FPC Program Ideas/Suggestions

Hi FT Program teams,

Good days!

 I would like to bring to your attention that through our MCAP eligibility check on the MCAP portal for workshop nomination up to today on 20 Oct 2021, all our existing EDU customers from Malaysia (53), Indonesia (3) and Philippines (7) do not have entitlement to any of the 14 MCAP workshops. 
M365 Accelerator Program (m365partneraccelerator.azurewebsites.net)

This is a great opportunity loss not only to E5/A5 upsell possibilities for Microsoft, but also a potential revenue loss for FRP like Alfa Connections (63 x 14 x $3500).

Seeking your assistance to look into this immediately as my teams ready to drive more MCAP in FY22.  Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Intan Nurbaizura Binti Mohd Zulhilmi | Operations cum FastTrack Assistant

 

Requesting early access to the tools and reporting within Partner Center as FTOP makes the transition to Partner Center. Looking to be apart of a pilot, leveraging the portal before any go live dates.

Understanding there are future plans for transitioning from FTOP to PC for data purposes I have a question about Overall Status Notes (OSN).  When previously asked, the answer was that they would likely go away and not be required anymore.  However, (as much as I cannot believe I am saying this) I feel the OSN history of a customer's FT engagement(s) can be quite valuable.  Some customers have been around FT for years.  Having a history of previous engagements can save a lot of time and headache.  As a regular part of our process, we review the OSN history for every new customer in FTOP.  Sometimes we find out information the customer may have forgotten to share that could have a significant impact.  Being aware of certain information helps us provide a better experience for the customer, which is very important to our team.
With all that being said, I am wondering if the program team will take into consideration the value of the OSN and provide FRP a way to still utilizing the tool.

下記ページの Compliance Score Workshop が対象と思われるが、404エラーでアクセスできない。
Translation: Compliance Score Workshop on the following page seems to be the target, but it cannot be accessed with a 404 error.

[FastTrack Playbook] - [Resource] - [Services Workshops]
https://partner-docs.microsoft.com/partner-site/playbook/resources-services-workshops.html

[Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)] - [Compliance Score Workshop]
https://partner-docs.microsoft.com/r/ygCnX5QYfpk/view

下記のサイトで、Compliance Score に関する資料を探したが、見つけることができなかった。
Translation: I searched for materials about Score Compliance at the following site, but I couldn't find it.
Microsoft 365 Specialty Partner site
https://m365-specialty-partner.powerappsportals.com/knowledgebase

対応お願いします。
Translation: Please respond.

Background: After watching the FRP Community segment on FY22 Partner Center and other tool changes and bringing AI to help evaluate OSU/Partner of Record claims faster, I wanted to suggest an alternative approach. My assumption is that it would be possible to have passive approvals for what I also assume are the majority of claims by changing the process. AI could still be used for what remains.
 
To truly streamline, having a hosted "request website" at Microsoft would be best as the OSU claims team would significantly reduce the need to manually evaluate claim forms. This saves whatever global quantity of FRPs there are from maintaining similar, but separate processes. The Microsoft program can pre-approve each FRP SOW for standard items at the beginning of the annual program period and implement required changes, like the public sector requirements on the fly or with minimal intervention. The team handling the claims approval would then have more time to process those with custom SOWs, that may include special offers or value-added services.
 
The customer and partner experience would improve significantly. Some customers have adversity to a document-based form that is routed via email versus a webform. There would be better reporting for all parties involved in the process.  Lost claims forms situations should go to zero. Target dates could be captured from the customer, when submitting the request. The partners would have better visibility to the status of claims and reduce manual input as well. The "chain of custody" problem with some claims would be eliminated. With some common sense guidelines determined programmatically, there could be a reduction of erroneous disassociations, which will reduce disputes. When disputes arise, more specific data in a single repository would exist, thus streamlining the ability to respond appropriately and more timely. There is potential that this process could also support short-term or specific programs like we saw with Edge or Teams Rooms. The limitations about the number of claims submitted could either be identified upon submission or be eliminated.
 
The workflow I envision is as follows (with my knowledge of the process):

1. The FRP provides the customer one of 2 ways to engage with the claims/partner of record process:
   1. The customer could receive a custom URL for a specific FRP
   2. The FRP would have a code to provide to the customer, that identifies the specific FRP
   3. For custom SOWs, the FRP could pre-enter much of the data and upload the SOW that is outside of the preapproved items for that FRP. Then a custom URL for that document could be provided to the customer and they would login and approve.
2. When the customer logs in, they complete the necessary fields. There may need to be an interim step as a Tenant Administrator (or even the FRP) may need to complete some fields and then save it as a draft or send it onto the designated approver at the organization.
   1. Want: The page could have both logos so it is visible this is a Microsoft program, delivered by a Partner
   2. Want: The customer could define the appropriate contact for surveys, indicating a single POC for all services or individual for each
3. The completed webform routes a notification as it moves to the FRP-confirmation stage, to the FRP for confirmation and once they confirm, it goes for approval to the OSU claims team
   1. The FRP should have the right to send it back to the customer for corrections
4. With a preapproved SOW list, any services at this stage that are defined as "standard" for the FRP, would have a passive approval, if no existing claims exist.
   1. Want: Process improvement to reduce erroneous partner dissociations.
      1. When a customer logs in for approval in step 2, they would see what is claimed by which FRPs and if they are below a certain percentage with no growth over a certain time period (TBD), they would be eligible to change.
      2. If they don't meet that criteria, there can be an exception form the FRP can walk through with the customer to determine if disassociation would be appropriate.
5. It is likely a significant portion of these would be auto-approved at this point, with confirmation emails sent to the Customer and Partner. Exceptions, customer SOWs, and disputes would become the majority of the work for the approval team as they can shift the volume out of their queue.
6. In the backend, this process could be linked to the Partner Center portal interface and simply loaded automatically at some interval, improving the speed of seeing the claims from the current process.

