How Microsoft Partners Build High-Trust Partnerships That Drive Sustainable Growth
Welcome to IAMCP Profiles in Partnerships, a podcast that showcases how Microsoft partners and IAMCP members grow faster by collaborating with one another. I'm your co host, Anthony Carrano. In each episode, we sit down with some of the most innovative leaders across the Microsoft ecosystem to uncover the strategies, partnerships, and lessons that are driving real business growth. Today, I'm joined by Lucy Bourne, Director at OKA Studio, a consultancy dedicated to helping Microsoft Partners grow profitably with greater clarity, confidence, and strategic alignment. Drawing on years of experience inside both Microsoft and the partner ecosystem, Lucy shares practical insights on building High-Trust partnerships, navigating rapid change, and preparing for the next generation of AI driven opportunities.
Anthony Carrano:So if you're looking to strengthen your Microsoft relationships, refine your go to market strategy, or become the kind of partner customers and Microsoft both want to work with, this is an episode you don't want to miss. But before we begin, I'd like you to think about two questions. First, what if your company's next major growth opportunity isn't another customer, but rather another Microsoft partner? And in an AI driven marketplace that's changing faster than ever, are you building partnerships that will help your business thrive? Or are you just trying to go it alone?
Anthony Carrano:In today's episode, Lucy shares why the future belongs to partners who embrace collaboration, specialize with intention, and build trust ecosystems that deliver measurable business outcomes. She also explains why the most successful Microsoft partners of tomorrow may look very different from the successful partners of today. Let's get started. Lucy, welcome to the podcast. We're so glad to have you on.
Lucy Bourne:Oh, I'm so delighted to be here, guys. Thank you so much for the invite.
Anthony Carrano:Excellent. Excellent. Well, I know we're gonna have a looking forward to a really great conversation. And, you know, as we kind of jump in and get started for our listeners who who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself and in your company and your role.
Lucy Bourne:Sure. So firstly, Lucy Bourne, I am about seventeen years in the at the Microsoft channel, most of which I have spent in the business application space. So my first role was working for a really small scale up partner in The United Kingdom specialising in SMB delivery of Dynamics CRM at the time, which then later quite quickly morphed into what we knew at the time as Project Sienna, which evolved into what we now know and love as Power Platform or Power Apps and Dataverse. That was fantastic, Worked on 40 projects a year, high frequency rapid delivery of really valuable solutions for small businesses and I loved it and I wore 19 hats in a day including walking the office dog, managing the office, know anything customer facing which was fabulous. But I really wanted some experience in delivering larger scale projects to more enterprise organizations.
Lucy Bourne:And so that was when I joined Hitachi Solutions where I had a kind of a hybrid role. I looked after pre sales for Dynamics CRM and Power Platform, but also the technical alliance relationship with Microsoft, which was kind of where my passion for managing alliances came alive really. It was a really lovely role. Used to manage things like app in a day, dashboard in a day, but also the really strategic kind of relationship building, meetings and parties etc which was fabulous. And about a couple of years into that role I had the fantastic opportunity to follow my friend and compadre Chris Huntingford into Microsoft.
Lucy Bourne:So he'd not long left Hitachi, he picked up the phone about three months later and said I'd absolutely love for you to come and work in the same team I'm in in Microsoft and I jumped ship at that point and it was at that point that I looked after the Business Applications Recruit channel for Microsoft. And so this was predominantly at the time when I started managing onboarding net new ISVs, so those or as they're now known software delivery companies onto the ecosystem. So they might have been established already but didn't have a working relationship with Microsoft or they may not have had a relationship or a product on Microsoft at all and so I was responsible for kind of managing their technical build but also their programmatic and relationship style relationship with Microsoft, which then expanded into systems integrators quite quickly. And so this this covered things from like ISV success through to Copilot jumpstart. And it was at that point, I kind of had a conversation with my partner Lee Baker who many of your listeners may have also come across and he said Lisa I've been working with establishing low code practices or power platform practices for years now and he'd done it for HSO and applied information sciences in North America and he said to me I want to do it for more organisations at once and it was really an interesting day because it was the day that I went on to statutory maternity pay with Microsoft which for your UK listeners they'll know means you get almost no money to stay at home and look after your child.
Lucy Bourne:And I said, look, that's cool. I'm really behind the concept. I think there's a lot of need for it in the market here, in The UK and North America and across EMEA. But it has to work right? There's no way it can't work because you will be the breadwinner for a short period of time before I go back to Microsoft.
Lucy Bourne:And so that was when OCA was born and about three months later when I went back to Microsoft I was kind of looking at him thinking I really want to join you. I think there's a need for the kind of go to market and sales and alliance capability alongside the technical enablement that you're offering partners. And so about a month after that, I took the call to join him too. And so that was when the brand of OKRA was really born about three and a half years ago. Now OKRA itself, we have a really, really simple mission statement because it's one that we know that works, and we exist to support Microsoft partners, solely Microsoft partners to do three things.
Lucy Bourne:Scale their relationship with Microsoft, as I briefly touched on across programs, incentives, you know, all of the kind of intricate nitty gritty of having a relationship with Microsoft. The relationship side, what we sort of jokingly refer to as the dark arts, who you need to speak to, when, what you need to say, why you need to say it, is it gonna pass the so what test with the person that you're speaking to. Sales and go to market, making sure they've got a really, really solid value proposition. They understand their ideal customer profile. They're presenting their messaging effectively, but also looking to Microsoft as how are we using Microsoft as a as a channel in the market, Be that through partnering with other partners or marketplace as a strategic lever.
