GDPR … and what now ?

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Starting from 25 May 2018 there is going to be a new European regulation that will come into force that effects the way you manage data, and your need to protect the data that you hold. That regulation is General Data Protection Rule (GDPR). It will not only be good enough to take measures about protecting data you hold on paper  because in addition there will be technological measures that will also be necessary to comply with the law.

It is with the utmost importance that each organization must present a clear policy to meet the required GDPR standards.

But what’s happening at the mean time (November 2017)?

There’s a tsunami of information and content available, especially when you get to excited asking google for information (own experience). I’ve been bombarded with a tremendous amount of a short terms and abbreviations.

Based on my experiences in the retrieval of this information I can understand that you as a business owner get very “saturated”, and may lose the desired focus on this topic due to the fact that it simply is too much information to process.

Can you as a company who hasn’t started yet meet the demands on the desired date? Maybe a more important question is “which parts need to be done in which order?”, but where do you start? Can you set everything so that you are 100% covered regarding GDPR? The  scariest factor is the fines that can easily rise to exorbitant amounts (€20 million). Can you as a company take out insurance to cover this financial risk, what are the conditions?

Are these types of questions top of mind? But is GDPR not just something you need to do as a company? Do we underestimate the urgency by the overwhelming amount of information, is the impact on the time factor underrated? But what’s most relevant to do, and especially who should do what?

The date of May 25, 2018 is a hard set one, and will come faster than we know it.  What needs to be done, and by whom? Fortunately, there is a lot of easy tools and information available, which can help you to understand the what, how and when about GDPR.

At QBS we like to give support to our partners to these issues.

Still not a QBS partner? We’ll be happy to get in contact with you!

 

 

Stand and Deliver, your customers will be mine!

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Upgrade your Customers NOW! Or Someone else WILL.

One of the biggest risks for any business, particularly business software vendors, is the potential loss of customers. Customers are your bread and butter and they are what helps keep your businesses ticking, the lights on and gets you that recurring revenue that helps you survive.

So, if you want to keep hold of those customers then you need to make them feel special. You have to make sure that they are not tempted away by some flash looking ‘dandy highwayman’, who we’re all too scared to mention, who spends lots of cash in grabbing their attention. Especially after so many years of your hard work to build that relationship.

To keep the dandy highwayman at bay, as a software vendor you need to show that you have your customers best interests in mind. When your customer starts to experience a problem, they should turn to you FIRST – even if you aren’t able to directly provide the solution. This though is good as you can help the client select the right product that doesn’t affect their existing solution and supports their infrastructure. This builds the bond and positions you as their trusted advisor.

However, what your customer (and you) may not realise is that maybe their problems can be solved by upgrading to the latest version of their existing solution. Keeping them up to date with the latest technologies is critically important so they understand what is available to them, how they can avoid risks such as not being compatible with other software upgrades and data protection. Because if you aren’t doing this that dandy highwayman will be lurking in the bushes to jump out and just steal them.

With the release of NAV 2018 those customers that are using anything older than the latest release are at risk of going to another reseller for the upgrade or worse still moving away from your product altogether. Your biggest advantage over the dandy highwayman is that you should already understand the customer’s needs. You will be able to advise them what is best for their business. You can also explain the knowledge gaps that other vendors may not be able to fill should they switch, such as moving away from your IP.

You need to think about how you should be informing your customers about what they have available to them and how easy it is for them to upgrade to the latest version when you use QBS Upgrade services. But what makes this even easier is that your customer can spread the cost of that upgrade monthly instead of a big capital investment. With the combination of QBS Upgrade services and the access to lease/loan through QBS Finance there is no reason for them to be on anything other than the latest version.

If you don’t know it by now there is still plenty of potential for you to generate revenue from those customers, especially your legacy customers. That’s all it takes is to spend a little time making your customers aware of the future potential of the business by upgrading to the latest technology. Better you earn that income than the rogue with white striped face who doesn’t care about the customer’s best interests.

So, Stand and deliver stop making those excuses and provide your customers with some extra special services.

If you grew up in the 1980s then you should know to what I refer, if not check this out.

 

Position NAV as stepping stone for more Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ deals

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Since the introduction of the Dynamics 365 Business Edition in the US and Canada late 2016, the position of Dynamics NAV is under pressure! Competitors took the chance to position NAV as an old-fashioned solution and that’s a direct threat to your NAV business!

In this edition of QBS Talks you’ll learn the 7 strong reasons to keep on selling Dynamics NAV to new customers. And new ideas on how to leverage that position, making NAV a safe stepping stone today to Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ in the near future.

This is a Must Attend webinar for business owners and all the people active in sales and marketing!

