Susanne Dansey’s Blog

The idea behind this promotion is to engage with the SMB customer who doesn’t have the time to really get an accurate picture of what his IT infrastructure looks like or what he can do with it. 

There are a few aspects of this new Microsoft SBSC project that I am unsure of. If you haven’t seen it yet, it has prime position on the bCentral UK website and features Mr. Busy who has been created to represent what I consider to be most business professionals - out of the office, following up emails, getting information for colleagues, and suffering from the usual setbacks.

45,000 customers are already on the mailing list and that doesn’t include those that partners will approach (that could get interesting with duplications!). The campaign explains to customers that a Microsoft Small Business Server can help them focus on their bottom line by taking away the need to spend time on repetitive tasks such as running backups etc.

Customers are made aware of how an IT HealthCheck on their business can identify whether a Small Business Server can help them. Customers are driven to a landing page where they can find a local partner who can offer them an IT Health Check. SBSC partners will only appear on the map if they have registered for the Assess and Win Campaign. You can register here if you haven’t already done so.

This campaign is the same message we’ve been communicating in some shape or form for some years now and I’m concerned that we could be missing a trick or two with this.

For starters, under the HP Centres of Excellence Membership which existed a few years back (that was a yellow badge) we had the same programme which offered anyone who was interested an IT Healthcheck. It was a fantastic idea, and HP had put together the marketing for us so that we didn’t have to do anything but send it to our prospects and clients. From memory, I don’t remember it being the biggest of successes; not because the message wasn’t right but I’m not sure the end user was listening or thought that the message was strong enough to give them a call to action.

I think it’s great that the effort is being made to approach prospective clients in a similar vein; to me there is no point re-inventing the wheel and it’s great to see that it has been positioned so highly on a reputable site such as bCentral.

But I have a few questions with it:

• There are ‘partners’ on the virtual map who I have never heard of. There are some dubious companies featured on there and I would be keen to find out how and why they are present. This also throws up a number of other questions about what it takes to be a partner on any level, be it registered, SBSC etc… but that’s for another post!

For example, type in ‘PR1 8UQ’ and you get INTL Software Limited. Click on their website link and you get this. See the webpage content? See the website address in at the top? (This may have been amended by the time you read this.)

Some form of vetting needs to be done on this. This is just one example, I know there are more and some don’t seem to have made any attempt to hide the fact that they aren’t IT service providers.

• I can’t see anywhere on this site where it defines what a ‘FREE IT Healthcheck’ is - I want some T&Cs included. From experience, that has caused partners on similar programmes problems because of two reasons:

a) FREE doesn’t mean necessarily guarantee quality - even MS Partners are happy to pay to attend quality events! It is important to avoid associating FREE with the quality of service that an SBSC partner can offer.

b) IT Healthcheck - a partner may know they are going in to assess the IT infrastructure but the prospect may think it includes fixing things - this makes it difficult for the partners to manage. Maybe a document needs to be sent to each prospect defining the meaning of ‘Healthcheck’ before the appointment is fulfilled?

• The programme is aimed at those businesses who don’t have a server. It is my understanding of the community, that there is a large proportion of partners who don’t want to be dealing with the <5 seated companies. Will there be similar marketing campaign coming out to facilitate those partners as well?
• What will Microsoft accept as a success from this programme? Will it be measured on responses and/or genuine installations or server adoptions?

So why are they focusing on this and not using the Campaign Builder which is dedicated to supporting Microsoft Partners produce marketing collateral? I asked Emma Cockburn this same question and the response was exactly what I expected: “Partners find it difficult to navigate and it is under-used”. I’ve suspected that this has been a problem for many partners for a while now, even I find that searching for a campaign can sometimes be a little bit backwards. For example, if you search for a campaign by competency, it doesn’t actually show the results by this and instead lists each of the campaigns with each of the competencies that apply to it - this makes for a very long list and should be the other way around!

What I will say is that it’s great that the likes of Emma recognises that some things that are in place aren’t getting the traction they were looking for. Proactively thinking about ways of making it easier for partners to utilise is great and if this doesn’t work for those who use it then we really need to think about why the prospects aren’t biting. To be honest, you can have the greatest marketing idea but if nobody’s listening then it’s going to die before it even gets going.

I rang Emma to chat this through and whilst I have my doubts I’m pleased that she’s stuck her head up above the parapet to join the likes of David, Robbie, Aileen, and Sonal to listen to the community. Thank you Emma and to the team that helped her put this together - I hope it really does help partners, particularly the One Man Bands.

If you do participate in this programme, I would be really keen to hear how you found it. It doesn’t fit our marketing focus exactly but I think that if it works for enough partners then more will follow on.

It still doesn’t answer the problem with Campaign Builder though…