In-Depth

Secrets from the Winners' Circle

Want to take home a Microsoft Partner Award? Try this insider advice from past recipients.

• By Polly Traylor
• February 01, 2007

No, we're not talking about Valentine's Day or the beginning of income tax season. Instead, it's time to start the application process for the 2007 Microsoft Global Partner Awards.

Whether you're a first-time entrant intimidated by the process or a past applicant looking to increase your chances of taking home an award, you're likely to benefit from the insights we've gathered from past winners. We also offer tips from Pam Salzer, Microsoft's worldwide director of partner marketing, about what judges will look for this year.

Why bother to apply for a Microsoft Partner Award? Well, for one thing, winning -- or even being named a finalist -- sets your company apart. In 2005, judges winnowed an initial field of 2,300 entrants to just 265 winners and finalists. Considering that Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of partners worldwide, being part of such an elite group is no small distinction. Past winners say that they also benefit from promoting their successes on their Web sites, in their marketing collateral and when meeting with prospective customers or industry analysts.

Awards can also increase customer loyalty, stimulate repeat business for the honored product or service and even generate new areas of growth. And some award winners cite benefits they've gained simply from going through the application process -- for instance, gaining improved clarity about their market goals and areas where they hold a competitive advantage. (For more on the benefits of the awards program, see "And the Winner Is ...," September 2005.)

Before you decide that your company isn't big enough, powerful enough or mature enough as a partner to capture Microsoft's attention, listen to Salzer: "We have had winners that are very small. For one- or two-person shops, there are awards for them, too." Garry Olah, a senior director at past winner Citrix Systems Inc. who oversees his company's global Microsoft relationship, adds this insight: "If you're a new partner, you have equal chances of winning if you're very targeted with your solution."

Following is some time-tested advice for acing the Microsoft Global Partner Award application process.

1. Start early and choose your categories carefully
Sure, you can slam together a sales proposal at the eleventh hour, but don't approach the Microsoft Partner Awards the same way and expect to win. (Besides, how many of those last-minute proposals are actually successful?) "You can tell who has scrambled at the last minute," Salzer says.

First, consider the award categories, which are announced when the online application tool goes live, to determine which ones best fit your organization. You can apply for multiple awards, or you can apply for the same award several times with different solutions. However, you can only win once per category. (At press time, Microsoft hadn't released the 2007 details, but you can review the 2006 results and categories.)

Citrix, a longtime Gold Certified Partner, takes the award program seriously. Since 2003, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company has either placed or ranked as a finalist four times; its latest distinction was the 2005 Office System Deployment Partner ofthe Year.

Because Citrix could qualify for multiple awards (it has won the Global ISV Partner Award twice, and its solutions support core Microsoft platforms including Office and Windows Server), the company allows sufficient time for managers to figure out which ones to target. In 2006, Olah says, Citrix focused on the Information Worker category to align with the release of Office 2007.

That's a smart strategy, according to Curt Wheadon, global vice president of operating environments and messaging at South Africa-based Dimension Data Holdings plc, a triple winner in 2006 (for Advanced Infrastructure Technology Innovation, Custom Development Smart Client Development and Global Winning Customer). "Know where Microsoft is making its bets and what its priorities are, and make sure your submissions are aligned," recommends Wheadon, who works out of his company's Bellevue, Wash., office.

Jackie Funk, director of marketing for Herndon, Va.-based Apptix Inc., spearheaded her company's first application for the awards last year. While some partners appreciate the online application, in her view it wasn't easy to share the multi-section application and its questions with team members. She spent roughly 20 hours over a few weeks completing the application, including substantial time studying the criteria. On top of that came the time-consuming tasks of validating technical answers with the development team and reviewing business questions with executives. "It was challenging to get it done," she says, recalling some tricky scenario questions around customer benefits. "Make sure to allow time for an internal review." Ultimately, though, the effort was worth it: Apptix was named 2006 Advanced Infrastructure Solutions Sales and Marketing Partner of the Year.

Bottom line: The application process can be overwhelming, so it's never too early to start preparing -- even if you've applied before. Olah says he started thinking about the 2007 awards in fall 2006.

2. Develop an application strategy
Take the time to think strategically about how your company will apply for the awards, including how you'll differentiate yourself from the competition. Treat the application process the same way that you would a project for a client: Assign a project manager to oversee the effort. This person should collect information from stakeholders, write or coordinate the writing of the application, obtain executive reviews and input, and facilitate the process of getting quotes and other supporting information from customers. "Don't rely on your technical teams for driving the award submission process," warns Wheadon. "Involve them, but have your best marketing people own the overall submission."

Citrix has the awards process down to a science. Virtual teams of cross-functional employees (marketing, sales, product development, engineering) work on the applications, sometimes repurposing information from past attempts. Citrix also developed an external Web site designed specifically for the awards that provides detail about its Microsoft relationship, and included links to that site throughout its applications.

Toronto-based Gold Certified Partner iMason Inc. hired a public-relations expert to write its application. That move reflects another entry imperative: While you need to call upon product developers and engineers to help answer the technical questions, the final outcome should be a riveting business story. "Using an outside writer helps you crystallize the message and provides an outside perspective," says Andrew Steane, director of marketing with iMason, a finalist for the 2006 Custom Development Solutions Technology Innovation category and winner of a 2006 regional Customer Experience award. Too often, partners simply don't provide enough detail to generate interest and excitement, Salzer says, adding: "Using PR is a fabulous idea."