Lucy Bourne:And then the final part is arguably the most important part. Are they sustainably set up for growth? I. E. Is their practice enabled enough to scale with the demand they're going to drive through using Microsoft as a channel or honing their sales and go to market strategy.
Lucy Bourne:So that's us. We're 50% ex Microsoft to use 50%. Again, I jokingly refer to as ex real world's kind of sales and marketing directors. And our passion is to make sure that we arm our partners with all that they need to know to be successful, but most importantly, to help them prioritize what they need to focus on to be successful. There's so much they could be doing, and actually some of it can be a bit of a distraction.
Lucy Bourne:And so our goal is to try and make their journey and their Microsoft pathway as clear and as simple or as prioritized as possible. So that's us.
Anthony Carrano:Excellent. What if you don't mind me asking, like, what's what's the typical size partner you work with?
Lucy Bourne:Do you know this is ironic given that I've just talked about ideal customer profile because there's two answers to this question. We work with what you might traditionally know as like a recruit partner. You know, they're perhaps a bit smaller or they're newer into the Microsoft ecosystem and they're potentially really, really technically capable. Perhaps they're a group of contractors that have come together. I can see you nodding, you know, like, we've all been familiar with this, you know, perhaps got a bit peeved at working at a larger organization and want to set up their own practice, but perhaps are less fluent or eloquent in telling their story to their customer base or the Microsoft ecosystem that needs to know about them.
Lucy Bourne:Or they're the other end of the spectrum where they're perhaps larger, perhaps they're part of a bigger multinational organization or management consultant or larger scale franchise type organization, really okay with their brand and their messaging, but perhaps need more support in scaling their delivery mechanism or selling their own division or business unit back into their own business. So it kind of they've kind of fall into one of two camps. And then the third kind of curveball camp that we've seen appear more recently and which is really interesting for us is the competing vendor camp. You know perhaps they've created an AWS capacity or GCP or even things more and more we're seeing competing vendors in the automation space. So UiPath or Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere where they've been really familiar with creating bots and automations or perhaps agentic capabilities, but they've not yet done it on the Microsoft ecosystem.
Lucy Bourne:And honestly, Anthony, what's been really interesting is that they their customers have come to them and said you need to have a Microsoft answer, you need to be more fluent with Microsoft's capability and they've come to us to help them articulate in the world of Microsoft what their vision should look like And that's been really interesting and honestly has made up quite a significant chunk of our capability in the last six to twelve months.
Anthony Carrano:Nice. Well, know in a lot of times that our customer engagements, know, Rudy talks often a lot with our clients about, you know, navigating the vast, you know, labyrinth, you know, known as Microsoft. And sounds like you're kind of like that guy that kind of got through that labyrinth, you know, torch in hand. So very cool.
Lucy Bourne:Cool. Very It feels like that. And it never gets any simpler. Hey, Rudy, it's always more and more complicated as the years go by.
Anthony Carrano:Well, know, it's interesting. That's fantastic. You know, now I know something else I kind of heard that you're really into is camping. So and I'm I'm a camper as well. Tell us a little bit about your camping.
Lucy Bourne:Oh, yeah. I've got to be honest. I find it such a a release from kind of the quite corporate techie world that we're in. I think there's nothing more you'll probably find this I imagine as well nothing more peaceful than being in the camper van with a view of the sea with nothing but a coffee machine and maybe a chessboard or something like that and a bike for my little four year old that for me is after heaven. I think it's so nice to be a little bit disconnected outside when we can in The UK.
Lucy Bourne:Although I will say you've caught me on a good day because today it's probably the hottest day of The UK probably ever. It's 38 degrees today so perfect camping day if I'm honest. Certainly what we'll be doing this weekend and actually on Friday so just in a couple of days I'll be picking up my newest ever camper van which has a pop top so more room for my little lad Ralph.
Anthony Carrano:Nice. Nice.
Lucy Bourne:I'm super looking forward to that. What type of camping do you do?
Anthony Carrano:So like, I think of like, we say camper van, oh, man, she's like into that luxury camping. Like, I've done with tents with my boys. So I've I've three boys. And when we would we used to go camping. I mean, the other two of them are in college now, but the other two, we we go in tent tents.
Anthony Carrano:So you get your, you know, your pop up tents and your head out there. I know we used to do a lot of camping like up in Wyoming and car Colorado. And I've got a kind of and I don't know if you encounter any issues of like wild animals, but like I know when I go camping in Wyoming, there was issues of bears. Right? You gotta, you know, and they would have signs like warning signs for for bears.
Anthony Carrano:And so this is when the boys were younger, and I I would have we'd buy this thing called bear spray. Right? And, you know, everyone would make fun of me. I got this bear spray. I'm like, you know what?
Anthony Carrano:You know, you you got a bear coming at you. You don't want this bear spray. Well, my kids, they didn't think it would work. Right? And they were arguing with me.
Anthony Carrano:I said, no. You're gonna wanna make sure you have this. And they're like, you know, but dad, how is this gonna work if we spray this on ourselves? Like, they were thinking bear spray as, like, a bug spray, you know, like, spray that on or something. And I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh.
Anthony Carrano:I could just imagine this visual of my three sons spraying each other in the tent with bear spray.
Lucy Bourne:Like, off the shave.
Anthony Carrano:Total disaster because you're supposed to spray it at the bear, not spray it on yourself, you know, which is like, okay. I get it now if they're thinking like, it's like bug spray, bear spray. I could see how now they why they would think that it wouldn't work. But so no.
Lucy Bourne:I'm glad you clarified that, though, because my mom is just about to go to Canada on a big RV adventure. And Okay. I have bought her some bear spray, and I was probably under the same illusions as your son. So thank you for clarifying and saving my potential for every two year old
Anthony Carrano:doesn't work. It yeah. You don't apply it like bug spray. You spray it straight, shoot the bear. No.
