The Microsoft Cloud Partner Program is available starting October 3, 2022. With this evolution of our partner program, we will continue to build on our existing relationships with partners to grow their business while driving customer value. These changes will enable partners to demonstrate their exceptional technical capabilities and continue to build upon the long-standing track record of demonstrable customer success.

Under the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, the primary metric used to measure partner capabilities is the Partner Capability Score. It is calculated as a composite score of three categories: performance, skilling, and customer success.

• Performance: the ability of partners to expand their customer base as measured by Net Customer Adds.
• Skilling: the capabilities and skills acquired as the number of people in a partner organization who are certified.
• Customer success: the ability to enable growth in the use of Microsoft products, or in the expansion of Microsoft’s services and workloads used by customers.

You can find your partner capability score in the Partner Capability Score Dashboard within Partner Center for each of the three categories of performance, skilling, and customer success that align to each solution partner designation. You can earn a maximum of 100 points across all three categories. You need a minimum score of 70 points, with at least one point in each category, to earn a Solution Partner Designation.

The impact of your score

• Provides partners with the flexibility to choose their own path towards attaining the qualifying criteria in a solution area.
• Requires that partners demonstrate their ability to provide high quality service to customers.
• Ensures that customers who are searching for partners can trust Solution partner designations.

We have recently added a new tool to your Partner Capability Score Dashboard that allows you to take your planning to the next level – The Partner Capability Score Simulator! Use this tool to test various scenarios you can implement to improve your score, whether that is adding one new customer or having a member of your team focus on a specific intermediate or advanced certification.

You must be a Global or MPN Partner Admin in Partner Center to be able to view your Partner Capability Score Dashboard. Please note that some partners’ capability score within the solution area will be comprised of multiple metrics.

Watch this overview video that includes a demo: Overview video: Solutions partner dashboard overview and demo (microsoft.com)

What are some of the benefits of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program?

While you do have the option to keep your existing benefits until they expire, the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program is offering these exciting new investments to help you:

• Realize business development with product benefits such as product licenses, cloud services subscriptions, and Azure credits.
• Increase customer reach with go-to-market services, Microsoft solution provider placement, customer-facing badges, and co-selling with Microsoft.
• Expand training and enablement with access to personalized assistance and world-class Microsoft experts, including comprehensive courses, technical presales, and deployment services, as well as product, platform, and technical support.

Calls to Action:

As you prepare for FY23, it’s critical to do the following to help you get ready:

• Continue developing your understanding of the partner capability score and how it can help shape your business strategy. Continue to learn about this new program.  and how it can help shape your business strategy.
• Get smarter about your score and how to improve. To view a recording of the one hour virtual session discussing the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program please log in to your IAMCP account.

View the complete list of upcoming Microsoft Cloud Partner Program sessions with IAMCP and Microsoft. Each series will cover a different topic. We look forward to seeing you at our next event.

Other posts you may like

• Announcement/Blog and Overview Videos
• Microsoft Cloud Partner Program Landing Page
• Partner-Ready Assets and Support Resources

Tags: Azure