Should CSPs Use Microsoft’s Self-Service Portal Template?

Recently, on Microsoft boards, there was an announcement about a beautifully crafted plan with images and workflows for a Marketplace and Self-Service Portal tailored for CSPs (Cloud Solution Providers).

The initial reaction from the Microsoft CSP Partner community was swift, and excitement was high!

I'll start my article with my bottom line in case you don't want to read any further:

“Every company, partner, and organization must have and offer a customer-facing application to their customers.”

Thanks, Microsoft boards!

The Motivation Behind the Self-Service Portal Template

What was Microsoft’s motivation for posting this article now?

• Help partners with thought leadership?

• Grow online services and cloud sales?
• Just checking off a checklist item for content and collateral creation?

It’s hard to know the exact motivation, but the importance of having a customer-facing application is well understood.

About 1% of Microsoft Partners operate as Direct CSPs. If you are a Direct Partner, you are required to offer a provisioning portal for your end customers.

Indirect CSP resellers use the Portals or Marketplaces provided by their distributors. However, it seems from a recent survey of a leading distributor that only about 1% of their partners leverage their Self-Service capabilities.

Quote from the template, “The Time is right: Customer self-serve checkout and provisioning”:

• Acquisition costs for very small business (VSB) customers interested in Microsoft 365 can outweigh potential profits
• Traditional sales processes can be inefficient. Customers often need to engage with sales and wait for services to be provisioned

As you read through, you may draw up your own mental map on the importance of these quotes as they relate to CSP Management and your business growth.

So, Is this Self-Service Portal Template New?

A Self-Service or Marketplace application to support CSP Management for Direct Partners is available through many commercial application providers, including my company, Work 365.

This new template from Microsoft appears to go beyond just providing a starting point for partners; it encompasses a broad range of capabilities, from customer onboarding to offering a complete shopping experience.

Given Microsoft’s vast product catalog, ranging from simple email plans to complex enterprise applications and cloud infrastructure, this template could be a strategic move to streamline these processes for partners.

Some of our competitors have jumped on to this bandwagon and quickly published articles with the help of what seems to be our common friend ChatGPT.

We have seen an uptick in conversations about a Self-Service Portal. The common motivations in these conversations are:

• A salesperson or a licensing specialist in a Microsoft Partner organization will reach out and state we are signing up a big customer, and they want us to provide a Self-Service Portal. Can you help?
• A CEO/business leader or owner will reach out and want a Marketplace in the hopes that they will start to acquire customers and ramp up their business.

In 2019, only about 25% of our customers wanted a Self-Service Portal. Today, all our users can and want to provide a Self-Service Portal. As of today, we process over 50,000 provisioning requests a month, equating to about 4000 hours (about 5 and a half months) saved for our users and their end customers.

Understanding Self-Service Portals, Marketplaces, and e-Commerce

Before discussing how Self-Service, Marketplace, e-Commerce platforms, and the online customer experience fit together, it’s important to first define these terms. What distinguishes a Self-Service Portal from a Marketplace or Storefront?

Understanding the terms will help you evaluate and plan your technology roadmap to create a better customer experience and expand your digital footprint.

Marketplace

A Marketplace is an online store provided by a vendor where you can transact across multiple vendors, geographies, and currencies. It allows you to purchase products, factor in shipping costs, and provides a seamless shopping experience for both new and existing users. Examples include Microsoft Azure Marketplace, Amazon.com,?or a distributor’s website that offers a range of products across multiple regions and currencies.

Storefront or e-Commerce

A Storefront or an e-Commerce site is a dedicated application where existing or new customers can purchase products that are specific to the provider. So, Nike will have a Storefront for its own products. Nike’s Storefront is not a Marketplace; it’s a shopping experience created by the provider for its own product line. Microsoft also has Storefront experience to purchase Microsoft 365.

Self-Service

A Self-Service site allows customers to manage existing services they’ve set up with a provider. There are lots of examples of Self-Service, including state and government sites, where you can request information or access documents and process new transactions. A common use case for Microsoft CSPs is enabling customers to manage existing subscription counts and renewals.

Planning for a Customer-facing Application

Whether it's a Marketplace or a Self-Service application, a web-presence for your services provides many advantages including both for CSPs and their customers:

For Partners:

• Cost Savings: These come from the time and effort that it takes to make changes and then capture them accurately into a billing system.
• Improved Reach: Customer acquisition across geographies, being able to handle multiple languages creates the confidence to be able to handle more types of customers.
• Improved Productivity: This comes from eliminating mundane time-consuming tasks of making license changes.
• Differentiation: Creating your own digital presence with product bundling and providing a holistic experience.

For End Customers:

• Improved Customer Experience: The investment in the portal speaks to the importance of what it means to meet the customer on their terms.
• Increased Availability: The improved availability means they can make changes when they want, regardless of time or the availability of resources.
• Reduced Efforts: They get faster turnaround times and don't have to wait on others to process changes or transactions that they know they need.

