Partner Programme Renewals
The Microsoft Partner Programme adds new benefits and resources all the time. The next few months sees the peak period for partner renewals so we would encourage you all to plan ahead and make sure that everything is in place to renew membership. For Education resellers in the UK there is a requirement that partners are Gold or Certified before they are able to become accredited AERs (Authorised Education Resellers). The Distributors will be checking reseller status before accepting orders, so please make sure that you have renewed.
The Microsoft Partner Programme provides a wealth of resources, including software, training and support services. The programme resources support all stages of your partners’ business cycle, here’s an overview of just some of the UK resources that partners’ receive:
- Receive sales opportunities from Microsoft, using Solution Profiler: A lead generation tool, allowing partners’ to profile their company’s solutions’ and promote out to UK customers via the Microsoft website.
- Reduce your business costs, through internal-use licences: Certified and Gold partners receive licenses as part of the membership fee, Certified partners receiving 25 licences and Gold partners receiving 100 licences. Further detail on this can be found on the Licensing Calculator
- Support your customers, using technical support: Certified and Gold partners have access to:
- Business Critical Phone Support, for server-down situations.
- Online Technical Communities, for break-fix and advisory support.
- Technical Sales Assistance, for phone-based pre-sales technical support to win competitive bids.
- 5 Pack Professional Support Incidents, for non business critical issues.
- Technical Advisory Services, for direct access to phone-based technical consultants to resolve any technical issue.
- Expand your network, using Channel Builder and our Partner Network: Meet and engage with Microsoft staff and Microsoft partners through our networking tools, and discover new business opportunities.
- Create demand and close more sales, using our sales and marketing tools: There is a wealth of sales and marketing resources available: the Sales and Marketing resource library providing downloadable collateral, the Sales Toolkit providing sales teams with product knowledge, the Customer Satisfaction tool providing insights on your partners’ customer base, the Microsoft Events team helping your partner to run up to 4 heavily subsidised Microsoft events per year.
- Expand your skills, using the Partner Learning Centre: Access to all the technical and sales training your partner needs to stay up to date with Microsoft technologies using the searchable training system.
Partner Support:
Telephone: 0800 917 3128
Certified partner email: certpartner@msdirectservices.com
Gold partner email: goldcert@msdirectservices.com
