Successful Cloud Partners 2.0: - PowerPoint Presentation

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Successful Cloud Partners 2.0: What Successful Partners are Doing to Build Profitable Cloud Businesses

Microsoft Cloud Summit , Fall 2014

Marilyn Carr, Partnering and Alliances ResearchSlide2

2013 IDC Report – It Can Be Done 2014 IDC Report – How? WW Survey with over 700 respondents 20 in-depth interviews

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http://aka.ms/idccloudebookSlide3

AgendaPlanning for your cloud businessCloud business strategies

Cloud sales strategies

Marketing for the cloud

Managing and measuringEssential guidance

© IDC Visit us at IDC.com and follow us on Twitter: @IDC

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Successful Cloud Partner PracticesPlanning for Your Cloud Business

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Planning for Your Cloud BusinessConsider Your Cloud Plan

You’re probably not behind… yet.

But you are losing deals to

Born in the Cloud and other partners

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Planning for Your Cloud Business© IDC Visit us at IDC.com and follow us on Twitter: @IDC

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We have effective solutions where we serve business applications to mobile devices through SharePoint online or through Azure where SharePoint is a tenant. Then

we are exercising three Profit Pools at once with Cloud as our leverage point

.

Emily Lynch, VP Marketing, Catapult Systems

Understand your profit pools

What do

you make the most money on now?

What

impact could cloud have?Slide7

Planning for Your Cloud BusinessIs it time for a management

offsite?

Key decisions must come from the top

Helpful to get outside help to facilitate

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Cloud has transformed our business but if you don’t have a plan

and you haven’t communicated it, how the heck are you going to get everybody there? Connor Callanan, CEO , CoreSlide8

Successful Cloud Partner PracticesYour Cloud Business Strategy

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Your Cloud Business Strategy Build Your Recurring Revenue – The New Killer Metric

Offers

predictability, cash flow, and positive impact on company valuation

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Like every ISV in the world

you want to be seen as a

SaaS company to Wall Street eventually.Brian Cook, Executive Chairman,

NintexSlide10

The Recurring Revenue Trough

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Today

Past

Future

Revenue

Revenue Shift + Investment Slide11

Recurring Revenue: Long Term Appeal

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Revenue from customers signed in year 1

Revenue from customers signed in year 2

Revenue from customers signed in year 3

Revenue from customers signed in year 5

Revenue from customers signed in year 4

Today

FutureSlide12

Recurring Revenue: Predictability

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Past

Future

Revenue

Traditional Project Services Model

Cloud or Managed Services Model

Having

recurring revenue on a cloud service model has been gold for us because it

flattens out the peaks and valleys

of revenue

.

Jonathan

Voight

, CEO AgilitySlide13

Recurring Revenue: And not Or?

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Today

Past

Future

RevenueSlide14

Your Cloud Business Strategy

Go Big Or Go Small. You Can’t Do Both

SMB = volume

Enterprise = depth

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Your Cloud Business Strategy

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You May Not Have To Change Everything

Selling services to enterprise customers may not change too much. Slide16

Your Cloud Business Strategy Use Cloud Internally And Share Your Own Best Practices

Gain powerful credibility with customers by using the products you are selling

Become your own best customer success story

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We are using a lot of business intelligence internally to drive how we make business decisions faster. It is

not difficult to transition this from an internal focus to an external offering

as the decision making improvements we have made through the use of smart technology resonates with all commercial businesses. Mark Williams, Partners & Alliances Director, WavexSlide17

Your Cloud Business Strategy You Only Have To Stay One Step Ahead

Cloud technology is evolving rapidly

Successful partners stay one or two steps ahead of

the customer and competitors to be a leader

Create a plan to keep on top of key developments in the solution areas where you focus

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Your Cloud Business Strategy Differentiate With Domain Expertise To Increase Profit

Cloud can commoditize you must differentiate

By

business process (e.g. accounting) or by industry vertical (e.g. retail).

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Our presales technical guys and our architects that are working with the customers to implement our software:

100% we have hired from the industry. Isa Qureshi

, EVP, Client Services,

QLogitek

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Successful Cloud Partner PracticesYour Cloud Sales Strategy

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Your Cloud Sales StrategyUnderstand Why Cloud Sales Are Fundamentally Different Past: Get to the sale

Now: The sale is the beginning

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Your Cloud Sales Strategy

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Open Doors With Cloud, Then Up-sell

Get in the door with Cloud

Up-sell over the long term relationship

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Your Cloud Sales Strategy Choose the Right Sales Structure For You Separate or Integrated?