Lucy Bourne:Shoot the bear. Aim for the bear.
Anthony Carrano:Aim for the bear, not yourself. Well, that's cool. She's doing an RV through Canada?
Lucy Bourne:Yeah. She's so cool. She retired at 52 and has basically not stopped going on adventures since. She's been to Vietnam, sailed around the world on a boat, backpacked all over the shop, cycled everywhere. Now they're going to Canada.
Lucy Bourne:Oh, massive RV trip. So, yeah, she's my true traveling inspiration. Yeah. She's gonna have a day.
Anthony Carrano:Well, I tell you what, you mentioned your son's four, so he's probably getting into fishing and stuff. So that'd be a
Lucy Bourne:It's not massive here. It's not massive here, but I will encourage him. He's really into rugby, football. Okay. And I have also shoehorned him into the canoe a few times, which he does really enjoy as well.
Lucy Bourne:Nice. But yeah, he's all about the World Cup right now, guys. I'm sure that's taken over your life. Oh, I bet.
Anthony Carrano:That's it. That's it. Oh, good. Good. Well, I know, I mean, I guess we could probably talk travel and leisure, but that's not really the topic here.
Anthony Carrano:I appreciate you sharing. Now I kind of want to maybe transition a little bit to kind of the story, you know, for the with the p two p. I know, you know, in in the story that we're about to tell, like in this showcase, tell us a little bit about the client. You don't have to get into, like, you know, their name, their size, any of that kind of stuff, and maybe some of the challenges that they were facing. And it's specifically like that story, like, you know, for the for the p two awards.
Lucy Bourne:Absolutely. So for the p two p awards, we're we've been working really solidly with a fantastic organization that you may be aware of now called Sia three sixty five. So Sia have been established for nearly five, maybe just over five years now. And it's a really interesting background actually, because they came onto the market while I was still at Microsoft, and I actually managed them as a recruit partner whilst I was there. And it was such an interesting offering when they came to me.
Lucy Bourne:They had basically, if you're not familiar with them, have made some tooling to make partners lives easier when it comes to gathering requirements for Microsoft Business Applications or AI business solutions capability. And so what this enables partners to do is basically qualify opportunities for Dynamics CRM, Dynamics F and O or F and SCM and Business Central much, much more quickly, much, much more easily. And potentially even with slightly less qualified solution architects, functional consultants. And it gives and it enables the partners to have that kind of complete level of quality over. If they're taking the customer through this Guide three sixty five journey, we know there's gonna be some clarity over the requirements that are being gathered and some standardized level of quality.
Lucy Bourne:And so when OCA started, I was evidently really close to the team, the senior leadership team that led CIR365. And I went to them and said look I feel as if there's a real opportunity to bring together senior leaders from a marketing, sales and leadership role in the business applications or ABS world because there's lots and lots and lots of opportunity for the technical leadership together. There's Dynamics three sixty five Saturdays, user groups, you name it. There's loads. And I'm sure it's similar your side of the pond, Loads of opportunity for the technical leadership to get together, less so for the kind of revenue focused roles.
Lucy Bourne:And so Rich Hughes and I, Rich is the chief strategy officer at CA365, this came up with the idea of having an event specifically dedicated to those roles. And we named it Partner Pulse. That event has been running now for goodness well over three years. I think we're on our tenth edition. We run it quarterly and every quarter we get at least 80 delegates from across multiple multiple partners generally around 60 to 70 partners attending and each session we try and make it as educational as possible.
Lucy Bourne:So it's a full day, there's about six to eight sessions across a number of different skill sets and levels. And as I say, try and give the delegates a whole bunch of activities that they can leave with at the end of the day. And so for example, our last event was focused completely on making sure that the partners were prepped and thinking and ready for Microsoft's FY '27. Now we knew that we weren't gonna have all the answers to what a good partner in FY '27 is gonna look like, but we knew from some of the mood music we were getting out of Microsoft what it was likely going to be in the direction of travel. And at every event we also try and get at least two Microsoft speakers to attend.
Lucy Bourne:For example, the previous event we had the BG or the business group for AIBS speak. So these are the guys that kind of lead the senior go to market strategy for each region. So where Microsoft Corp comes up with the go to market strategy globally, These guys are responsible for disseminating that insight in our instance, The UK and Ireland and coming up with strategies for how it relates or how it pertains to The UK market. They presented incredibly beautifully this last session, you know, on what makes a good partner, what partners should be thinking about, but most importantly, how they should be taking that offering to their prospects and to their customers. And they, we had the whole team there, which was fabulous.
Lucy Bourne:So led by Mark Nixon and presented by Jessica Ho, were really, really insightful. And that's just one example. And the event that we've got coming up on the July 2, which will be obviously the start of Microsoft FY27 is completely focused on what it takes to be a frontier firm. I know this is a phrase that we hear a lot and it's been bandied about for the last twelve to eighteen months. But for us, this will be a focus on, you know, an OKR perspective, we'll be focusing on what makes the seven traits of a partner in what we're calling the partner genome.
Lucy Bourne:So these seven traits are really focused on the areas that partners should be focusing on like how they deal with ambiguity, how they're looking at outcomes based selling in this world of AI that we find ourselves in like eighteen minutes before we mentioned the phrase AI. I think that's quite an achievement. And things like how ecosystem aware they are. So this is P2P in itself, right? Like we want our partners to be aware of where their expertise lies, where they need to be looking out into the wider ecosystem to be bringing expertise in or how they should be looking at other partners to generate demand for them.
