Over the summer P3 Adaptive achieved our Microsoft Partner Gold Competency in Data Analytics. As part of our increasing focus on our partnership with Microsoft we invited Tamer Farag, the Global Partner Ecosystem Lead for Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow at Microsoft, to participate in our latest coffee talk. Below is a transcript of a Slack conversation held 8/30/2017, edited for clarity and brevity.
Introductions
Engineers and Partners
Microsoft has a large team focusing on partners’ success. In Engineering we don’t want to try to duplicate their work, so when we looked at where we could really add value we came to the conclusion that we have a lot of insights about our customers. Power BI is a SaaS service, so we have a lot of data available for us to learn about how they’re using the product, their needs, challenges and where they need help.
We also have a lot of assets at our disposal, from the public websites, the product itself and our marketplaces. If we can leverage our insights and those assets to connect our customers to our best partners then it’s a three-way win: it’s a win for customers because they get professional help to make them successful, it’s a win for partners because they get more business and it’s a win for Microsoft because we get increased adoption and customer satisfaction.
Sure. we drive three motions to drive customer to partner connections:
- The first is the Partner Showcase that lets partners present interactive solutions and IP tailored to specific industries, departments, and geographies. This enables the partners to showcase their industry expertise and the customers to test drive published Power BI solutions.
- Second are the [link removed due to 404] Solution Templates. These are templates built by Microsoft, and in some cases by third parties, that provide working solutions—data connectors, data models, analytic views—for common scenarios. Partners can customize these templates for a specific client to accelerate the sales process and gain quick traction and credibility.
- Finally there’s AppSource, and more generally the concept of a Consulting Services marketplace. Last year we ran a variety of experiments and pilots, we learned that the best chance for partners and customers to connect is if the partners can present customers with a clear offer with a clear price and timeline for delivery. We’re leveraging Appsource because that’s currently where the 100 million active monthly Office365 and Dynamics365 users go for SaaS solutions. Now Power BI partners can use that same platform to publish offers for consulting services and generate qualified leads.
Fitting the Pieces Together
Power BI is optimized for self-service analytics but we all know that, in large organizations in particular, making self-service a reality requires a complete end to end solution. You still need ETL and modern data warehousing, you still need one version of the truth, you need advanced analytics available as easily consumed services. Azure can be the backbone for making all of that happen.
But it’s not a requirement, and it’s important to recognize how significantly Microsoft has invested in openness and working with other vendors and other technologies. Power BI lets you connect to so many different data sources, and has an open environment for creating custom visuals.
We’re committed to openness but we always want our products to work better together.
Excel is still the most popular and widely used analytics tool on the planet and we absolutely see it as a first-class component of the Power BI platform. We wanted our Power BI users to get a lot more than just the ability to export to Excel, which is what most other tools in the market provide. Users can publish their Excel sheets and reports Power BI, or publish entire data models from Excel to Power BI for others to use. Or they can go the other way and, as I mentioned, export from Power BI to Excel or, even better, connect to published data models on Power BI from Excel for additional analysis.
We know there will always be users who prefer the Excel experience or who have valuable models they’ve created in Excel and don’t want to rebuild, and we want those users to benefit from Power BI as well.
Working with Partners vs. Microsoft
It’s not either/or. Microsoft has always been a partner focused company. From the earliest days we looked to partners to help us scale and reach customers. And the reason we do that is that our research tells us that accounts where partners are engaged see more sales, more usage and more customer satisfaction. This is why starting this Fiscal year we went even further and now our sales professionals can retire their quota by selling partner solutions. That’s how committed we are to the partner led model.
So customers can be confident that if they are engaging primarily with a Microsoft sales professional, that individual will bring the right partners in to help if there’s a need for specific expertise and depth. And if customers are engaged primarily with a partner, they should know that partners have access to almost exactly the same training and resources as internal sales, and that partners are encouraged to communicate with sales to make sure they have a complete picture of that customer’s current and potential relationship with Microsoft.
Where It’s At: The Intersection of Biz, Human, and Tech*
We “give away” business-value-creating and escape-the-box-inspiring content like this article in part to show you that we’re not your average “tools” consulting firm. We’re sharp on the toolset for sure, but also on what makes businesses AND human beings “go.”
In three days’ time imagine what we can do for your bottom line. You should seriously consider finding out 🙂
* – unless, of course, you have two turntables and a microphone. We hear a lot of things are also located there.
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