Setting up Selling Partner: ISV: Challenges and Tips
While helping a channel partner to set up as a seller in Microsoft Partner’s ecosystem for https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/marketplace/multiparty-private-offers-for-selling-partners, I came across some practical challenges which I am sharing here along with tips those may help: Help the partner select the right Partner Type – Partner, SI, MSP etc. for enrolling in the AI Cloud Partner Program. For a new partner to successfully enroll in Microsoft AI Cloud Partner program, it is mandatory to set up the authentication method using Authenticator tab. The enrollment didn’t succeed until the partner followed all the exact instructions provided on the browser on the Mobile Phone, including scanning the QR Code step. Without this step, the enrollment kept on failing although Authenticator recognized the user as a valid account on the Mobile Phone After enrolling in Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and Microsoft Commercial Marketplace program, it is necessary to complete Microsoft Validation of the partner. Microsoft sends emails to verify you as the right partner by sending email ID from Microsoft Vetting Services Email ID. You may receive multiple emails for Verification, ensure that complete verification by following steps from all those emails. Only after the verification was complete by following 3 emails that the partner received, Tax Profile and Payout Profile Assignment was enabled for us to complete on the Accounts Settings. The external Tax Completion Form did not display correctly on Chrome. After spending 5 attempts, we could successfully submit the Tax Profile form on Microsoft Edge. The partner set up the Payment profile after the Tax Profile was completed. It was necessary to select $ as a currency to associate Payment Profile to the Tax profile to complete this step. Note that Multi party Offer is currently available only to partners in the USA. The last step for my partner to gain visibility on the commercial marketplace as a Partner Directory was https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/create-a-marketing-profile Hope these practical steps help , would love to know your experience about setting up Multi-Party private offers.Welcome to the new marketplace community!
Hello and welcome to the new marketplace community! This community supports participants in the ISV Success Program and is open to anyone who is building cloud applications to help you reach more customers, go to market faster, and unlock growth. We’re so glad you are here and we’re excited to help you maximize the marketplace opportunity. This discussion board is appropriate for topics related to building applications the Microsoft Cloud, publishing to the commercial marketplace, and growing more sales of your applications. When you create a new post here, you’ll notice a prompt to select the appropriate label (Build, Publish, or Grow) that corresponds to your topic. You can also select the “Other” label if your topic does not correspond directly to one of the other labels. I encourage you all to get started with posting new discussions – we have internal teams here at Microsoft that are engaging with our community members to help get your questions answered. For more information on the new marketplace community, check out this blog. Thank you!Last chance to register for Microsoft SaaS Day for Startups on May 9th!
Wondering how to make the most of SaaS in your startup? Featuring industry experts including Open AI, this upcoming event will help businesses accelerate their journey using SaaS — with actionable insights and best practices from both business and technical perspectives. This is the last week to register! Register today for free!Sharing the value of marketplace with your customers: Reflections from Microsoft Ignite
Cloud marketplaces are the future of B2B commerce, making it easier for organizations to get the solutions they need. At Microsoft Ignite 2024 in Chicago, the Microsoft commercial marketplace team shared with customers how to unlock the value of the marketplace in the era of AI and updates on the latest marketplace capabilities that help them spend smarter and move faster. Here’s a recap of the customer breakout session, “More than a storefront: unlocking value through the marketplace,” now available on the Ignite website and YouTube, to help you share with your customers why they should purchase your solution through the marketplace. Why cloud marketplaces now? Cloud marketplaces are growing at an unprecedented rate as more organizations than ever are reliant on the cloud. SaaS spending is expected to reach $232B 1 , which is coupled with the increasing investment in AI. McKinsey estimates that 67% of organizations will invest more in AI over the next three years 2 . It’s critical that organizations have a seamless and centralized way to procure and manage these solutions so they can scale and achieve meaningful business value. Yet far too many investments are suboptimized. Zylo reported that license waste was the top challenge for IT professionals 3 . The Microsoft commercial marketplace is one catalog of partner solutions published by software companies and vetted by Microsoft. It’s discoverable through our storefronts (Azure Marketplace and AppSource), within our products like Teams and Azure Portal, and through our group of 35K+ Microsoft sellers worldwide. At the core, the marketplace helps customers simplify B2B commerce by streamlining their entire procurement process. It also enables them to buy how they want to buy – whether that’s directly online, through their preferred channel partner, or with their Microsoft account team. With 95% of the Fortune 500 running on Azure 4 , many of these organizations already use the marketplace. But it’s not just the enterprise that’s finding value. We see customers of every size and from every industry finding success. What’s new in the marketplace? The marketplace helps customers buy with confidence by trying solutions before they buy and knowing solutions