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Need Security Everywhere back for Partners with the security badge!
Suggested by John Francis – Needs Votes – 0 Comments
Team, up unitl i think the beginning of 2023, we were able to delivery PIE security everywhere engagements... we are an M365 partner with 5 badges, security being one of them.. but that doesnt seem to matter for the security everywher program as you now have to be an MSSP to delivery that engagement.We find that a bit ridiculous in that we are always helping clients move to e5, EMS, etc.. and have built a team around that... we are a Professional Services company and an SI (as well as a CSP), but we are in the business of implementation and integration, not the types of services provided by an MSSP.our M365 clients rely on us to help them make decisions around upgrading, replaceing competitive products, etc.. and they dont think they should have to pay for that as they consider it microsoft presales work... but now i cant accomodate those types of engagement sfor them...we need to be able to! -
FRP Meetup for knowledgesharing
Suggested by Rens Ploegstra – Completed – 3 Comments
Hi,As a FastTrack Partner i'd like the idea of having a quarterly or twice a year get together with FRP's on discussing issues they've been encountering and getting solutions.obviously, this would be the best if it was set in groups of 4 where the FRP's are in different Geolocations (Competition wise)the community call is more a presentation meeting with Q&Ain the times that there is no Face 2 Face event for FRP's anymore this would be my second-best solution for this. -
Statement File Naming Convention
Suggested by Graham Cherry – Completed – 2 Comments
Please use a sensible file naming convention for Statements that will allow them to display in chronological order -
Windows 11 Deployment Incentive Program
Suggested by Arto Ovaskainen – Completed – 2 Comments
My feedback is for the Microsoft FastTrack Ready Program> Windows 11 Deployment Incentive Program.
FastTrack team has announced that a suitable Telemetry tool is coming to use to get the necessary customer background information for the Windows 11 Deployment. The tool would provide us, as Partners, a way to identify potential customers to whom we would recommend the program.
We have an example from this week.
We presented the incentive program to our eligible customer. The telemetry surveys were based on information obtained from the customer's environment. We spent a lot of time on this topic from our internal stakeholders and also from the client side.
After Claim Submission, we were notified of the rejection of our claim with the conclusion: "After reviewing the customer details, we are unable to approve your request as this customer was already over the Windows 11 MAD activation threshold for this program at the time the claim was submitted. "
If we had the telemetry tool at our disposal, we could pre-empt potential customers for whom the incentive support would be worthwhile.
This would save everyones time in this topic. -
Deployment Voucher - Customer Eligibility
Suggested by HIram Machado – Completed – 2 Comments
I would like to bring up some perspective about the Deployment Voucher Offer that I think it is important to have as Microsoft work on the T&Cs as well as a definition of customer eligibility. Since the guidelines mention Commercial customers, I wanted to suggest that it should include government customers too. Let me try to explain why. We have served several customers last year with the deployment vouchers, taking them from not having the licenses to full utilization of the acquired licenses (the primary example of that would be X customer - ~7,000 seats). And we continue on engaged with this customer working on advancing them even more with Azure workloads. Now, the following opportunities are in the pipeline for E5: • Y customer (19,000 users) • Z customer l (4,000 users) • L customer (800 users) These customers are in Brazil, and they are government agencies. The challenge is that they have a long and bureaucratic process for running an RFP, they are now in the process of making the license acquisitions, but it can take them months, and in some cases years to run another RFP for services. There had been cases where they have purchased licenses and never implemented anything until the licensing contract was already expired. The Deployment Offer had allowed us to jump in right after the acquisition of the licenses and ensure that these licenses were going to be deployed and utilized. Which in turn helps to justify the ROI of the investment they have made at Microsoft and improves Microsoft’s position at renewal time. The Microsoft Account Team we are working within Brazil includes Luciano Lourenço, Fábio Gaspar, and Andre Toledo. Please, feel free to reach out to them if you would like, they will probably have a lot more customers on the radar than the ones I am sharing with you. And the Deployment offer might actually be the justification these government organizations might find to make a license acquisition sooner rather than later. We are looking forward to hearing back from you! -
Phone System - Implementation Voucher
Suggested by Rubens Daniel Junior – Completed – 1 Comments
Into the FY21 we had a great initiative of the M365 Deployment voucher, where a eligible customer had the implementation services covered by a eligible FRP partner (and follow up with FastTrack program itself).
Into FY22 one of the main KPIs is the Phone System adoption / implementation.
It would be a great punch to drive it, a Phonesystem Deployment Voucher to eligible customer that purchase licenses and help them to have all the required UC services to implement it (or migrate from other vendor) into Microsoft Solution. -
Success story registration site (aka.ms/FRPStories)
Suggested by Chie Kawaguchi – Completed – 0 Comments
[Translated text]
Success story registration site (aka.ms/FRPStories)
We need to clarify these points:
1. Microsoft's goal (of collecting our success stories)
(We have already provided our success stories in PPT.)
2. Merit of posting our practices on aka.ms/FRPStories
3. Partner’s benefit
We think there will be more posts if we have benefit(s) like the following:
- When we as a partner post more, he can get higher priority in referrals (e.g., MS will assign more users to us)
- A partner with more posts will have more FRP incentive, for example, doubled.
- The point will be added by 0.1 of FRP incentives for each post to introduce one of our new practices.
4. Are there any benefits to customer from this?
Benefits like the following:
- Some workshops will be free of charge for customer. -
Make it easier to register all workloads for a customer
Suggested by Jeremy Deschner – Rejected – 0 Comments
I have some customers that have self deployed and have already achieved 80% or more on some workloads. In order for our company to be a Value Added Service provider I would like for us to be their first point of contact for all issues in M365.
Currently if I want to register all the other workloads that are already 80% or more, I have to provide a signed POE or SOW, then a schedule, then more paperwork that may or may not be rejected. This is all time that we have to spend a company resource on instead of upselling.
If the workload is over 40%, we won't get any commission or incentive, so make it easier to register.
If we register all their workloads the added value to the customer is
1. It means the customer can easily use the remote guidance feature of FT
2. It puts our company in a really good position to upsell to E5 because there is no other vendor in the picture.
3. If all their solutions have top level support, they will not look at Google or other providers. -
Lead Quality
Suggested by Janet Khar – Accepted – 1 Comments
We shared with our Fasttrack PDM the issue with FPC Referrals just wanting us to solve their problem and not interested in new projects. We have not garnered a single new project this year from FPC referrals. Therefore, the ROI on the FPC Referrals has been poor. Our FPC PDM asked if we were holding firm with FPC Referrals to the 2-3 hours of free services only. We do try, but if the customer's issue takes longer than 2-3 hours the customer still expects it will be free regardless of how long it takes. If we try to charge them, they just complain about us.
ASK - We need Microsoft to truly partner with us and help set the boundaries and expectations of what a FPC Referral should expect from a partner - for free. There is nothing in the original communication from MSFT to the customer to set any time boundary expectations. Given this is a MSFT program. MSFT should be setting the clear expectations to customers.
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Incentivize workloads like M365 Copilot, Microsoft Entra ID for FastTrack Partners
Suggested by Sohong Chakraborty – Completed – 1 Comments
As a FastTrack Ready Partner, we would like to see certain workloads like M365 Copilot, Microsoft Entra ID incentivized under the Modern Work & Security Usage Incentive program. We get a plethora of RFAs for these workloads and readily assist the customers. But incentivizing these workloads for this fiscal will lead to more skin in the game for the partners and, justify the time and effort the partners put in to deliver these FastTrack benefits.
FPC Program ideas/suggestions
Share insights/feedback, ideas and requests related to the FRP Program.