Learnings and Lessons from Experience

Our journey with an e-Commerce Site

When we first enrolled in the CSP program, we initially assumed a Storefront experience would help us drive sales. We invested a year of development resources, including marketing, catalog management, and integrations into multiple partner centers across three regions in building an e-Commerce site.

We were the number one search result in our region.

We saw interest but needed an offline sales process to quote for nuances around support, migration, and pricing questions. Despite having an integrated provisioning process, our billing, sales, and product catalogs were not integrated, and we were left with a fragmented solution.

This experience taught us the importance of aligning technology investments with customer needs and strategy.

When Does a Self-Service Portal Make Sense?

The real value of a Self-Service Portal lies in how it enhances the overall customer experience, differentiates service offerings, and strengthens relationships and trust. Competing on price alone leads to a race to the bottom.

To stand out, partners must develop a well-thought-out approach to building a portal that adds real value beyond just selling licenses.

According to a Forrester study, 41% of customers rank Microsoft as the top provider for workspace, collaboration, or communication tools they are willing to purchase online in a self-service manner.

This highlights the importance of offering a Self-Service Portal and ensuring it aligns with what customers are already seeking.

The Venn diagram below represents the universe of customers who purchase Microsoft licensing from partners.

In the diagram above, section A represents the managed customers that may not be a good fit for a Self-Service Portal.

However, area B represents a large group of growing end customers who would value a Self-Service Portal.

Competing as a Microsoft CSP Partner

Microsoft CSP Partners compete on several fronts:

• Differentiated Service Offerings: Offering unique services that go beyond the standard Microsoft products.
• Customer Experience: Providing a seamless, user-friendly experience that meets customer needs.
• Relationships and Trust: Building long-term relationships with customers, ensuring they feel supported and valued.
• Pricing: While pricing is a factor, it shouldn’t be the only focus.

For many partners, especially MSPs (Managed Service Providers), the question is whether their customers even need to use a Self-Service Portal. For managed customers, the MSP typically handles everything, making a Self-Service Portal less necessary.

For partners with a hybrid model of managed and unmanaged customers, a Self-Service Portal can make sense—if used strategically for the right reasons and the right customer segments.

Common Use Cases

Aligning with the benefits, we can lay out some common themes around use cases. The general focus around an application or automation would be growth in revenue and customers, and reduced burden on operational aspects of the business for both the user and the provider of the application.

• New Customer Flows: Setting up a new customer with Microsoft 365 Transitioning partner relationships with existing customers
• Existing Customers Flows: Purchasing new product and service sales Managing changes to existing service quantities Viewing invoices and processing payments

The table below describes the ease of implementation and frequency of occurrence to further confirm the most common use cases and the suitability for a Self-Service Portal vs a Marketplace or Storefront.

Takeaway: Based on the frequency and difficulty of the implementation, it would make sense to focus on Self-Service capabilities.

A Holistic Approach to Service Offerings

When considering a customer-facing application, CSP Partners should adopt a strategy but avoid getting bogged down by the fallacy of automating every possible use case. This includes selling CSP licenses and addressing support, billing, onboarding, and customer retention.

Onboarding a new customer involves complex discussions about services, migration, billing, and project scoping—tasks that often require more than just an online portal.

Moreover, with large-scale resellers offering similar services, the ability to differentiate becomes a competitive edge.

The key question is whether a partner can truly innovate and lead their CSP business on their terms. While Microsoft’s template provides some good ideas, it should be part of a broader strategy that includes operational efficiency and strategic use of technology.

Microsoft CSP Partners compete?

• Differentiated service offerings
• Customer experience
• Relationships and trust
• Pricing

In a managed scenario (where an MSP manages the customer’s IT), the customers are less likely to go to a portal except to submit a support ticket.

Onboarding a new customer requires a conversation on services, possible migration, billing and payment arrangements, setting up of services and scoping out a project.

When an end customer switches Microsoft CSP Partners, it requires a conversation that’s not easily found online! There are many large resellers that provide the same exact Microsoft CSP services, so differentiation on relationship and service offerings is the key to winning new business.

Click here to view the recent conversation from experts who have been down the path of building Self-Service and Marketplace applications for their audience. Self-Service and Marketplace applications for their audience.

Empowering for Growth

These are some of the concerns and assumptions I often hear from Microsoft CSP Partners:

• I am using a distributor; their portal is sufficient.
• My business will grow if I have a Marketplace or Storefront.
• Customers will make mistakes while ordering by selecting either the wrong SKU or quantity.
• Customers expect us to manage their services – they don’t want a portal.
• Customers may not pay after making a purchase.
• All my customers are not going to use or need a portal.

In my next article I will weigh in on these statements and detail considerations and strategies.

To wrap up, success in today’s economy requires a holistic and strategic approach to customer engagement. A Self-Service Portal can be a powerful tool, but only when it aligns with the specific needs of the business and its customers.

It’s not just about adopting tools—it’s also about integrating them thoughtfully into your broader business strategy to unlock true value for both partners and their customers.

Contact us for a demo or more information on how Self-Service Portals can benefit your business.

?