Exclusive interview with Jeff Edwards Director for ERP Channel Strategy Microsoft

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At Inspire 2017, we had an interview with Jeff Edwards. Jeff has been working for Microsoft since 2000 and is the director for ERP Channel Strategy and programs since 2007. We talked about the partner transformation process over the years. About the positive changes and the current challenges for both partners and Microsoft. And of course, we’ve also asked him for his best advice for you as a Dynamics partner going forward.

Jeff Edwards
Jeff Edwards – Director ERP Channel Strategy Microsoft

Jeff, what are your observations around the partner transformation process in the SMB market?

“Well, let me start with the positives and cover the challenges afterwards. First of all, our best SMB partners have really embraced the Microsoft stack. They’re no longer single category ERP or CRM partners since they also implement solutions like Office 365 and CRM. And they offer Power BI, creating dashboards for their clients. The introduction of Dynamics 365 Business Edition will further increase that number of partners due to the attractive pricing and the smart packaging. The NAV partners who are not broadening their portfolio will be under risk – both for new business as for their existing customer bases. A year from now, if you’re an ERP partner not selling CRM – I don’t know what you’re doing.”

So, can you tell us more about the second positive?

“My second positive observation in the transformation is the degree of specialisation or verticalisation. Today’s prospective customers are not interested in conversations with partners that start with “so tell me, what does your business look like? What are your problems? What do you want to achieve?” And then build, support and update that bespoke solution. I don’t think people are willing to pay for that anymore. Besides, it’s often too complicated, takes too much time and the risks are too high. And all that comes with at a never-ending cost of keeping up with new releases. Companies like Forrester and Gartner confirm that the market wants as much out of the box as possible. And if you really want to do a customization, it should only because of a specific competitive advantage. Not because “we do things different.” The customization should have a specific customer benefit.

So that’s a big change for a partner! Basically, they have to move away from expensive sales and pre-sales processes and employees. The ones with long RFI’s, several product demonstrations and multiple Proof of Concepts to win a random new customer based on customization skills at a discounted prize. They also have to move away from one-off customizations and intensive consultancy projects towards repeatable vertical products, improved digital demand generation and product marketing to become successful in their selected markets. Also, the owner of this future-proof partner needs to have a different skill-set.

I’ve seen 12 years of nominations for our Dynamics partner awards. Over time, these nominations have become so much better and vertically precise. Our best partners have made huge progress in both business knowledge and business outcomes. A significant majority of the partners that do 80 percent of our business is fully verticalised. The top 20 percent of our total channel has made astounding progress. The next 30 percent is doing okay. We also see some differences in regions and solutions. In Europe 50 to 60 percent is fully verticalised. But the partners in the North of Europe are doing better than the ones in the South. And US partners are still less specialised than partners in Europe. CRM partners all over the world are still less specialised than their ERP colleagues. But they reform fast! When it comes to IP, you don’t have to build it all by yourself. AppSource will be very helpful in this process. And partners should definitely consider combining their own IP with IP from ISV’s.”

And finally, your third positive aspect. Which one is that?

“My third and last positive is the cloud acceptance all over the partner channel. I see a complete mental acceptance of the cloud today. However, reality is that in many countries or regions the infrastructure is not always sufficient. We see that the lead time of the transformation of our own business to cloud gets shorter all the time. To illustrate that: I think Microsoft announced CRM Online in 2009. It took us about 6 years before the cloud license revenue surpassed the onpremise license revenue. With Dynamics AX that transition time was two years. I expect that we will reach that turning point with NAV within 24 months.”

So that brings us to the challenges. Which are the most important ones that you see?

“Challenge number one is the switch from customized projects to standardised products. Partners aren’t doing a great job at that. The critical part probably is that it needs a different set of skills in terms of product management, release cycles, document and test. Plus the discipline that needs to come with that. Many partners have yet to take steps in this area.

My second one is the switch from a sales motion to a marketing motion. I think that we all have bought into the idea of this new buying behavior based on anonymous research. Yet, most partners are still poor at marketing. Many partners have been hiring marketing people recently, but rarely of the right level. Most of these new hires are young and have limited experience. Partners should focus on senior marketers and should give this person a seat in their Leadership teams. Just like they do with their sales manager. Our top partners already do this, like Power Objects, Socius and LS Retail. But that’s only like 10 percent of the channel. So that’s a disappointment. Partners that don’t improve their marketing will continue to be relatively ineffective in their sales at a way too high sales cost.

