Microsoft WPC 2016 – Cisilion and TeleWare partnering for growth
Having landed back in the UK 4 days after Microsoft’s annual World Wide Partner Conference (WPC) event in Toronto, the collective TeleWare and Cisilion teams are feeling inspired, energised and confident about the opportunities our new partnering relationship will create and the value we can bring to our current and future clients.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella launched the conference on Monday with the message that the journey Microsoft and its partners are on, is focused around enabling the Digital Transformation every business is on. Success in the new world for partners requires that we:
- Better engage customers
- Empower employees
- Optimise operations
- Transform products and services
There were a number of announcements across the week including the launch of Windows 10 Enterprise as a Service, AppSource, a new business application marketplace, and “Surface-as-a-Service” which will be available through new hardware vendors and Cloud Solution Providers such as Cisilion.
The core focus of the conference however, was to bring home and promote the many new innovations across Microsoft’s “Intelligent” Cloud – connecting Office 365, Dynamics 365, EMS and Azure enabling collaborative and efficient business operations and workflow with enterprise grade security and compliance built-in.
Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group said that the one word to define this year’s WPC for partners is “opportunity” and we certainly agree. Cisilion and TeleWare are a great example of partners working together. Together, we are able to build upon the Microsoft Office 365 offerings by enhancing the value through our tailored Office 365 | Skype for Business solutions. Together, we provide our customers with effortless voice migration services to Microsoft Cloud PBX, PSTN Conferencing and PSTN calling within Skype for Business and provide a wealth of productivity, security and compliance features. These sit on top of Skype for Business including server/cloud side voice and media recording, enterprise class voicemail and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services.
It’s all about partnering for growth
It was great to see multiple themes from the event aligning to the values of the Cisilion/TeleWare partnership. Why partnering is key to maximise growth opportunities was covered in many seminars, and this is the foundation of the partnership that we’ve created.
Satya also talked about how Microsoft technology is helping customers through integrated solutions and with the launch of “Surface as a Service”, Microsoft have seamlessly blended their hardware offering with the innovative software propositions that they have evolved over recent years.
During Thursday’s briefing for UK partners, the Microsoft team talked about 4 things that need to be resigned to “Room 365” – Microsoft’s take of the popular show “Room 101”, for any partners looking to achieve growth. These were about chucking out:
- Outdated sales techniques which do not treat the customer as an individual
- Vanilla value propositions which are not differentiated
- Self-serving people and partnerships
- Insight that is not relevant or timely
Having spent a lot of time listening to our customers, we have a value proposition that addresses a number of their pain points around voice migration and interoperability, media recording and compliance. Together we are confident that we have something unique that will really help them with their own digital transformation journeys. This means that together we enable businesses to migrate to new cost effective solutions, integrate with existing business critical applications, helping to transform their productivity and business processes.
All of this means nothing without shared culture and aligned values
Another theme from the event was that the very best partnerships have to be built on shared vision, culture and values. Without these elements sitting at the core of the partnership, building a trusted relationship with mutual respect is almost impossible.
Together our solutions provide our customers with solutions that deliver:
Mark Elwood, Marketing Director at TeleWare
Rob Quickenden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cisilion