Marching Orders 2013: Focus on Business Consultations
As part of Redmond Channel Partner's annual "Marching Orders" feature, we asked several channel luminaries to give their best advice to help Microsoft partners succeed in the coming year. Here are some insights from Tom Chew, national general manager of Slalom Consulting.
Slalom is embracing opportunities in the cloud to drive deeper engagements and long-lasting partnerships with our clients. We've seen great success by first seeking to understand a company's unique business needs, and then developing a tailored solution that delivers ongoing value after implementation.
That's important because the explosion in adoption of cloud technologies from Microsoft -- such as Windows Azure and Office 365 -- means partners have even more tools to create a strong breadth of offerings for their clients. Many of the Microsoft tools work with cloud solutions from companies such as Amazon.com Inc. as well, expanding the opportunities. But gaining long-term business value is often a real challenge.
If you're not already, consider your client interactions as business consultations -- not just technology implementations. Slalom focuses on offering unique solutions and truly becoming a client's business partner. We also believe that strong relationships with cloud providers, anticipating change, and adapting business models to provide customized offerings are crucial.
The reality is that clients can choose from many partners to help them move to the cloud. By effectively communicating both the immediate benefits and long-term business value to your clients and guiding them through the transition process, partners can achieve great success through their cloud offerings.
Posted on February 06, 2013