 
 

Hey Team,

It has been a while since we have had any updated deck describing the workloads and description of guidance provided around the workloads. I have asked our FPM and it seems that the most recent one is very outdated and missing workloads. Is this something that is on the roadmap or something that has been released and I just have not been able to access. Please let me know if available or when an updated one will be available.

Does the FTC send Customer Satisfaction Surveys to FRP customers?  If not, would this be something they would consider?  On occasion, we request a SME from the FTC.  Most times the customer has a very positive experience, but not always.  I feel it would be beneficial for the FTC to know who is doing a great job representing Msft and who may need a little additional training.
 

We have found that the PAU occasionally differs from what we expected.

We recognize that the values in FTOP reflect the data on Partner Center, of which we inquired why the difference sometimes occurs, and they answered they were "system bugs."

 When the same event occurred around May 2020, you responded as follows:

We considered FTOP as the provider of legitimate data; however, we are afraid to say that no values are considered legitimate because we have found the source data for Partner Center and FTOP are the same at present.

We think this problem should be fixed, although it is systematically hard to fix.

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Entitlement (number of licenses), the basis for incentives and AU are based on information from Partner Center. Therefore, the data in Partner Center should be treated as the right number.　When FTOP and Partner Center show different numbers, some numbers are doubled. we simply think it will occur again especially when expiration of a license is coming as below and the number is shown double and then combined for a certain period of time. As you can see the numbers below, the entitlements in FTOP return to the original number after May 30th.  Please understand this is the way it goes. Unfortunately, this is something we cannot help improved by any means.

FTOPのPAUが、想定される数値と異なることが時折発生します。
FTOPの数値はPartnerCenter側のデータを反映していると認識しており、PartnerCenterに問い合わせたところ、「システムのバグ」と回答を頂きました。

2020年5月頃に同事象が発生した際は、貴社に下記のように回答いただきました。
今まではFTOPを正と認識しておりましたが、現状はPartnerCenterとFTOPのデータソースが同じなので、どこにも正と出来る数値が存在しないことになります。
システム的に難しいことなのかもしれませんが、改善をお願いいたします。
=================

インセンティブの計算の元となるEntitlements(ライセンス数) 、AU共にパートナーセンターの情報がベースとなります。よって、パートナーセンターの数字を正としてください。

FTOPでパートナーセンターの数字が異なるのは、単純に数字が2倍で表示されることは今までも今後も続きます、これは例えば下記のようにライセンスが切れる時期が近くなるとこちらのシステム上一定期間2重表記され合算されて表示される期間があります。下記数字をみると想像できるように5/30過ぎると重複しないためFTOP上のEntitlementsは元の数字に戻ります。こちらはこういうものだと理解していただけますようお願いいたします。これはどうしても改善は出来かねるものです。
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Into the FY21 we had a great initiative of the M365 Deployment voucher, where a eligible customer had the implementation services covered by a eligible FRP partner (and follow up with FastTrack program itself).

Into FY22 one of the main KPIs is the Phone System adoption / implementation.

It would be a great punch to drive it, a Phonesystem Deployment Voucher to eligible customer that purchase licenses and help them to have all the required UC services to implement it (or migrate from other vendor) into Microsoft Solution.

[Translated]
When a customer has an MPSA contract, only MAUs are shown on PartnerCenter/FTOP, and PAUs don’t count.

I understand that PAUs are not viewed for MPSA contract as it is not eligible for incentives; on the other hand, I do not understand why we still can submit a claim via CPOR. Therefore, we suggest any submission by the customer with MPSA contact should not be allowed.

Also, I hear that Microsoft Cloud Accelerator Nomination is determined based on the data from PartnerCenter.

License types do not affect the Microsoft Cloud Accelerator criteria. However, the licenses for the MPSA contract do not count in PAU, which might not be able to be nominated as the number does not reach the requirement.

We hope these two issues are fixed for a better partner/customer experience.
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お客様がMPSA契約の場合、ライセンス数がPartnerCenter/FTOP上でPAUはカウントされず、MAUのみ表示されてしまいます。
MPSA契約の場合、インセンティブ対象外なのでPAUが表示されないことは理解できますが、であれば、CPOR申請のタイミングでMPSA契約の場合は申請できないようにしていただけないでしょうか？

また、Microsoft Cloud AccerelatorのNoimnitaion可否はPartnerCenter上のデータを基に判断されていると聞いています。
Microsoft Cloud Accerelatorのクライテリアにはライセンスの契約形態は関係ありません。ですが、MPSA契約のライセンス数はPAUにカウントされず、ライセンス数不足のためノミネーション不可になってしまうことがあります。

上記2点に対して改善をしていただきたいです。