I thought I would try and address some of the common questions that I hear from both customers and partners and try to do this over a series of blogs.
I wanted to start with how to position Online Services. I tend to divide conversations into three steps as I find it helps to give the discussions a logical progression. The steps I use are:
Lets have a look at the three stages in more detail:
If you've ever had training about solution selling you know that one of the keys is identifying a business need, pain or decision point which could trigger a need to purchase a solution. Examples relevant to Online Services are wide but could include:
- Wanting to mobilise a salesforce
- Consolidating IT infrastructure
- Reviewing an existing hosting agreement
- Reducing business travel expenditure
Once you have a business case/reason you then need to think about the technology available to address the challenge. For example, if a Design agency is looking for a way to make digital content available to customers they may be looking for an Extranet solution. In reviewing the options, we hope you will choose a Microsoft technology, in the case above potentially SharePoint.
Once you've picked the technology, you then need to think about how the solution is going to developed and delivered. At Microsoft we think there are three main choices namely Self hosted, Partner hosted and Microsoft hosted (Microsoft Online Services).
As a business we refer to this as the Power of Choice – for both partners and customers. Depending on the priorities for a customer and the outputs from the previous two stages, each Choice presents its own advantages and disadvantages.
There are lots of ways to frame conversations about delivery but I find it helps to have a single, structured approach (like a decision tree) that also provides a framework for working together & should ensure that your customers get the right solution for their business needs.