News & Views for Australian SBSCs

Feedback from the SBSC Roundtables held in May

The second series of Australian SBSC Partner Roundtables were held in May 2008 as a follow-up to the events of November 2007.

The 22 attendees across Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney were a mix of new partners & those that had been involved in the earlier events. Sessions were moderated by Athena Thompson (SMB Marketing Manager) & Robbie Upcroft (SMB Servers Product Manager)

The all-up feedback was fairly consistent & this is summarised below. Next steps are as follows:

• Athena & Robbie to meet with the Microsoft Australia Partner team to discuss
• We will then come back to the community to talk actions & plans for the coming year

Please know that we appreciate & take this feedback very seriously. Given the level of input & passion that all the roundtable partners displayed, I will personally commit to seeing this program updated - one way or the other.

Regards & please let me know if you have any questions,

Robbie

Summary of feedback

SBSC Program Value: “The brand is meaningless if we don’t know what it is and no one knows about it”

• SBSC VS Certified: elevate SBSC within certified, eg, “Another feather in our caps” to registered/certified and Gold
• Will consider paying to be part of the program, eg, $500 p/year; $1000 p/year if there were tangible benefits. This would need to be rolled into the current Certfied/Gold fee.
• Would like to see restricted content for SBSCs (more than what the others see)
• Make sure people/customers know about it. IE, “Microsoft has certified me”. All felt there is no awareness about the program (partner capabilities etc) with customers at all. The ideal promotion would mean a “thank god you’re here!” reaction from new customers. CPA-type program was lauded by all of what the program could be.
• Should represent a standard not an entry point
• All would like to see the program drive business and business knowledge; eg, training on how do successful partners drive their business.
• Technical training
• BDM/grow business training
• Sales and Marketing training

Program re-enrolment

• All liked the idea of re-enrolment each year to keep certification current, including:
• Submission of customer case studies
• Attending training
• Potential for annual exam
• Dated logo, ie, “Certified for 2008” a la the UK model

Community engagement

• All liked the sound of an annual SBSC conference – would pay to attend
• Another angle would be the potential for a “mini-MBA”
• Agreement that all SBSCs should sign up to the blog and newsletter; particularly wanted previews of new products here.
• More information around leads & how they’re farmed out
• Feeling that partner finder was buried on the MSCOM.AU site and should be easier to find
• Highlight successful SBSC partners & show how these folk go about marketing, hiring staff, managing finances etc

Products

• Strong interest in CRM among the SBSCs: all liked idea of getting the MS PM up to one of the next user group meetings.
• Specific feedback around CRM Workgroups edition should allow for an additional 5 users on top of the current restriction of 5.
• Want clear information on SBS and EBS and what they can really do better.
• What about building some sort of tangible offer within the SBSC program, such as NFR product for customers that partners can give away?
• More detail needed on when to license & why – ie, OEM vs VL
• More support needed to help make the licensing programs effective & efficient
• More information needed on hosting opportunities & how to position against on-premise offerings

Marketing & communications

• Click & go feedback: Good support for the HP e-catalogue reality more
• One partner had done some “mystery shopper” calls to 132058 and asked for a small business partner and got the complete run-around; can we review this process and ensure it is leading back to the SB website and the partners pages?
• Better explain the SBSC program on every piece of collateral
• Robert Crane: How to Use SBS on Youtube – has over 100K hits.
• Business opportunity information: package up key insights from Analysts that might help them secure business, eg, “Gartner says small businesses should be spending 1-2% of turn-over on IT”.