The third challenge is the expansion of the footprint of partner solutions. As I said before – our top partners have embraced the Microsoft stack. But for the total channel, the progress is at too slow a pace. And because of that, partners will miss deals. Especially if they plan to be successful with Dynamics 365. A solution like Office 365 won’t bring a partner a lot of money but in return it delivers account control. Do you want to be the IT strategy and solution provider for your customers? Then you simply need to offer the most important parts of the full stack. Either direct or as a white-labeled service via partners. I see sort of an end-point in this cloud SMB business where partners are deep solution providers in a micro-vertical, maniacally focused, offering the full Microsoft cloud stack via a kind of a portal. I don’t think that these partners necessarily need to be 100 million dollar companies with venture capitalists and IPO needs. They can be 10 to 30 million dollar companies and they will be very profitable.”

To expand their solution footprint, partners can consider a merger or acquisition. What is the status of these M&A activities in the channel?

“The M&A market is here now! At almost all of our top-partners, everyone talks to everybody. Either as a potential buyer or as a potential seller. However, buyers are not prepared to pay premiums. And often the sellers end up being disappointed about the price that is offered. And mostly that is because the owners focus more on the money they need for their retirement, rather than what the value for the buyer is.

I see two important trends. First is that partners understand the need for critical mass, both geographically and skill wise, to be a more complete provider for the full Dynamics 365 solution. Or even for the full Microsoft stack. Secondly, ERP partners buy CRM practices. Clearly this gives them an easy sale at a low cost to upsell CRM to their existing ERP customer base. In general I see that recurring revenue is the game changer. So I expect prices in M&A for traditional project businesses will decrease, where the market value of subscription based businesses will further increase.”

An alternative scenario for M&A is Partner to Partner co-operation. Why is that relatively unpopular?

“First of all, P2P co-operation needs trust. The investments you need to make in order to build that is substantial. As a result, there’s not much ROI on the short term, say the first 6 months. So the initial lift of co-operation is heavy and you need to maintain the discipline and be patient afterwards. Secondly, most partners don’t succeed in co-operation at scale. Maybe we should start thinking about making P2P co-operation into an official competency. In the near past, we’ve tried to stimulate co-operation in an analogue way. Maybe we should try this again in our digital world with AppSource and Partner Finder. Another good idea is to have CRM and ERP partners dating with each other at events like DIRECTIONS US and EMEA this fall.”

In your opinion – what is the ideal size of a successful Dynamics 365 partner today?

“So that’s an interesting question! A few years ago, the ideal size of a Dynamics partner business was calculated on 80 or more employees. That size allowed a partner for example to have a proper marketing department and someone responsible for methodology and quality. But that was based on traditional project business. With the partner channel switching now to pre-packaged, vertically focused products, this size question becomes relevant again! We definitely need to think about that, but these are my first thoughts. Marketing and a product management drive scale. Where sales, consulting and custom development do not. So the partners that have already made the switch can now grow their business relatively easy without hiring loads of extra people. On the other hand, there is the need to embrace a bigger part of the Microsoft stack that will lead to hiring additional skill sets.”

So what is the actual status of Partner requirements?

“We are reintroducing certification requirements for Dynamics 365 in the SMB market. This will come sometime in the next calendar year. We expect CSP to be the key channel for this product. You can see that we have changed the Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition requirements where now, certifications are required to sell the product in CSP. We do not want an unqualified channel to sell Dynamics 365, and we do not want unqualified partners to offer the subscription at a low cost just because they have invested nothing in marketing, sales or technical expertise. You can expect to see higher requirements for both the Silver and Gold Competency, and the right to sell in CSP. As always, we want a qualified lead to go to a partner that has the best chance of winning the deal, AND successfully implementing the software and ensuring customer success.

Finally, what are your Go Do’s for the Dynamics partner channel?

“Well, there are many things to do if you’re a Dynamics partners today! So, some kind of a structured approach will be very helpful. I would recommend our Dynamics SMB partners to focus on these four areas:

  1. Get ready for Dynamics 365 Business Edition and the cloud world in general
  2. Let go of your single category approach on either ERP or CRM and embrace the full Microsoft stack
  3. Focus on vertical markets. If you’re in a macro-vertical market today, consider going deeper to the niche or micro-vertical level
  4. Improve your marketing! Hire a product marketing manager. And think in terms of doubling your investment in time, money and dedication”

DIRECTIONS EMEA 2017 business report is available now!

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Never before it was so important for Dynamics partners to understand the directions that Microsoft takes with her Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 business applications in today’s fast changing cloud world!

At DIRECTIONS US in Florida and the EMEA edition in Madrid, Microsoft unfolded some bold ideas to disrupt the market and grow faster. QBS group was in Madrid with a 23 people to hear these plans from first-hand. After the event, we have once again written our unique and well known DIRECTIONS EMEA 2017 business report with a team of 8 authors.

At QBS group, we understand that informing Dynamics partners well is crucial for making the right strategic decisions. That’s why we strive every single day to make “QBS Partners the best-informed Microsoft partners.”