Lucy Bourne:So yeah, we'll be going deep into what a frontier firm looks like. But I guess to summarise your original question, the whole focus of our partner to partner relationship with SEER has been around bringing together our hive mind of what it takes to be a brilliant partner and giving as much of it away as we can in these quarterly workshops and giving and making sure there is deeply educational and action based as they can be. So they, these partners really leave with a whole action plan. Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty at the end of the day, if I'm honest with you guys, because they have, they've had so much over that six hour session that you kind of look at them and they kind of they're going out a little bit glazed because they don't quite know where to start. And so we always follow them up with what we call our partner insights, our monthly webinar that tries consolidate the thinking that we heard at the previous Partner Pulse events.
Anthony Carrano:Excellent, Rudy?
Rudy Rodriguez:That was really interesting and I really love your business model and what you folks are doing there because we know when you're working with partners and collaborating with partners, those relationships don't always happen by accident, do they? And so one of the things is, can you tell us a little bit about what specific practices or frameworks or agreements that you put in place that, you know, that makes partnerships work for you folks?
Lucy Bourne:It's a really good question. I think, you know, when we talk about our partners building partner to partner relationships, we always say that it absolutely shouldn't just be tactical and opportunity based. It needs to be something that you sit and plan and work on together to give you the opportunity to understand each other's motives and why you should have that partnership to start with and why you should be investing time in dedicating resource and capability towards that partnership. And so when we sat down with Sarah and came up with his concept, we knew that we had to have a dedicated what good looks like for us. And so for us as OKRA, obviously it's we want to make sure that we are positioned as thought leaders in the space when it comes to scaling partner businesses.
Lucy Bourne:And for Sarah, it's very similar, you know, for them, their customer audience is exactly the same as ours. And so fortunately that made our joint so what messaging and joint mission statement really simple. It's demonstrate our thought leadership, demonstrate our strategic capability to scale these practices. And then hopefully, you know, the lovely outcome is that we all win, you know, like CIR365 wins some additional guide customers. We as OKR are able to onboard net new customers into our ecosystem, what we call our partner accelerate framework.
Lucy Bourne:And it's really worked. And you know, I think the other thing that's really important to do is constantly reflect on not just how well is it going and are we working successfully towards our mission, but also what else could we be doing? I think, you know, the ultimate goal for our partnership with SERE is not actually necessarily revenue based. It's not about how many new partners can we sell OCA services to or SERE three sixty five capability to. Actually, it's about how can we position ourselves best and that will come out of it.
Lucy Bourne:And so, you know, for example, there have been some scenarios where we could actually really have actively sold our services in some of these workshops, but that's not what they're about. They're about demonstrating our skillset as effectively as we can and giving away as much as we can. And so we do reflect on that and we have quarterly, meetings ourselves to make sure that we are working towards the right track and pivoting our direction if we need to. For example, about eighteen months ago, we took the call to adapt our messaging. So it's not just business applications or ABS focused.
Lucy Bourne:It's actually Copilot studio, AI foundry focused because what makes a good business applications or AI business solutions partner is not that they are just focused on that, that actually they have to have that broader capability. And likewise the same for data and AI, you know, a good AI business solutions delivery for a customer needs an element of data and AI. And so we have to kind of include that capability too. And so actually unusually we've broadened our audience for these workshops rather than narrowed it down even more. And the other thing, know, one of the other reflections kind of to your point Rudy earlier is these relationships don't happen by accident.
Lucy Bourne:We know that a really positive outcome of our Partner Pulse events is that partners get to meet each other and they get to engage really proactively in an environment where they've dedicated the time to spending a day learning. And what's lovely is that quite often we hear anecdotes about whether these partners have met each other at these events and gone on to do great partners partner go to market, partner to partner strategies themselves. Quite often as this is always the case that happens over the drinks at the end. We always, always have a dedicated area in the bar near the venue which happens to also be where lots of Microsoft people hang out, right? Cos it's right next to their office in Paddington in London and we always hear these, oh, I've got this big BC deal and I can't quite work out how I'm gonna deliver it or I need an ISV that does x y z and we see these relationships, these p to p relationships form live in the pub over a gin and tonic or a pint of Guinness or whatever or non alcoholic drink of choice and it's lovely and that is such a lovely outcome of getting these partners together in the same room.
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, let's talk a little bit about, you know, how working with, you know, partners and partnerships, as you well know, sometimes they don't go as planned, right? Sometimes you just run into issues. Can you tell us about a time when you had a partnership that didn't go as planned, and what you learned about the resilience and leadership from that experience?
Lucy Bourne:Oh, it's a really good question, Rudy. So, guess my response to that would be way back as I described when I worked at this really small scaling partner. Because we were small, partnerships were everything to us quite frankly. We needed them because we simply didn't have the capacity to deliver on all the projects that we landed ourselves. And for the SMBs that we were serving, it made much, much more sense for them to have ISV solutions for certain capabilities than it did for us to build it.
Lucy Bourne:Know, in an enterprise world, in my Hitachi life, actually ISVs were kind of a little less of a priority because we had enough capacity to build on the exact requirements for that particular customer. So back to this SMB delivery, delivering ISV solutions, we had, I would say probably anywhere between 20 to 30 active ISV relationships for these SMB CRM deliveries. And, you know, one worked really, really well and it was an organization Click Dimensions. I'm sure many of your followers and your listeners are familiar if they're from the business application space. They really well established, really excellent product set and actually invested really heavily in their P2P motion because that was their number one route to market.
Lucy Bourne:And so we had a fabulous engagement. We delivered some quite big deliveries for them. We won I was quite proud to be part of their biggest ever deal at the time into London Marathon Group, which was a wonderful user story use case where basically Click Dimensions was doing all the email marketing to onboard all these runners for the biggest event, you know, in The UK from a running perspective. It was brilliant. Really proud to be part of that.
