Recently, at the Worldwide Partner Conference the Licensing and Pricing team announced the future availability of Microsoft’s new Partner Quoting Tool -- MS Quote -- created to give channel partners more flexibility and help drive revenue and growth opportunities. With over 430,000 organizations in the Microsoft Partner Network (and 160 million mutual customers worldwide), Microsoft is making key investments to assist partners with customer acquisition and retention impact. Cloud,
Big Data, Devices and Mobility, and Enterprise Social have been identified as areas with the largest opportunities in the current marketplace and Microsoft is working to provide partners with the right tools within each to accelerate business growth, compete and become more profitable.
The new Partner Quoting Tool is just one example of how Microsoft is listening to partner feedback and prioritizing delivery of tools that help partners capitalize on the rapid industry transformation to devices and cloud services.
During WPC sessions focusing on the soon-to-be available tool, general partner feedback was positive. Several attendees expressed excitement about the addition, one in particular saying, “More than happy to see this, [the new Quote Tool] will have a tremendous amount of time savings for both Microsoft and partners.”
Beginning in November, partners will be able to process quotes more accurately and efficiently by creating new and renewal quotes for the enterprise and enterprise subscription programs as well as close standard deals (that require no empowerment for the end customer) without Microsoft licensing sales specialist (LSS) involvement.
The new partner quoting workflow process will consist of the following:
By streamlining the process and no longer requiring LSS to model and create quotes for channel partners in MS Quote, partners will be able to:
- Process standard deals
- Start on deals that LS completes due to empowerment and concessions requirements
- Focus on sales
Other key features include the ability to:
- Generate preliminary and Final Customer Price Sheets
- Generate Product Selection Forms
- Save a quote for subsequent use
Additionally, partners will benefit from self-service quoting, improved deal velocity and scaled sales capabilities through channel enablement. Channel Partners will be able to easily access and use the new Quoting Tool (screen shot of landing page below) with a Windows Live ID, Microsoft Partner Domain Account or Microsoft Corporate Account.
For more information on the Partner Quoting Tool please email pqinfo@microsoft.com.