Stronger Together

“Resilience, Resolve, Togetherness: these are the three words I would use to describe the partners in the QBS community. It was great to see the 70+ partners who attended last week’s channel webinar or have downloaded it over the weekend. You can listen to the recording and download the resources here.

Whilst the COVID 19 pandemic changes our day to day reality I have been lucky enough to speak with dozens of Dynamics partners of all shapes and sizes in the UK and beyond. Truthfully, it has left me emotional. Not plummeting into the depths of despair; the exact opposite – I was utterly inspired. Every call I made I was mentally prepared to hear not great news – personal or business – and in many instances, I left the call upbeat. Some are having to make hard decisions, but there is the underlying common thread saying that they will get through and be even more successful once they get through. I have always respected any Dynamics entrepreneur, I did not know there were move levels to go up, I did not even know those exalted levels existed – but my respect for the community has gone stratospheric and beyond.

So, I thought I would share some of the key thoughts from those partners that I have spoken to:

·      “Understand the Government funding and how it can help” – work with your financial advisors and accountants to make sure you are in a position to understand and make use of this funding.

·      “Cash is King” – liquidity is vital

·      “We are not a bank” – customers will ask for a change in payment terms, their first port of call should be their bank or review how to access the government funding packages

·      “We want to keep our resources” – you have spent years and decades building a valuable team, whilst it is hard to predict monthly utilisation levels you are looking at ways to keep your team engaged with online training and hackathons

·      “The way we communicate with our customers” – have a rhythm of customer engagement. Make sure you understand how different aspects of the customer are functioning. For example, in the last few days we are actually seeing an uptick in requests for upgrades and cloud migrations as customers see this as a “minimally disruptive” time.

·      “Microsoft Teams has been a life saver” – some of the channel have become so expert at its usage that they are now offering a Teams service to their customers. Also check out Haseet from City Dynamics talking about remote working here: https://youtu.be/4YVQyWBqhpE

·      BE EVEN MORE ENTREPRENEURIAL – this time of crisis will present opportunities to assist your customers. Be open to new ideas – and if assistance is needed work with another QBS partner!

So please keep your ideas coming. Keep an eye on the QBS UK Yammer feed and our COVID 19 Yammer group. We have also created a landing page on our website ‘QBS support through the COVID 19 outbreak’ where you will be able to access useful links to external Government sites with up to date information for your region”.

•       QBS Yammer site

•       QBS COVID-19 link

•       QBS support through the Covid-19 outbreak webpage