Lucy Bourne:But I guess with that success of Click Dimensions and their increased awareness and actually the awareness for using Dynamics CRM for marketing really came when Microsoft tried to launch their own capability MDM, which for the first kind of year or so of its life didn't really work very well. Sorry, Microsoft. And so actually what it did was it just drew a load of eyes and hearts and minds to Click Dimensions because we were like, okay, well, we now know and we're open to the fact that marketing could be delivered in Dynamics. Let's look at what the alternative solutions are and say Click Dimensions won a whole load of business out the back of that, which was great. We were delighted for them.
Lucy Bourne:But one of the things that really did struggle at that point given the demand and the increasing their customer base was their support, know. Their product was straining because it was at capacity and there were a couple of different support issues. And at the start, it was it was difficult for us to manage as a small business. You know, we had a very small support team. They were trying to do their own first line support themselves, trying to kind of escalate Click Dimensions on as and when it happened.
Lucy Bourne:And Click were doing a a good job at the time of responding, but it just it got to the point where the sheer level of support wasn't able to be dealt with by the capacity that Click Dimensions had. And I think it was at that time, you know, we had to kind of sit down at a virtual table and say, look, we need an answer to the challenges that we're having with support. And whilst it was a problem and it wasn't reflecting very well on us as the SI partner implementing this ISV to our customers, what it did do was it gave us the opportunity to sit down and really work through right click dimensions. This is what we expect. This is what we're needing.
Lucy Bourne:We know you're at, you know, breaking point quite frankly. We know that there's a lot that you're having to deal with, but our reputation and your reputation as a result is being damaged by this challenge. And they responded really, really well. And they, you know at the time it was quite miraculous to have like a knowledge base and a chatbot and they delivered that really quickly and it just made what was you know a short lived problem, they responded so well that it made it made us feel really confident in the fact that they were listening. They understood that our partnership meant a lot to them and they responded accordingly.
Lucy Bourne:So yeah, I guess that's just one example in answer to your question.
Rudy Rodriguez:Great story. Anthony?
Anthony Carrano:Yeah, so let me ask you this now. In your experience, know, what does like High Trust networking look like in practice? Maybe, you know, outside of the pub, right? Yeah. How do you measure whether it's working?
Lucy Bourne:Oh, it's a really good question. Think High Trust Networking if I'm honest is something that we lost a little bit over Covid. I don't know if you experienced similar. It's so hard I think to do it virtually. I think it is so much more effective in person and I think ultimately in terms of measuring how it's working there is no second best for your gut and your intuition.
Lucy Bourne:And so I think you will know if you meet a partner, I mean for example at OKR we also have a really really strategic partner with an indirect provider, Disti Arrow in The UK and Ireland. And one thing that they are absolutely excellent at is events and getting people together. But the thing that all the key elements that we've learned from that is that to my previous point, there is nothing better than getting people together in a room to talk authentically with each other. And I think that authenticity and that honesty rings true. And so, yeah, I guess those two words would be my kind of key takeaway for this point is, you know, in your heart of hearts as a partner manager, as a partner leader, as an owner, managing partner, whatever your role, you know, if that partner that you're having an engagement with is someone that you can trust, Be it how how they speak with you, how they engage with you, their eye contact, their body, a language, whatever you will know.
Lucy Bourne:But secondly, there is obviously a need to have quantitative facts that you need to assess to check whether your partnership is going well. Be it, I don't know, a number of net new logos that you provide to each other or a certain number of revenue from a revenue share perspective you should be tracking to or a certain number of thought leadership articles or social media posts that you do together to drive demand. It almost doesn't really matter what the metric is as long as A) there is the cadence that you assess them effectively and B) that you are tracking to them ultimately. If And you aren't tracking to them, you need to kind of take a bit of a step back and assess, okay, what's not quite right here? Are we just tracking the wrong numbers?
Lucy Bourne:Should we be considering tracking alternative metrics? Or should we just take a call that this partnership's not quite right for either of us now? And I think that concept of failing fast is really important, you know, particularly in partnerships where, you know, and if I reflect as I say back on the SMB partner, we had so many partnerships, they were so necessary that we almost had to tier them. Know, not every partner could be a strategic partner. Some had to be slightly more opportunistic than others because otherwise we'd be spending our entire lives having quarterly business reviews or monthly catch ups with those partners.
Lucy Bourne:And I think being really honest with the partner that you're speaking to about where they fall in your priority because it's probably similar for them. And if they are one of your priority partners, what that means to you and being really open and honest about you, you know, we can't do what we do without you and therefore we expect this level of relationship with you in response. And that might sometimes be a bit off, know, classic example is just that, you know, the partnership I explained to you about Arrow, you know, they're a much, much bigger organization than us, know, they're the seventh biggest company in the world. We are not. We definitely are very open about that.
Lucy Bourne:But equally, we know that the support we help provide them with is quite pivotal in their UK and Ireland business. And so, you know, making sure that we're aware and we've got the cadence to feedback on. This is where we feel we've helped you you know please do give us the feedback in response has been really quite powerful for us just gives us that opportunity to kind of have a really open and honest conversation. We have actually had that conversation with other partners where we've said we felt like this was going to be powerful. We felt like this was going to drive a lot of value for each of us.