We have been writing business reports on the international Microsoft events since 2004. So we know what we’re doing. This report is part of our ‘around the year’ reporting service that spans all the major events for Dynamics partners: Inspire/WPC, eXtreme 365 and DIRECTIONS.

What you can expect?

This unique report features broad, insightful and independent business reporting on the happenings at DIRECTIONS EMEA 2017. The report, which consists of 51 pages of need-to-know information, is bought and used by leading Dynamics partners from all over the world.

These partners use the report among others to:

  • Inform all their colleagues who did not visit the event
  • Improve their marketing and sales pitches
  • Update the content on their websites

 

What do Dynamics partners say about these reports?

This is what some of your colleague partners say about our reports:

  • “We are a loyal purchaser of these business reports. Where in the world can you find a solid, structured and well-informed second opinion for so little money? We always discuss the report in our board meeting. QBS helps us to stay alert!”
  • “This is a great report service! It contains lots of background information that helps us better understand how to translate Microsoft’s strategies to our daily business.”
  • “I’ve only recently started in the Dynamics channel. Thanks to the QBS reports I was up to date in no time of the various Microsoft strategies, her product policies and the trends in the Dynamics partner channel”

The average satisfaction score for this report over the last 5 years was 8,6 on a 1 to 10 scale.

Taste first?
To get a good idea of what you can expect from our DIRECTIONS EMEA 2017 Business Report, you can now download the 2016 edition for free.

Order your copy now!

Partners of QBS group receive this report at no additional cost, as it is part of their QBS membership. For non-QBS Microsoft partners, the report is available for only Euro 400 exclusive of VAT per partner company.

Do you want to know all about Microsoft’s plans with Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ and the opportunities these solutions create for your business? Then order your copy today!

As a Microsoft Dynamics professional, can you afford to miss on this important information?

Business Edition is off – long live Tenerife!

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Our team is just getting back from Directions in Madrid. It was a remarkable event in many aspects. First it has been the 10th anniversary of Directions and fact that it has been now with more than 2.000 attendees is not just a testament to the success of Directions, but also to the momentum this community of partners have built.

At same time, Directions this year signaled a significant step in the product strategy for NAV and the SMB agenda for Dynamics. While Microsoft gave up on having two editions of Dynamics 365, by basically no longer launching the Dynamics 365 Business Edition, it become clear that the NAV platform remains an important pillar to the Dynamics 365 strategy. This statement has been doubted in weeks before, after some announcements that could have led partners to believe that NAV becomes almost legacy. But if anything, no one should have any doubt that NAV will stay platform of choice for customers that want to have a suite of business process capabilities, delivered on-prem or through cloud.

That is an important message, the capabilities and in fact the code base is 100% identical, regardless if you want to deploy on-prem or cloud. So the promise, that your customers can migrate to cloud in their terms, is not just a promise. And you can then add capabilities as you go, being it in sales, marketing or field service or even human talent. Since all Dynamics applications, including next version of NAV, code name Tenerife, will use the Common Data Service, they can seamlessly work together.

As QBS Group, we extend this agenda to you, we serve you and your business regardless if you want to deploy your solution for your customers on-prem or of you want to offer it through private or public cloud. We have the trainings and programs in place to help you migrate your solution to the Tenerife platform, we will bring you new customer prospects through our Take-the-Lead program, create new capacity in your technical teams with migrations service or help you build your strategy around your all up business or marketing wih our individual workshops. In any case we invite you to talk to us about your future, either in one of our upcoming QBShares, through your local QBS teams or by contacting me or any of our staff. Finally in case you want to know more about what main themes were discussed at Directions this year, we recommend that you listen to the recoding of our recent webinar “HOT News from Directions EMEA” and keep an eye out for our Directions business report, that provides you with all important insights.

Directions EMEA 2017 in Madrid: Microsoft shares core beliefs that Dynamics SMB partners can embrace

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As a longtime Microsoft-observer with a perspective geared toward Microsoft Dynamics, I’d like to share some of my impressions of the important trends from this year’s Directions EMEA 2017 in Madrid.

The Microsoft Dynamics SMB partner community has never been awaited a Directions EMEA event as it did this year’s edition. There were two main reasons for that. First, they recognize the growing importance of the Dynamics 365 concept for both the Dynamics NAV and the Dynamics CRM channels. Second, they are facing confusion around the go-to-market models around Dynamics 365 that was created by Microsoft at the US edition a few weeks before.

Microsoft succeeded in clarifying the product strategies and go-to-market initiatives for Dynamics 365 in the SMB markets. Marko Perisic, general manager Dynamics 365 for SMB markets, explained to the audience why some of the initiatives as communicated at DIRECTIONS US were not that smart after all. And together with his team he delivered some fantastic product demonstrations.