are pre-configured to seamlessly deploy and run on Microsoft technology. It helps them increase efficiency by simplifying their vendor onboarding and having partner solutions billed directly to their Azure invoice. It also helps them spend smarter by maximizing cloud investments because the marketplace counts 100% of Azure benefit eligible purchases towards a customer’s consumption commitment. Here are three new features to look for in the marketplace: Multiparty private offer (MPO) expansion- MPO is now available in the US, UK, and Canada. This allows customers to bring their preferred channel partner to the marketplace to procure solutions on their behalf. This capability will expand soon to customers in additional geographies. Professional services- Customers can now transact professional services alongside software solutions in the US, UK, and Canada. Professional services could be vendor assistance with implementation, employee training, or consulting support. Now, these purchases can be included in a customer’s single Azure invoice, further simplifying invoicing. Flexible billing- Soon the marketplace will support flexible billing, or the ability to align charges with a budget cycle or consumption needs. This helps to ensure uninterrupted invoicing cycles with adaptable contract terms or automatic transitions. Look for this capability in early 2025. The power of marketplace for AI transformation Microsoft is the number one provider of AI services in the world, and the marketplace is part of how we extend AI innovation by connecting customers to the solutions they need. AI solutions are the most purchased category by net new customers 4 . We’ve seen a 163% increase in AI offers listed by our software partners and a 7X increase in customers visiting AI and machine learning offer pages on our storefronts 4 . This has translated to a 387% increase in customers purchasing AI offers 4 . This momentum is driven by the benefits customers get by going through the marketplace, including free trials and proof-of-concept options to ensure that solutions align with their needs before committing. Customers also save time by deploying directly from Azure in a secure environment. With the marketplace, customers can get cutting edge AI technologies that help them build with generative AI and models-as-a-service. They can also extend copilot capabilities through connectors and agents or build their own copilots. In addition to Microsoft’s own AI tools for developers, organizations can find a breadth of offerings from leading AI companies like Aisera, Cohere, LangChain, and Pinecone. There are also many SaaS applications powered by AI that are helping customers experience AI transformation in any number of scenarios from marketing and human resources to operations and supply chain. To see how a customer would leverage the marketplace to build a custom copilot for business users at a manufacturing company, check out this demo from the Ignite stage. AI has also been built into the marketplace to improve the customer experience. Our new AI-powered solution discovery is now available in Azure Portal, helping customers intuitively find solutions with natural language. The search result not only returns solutions but also suggests relevant Microsoft technical documentation to help customers make informed decisions. Customer success story We love showcasing how our customers are finding success through the marketplace. TP (Teleperformance) is a multinational company which offers business services for organizations in 100 countries around the world. Watch the video to see how TP has simplified their cloud portfolio management, unlocked discounts on their Azure infrastructure, and increased time-to-market by streamlining procurement processes. The Ignite session includes an interview with Jatin Suri, Global SVP, Cloud Center of Excellence, who goes into more detail about why the marketplace is key to TP’s procurement strategy. Resources for your customers Learn more: Azure.com/Marketplace Download the eBook: aka.ms/MarketplaceQuickGuide Talk to experts: aka.ms/MarketplaceCustomerOfficeHours Check out the video collection: aka.ms/MPCustomerVideos Get documentation: aka.ms/MarketplaceCustomerDocs 1 Custify , The Future of SaaS: Top Trends and Predictions in 2024 and Beyond, July 12, 2024 . 2 McKinsey Global Survey, The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value, May 30, 2024 . 3 Zylo , Unchecked SaaS Sprawl Leads to an Average of $18M in License Waste Annually 4 Microsoft internal dataEnhanced revenue dashboard and reporting is now available for commercial marketplace partners
The revenue dashboard under commercial marketplace insights helps partners to track and reconcile their revenue with usage, order, earnings, and customer reports. Top features of this release are: Intuitive and enhanced user experience Insights around "collection in progress" amount Insights around offers, plans, and customers Details around adjustment, resellers, invoicing, and restatements are available in a downloadable report For more information, see Revenue dashboard.New Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study on the value of marketplace for customers
Today, we announced our 2023 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study, commissioned by Microsoft, which found the Microsoft commercial marketplace delivered customers a 587% return on investment (ROI) with a payback period of less than six months. Forrester Consulting interviewed 10 customers that actively use the marketplace to quantify the opportunity. The research found that for a composite organization based on the interviewed customers the marketplace: Reduced employee time for onboarding new vendors by 75%. Reduced employee effort required for each procurement engagement by 50%. Optimized Azure cloud budget by recapturing up to 50% of at-risk spend. Read the Azure blog for more on the study and how the marketplace simplifies and accelerates B2B tech commerce: The Total Economic Impact™ of the Microsoft commercial marketplace | Microsoft Azure Blog