Lucy Bourne:It's not demonstrated that it's going to and so we are here. We're not going anywhere but we just need to make sure that we prioritize the right partnerships. It's not the nicest conversation to have but ultimately it saves their time as much as it saves yours.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah, if I can kind of lean in a little bit, you know, you talked about like with failing fast and, you know, we've emphasized a lot about communications or whatnot. At what point like in the partnership does it make sense to what's in that context of, you know, proactive communication, understand your metrics and this failing fast and specifically around failing fast, like when is the time to have that conversation with the partner to say, okay, is this working? Is this not working? Do we persevere? Do we pivot?
Anthony Carrano:Move on?
Lucy Bourne:I think it's probably at the point you have your first quarterly business review. You know, it's as early as you can. I think if you're, once you've got those kind of, even if they're rough straw man style metrics, once you've got those after a, you know, a three month, four month period of time, you should really be having a a good understanding as to whether it's having any impact on both sides. And if it's not, yes, I appreciate sometimes sales cycles are longer, but if you've not got any kind of pipeline type metrics or early in stage kind of even if you're targeting yourself on things like generating social media articles or blog posts. If you haven't done that in the first three months or four months, it's not gonna happen.
Lucy Bourne:And you've gotta call it. You've gotta be really honest. Yeah. And and equally say, you know, let's revisit it in twelve months because it might be that your situation's changed or ICP might have adjusted or pipeline might be slightly more impactful for them at that point and come back to it. And I think it's important to not necessarily completely close the file, but park the file as early as you can.
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, you know, you brought up that great term that's in the marketplace right now, frontier firms. And, you know, we know the marketplace is changing a lot. AI is, you know, and all that automation is reshaping the partner landscape, right? So what are the what's one area that you see partners both leveraging and underestimating the opportunity or the risk?
Lucy Bourne:Such a good question. One I feel like I'm answering every five minutes at the moment. I think partnerships is probably one of the, you know, excuse the irony given the focus of this podcast, but I think it's absolutely one of the areas partners aren't leveraging the most. Particularly in this concept of kind of agentic capabilities. Because ultimately what makes good agentic solution is one that is truly changing the operating model, the structure of the customer, right?
Lucy Bourne:It's truly kind of throwing things up in the air and waiting for them to land in an agent generally. And if I'm being honest, I don't think traditional Microsoft partners be the modern work partners or, know, Power Platform Dynamics or even kind of Azure app development partners. I don't think they're truly historically set up to discuss business change. And I'm happy to be completely contradicted. So you know come at me on my socials at Lucy born at Lucy Ellis born wherever.
Lucy Bourne:But I truly don't believe that's what they're there to exist for. And I think those organisations that do think change management organisations, adoption organisations or managing consultants, they are really well primed to help actually truly map out what a decent target operating model looks like for a retail firm of the future, a utilities firm of the future enter industry focus area here of the future. And I think partnering with an organization of that kind as their technology or their agentic or copilot or Azure AI foundry partner is gonna be really quite powerful for many organizations because they're gonna be able to go, you do that bit, You identify where the true opportunity lie, and we will then map the technology to that rather than the other way around. Because we've seen so many customer user organizations that have tried to plug a people problem or a strategy problem or a target operating model problem with a bit of technology, and they thought that will fix it. But they haven't actually got the answer to how are these people gonna use it?
Lucy Bourne:How is it going to affect them mentally? You know, what was the behavioural change that we should be considering as part of this quite fundamental deployment of this technology solution? They've just gone problem, technology, throw a bit of budget at it, throw a partner at it, it will fix itself. And it doesn't. And you really need that kind of particularly in this AI world, the the understanding of that human behavioral change that sits behind it and how it's actually gonna land.
Lucy Bourne:How are gonna use it? How is it gonna impact their day? How is it gonna stop them going into an existential crisis spiral thought loop where they think their role is going to be completely usurped? And that I feel is where a true partnership's going to come alive going forward. So being truly ecosystem aware, understanding which partners are going to help you with that part going forward if you're a technology systems integrator now is going to be super important.
Lucy Bourne:And then kind of pulling on that being absolutely, absolutely deliberately narrow focused as a partner, particularly when it comes to your demand generation is gonna be super pivotal because not all partners are gonna be able to be excellent at all industry areas, all horizontal workloads when it comes to delivering technology into them. They they are going to have to be able to demonstrate their expertise when it comes to that industry and that situation that these end user customers gonna find themselves in. Now I'm not saying, you know, if some opportunities come to you that sits outside of that deliberately narrow focus you've set themselves, that you've set yourselves, ignore it. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is when you go to market and you're looking to drive your own demand, you need to be able to demonstrate that you can talk the language of your customer.
Lucy Bourne:You know the persona of the individual you're going after in that customer. You're being deliberately using the specific vocabulary that's going to resonate with them and perhaps you're even using, you know, macroeconomic news related terminology that's gonna land with them effectively. Because without that, you're gonna be seen to be too broad. You're not gonna be able to find the audience and or find where that audience is to be able to resonate with them. And I think particularly in this AI world where it's now you're no longer longer are you competing with a another Microsoft partner that does a another technology.
Lucy Bourne:You're gonna be competing with Anthropic and you name it, enter other LLM of choice. You know, we are the opportunity is broadened, the capability is broadened and as a result, partners need to respond by being super focused and intentional about the personas, the individuals, the workloads, the industries that they know they can service effectively. Hopefully that
Rudy Rodriguez:answers You just reminded me of a you just reminded me of a conversation I had with the CTO yesterday and you'll appreciate the story. They spent $66,000,000, 66,000,000, implementing AI, and what they have, the problem is they have people standing around because they're afraid to use it now, because they're afraid they're going to lose their jobs. Change management is very important in getting the right adoption taking place. So all those things that you mentioned. Let's look ahead
Lucy Bourne:a couple
Rudy Rodriguez:of years now. What do you think is going to define the most successful Microsoft partners in the next one to two years? Is it specialization, innovation, or community, or combination thereof?