So Microsoft’s overall performance at this event took away most of the confusion and was instrumental in building trust in the companies’ future product directions. Here are some of the core values and beliefs that Microsoft shared about their future direction.

  • Microsoft explained why they decided to no longer use the split between the SMB variant (Business Edition) and its bigger brother (Enterprise Edition) based on the somewhat artificial 250 employees border. The new approach will allow Microsoft and its partners to start the product discussion based on the customer’s needs. Of course this is a starting point that makes sense!
  • With the introduction of Dynamics 365 codename ‘Tenerife’, Microsoft will bring the Dynamics NAV brand under the overall Dynamics 365 umbrella. That’s good news for the partner community, since it helps NAV to leverage the large investments Microsoft is making in the Dynamics 365 brand.
  • Microsoft is going to make a big step forward by making Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ available in Spring 2018 in 14 countries based on localised versions.
  • The event made clear that the cloud is here and it’s here to stay. The important message to the partner community is that cloud is not just an option anymore, but a ‘must have’ in the proposition of any successful Dynamics partner business!
  • Like in previous events, Microsoft repeated her messages around the importance of the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. Many Dynamics partners have not prepared themselves for this program so far. But it will be the only way to order Dynamics 365 licenses going forward. Microsoft also announced new rules that makes it more difficult to become a CSP Direct partner.
  • Another important topic at this event was partner certification. The current competencies for ‘ERP’ and ‘cloud CRM’ will disappear shortly. They will be replaced by the new ‘Business Application cloud’ competency. After 3 years without exams, partners can expect the re-introduction of product-oriented exams on top of revenue thresholds.
  • Even the most traditional Dynamics NAV partner at the event had to admit: the days of the Dynamics NAV partner are over. All partners understand that their future is in the Microsoft stack, thus in being a Microsoft partner rather than a Microsoft Dynamics partner!
  • Standard ERP and standard CRM implementations have turned into commodities. Just like Office 365 implementations some years ago. This means that Dynamics partners must differentiate themselves even more than in the past to stay out of the pricing downward spiral. The real value is in specialisation/verticalisation and in adding new technologies like the ‘Power Suite’, artificial intelligence, and IoT.

The overall message to partners was the importance of change! The successful Dynamics partners of the future have an open mindset, have no fear of experimentation, and are willing to invest time, money and energy in new ideas, concepts and go-to-markets. The near future will tell us which partners are able and willing to do so.

The organizing committee of Directions EMEA had many reasons to be proud. They reported over 2,150 attendees representing 600 partners from 60 countries from all over the world. An all-time record! The 2018 edition of Directions EMEA will take place on October 31st to November 2nd in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Our Build or Buy Agenda

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When I joined QBS group a year back, it became clear, that we have to invest in 2 directions in order to stay competitive in the post Dynamics 365 environment.

One big change with Dynamics 365 proposition is to get from distinct products to an integrated experience, very much like Office did vs. single apps in productivity. As QBS group we have built expertise and IP around NAV. So we needed to quickly get access to CRM related knowledge and also get IP that can provide additional value not just to ERP related scenarios for our partners, but also to Sales and Marketing. While we could have chosen to start building these assets from scratch, it would have taken way too long. So we were looking out for a partnership.  We found a great fit of objectives with MindsUnited. They were coming from the exact opposite side, focusing on CRM related workloads only. Yet same approach as QBS group – target SMB market  and have clear focus on partners. So that drove our decision to invest in MindsUnited and eventually integrate them into our holding The IT Channel Company.

Also brought in talent and expertise on the CRM side, which we already made good use, in the interest of our partners.

As direct consequence, we were able to offer their CRM Online Jumpstart product to our partners. Jumpstart is a wizard based enabling tool, that let’s you configure and implement the relative complex CRM Online environment, even with little CRM expertise. So partners that wanted to also serve customers on CRM Online, but with a simplified implementation, were provided with that immediate opportunity. Also MindsUnited Cloud-Chain service was great addition to our partners portfolio, as it helps them to integrate data and process from different business application and productivity platforms. As intended, the acquisition also brought in talent and expertise on the CRM side, which we already made good use, in the interest of our partners. MindsUnited experts gave technical trainings and consultancy as well as direct support in customer negotiations. Their Jumpstart product is supporting D365 Sales Enterprise Edition right out of the gate and therefore keeps our partners connected to latest technology from Microsoft Dynamics.

They are very successful in providing outsourcing capacity on migrations for NAV solutions and other development workloads.

