and then subsequently be recognized against your solution designation. And it can really accelerate your journey to that.

Neil Benson [00:30:55]:

On the other hand, Microsoft has also announced some new authorization. I can't remember what they call it, authorization requirements. If you don't achieve solution designation, it's going to remain harder to be a Microsoft partner at all. That is the impression I get from that email. I don't know if there's any truth to that, or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Lucy Bourne [00:31:12]:

I'm not sure about that one. If I'm honest, Neil, I'll have to take a look into that. But I mean, solution designation is definitely being seen as kind of the must have as of FY26. And specializations right now are kind of really nice to have. They're going to become even more of a requirement. I don't think it's going to have an impact on you being a partner all up, as long as you have some kind of, you know, the partner's success pack or whatever they call it that, you know, demonstrates you're on your way to getting a solution designation. But I don't think it should stop you from being a partner at all, but I will check that because, yeah, that's the first I've heard of that.

Neil Benson [00:31:50]:

What's the deal with upsource these days? Is it worth publishing on publishing apps? You can publish consulting services as well. Both. And should partners think about transacting through AppSource or just using it as somewhere else to market their goods and services to prospective customers?

Lucy Bourne [00:32:04]:

Brilliant question. So, yes, definitely have a plan for AppSource whilst, you know, and like, maybe with my Microsoft hat, and I wouldn't have been allowed to say this, but whilst I would not say that it's going to become your number one route to net new customers, I would say it's a really, really valid shop front, not just for the 4 million monthly active users it gets, but also for Microsoft sellers themselves. So for those that don't know the front end of AppSource, you know, you publish your services and solutions through Partner center, they Get Published to AppSource Assuming you fill in the right boxes and you tick the right checkboxes. They also publish to Microsoft's co Sell solution finder that's inside Microsoft and syncs directly into their own internal CRM solution, msx. So when a seller is architecting a deal, there is actually genuine AI that feeds back on solutions and services from AppSource, which is great, right? So, you know, it's another reason to be found in terms of IP and whether I think you should list transactable solutions. Again, I think it really depends on what your focus is as an organization. If you have some capability, be it horizontal or solution area, which is incredibly wrapped up, you've already got it, it can be solutionized, it can be deployed autonomously. Yes, absolutely.

Lucy Bourne [00:33:21]:

Get it up there as a transactable solution because you've almost got nothing to lose. Yes, it's a bit of a process getting it there, but I think there's a huge amount of value. Also, there's a lot of eyes on internal Microsoft partner resources to get more transactable solutions on AppSource. Right. So it's only going to gain you a bunch more credibility in your region of the Microsoft subsidiary you relate to to. If, however, like let's take you guys as an example, if you've got a focus on financial services and you've got an accelerator that helps with, you know, the standard entities and business process flows and journeys, customer journeys etc, that relate to that industry, don't worry about getting that transactable, but definitely put it up there. As an accelerator because it's going to again help to identify your differentiation as a partner, help to demonstrate you know your specialism and your experience in that area and you can have it as what's a Contact Us listing Right. So whether that customer reaches out to you via AppSource and is able to interact with your pre sales or your sales journey that way and I think there is huge value in that as I say particularly from a co sell solution finder perspective if you want to positioning it into Microsoft.

Lucy Bourne [00:34:26]:

We've had examples of partners here in the UK getting opportunities from all sorts of different regions because Microsoft sellers in other regions have said we don't have anything like this this in you know us. The example I had recently was they didn't have any solution for private equity firms and so partner is working with had a great solution for that on AppSource and it was a the the PDMs of both partners were able to put them in touch with each other. Great, great reference case. So I would invest in it. I would say if you're if you're going to do a Contact Us solution just bear in mind you have to get the accelerator or the IP through that technical approval process and you only have to update it every six months. So you know, put in just the right amount of effort to get that technical solution approved but don't worry about it too much.

Neil Benson [00:35:11]:

Awesome Lucy, that's you've been a gold mine today. I really appreciate you coming on. I know it's early in the morning in the uk We've covered alliance managers and a bit about Partner center and awards and marketing customers who don't allow marketing case studies and things. The importance of solution designations. I have learned heaps and taken away a lot. I'm going to put some links in the episode description about the recent webinar that you did on dual recognition and links to Orchid Studio. Is there anything else people can do to follow your work and get in touch?

Lucy Bourne [00:35:41]:

My number one recommendation would be our LinkedIn channel. We put all of our events webinars, we do loads of in person events as well as webinars on there and yeah feel free to contact us on there as well. That would be the number one source of information for information from my side.

Neil Benson [00:35:55]:

Great Lucy, thank you so much. You've been amazing. Thanks Lucy for joining me on practice leading. There are links to Lucy's LinkedIn profile and Oka Studio as well as a link to the replay of that dual recognition webinar. If you're running a business apps practice that is ever lost out on recognition to an invoicing csp. There were so many knowledge bombs in today's episode. Can we still say knowledge bombs? Value bombs? It's 2025. I don't know and I'll include a summary of all of them in the episode download and you can get that when you join the Practice Leading mailing list.

Neil Benson [00:36:27]:

But here are my three key takeaways from my episode with Luci Microsoft Partnerships have changed if you've been in the Microsoft community for any length of time, you'll have realized that the days of easily acquiring a gold competency, they're long gone. It's harder to achieve a solution designation and the benefits are better, but maybe the margins aren't number two. Alliance management takes at least two skill sets Lucy identified the need for an ongoing operational role from someone able to focus on Partner center, maintaining your solution designations and registering opportunities keeping them up to date. There's also another role for someone able to connect and build relationships with Microsoft sellers in your local subsidiary, and it's unlikely that one person has the temperament for both, so it's going to take some teamwork. 3. Multiple vendor partnerships are possible, but harder Smaller partners will need to have a compelling narrative behind their reasons for having partnerships with other vendors. One might be that a systems integrator is transitioning from HubSpot or UiPath over to Microsoft. We also covered investing in marketing, especially in case studies where you can name your customers due to confidentiality and in industry awards, enlisting on AppSource and when to communicate your successes inside Microsoft.

Neil Benson [00:37:41]:

Join the Practice Leading Lab mailing list for a summary of all the key takeaways From Lucy, visit practiceleading.com and enter your first name and email on the homepage. Or click on the link in the episode description and you'll receive an invitation to the free tier of the Practice Leading community where you'll find a download for every episode. Until next time, Keep Experimenting I hope you enjoyed this episode of Practice Leading and found it useful. If you did, please follow the Practice leading page on LinkedIn where you can leave comments on each episode or a follow up question for our guests. Just search LinkedIn for practice leading and follow the page until next time, Keep Experimenting.