The requirements you should set for your Microsoft license partner

What else do you get besides the license?

In larger companies, there is often a habit of running license agreements for on-premise products for three years at a time. This practice has been overturned by cloud licenses because the whole point of cloud solutions is the flexibility to scale up and down as you wish. Therefore, long contractual periods do not sit well with them. By "tradition", many still continue to buy their licenses according to the older model - without the license partner having to offer anything more than the license itself to their customer. For smaller companies, however, it is often a matter of simply trusting the existing license partner and settling for less. This is often due to the fact that the knowledge of what opportunities are available and what requirements should be set is relatively low.

Today you buy the license for your Microsoft product as a pure transaction - you pay and the vendor provides the license. But the partner that provides licenses in this way does not optimize them for your needs. Instead, they often offer a one-size-fits-all solution and there is no real thought behind why they offer one license or another.

For you as a customer, this means that you often pay for functionality that you have no use for or that you buy licenses that do not cover the functionality needs of your business.

How can and should a license partner deliver added value?

The general rule should be that you buy the license from the supplier who can add the most value to it. Therefore it is important that your partner:

• Have sufficient understanding of your business to optimize your licenses.
• Have solid knowledge of the platform to which they sell licenses.
• Ongoing information on new functionality is provided so that you can keep up with developments in a way that benefits your business and allows you to make full use of the licenses.
• Offer smooth ways to order licenses, with short feedback times. For example, waiting several weeks for licenses is not acceptable - there must be well-established processes.
• Offers monitoring of unused licenses with clear reporting.

Don't think technology - think functionality and business value

The role of IT has changed. It is no longer just a client organization but an important part of the business-critical development. Now licensing merges with functionality and business needs in a completely different way than before, which means that the discussion of licenses is not based on a purely technical perspective. This creates completely new requirements for your license partner to have an understanding of your individual needs and knowledge of the platform and its functionality.

At WeSafe, we know the importance of both understanding our customers' needs and the ability to translate them into functionality on the platforms we specialize in. Want to know more about how you can optimize your licenses and be continuously updated on new features? Get in touch with us!