Next we knew that we need to differentiate ourselves through services we provide to partners. Doing license transaction will become a commodity in context of SaaS services like Dynamics 365 in long-term. Hence it will be harder for us to provide unique value to partners. While we already developed comprehensive service platform for lead generation (Take-the-Lead) or enablement (our D365 accelerate program), we saw one common challenge our partners had, that we could hardly address: Create more capacity by offloading IT work. On one hand side, we work very closely with Dynasource as a marketplace for our partners to offer and take in IT talent, yet when it comes to concrete outsourcing projects, we had to point to 3rd parties. That was decision point to have strategic alliance with 1ClickFactory and also invest in that partnership. They are very successful in providing outsourcing capacity on migrations for NAV solutions and other development workloads. In fact they are one of the few ISV development centers for Microsoft Dynamics. So we are confident that this partnership can help us to further deliver against our promise, to increase revenue of our partners and reduce costs.

We will continue to listen carefully to our partners in terms of their pain points and the market opportunities they want to pursue. We will continue to invest inside our company, but also through partnerships and acquisitions to make sure we provide the best value to our partners moving forward. But at same time, we are very clear that we do not want to compete with our partners at any time. We continue to be a partner led organization that has clear mission: Help our partners to increase revenue and decrease cost. So if you have any suggestions or comments, I am eager to hear it.

Directions EMEA 2017 Madrid

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Find here all the information you as Microsoft Reseller need to know from Directions EMEA 2017.

Hot News from Directions EMEA 2017 (48 Minutes)

More videos about Directions EMEA 2017, you can watch on our
QBS group Playlist – Directions EMEA 2017

Blogs

This year’s edition was delivered in Madrid from October 4th till 6th. This year Directions has many announcements and new strategies especially around Dynamics 365 and the local availability in the EMEA region.

Like every year, QBS group has attend this event with a large team.

Reflections on this weeks announcements from Microsoft

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One of our founders summarized this week plain and simple: Never a dull moment. Yes it was a roller coaster week for Dynamics partners, especially the ones that build their business on the NAV platform. Other than just summarizing the events, I wanted to write up my position. And I felt it might make sense to put myself into the product marketing shoes of Microsoft and start with a white board session. How I would structure the best possible go-to-market for Dynamics in SMB?

First consideration is that most, if not all SMB companies do not deploy Accounting, Finance, ERP, Sales and Marketing all in once. One because they might have an existing solution and complement that or because they prioritize one over the other. Second we would want to optimize for the 10-99 employee space. As we have seen in past through market research from AMI, this is space where we should expect the highest growth for SaaS Business Apps. If I would now optimize the go-to-market for prospects that are starting from Finance / ERP, I would always integrate the industry context of a given prospect. I don’t believe that you can attract majority of customers in that space with a “vanilla”, one size fits all ERP platform. (See also my blog earlier this year) As customer you at least want to use the business app within your industry environment. The more sophisticated you get, the more you then need processes and functions that are specific to your industry, which is hard to get from a “horizontal” business app solution. So I probably would not bet on a finished user experience coming from Microsoft, but rather a platform where partners provide their industry expertice. Well isn’t that what Tenerife is all about? I think we should be really excited about the platform Microsoft announced this week.

Then I think about the Sales and Marketing side. This is still relatively new business process to many of our SMB customers. Which would suggest that you start simple, with processes that are most common, like managing a pipeline and then as you grow into the CRM concepts, you add functionality. As far as I understand, that is path forward with Dynamics 365 Sales, one service to start and then pay as you go. If you need more functionality, you add and pay. Looks like a winning strategy in SMB to me as well.

My point being that, highlevel, the go-to-market that Microsoft presented early this week is good news for us and our partners to be successful in acquiring more SMB customers to cloud, at scale. Unfortunately, it came with 3 major issue :

  • We need to benefit from Microsoft’s branding. Taking Dynamics with its individual brands to Dynamics 365 was a very smart move. It associates Dynamics to the de facto standard for cloud productivity, Office 365. If the SMB go to market, that is based on Teneriffe can’t take full advantage of thatbrand proposition, it limits its potential success. Even worse, it could be misperceived as having NAV become a legacy platform. Many competitors would love to take advantage of such a misperception.
  • The way it was positioned, provided room to speculate how committed Microsoft is on the different ERP platforms. So far, Microsoft and especially Marko Perisic did great job to ensure that customers and partners place a safe bet with AX, NAV, GP and the SL platform. I am not a technical person, but I do understand that providing only one ERP platform from small business with 10 employees to enterprises with thousands of employees and international subsidiaries is simply bound to fail. All competitors equally struggle to do so, they all go with 2 platforms to serve the purpose. We all need to see that strong commitment from Microsoft to the different Business Application Platforms.
  • I am with Steve Mordue that it was odd to have announcements around branding, positioning and product portfolio go out completely untested. That is why there is an Inner Circle, why there is a Partner Advisory Council. It’s great to see that Microsoft is taking feedback. They reacted at Directions, they start to react on the feedback we and other partners gave as part of the Inner Circle event, but it could have saved a lot of unproductive discussion and sleepless nights for many of us, if it would have been done in a small forum first and positioned to a larger crowd.