Customers can also help you tell your story better. Steane asked the business customers that iMason featured in the applications -- the city site Toronto.com and a large Canadian financial institution -- to provide feedback on the solution's business value, an exercise that he calls extremely useful. (iMason also won a Microsoft Canada award in 2006 for the Toronto.com project: the IMPACT Custom Development Solution of the Year.)

Ultimately, you must determine the best way to highlight your organization's strengths and package the information. To help solidify its message, Apptix, which provides hosted Exchange and SharePoint solutions, repeated one theme -- the scalability and robustness of its service management platform -- throughout its application. Funk recalls: "I talked about how our platform infrastructure allowed us to service and support and scale [to] our customer despite the fact that we were rapidly growing."

3. Use your most compelling customer story
Due to the sheer volume of applicants, Microsoft can't accommodate source code or screenshots, says Geoff Saunders, project manager for the Global Partner Awards program. So your best supporting documentation is probably your best customer story. And while some awards don't require a customer case, you must still, at minimum, demonstrate quantifiable customer ROI and benefits.

C2C Systems Ltd., a Gold Certified Partner based in Reading, England, provides Microsoft Exchange-based e-mail archiving solutions for midsize and small enterprise customers worldwide. Because of compliance issues and the growing volume and complexity of corporate messaging, the company's offerings address a clear customer pain point. C2C won the 2006 Customer Experience award for the implementation of its "Archive One" solution for the Tyler Independent School District in Texas, which needed to quickly show compliance with a rigorous state regulation.

Dan Langille, manager of channel programs for C2C Systems, believes that time-to-market was a critical factor in his company's award. Counting from the date of the first contact with its school district, C2C Systems launched the solution in just two weeks. During that time, the company even coordinated its efforts with a hardware vendor and systems integrator.

What also worked in C2C's favor, he says, was the partner ecosystem model of the implementation -- which Microsoft likes to see. But ultimately, they knew that the school district would be a good reference. "The most important thing for us [in terms of differentiation] is that the customer has to be blown away by what we have done," remarks Langille, who works from an office in Nova Scotia, Canada.

"We look for a good story, but also a case that goes across several Citrix and Microsoft products," says Olah. His company's 2006 award was for a data-centralization project for Beverly Enterprises, a large health care services provider at which data and IT management was decentralized across 400 locations. Since the implementation of stricter confidentiality and record-keeping requirements in laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA] and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, "you can't have files sitting out on laptops," Olah observes. The Web-based information access solution, Citrix Access Suite, lowered the company's IT operating budget by $10 million over five years.

But be careful how you write up your customer story. Partners tend to talk too much about the products and not enough about the solution or the customer, Salzer laments. Steane adds this reminder: Don't forget that the customer story should be more about the customer than your company and its role.

4. Put on your Microsoft goggles
A successful application will hammer home how your organization and solution drives Microsoft goals and sales. "Our business has grown significantly in the last year, so that is important for our credibility plus Microsoft revenues," Funk explains. Additionally, think about how you can align with areas that are most important to Microsoft from a competitive or product-release standpoint.

Because the competition's 350 judges come from many disciplines and geographical regions, you'll need to showcase how your solution is applicable for customers in different countries and industries. Some other factors you may wish to highlight are innovative use of technology and good customer care.

"The early adopters we love to see," Salzer says. Microsoft craves strong customer stories for case studies, particularly when the customer is using a new technology. (iMason, for instance, used a beta version of Visual Studio 2005 in its winning solution for Toronto.com.)

Microsoft provides official criteria for the entries, each of which is independently reviewed by three judges. Factors considered include time-to-market, customer productivity and marketplace impact, among others.

In developing the criteria, Microsoft tries to not be overly prescriptive, according to Salzer. That approach might be frustrating for partners trying to determine exactly what it is that Microsoft wants, but from Redmond's perspective the end result is a richer set of solutions from which to choose. "We want the partners to come in without a lot of filters or guidance," Salzer says. "We're always delighted to see how much creativity there is out there."

5. Remember, it's not just about the award
It's good to find one more reason to dust off the old adage: "It's not about whether you win or lose -- it's how you play the game." Like the leadership team at the mother ship in Redmond, executives at Microsoft partner companies are hardwired to compete and win. But if winning is your only goal, and visions of the award stage dance like sugar plums in your head, you're missing the point. Going through the application process itself is a learning experience that can contribute in a meaningful way to your marketing efforts -- and even to your business strategy.

Steane, of iMason, sums up his take on the process this way: "It helped force us to do something we should be doing anyway -- documenting our successes." Too often, team members don't understand the full value of the submissions, he says, and it's easy for people to lose hope if the company doesn't win the first, second or third time around. But, he continues, "it's not constructive to look at it as a one-time thing or [as if] it's all about winning." (iMason, which has entered the competition annually since 2004, has won regional awards but not yet a global one.)

"It's not just about the award process, but the relationship you've built with Microsoft," adds Olah. "We take pride in being a finalist in any category."