July 8, 2022

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    Microsoft pays out millions of dollars per annum in rebates to Microsoft Partners. How much are you getting?

    If you want to get more, keep reading because there are just a few clauses in your contracts and small process changes that you can make that will take you from 100s to 100,000s in rebates.

    You may be missing massive Microsoft rebates simply because you don’t have certain clauses in your contracts. When our CVO, Tim Wallis, ran his Microsoft Partner businesses, he grew Microsoft rebates from thousands per month to over £1m per year!

    More than money, you get GRAVITAS

    It’s not just about the money – by claiming the rebates from Microsoft you’ll also get your name on their scorecards and showing up in their systems as the incumbent and trusted Microsoft Partner for your customer. Yes, that means you’ll block other Microsoft Partners from claiming or being introduced to your customers.

    It’s a no-brainer and it’s so simple to do – so what’s stopping you?

    You just need to add clauses regarding CPOR/DPOR/PAL/TPOR and ensure that Proof of Execution (PoE) and global admin access rights are inserted and defined against your data protection policies. But why stress about it when you could have Law 365 do the work for you? Just give us a call.

    How can DPoR and CPoR get me rebates from Microsoft?

    What is DPoR / CPoR?

    Until 2019, the Digital Partner of Record (DPoR) automated how Microsoft Partners were attached as the Partner of Record for the subscriptions they were actively managing for customers for Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, AX7, Intune, Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Azure. The benefit for the customer was that this gave the Microsoft Partner they were working with access to their performance and usage data which then helped them to provide a better service.

    Since 1 October 2019, Microsoft introduced CPOR - Claiming Partner Of Record - as a new customer experience. CPOR is different in that it now recognises Microsoft Partners that are helping their customers to deploy or adopt ALL Microsoft products/services, including for example, Microsoft Teams, it also allows for more than one Microsoft Partner (as is often the case) to be associated with a subscription.

    Why did Microsoft change from Digital Partner Of Record (DPOR) to Claiming Partner Of Record (CPOR)?

    Microsoft made the changes in response to Microsoft Partner’s negative feedback about the DPOR experience:

    • DPOR was limited to just one Microsoft Partner per subscription. This caused problems because customers regularly work with multiple Microsoft Partners at the same time.
    • It was up to the customer, not the Microsoft Partner, to make the association to Microsoft – which meant that some Microsoft Partners weren’t being recognised for their contribution to a customer’s adoption of Microsoft services.
    • There were complaints that limited reporting meant that there were missed opportunities for Microsoft Partners. Better data was needed to leverage future customer work.

    For Microsoft, it was difficult to understand which Microsoft Partners were making a genuine contribution to customer success.

    CPOR aims to overcome these issues and allows Microsoft to measure their Partner Network more accurately.

    How is Claiming Partner of Record (CPOR) better than Digital Partner Of Record (DPOR)?

    Microsoft Partners support customers throughout the customer lifecycle, from deployment and adoption to ongoing maintenance and support. 

    Therefore, to be recognised for their contribution to Microsoft, it’s important for them to be correctly associated to their customers.

    • CPOR can associate multiple Microsoft Partners who are providing the deployment and/or adoption services to the customer, rather than one at a time.
    • Microsoft Partners can create associations for their customers, rather than relying on their customer to make the association.
    • The customer association is created at workload level instead of at subscription level (for DPOR) which means that each Microsoft Partner can be associated with specific tasks or platforms.

     How does CPOR work in practice?

    Of course, as lawyers, we’re going to say that it’s vital to include the right language in your contracts and agreements from the start.

    • You need to be recognised as the CPOR before you provide planning, implementation or services for Microsoft.
    • Your customer will need to accept the New Customer Agreement
    • They will need to give you the tenant ID of your production tenant and the initial subdomain
    • All future work for that customer will be associated your Microsoft Partner MPN ID and the Customer tenant ID and the initial subdomain, the services in scope for the engagement, your customer contact details
    • Your customer will also need to verify, with a signed agreement, that you’re actually delivering the services.
    • The onus is on each Microsoft Partner to create a customer association in the Microsoft Partner centre in order to claim. Microsoft will then verify the details for the claim.  Once the claim is submitted, an automated e-mail will be sent to the customer.

    Why are clients still using DPoR if CPoR is supposedly the new, improved version?

    As you may have realised, there is now some kudos to having the DPoR status. Because Microsoft historically only allocated one DPoR per customer, if that was your Microsoft Partner business, you’re going to want to claim that history with the client and demonstrate your gravitas.

    Why claim for Usage Recognition?

    Usage recognition is another way to be recognized as the Partner of Record (PoR) by Microsoft. You won’t earn incentives for it but it’s a good way to be recognised by Microsoft without having to submit Proof of Execution (POE).

    Too many acronyms!!? If your head is spinning, we’re here to help

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