So in closing, there is much to be excited about the Dynamics future in SMB. The strategy is sound and Microsoft, especially the Dynamics NAV team, has demonstrated that they can deliver. If they take feedback to heart and make sure we remain in the strong position as Dynamics SMB partners, we have the best ahead of us. As QBS we will continue to represent the interests of our partners best we can and provide feedback to Microsoft, to optimize our joined go-to-market. Also watch out for our Directions 2017 Business report. We will have exclusive interviews with Marko Perisic and other executives from Microsoft.

Best regards,

Michael Hartmann

CEO, QBS group

Slimstock and QBS group join forces to strengthen QBS partner capabilities

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Leusden, 21th of September 2017

Slimstock: market leader in inventory optimisation in Europe, announced a partnership with QBS to drive more business opportunities within the QBS partner base. With the complete software package Slim4, Slimstock helps customers to get the right inventory to the right place at the right time. Slimstock offers assistance to help reduce your inventory while at the same time increasing the service level. So turnover increases, while costs decrease and they offer a guarantee on these results. QBS will work with their partner community to explore opportunities for and with Slimstock which should result in service projects for the QBS partners.

The long-term strategic relationship will focus on enabling clients to implement the complete solution for the structural optimisation of their inventory with Slim4 and give our partners an upsell possibility at their customers and create more value add in the value chain of the customer.

Eric van Dijk, CEO, Slimstock: “Working with QBS will help us sharing our knowledge with more partners and customers. Thereby helping customers to take advantage of the new innovation in Dynamics NAV more efficiently.”

Michael Hartmann, CEO, QBS: “We are glad to offer another solution that helps partners adding more value add software on top of the existing NAV base”

For more information, visit www.slimstock.com

 

Important news from Directions US 2017

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QBS Partners are the best informed partners. As this is the mantra we live by, we are sharing the latest news on Dynamics NAV via this article. This week the first of the two Directions conferences is taking place in Florida. Some important news was shared which is crucial for your business planning for 2018. Although most of this news is very fresh, not fully detailed and will be repeated at Directions EMEA in Madrid, we would like to share what we know right now.

Dynamics  365 “TENERIFE” will offer full NAV functionality

The current versions of D365 Finance and Operations BE, avaliable in UK, US and CA offers limited functionality. This product was scheduled to become avaliable in other countries in Q4 2017. At Directions US it was announced that the new product, code name “TENERIFE” will have full functionality, giving customers the ultimate decision power to go for any configuration (OnPremise, Hybrid, SaaS or Multi Tenant hosting). For customers requiring less functionality, Office 365 Business Center will be the place to start. With this news it looks like the rigid division between Business Edition and Enterprise Edition is a blast from the past. This news proofs the full and continued focus of Microsoft on offering a great cloud product for the SMB with the same code base and functionality provided by Dynamics NAV. It is expexted that this product will launch in the spring of 2018

 

Extensions will be be optional

This new product “TENERIFE” will offer more possibilities to enhance the solution without the eminent need of extension. Although extensions will be by far the BEST option (in terms of upgradebilty, scalability and technical support), there will be options to leverage on the investment done in the current verticals build on older techniques

Although many more news was shared, these are the most important messages for now.  During the coming QBS Share Events we will share with you more details and indepth insights on these subjects. The connections we have with Microsoft via Inner Circle (amongs others) will be used to keep you updated and gives you early on the possibility to adapt to this news.

If you have any questions regarding this news or want to know more about our services around cloud readiness, please contact your PAM.

 

The CSP Direct model is like an iceberg

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At QBS group we believe that our partners deserve the best. The best support, the best software and the best stories. This time we have asked one of our UK partners, Creative Business Systems (Cbiz), to share their thoughts and experiences with you on their journey to the cloud. We asked Amit Wason if he could share his experience with you on the matter of a direct or indirect approach.

CSP inDirect

The market request for a subscription based approach is growing

We noticed that the market is changing, our clients are, more and more, requesting a subscription based approach. This allows them to not have their own services nor the hassle. At Cbiz we have always liked doing new things both in as well as with NAV, where we focus more on a service oriented delivery and not a product delivery. For now we are working on creating our own apps that will work on Dynamics 365, thus allowing us to have less on-offs and go the more repeatable side of the business. We will engage with our customers to see what is really important to them and fill the gaps with our apps to make sure the standardised Dynamics 365 offering is a perfect fit for them. By working with QBS group we can get rid of the technical challenge and focus on the solutions.

Find your market; do some proper market research to see where the vertical is that you should go for. Do not just dive in; the potential market for Dynamics 365 is different than the traditional market.

