Continue reading and discover what it means to be a Microsoft Partner, what are the advantages and what is a Gold and Silver Partner so you can make the right choice of supplier.

Microsoft has one of the largest, oldest and most successful partner programs in the world, the Microsoft Partner Network. Proof of this is that 95% of Microsoft’s business is carried out through more than 64,000 partners (2017 data) distributed globally.

In this way, over more than 40 years, the program has been perfected, aligning its requirements with customer needs.

The partnership program establishes a series of requirements that partners must comply with in order to demonstrate their technical capacity.

Microsoft Partner Competencies

There are several skills or specializations, each aligned with a specific need. Therefore, a Microsoft Partner can have more than one competency.

For example, our mission at Smart Consulting or specialty is to develop applications that help other companies to better serve their customers, sell more, manage projects, optimize processes, analyze and obtain insights from information. Everything to improve the performance of people and companies.

In this way, we specialize in the Microsoft Business Platform: Dynamics 365, PowerApps and Power BI.

With this specialization, we become partners with Cloud Business Applications / Customer Engagement, Application Development and Data Analytics skills.

In other words, it is very important to choose a Microsoft Partner who is certified in the area of ​​specialization you need.

Each area of ​​expertise requires a specific set of knowledge and experience to get the best out of each solution. The implementer makes a lot of difference!

Gold and Silver Partner

Every competency has two partnership levels: Gold and Silver.

Microsoft Gold Partner

The Gold level recognizes partners that are larger and have a higher level of experience.

For example, as a Gold Cloud Business Applications partner, we need to have a minimum of 15 consultants certified in Dynamics 365.

The necessary certifications are updated over time, requiring partners and their team to stay up to date by continually studying.

Here at Smart Consulting, we’ve gone one step further with the directive that all of our consultants keep their certifications up to date.

It is an additional investment, which is worth it, always offering our customers a super qualified team.

With these requirements, Microsoft seeks to ensure that partners are always up to date with new technologies, adding maximum value to customers using the Microsoft platform.

Managed Partner

Among the Gold partners, Microsoft also chooses, based on its experience and good services provided, a smaller group of partners, who work more closely with it.

By participating in this select group, we have greater access to training and development opportunities, which further increases our ability to carry out excellent projects and add value to our clients.

Benefits

A Microsoft partner also has several benefits, such as technical support, training and access to a large number of Microsoft software and cloud services.

This allows us to learn and use Microsoft products internally and then create innovative solutions and services to offer our customers.

Our trajectory

Finally, we have been Microsoft partners since 2004, starting with the lowest level of membership (Membership).

We invested in partnership and, in 2007, we achieved the Customer Relationship Management competency (at that time, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement was called Dynamics CRM) and today we are a Gold Partner and one of the main Cloud Business Applications partners in Brazil.

We can assure you that it has been quite an experience, with a lot of learning, a lot of work and great achievements, always counting on the support of Microsoft 😊.

Did you like to know how the Microsoft Partner Program works? Leave it in the comments!