Solve for Internal Conflict or Customer Choice?

© IDC Visit us at IDC.com and follow us on Twitter: @IDC

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Separate Cloud Group

Integrated Group Slide23

Your Cloud Sales Strategy Carefully Architect Your Sales Compensation

Problem: How to motivate salespeople who were used to selling up front license + services deals?

If affordable, pay up front

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We changed the bonus triggers for our salespeople

that they get more percentage on the

SaaS sales than they do from on-prem. And they also have to sell a certain percentage of

SaaS

in order to even get the on-

prem

bonus.

Anonymous,

ISV Slide24

Your Cloud Sales Strategy Consider Hiring Outside The Box

Hir

e

young Hire

for value Cloud partners have more staff in sales and marketing vs. other partners

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Your Cloud Sales Strategy Create A Lean, Mean Operating Model For Volume

For a volume play, impetus must be on efficiency

Minimize the cost of making the sale

Consider Telesales To Increase Your Reach Telesales can be a cost effective strategy,

Different skill Metrics driven

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The top sales people, like Charlie, are making 50 to 100 calls per day. The sales cycle is a few days and implementation is a matter of weeks. The focus is on high-volume.

Ben Gower, Managing Director, Perspicuity Slide26

Your Cloud Sales Strategy Take Customers To The Cloud In Steps

Many customers are still not ready to fully dive in

Certain products are good for the first sale, some better to up-sell

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Once customers realize they can

iterate and improve the Azure solution quickly and easily and relatively inexpensively - they go wild. There are no boundaries. The amount of overhead it takes for us to roll out a new set of changes is minuscule, it’s almost nothing.

Alex Brown, CEO, 10

th

MagnitudeSlide27

Your Cloud Sales Strategy Speed Up the Sales Cycle by Sidelining Cloud Objections

Arm your telesales team with resources to take FUD questions off-line

One-page FAQs, videos, web sites, etc.

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Successful Cloud Partner PracticesYour Cloud Marketing Strategy

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Your Cloud Marketing StrategyShift Your Marketing To Digital

Successful cloud partners are investing in digital marketing

SEO, pay-per-click, banners, videos, webinars, blogs, social media, iterative web pages and landing pages, etc.

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We have a film crew and editing company that does

Youtube

videos for us. Obviously

our goal is to always try to differentiate ourselves

.”

Brian Cook, Executive Chairman,

NintexSlide30

Your Cloud Marketing Strategy30

Establish Your Brand With Thought Leadership

Get known as a thought leader

Some partners provide incentives for staff to publish

We do a lot of bylined articles. I had a bylined article in ‘Wired’ a little while ago, and we just had one in ‘Chain Store Age’ magazine. We typically, I would say

once a month, we have some thought leadership piece out there

. It continues to build presence and awareness and it drives some inbound traffic.

Alex Brown, CEO,10

th

MagnitudeSlide31

Successful Cloud Partner PracticesManaging and measuring

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Managing and measuringFocus on new customers, but also renewals

It is critical to keep existing customers happy

Not as easy as it sounds

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One of the things that we hadn’t intended on doing which was then a

real success for us is the contact center

. When we bring someone onto Office 365, the day they go live they have a 1-800 number. Stephen Alderman, Chief Technical Officer, InverseCurveSlide33

Managing and measuringManage Using New Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Recurring Revenue %

Churn % Lifetime Customer Value

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We have a monthly recurring revenue number that we want to hit.

That’s the only metric we actually present back to our staff. And that number is on the wall. If we hit our target, we fly 40 people to Las Vegas in October.

Chris Day, CEO, Fully ManagedSlide34

Essential Guidance34Slide35

Essential Guidance

There are many paths to Cloud success. Common elements of success include:

Recurring revenue models

are slowly but surely replacing traditional project and transactional based models.

Most partners will have to endure some short term pain in order to achieve

long term success, which could include higher margins and a higher company valuation. Those who master a specific vertical or horizontal domain will be able to speak the language of the new power broker in the enterprise, the Line of Business executive.

The time to act is now. There is a land grab going on for cloud customers and there’s not much time left before you find yourself in the bottom half of cloud partners. 35Slide36

Successful Cloud Partners 2.0: What Successful Partners are Doing to Build Profitable Cloud Businesses

Microsoft Cloud Summit , Fall 2014

Marilyn Carr, Partnering and Alliances Research