Author: Mandy Brar - Performance Lead

Mandy Brar is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Maven Collective Marketing. With a an intensive background in scientific research and psychology, Brar brings a creative and analytical results-driven approach to every project that she works on. Brar’s keen eye for design coupled with her passion to bring every story to life helps Brar create captivating content with beautifully designed artwork. Brar thrives working on content marketing, copywriting, graphic design, SEO, and website maintenance.

How Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) Can Elevate Your Business

Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes

Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners

Revised August 2023

Microsoft provides Partners with various benefits, including access to the Commercial Marketplace, the CloudAscent Program and Digital Marketing Content (DMC) OnDemand, the Co-Sell Program, and Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP). Let’s dive further into how Microsoft provides support for Partners, what Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners entails, and the benefits that come with it.

Microsoft Partner Support Plans

Being part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program automatically comes with benefits, and depending on the Solutions Partner designation, includes technical pre-sale and deployment services (TP&D), go-to-market services, product benefits, and eligibility for incentives. However, while Solutions Partner designations provide various benefits, they are limited in that they are self-service benefits, meaning Partners are expected to familiarize themselves with the services provided all on their own. With these benefits, Partners are not given any management or a ‘navigator’ to help them understand the various facets of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. While the benefits are available, they are quite general and may not represent the specific interests of the organization. This is where Microsoft’s Partner Support Plans come in:

Microsoft Premier Support for Partners

Premier Support offers complete end-to-end managed support for Partners across the entire Microsoft platform to meet their complex needs, expand their cloud capabilities, and strategically collaborate with Microsoft. With Premier Support, Partners are given an account manager and a full catalog of proactive services, but this plan can be quite cost-prohibitive for many organizations.

Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners

We will focus on Advanced Support for Partners, as it offers a managed cloud-focused service experience but at a fixed price for every partner, no matter where they are geographically located. Advanced Support, starting at $16,500 USD yearly (2023), is at a more accessible price than the Premier Support plan, and is a good fit for organizations looking for elevated support to help grow their Microsoft practice.

The Value of Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP)

Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners comes with plenty of benefits, including:

Technical Cloud Support: Gain access to prioritized technical break-fix support for Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365, for both you and your customers, giving you the opportunity to resolve issues as soon as they come up.
Account Management: Gain direct access to a Partner Success Account Manager (PSAM) who will advocate for and represent your organization within Microsoft and act as an extension of your team, helping you with your top cloud priorities and escalation management.
Cloud Enablement Services: Accelerate cloud adoption and growth of your business by accessing Cloud Consults, Cloud Optimization Reports, or Support Practice Enablement.
- Cloud Consults: One-on-one technical consultations with a Microsoft Cloud Expert, designed to guide you on best practices to optimize your cloud projects.
- Cloud Optimization Reports: Review a monthly in-depth view of your Advanced Support partnership, offering insights on customer renewals, deployments, and seats sold.
- Support Practice Enablement: Optimize your support, help your business plan, and enable your team to better support customers.

Is Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners a Good Fit for Your Business?

Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners is the right choice for Partners looking to accelerate their cloud business, as they can benefit from cloud enablement services and best practices guidance. By having a Partner Success Account Manager (PSAM), Partners can have a closer relationship with Microsoft as the PSAM can act as a trusted advisor and help with resource coordination.

If your organization is looking for proactive cloud enablement services, elevated technical support benefits, and a closer relationship to Microsoft, then Microsoft Advanced Support is a good fit for you, especially if you are a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) working directly with customers.

Leverage All the Microsoft Benefits for Microsoft Partners

With all the benefits Microsoft offers to Partners, it can be difficult to decide which ones are most relevant to your organization, which is why we are here to help.

Engage the Mavens to help you elevate your brand with our measurable expertise in Microsoft Partner marketing and knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem.

Why you Should Leverage the Microsoft CloudAscent Program and Digital Marketing Content (DMC) OnDemand

Why Leverage the Microsoft CloudAscent Program and Digital Marketing Content (DMC) OnDemand

Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes

Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners

Revised August 2023

Microsoft has offered partners a variety of initiatives to ease the transition into the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. One of these includes the Microsoft CloudAscent Program and Digital Marketing Content (DMC) OnDemand. The Microsoft CloudAscent Program is described as a data-driven customer targeting model that delivers prioritized leads and customer insights to help capitalize on opportunity and drive up-selling and cross-selling, and DMC is an automated content marketing engine included with all Solutions Partner Designations to help partners put together cohesive go-to-market campaigns.

What is CloudAscent?

Microsoft CloudAscent uses a machine-learning model to perform predictive modelling on your existing customer base. By leveraging your existing base, the program aims to reduce customer churn and focus high-cost resources on customers with the highest propensity to purchase.

The program uses data-driven analysis to highlight new opportunities, generate monthly customer propensity reports, and identify when customers are ready to buy. With go-to-market (GTM) sales plays, you can quickly and easily deploy campaigns to educate and nurture your customers, with the aim to close more deals as a result.

CloudAscent consolidates the account fit model, which looks at customer size, win-loss factors, and location, as well as the buyer intent model, which looks at online behavior, to sort customers into four propensity clusters, which include:

Act Now
These are customers that are sales-ready. As account fit is high, marketing and sales efforts should be targeted to these customers.
Evaluate
These customers are marketing-ready and should be engaged with multichannel campaigns, including paid ads and downloadable materials. The account fit is medium.
Nurture
As account fit is low, these customers should be targeted with organic awareness campaigns, including videos and infographics.
Educate
Account fit is very low, and customers should be targeted with broad awareness campaigns, including videos and infographics.

The CloudAscent Program monitors the likelihood of a customer moving to the act now or evaluate cluster, as these customers have the highest propensity to purchase.

What is DMC?

Often, partners go to market with their solutions and then realize they haven’t put much focus on their marketing. Luckily, the Digital Marketing Content (DMC) OnDemand benefit, available to all solutions partners at no cost, allows you to post content to your social media, blog, and email from Microsoft developed resources.

The DMC includes curated customer marketing materials that address the pain points when going to market, including locating the right content, pulling together cohesive campaigns, managing multiple social media accounts, and tracking ROI. By providing fully customizable suggested tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook statuses, mini blog posts, and emails, DMC ensures you can maintain your online presence with ease.

In addition to social media posts and emails, DMC includes infographics, customer stories, gated social images, thought leadership, sales guides, and pitch decks. With this gated content, you can capture new leads and nurture existing customers.

Actively use the CloudAscent Program and DMC OnDemand

You can view which customers are ready to purchase by downloading monthly reports from your Partner Center Dashboard to align your sales and marketing outreach to your personalized data.

Once you have reviewed the customers who fit the act now or evaluate clusters, you can upload these contacts into DMC and leverage the provided marketing assets to create and target a campaign to close sales.

By leveraging the CloudAscent Program and DMC OnDemand, you can ensure you are targeting customers that are ready to purchase and reduce the time it takes to close a deal by taking advantage of readily available assets.

Leverage the Benefits Provided to Microsoft Partners

Let the Mavens help you take full advantage of all the benefits provided to you as a Microsoft Partner. We will take your B2B marketing strategy to the next level as you adjust to the changes that come with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. Whether you are a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP), Microsoft Managed Service Provider (MSP), Microsoft Value Added Reseller (VAR), Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV), Microsoft Systems Integrator (SI), or a Microsoft Reseller, we’ve got you covered! Check out our blog for more insights and updates on the Microsoft ecosystem or reach out to us directly get started with the Mavens.