The launch of Microsoft's New Commerce Experience hasn't been without controversy. At first look, some of the 'what the heck!' changes to subscription terms are unexpected and perhaps even seem a little draconian.
But while Microsoft's NCE does mean you need to rethink how you position licensing options for your customers, it offers significant benefits and opportunities for your business.
So, let's talk them through.
- Revenue predictability
By means of discounted multi-year pricing and annual term offers with competitive pricing, NCE encourages your customers to commit for longer. And during that term, they can only increase seat counts, not reduce them.
What does this mean to you? As their partner, you have a predictable source of revenue, which can only go up during subscription terms, not down. With the confidence of predictable licensing revenue stretching in front of you, you can invest in more skilled resources, more support, more innovation, more growth. Which are all good things for you and your future.
- Customer stickiness
The month-by-month subscription terms may have offered your customers flexibility, but they also provided a quick 'out' if they, in essence, got a better offer elsewhere.
Annual subscription terms provide a more stable business relationship for both parties – based on trust and collaboration, and help eliminate the often cut-throat license discounting competition between partners. Instead, knowing they are locked in long-term, means customers will do more thorough due diligence on the partners they are considering in advance.
So you will be reliant on your proven ability to deliver outstanding solutions, and will need to stand out from the crowd with impeccable customer references (which is not a bad thing at all!). It simply means that you will need to have an unrelenting focus on supporting prospects and winning their business, or else risk them signing on with a competitor for 12 months (or even three years).
- Strategic strength
Meeting the needs of those customers who require month-by-month flexibility due to seasonal seat requirements is an opportunity for your business to shine.
Helping to design well-balanced hybrid (annual and monthly) license subscription models can help your customer achieve a flexible and cost-effective outcome, and demonstrate that you can add invaluable strategic planning capabilities to the relationship mix.
NCE is also an opportunity to enable your customers to drive more value from what they invested in, and be proactive in your approach to optimising their broader Microsoft application stack. So what they do have, you can help them use to maximum capability rather than letting it languish.
- Simplified billing (save on admin)
As part of Microsoft NCE, they've done away with a complex - and dare we say overblown – legacy licensing model dependant on customer size and segmentation, and the type of partner you are.
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The benefit to you? Your accounts department and licensing team will give a large sigh of relief when they see the new, easier to understand billing data, simplified price lists, and automated subscription charges come renewal time. So it will cost your business less time and effort to administer licensing than ever before.
- Always-on expertise
As a Tech Data CSP partner, you've always got help at hand not only to spot opportunities, but make them happen.
While that's easy to say, we can back it up.
In 2021 Tech Data was named Microsoft's Worldwide Partner of the Year and Indirect Partner Provider (for the fourth time in seven years). We offer world-class CSP Support and best practices with 500 Microsoft dedicated specialists and over 600 cyber specialists. And we have a laser-like focus on today's major drivers of security, secure remote work, and cloud modernisation.
We've invested heavily in ensuring that we understand NCE inside out, and can help you create the best possible plan to upgrade from old CSP offers to new ones. Our Tech Data Sales Teams, Solution Experts and License Desk will help you find the best solutions for your customers.
And our StreamOne Cloud Marketplace is set up to support the NCE offers and billing logic. So once Microsoft launches the new offers in January 2022, it's all go – and you're instantly ahead of your competitors.
We've also organised multiple webinars and training sessions to help you and your sales teams understand the changes and leverage the new commerce offers for maximum impact.
So you can be confident we know what we're doing, and that we're on call to help you drive growth and income from the new opportunities that Microsoft NCE offers.
