Written by our Lead Microsoft Consultant – Kristina Bennington.
Plus an exclusive incentive!
Partners globally are now dealing with an IT landscape that looks vastly different to how it did pre-Covid. Most of your customers will now be working from home or considering hybrid working options and have shifted their entire business online. But with remote working comes increased IT challenges and security risks with a report by security firm Carbon Black stating that 88 percent of businesses in the United Kingdom have fallen victim to a breach in the past year and SMBs are just as, if not more, likely to be attacked than large enterprises.
But despite these challenges, this rapid shift to remote work presents partners with a huge opportunity to help SMB customers and the great news is that Microsoft 365 Business Premium can help you meet these challenges. It is a comprehensive solution that combines Office productivity with advanced security and management tools to meet the changing needs of SMB customers.
Now that remote work is here to stay, businesses are looking for ways to improve collaboration across their dispersed teams which brings us to Microsoft Teams. Teams provides one place for employees to collaborate; one place to share and co-author files, one place to chat, have meetings or call and integrated apps that enable you to customise the solution to meet your business’ needs, so less time switching between apps and more time being productive!
Microsoft has also included enterprise-grade advanced security technology within Business Premium such as Microsoft Defender. You can protect against data leaks with Data Loss Prevention and can control access to email and files using Azure Information Protection and encryption. Plus, you can utilise Cloud App Discovery to gain visibility of the cloud apps employees are utilising and measure the risk that shadow IT poses on the organisation.
But enabling secure remote work is more than just protecting against cyberthreats and securing data it’s also ensuring that passwords are protected and that the right people have the right level of access to the right documents and applications. With Business Premium you have advanced Azure Active Directory capabilities such as Multi Factor Authentication and Conditional Access as well as app proxy which helps employees access on-premises web apps remotely, without the need to open broad access to the company network.
Business Premium also opens the doors to enable Azure Virtual Desktop, enabling employees to access any remote app on any device whilst also maintaining central management and security of a user’s desktop.
Finally, let’s talk about devices. When working from home, managing the company data that ends up on employee-owned devices is critical to maintaining security. With Microsoft Intune you can set policies to specify that company documents can only be saved in work-controlled applications i.e. OneDrive for Business and if a device is lost or stolen you can quickly set policies and remotely wipe data. When it comes to provisioning and reprovisioning devices, you can utilise Autopilot to remotely pre-configure Windows 10 devices.
So what is the business case for a partner to start selling Business Premium and upsell their customers?
Firstly, the security element that we’ve already discussed. 90% of SMBs said they would change their IT provider if they provided a better security solution so by offering Business Premium you can elevate their existing security environment and offer them an all encompassing solution combined with Teams and Office.
You can build on the license revenue by bolting on value added services. As Business Premium contains everything from Teams to Azure AD to Intune, Microsoft’s most successful partners are using it as a foundation to build on high margin managed services and outline a roadmap for the customer. When you first deploy Business Premium you may start with Office, Teams and SharePoint and turning on MFA with Conditional Access so users can access their apps securely whilst remote. To build on this you might then consider offering a package of AVD and Azure consumption so the customer can remotely access work apps from home. Over the next few months you can secure the customer’s desktops and mobile devices via Intune and add on a comprehensive threat protection solution with Microsoft Defender whilst wrapping around an ongoing device management service involving support, monitoring, hardware refresh, device provisioning and lifecycle management. Business Premium enables partners to create a virtuous cycle of ongoing projects and opportunity to further drive a customer’s digital transformation through these additional value services.
Finally it can help reduce your management costs. Business Premium is an integrated productivity and security solution, and so consolidating these services into one product reduces the time your helpdesk needs to learn and manage multiple solutions and the time your finance or administration team need to provision and bill. Then when you consider the incentives available for Silver or Gold Microsoft partners, Business Premium can earn you an additional 5% on top of the 4% you get for Business Basic or Standard licenses, maximising your margins.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium offers partners a great opportunity to build out their offering, grow their revenue streams and maximise their margins. Get in touch with the Modern Workplace Microsoft Consultants at intY today to find out how you can build out your Business Premium Practice.
Exclusive Business Premium Incentive
Microsoft have introduced a brand new incentive for Silver and Gold Competency partners to drive the upsell to Business Premium.
- To be eligible, partners must have sold at least 50 seats of Microsoft 365 Business Premium over the last 2 quarters. This will be re-assessed every quarter so if they are not eligible yet, get started now to qualify next quarter!
- Microsoft will look at their average of M365 Business Premium net paid seat adds (NPSA) over the last 2 fiscal quarters + 5% to set a threshold. They will earn $20 per each net paid seat added over that threshold.
- Both new and existing cloud customers are eligible so the total M365 BP NPSA number can be achieved via net new acquisition or upsell from other subscriptions
- Program period begins 1st October 2021 and finishes on 30th June 2022.
- Partners can qualify for this incentive alongside all of the other incentives so the earning potential for Business Premium is now massive!!
Please contact your Account Manager to find out more.