Lucy Bourne:It's such a good question. And I think I think one of the key points we've yet to touch on is is the speed of change and the rate at which we are as Microsoft Partners having to deal with that change. Now we've all been through this before, know, with the landing of net new products, net new capabilities, power platform, Azure capability, you name it, it's landed, you know, once a year we get a new fundamental shift in the Microsoft partner world. Now we're getting it in the space of days, not in the space of weeks or years or months, days. And so Mhmm.
Lucy Bourne:The partner in twelve months that's gonna be the most effective is going to be the one that is tolerant to ambiguity. And by that, what I mean is they're able to understand not necessarily which horse to back, but how quickly to back it, if that makes sense. They're able to go, okay, we don't have a perfect answer to what it means to be a Co Pilot studio partner or Agent three sixty five partner. But we are gonna be open and honest and authentic with our customers and help take them on the same journey that we're going on. And we're gonna arm our teams with the skill set or at least the space and the time to educate themselves on how that's that tool tooling set or that product offering is going to positively impact their customers.
Lucy Bourne:And I think by tolerant to ambiguity, what I really mean is they are the partner is uncomfortable, sorry, is comfortable with the uncomfortable. They know that they're not going to have necessarily all the answers, but they know they have a framework to support their customer through answering those questions jointly. I think they're also comfortable with not necessarily knowing how to price or commercially structure things in the way that they've always done it. Know, I think we're seeing this fundamental shift from time and materials. We think this project's gonna be this amount of days because we've done this much discovery, fixed price discovery, estimate of time and materials days to we think that this solution we're gonna deliver to you is gonna help you, dare I say it, cut FTEs or increase revenue or increase this value of this revenue stream for this customer or add an additional one.
Lucy Bourne:And we think that the value of this additional revenue stream is gonna be worth x to this customer and therefore we're gonna charge a percentage of that. And I think the true successful partner in twelve months is gonna be able to effectively basically mark their own homework. You know, jointly come up with their customer with an outcome they think they can jointly achieve with the customer's consent and with their authority and price it accordingly. Now it's it's a gutsy move, and not many are doing it right now. But I think and I and I don't think it's gonna happen overnight.
Lucy Bourne:Right? This is a complete journey. And there might be a hybrid model between, you know, perhaps charging some T and M on the way and refunding it later once you've outcome to the opportunity, driven the outcome that you've jointly agreed on. But I do think we're ultimately moving to a world of almost charging a subscription for the benefit of the outcome that you have provided your customer with. And I'd love to be in that space.
Lucy Bourne:If we if we came back on this call on the 06/23/2027, I'd love to be able to give you some anecdotes of where successful partners have done that, and I honestly think we'll be at that point by that by that stage.
Rudy Rodriguez:It's interesting you mentioned that because we've been having conversations with partners and people are talking outcome based pricing. So, and in fact, we found out the McKinsey Corporation is I doing that as well
Lucy Bourne:think it's certainly much, much easier for consulting businesses to lead on outcomes based capability because there's less cost associated right upfront as thought leadership, etcetera. But I think, and you know, honestly, of the, one of the retaliations, one of the bits of feedback I've had from partners when we've talked on this concept of outcomes based pricing has been as soon as Microsoft charged their licensing based on outcomes, I will change my model to outcomes based. That's what I've had before. Honestly, it's a really valid response. I get it.
Lucy Bourne:I really get it. And maybe we'll get there. You know, maybe Microsoft will completely shift to that kind of consumption based potentially even outcomes based model for all of these products. But my view with them is if you don't do it, someone else will. And if you're in that partner sorry.
Lucy Bourne:If you're in that customer with another capability and someone else, AI first or outcomes first is coming in, which partner do you think that customer's gonna go with if they're guaranteeing certain outcomes? And then you're gonna lose the rest of it. So I I do think there's a there's a powerful shift about to happen. I don't know how quickly, but it I feel like we're on the verge of it happening pretty soon.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. We'll have to bookmark our calendars for this time next year and see see what what's come what's come to fruition or not.
Lucy Bourne:I'd love that.
Anthony Carrano:Let me ask you this, Lucy. If, you know, for another partner listening today who wanted to replicate your success, you know, in terms of, like, with, you know, P2P and, know, like partner engagement, what's the one principle or mindset shift you tell them to adopt first?
Lucy Bourne:Oh, this probably sounds a little bit like I'm near a breaking record here, Anthony. So sorry about that. But I think that authenticity and openness is key. You know? I've seen so many partners try and protect bits of revenue.
Lucy Bourne:Oh we do that bit, they do it too. But we want to partner them on that bit. Yeah you have to be so open about that. You have to be open about where the Venn diagram crosses over because absolutely the first deal that you both get if there's gonna be elements where your skill sets cross or even if it's with an ISV or a software development company where you actually wanna build it rather than productize it or sell the product that's gonna fix that problem. Be super open about that.
Lucy Bourne:Or even if you're, you know, let's say there's two services organizations coming together. I don't know. Let's let's say a standard MSP that wants to add Business Central to their capability. Right? It obviously makes sense for them to partner to bring Business Central into their business.
Lucy Bourne:But that MSP has the intention to develop their own practice. Just be open about it. Be super open about it because, you know, we've seen really successful partnerships turn into acquisitions, turn into mergers. There's always an option or, you know, ultimately they've given themselves like a twelve month timeframe. In twelve months, we will have organically grown our business and we will have no need for you anymore partner.