Direct or indirect approach, that’s the question

There are 2 options when going to the cloud. Some 4-5 years ago we had set up another company that would focus on 2 things: cloud (internet) security and cloud based services. We tried to offer the works: provisioning, creation of new users and portals, automated invoices etc. In the end it was just a mammoth task and towards the end we managed to make it all work, although we were not there where we wanted to be. The competition of large players however is fierce, the investments are huge and all the other things you need to think about were just crazy; support, security. Unless you can really go to market with some serious numbers, it does not make sense to go direct.

We have gone through the pain and realized how hard it is to create your own direct model. So when Andy De Rosa of QBS group, he and I go back for some 10 years, mentioned we could use QBS group for all this we were most definitely interested. And I can only say when looking at the indirect model, such as offered by QBS group, it is just brilliant. My advice to others…don’t take the direct approach, it is like an iceberg; you only see a small portion, the majority of the work takes place under water. QBS group and his CSP offering has the best margin. If you would go direct all the margin would be eroded with all the hassle you have to keep it working. Setting up the hardware part is actually the easy part, the hard part is trying to service it. QBS group has done all the hard work and they give us one place with all the information we need. Adding additional services is a matter of seconds.

In the process we of course encountered many questions, such as security, who is hosting what, who does what. Getting clients to understand what goes where. Security has been the biggest hurdle, especially more corporate companies want to know all the details and do the technical governance themselves. It would have been good to have a pack with the answers to these questions, explaining this is what you are buying and this is what happens. We collaborated with QBS group in providing the right answers to our clients in these projects.

Results so far

We have been using QBS group for our services for 2 years now, and we have several customers live on the platform. With QBS group we have found a partner in the process and not just a supplier of the platform. When dealing with Microsoft directly you are on your own to make things happen. We also have our own portal on Azure but do realize it is a lot more difficult and more work if something is not working. Whereas with QBS group you just switch your server on. It just makes it easy to get it working.

As well as the costing is a lot easier; we do not have to worry about how much database was used that month, how many connections, etc. We have more confidence as with QBS group we get a fixed price for our infrastructure costs, user bandwidth costs so that we know exactly how much our cost price is and what we can pass on as resale costs to our customers.

Our plans for the future

We will be offering half our services on the cloud and thus repeatable and half of it still on a project basis. The mass of our customers will work in a more slick way. We expect some of our smaller clients to outgrow Dynamics 365 and move towards projects. We might even need to set up a separate company for the cloud business, with their own marketing and sales. I expect we will have doubled the manpower by then, whereas there will be a shift in people we will attract. We will focus on creating apps that will assist our clients in getting the most out of their ERP software. In the short term we will need to get ready for NAV 365, as we are the first country in Europe to launch. These are exciting times!

Start selling Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales now via special SMB SKU

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QBS group guarantees “future proof selling” to Dynamics 365 Sales when it becomes available

You want to get started selling D365 Sales but don’t want to wait to Dynamics 365 Sales to become available in your country…. We got you covered!

In combination with the Jumpstart add-on we can sell you D365 today and guarantee you the upgrade to future products.

The basis for this offering are the 2 promotional SKU’s from Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales or Dynamics 365 for Sales and Customer Service (for more information visit our Partner Portal).

These promotional SKUs basically allows you to sell the D365 Sales Enterprise Edition to with a “SMB” price, which means that you can start selling to customers and don’t have to tell them to wait.

More info on Jumpstart via: http://www.jumpstart365.com/ 

If you want to know more or order this solution, please contact QBS group via the Partner Service Desk.

Promotion of Anne D. Jakobsen to VP of Marketing for QBS group

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Customer lifetime value and customer adds have become the new currency in the business application space. So at QBS group we want to strengthen our ability to offer world class marketing to our partners in order to keep them competitive. Promoting our Global Marketing Lead to VP of Marketing, Anne D. Jakobsen, is a natural step in this direction.

Anne has been with QBS group since November 2015, when she joined as the OneBizz Marketing Lead in the Nordics. Before that, Anne had a 15+ year history with Microsoft/Navision, so she’s a long time veteran in the world of Dynamics. She brings in a wealth of marketing experience on numerous disciplines and experience on cross-European activities, latest from her role as Marketing Manager with Microsoft Western Europe team. We are sure that strengthening our marketing organization like this will benefit all partners in the QBS group community.

In her own words: “I’ve spent most of my adult life doing marketing on the Dynamics portfolio – and over the years it has become more and more evident that creating modern marketing activities is what can make or break a company in this industry. So the services of the QBS group marketing teams are vital to the success of the partners in our community”.

Partners with QBS group benefits from marketing services such as strategic consultancy, lead generation, online marketing and marketing automation. Want to know how to join the QBS community? Read here.