Lucy Bourne:And that's good. You know, ultimately if there's a scaling practise that's looking for demand and looking for opportunities and looking to make sure their bench is kept busy, it's still a really valid opportunity for them, but they just need to know that that's not gonna be there forever. And they need to start building their own pipeline alongside that and making hay while the sun shines in their own, in their own world. So I think, you know, to summarise openness, authenticity, being afraid to say this isn't working or this needs more focus from your side or you know being really clear on what each side's motivations are is absolutely the key.
Anthony Carrano:Now that's great, I really appreciate you sharing that and just all your insights here throughout, you know, just our conversation today, Lucy. As we're getting close to kind of wrapping up, one thing I'd like to kind of circle back on is earlier in the conversation you mentioned that it's the seven traits of the partner genome. And I mean, that's that could be a whole podcast interview in and of itself. We're not gonna go go there. But for those listening, if they wanna learn more about that, is there like a either an ebook, a workshop, or an assessment about that?
Anthony Carrano:And maybe can you share a little bit, you know, you know, about how folks can kinda learn more about that?
Lucy Bourne:Absolutely. So, yeah, we talk a lot about these seven traits of a truly effective frontier future ready partner. And yeah, we absolutely do have what we call our partner genome review. It was like a half day session. We'll go in and assess across these seven traits and give you some kind of real key priority areas to build an action plan out the back of them.
Lucy Bourne:But in the in the first instance, out of the back of this podcast, I would love for your listeners to log on to our website oka.studio they'll find the seven traits of the partner genome on there and I want them to think really really openly and honestly about how they score across those seven traits and then take two just two to focus on improving first. So be honest about what they need help with and where they might be able to partner to improve on those traits and then set themselves some really smart goals for what they could look like in twelve months against those traits. And that is all. I'm not giving too much homework for this one, which people will be pleased But to
Anthony Carrano:we'll the links though for that in the show notes for those that are listening. So you can definitely take action. In addition to the links to the Partner Genium review, what are some of the best ways for folks if they'd wanna reach out and connect? What's the best ways for them to do that?
Lucy Bourne:Sure. Probably the best way is our LinkedIn page. So, okadotstudio on LinkedIn, and they can also drop us an email on infookadotstudio. We would love to hear from them.
Anthony Carrano:Excellent. Excellent. Well, we've really enjoyed having you on Lucy. This has been fantastic. And, you know, before we sign off, just, you know, you ever go camping in Wyoming, Colorado, don't forget the bear spray.
Anthony Carrano:You'll be all good. And enjoy the rest of your time.
Lucy Bourne:Thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed being part of this conversation. I'm really grateful to be invited. So thank you.
Anthony Carrano:Well, that was such an insightful episode, you know, with Lucy. I really appreciate it. Just a lot of the fresh perspectives and just some of the things that her and her company are doing, you know, in terms of partnerships.
Rudy Rodriguez:Oh, absolutely. It's always good, great to get perspectives from the other side of the pond, as she mentioned, called us, yeah, on their side of the pond. And I really enjoyed the things that they help partners with and the focus of their business. And one thing that kind of stood out to me was what they call their partner pulse sessions on teaching people how to prioritize, prioritize the traits for their business to become more successful. And that they've had up to 80 people attend these sessions, and that they that they walk out after, you know, they they get to attend six or eight sessions during the partner pulse, and they walk out with an action plan.
Rudy Rodriguez:As she says, kind of the partners may be glazed over because they take them through some intense training there. But they walk out with an action plan on how to prioritize those things to make them become a much more successful partner. And I really appreciate that. So that really ties into everything that we teach at IAMCP. But just a different format.
Rudy Rodriguez:So like I said, I like the fact that that that they have their their their hands on the pulse of the business. So that's really great, Partner Pulse.
Anthony Carrano:What about you? Yeah, I think we, I thank you. And I think we got a little glimpse into when she was talking about the seven traits of the Partner G Room genome, especially when she was leaning in about just the importance for them to be, you know, ecosystem aware and narrowly focused when it pertains to like with their demand gen, their ideal customers, what their individual expertise is when developing that like their own go to market so they can really talk the language of their customers and speak in a way, one, that the customer understands, but two, that really resonates, you know, with the customer. And so obviously doing what we do with Dynamics, you know, marketing, you know, I've really appreciate just the emphasis, you know, on that and how important it is, you know, to really focus and get specific so you can get the results that you're looking for. I also found just the conversation around just because you asked a really, you know, interesting question about like, you know, about the one to two years, what do you think, you know, for partners, you know, to look like and be, you know, be successful?
Anthony Carrano:And she really answer it like the way, you know, a lot of other folks answer it, you know, whether it's about, you know, your network, your community, your specializations, etcetera, innovation, You know, she answered it specifically, you know, around the speed of change and how, you know, the phrase, and I haven't heard someone really emphasize this as much as she has, the being tolerant of ambiguity. And I think that and then towards the end, the conversation you and her had about the outcome based pricing really interesting. And it's definitely worth, I think, looking more into.
Rudy Rodriguez:Yeah, well, I think she touched on things that Jay McBain brought brought this for to the forefront in the conversation we had with them. And there's just an awful lot of change taking place in the partner channel right now. So it's good for people to keep listening to our podcast and keep learning more. So based on that, thank you for joining us on this episode of IAMCP Profiles in Partnership powered by Dunamis Marketing. We really hope you enjoyed this podcast and find it useful and inspiring.
Rudy Rodriguez:If you did, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. One of the best ways to partner for success is to join IAMCP, a community of Microsoft partners who help each other grow and thrive. IAMCP members can find and connect with other partners locally and globally and access exclusive resources and opportunities. Whether you're looking for new customers, new markets, or new solutions, IAMCP can help you achieve your goals. To learn more, visit the website @www.iamcp.org.
