1. “With CSP we combine Microsoft cloud offerings with
our services and end-user devices, increasing our
revenue per deal by 25 to 40 percent while delivering
more value to our clients than we could if they
purchased these solutions separately.”
Paul Erhart, Director of Product Management
Global technology provider Insight has adopted the Microsoft
Cloud Solution Provider program, through which it can serve
customers better and grow its managed services business.
Large organizations generally don’t do
change quickly or well. However, in the
partner ecosystem for Microsoft Office
365, global IT provider Insight appears to
be doing just that. And if its business
transformation isn’t exactly instantaneous,
it’s nonetheless remarkably rapid for a
more than US$5 billion-a-year Fortune 500
company—and a model that other Office
365 partners, regardless of their size, might
choose to study.
Insight was early to offer Office 365 and
that initiative has paid off. The company
has sold 10 million seats of Office 365 over
the past four years, making it one of the
top two sellers for the service. And the
future looks just as bright, with Insight’s
Office 365 business currently growing at
an annual near 100 percent.
So why the need to do anything
differently? Insight wasn’t just early to
Office 365. It was also early to understand
that the cloud has fundamentally new
economics to which a technology provider
must respond.
“We’re the number one global Microsoft
SPLA [Service Provider Licensing
Agreement] partner,” says Paul Erhart,
Director of Product Management at
Insight. “And we got to that position by
focusing on driving the customer
transaction. But we saw that with the
cloud, customers are looking for solutions
and we need to focus on getting the
customers to use the technology.”
Despite Insight’s massive size, the principle
it’s applying to the issue of active use is
the same that smaller partners are also
employing with success: building
consulting and managed services to help
the customer deploy Office 365, to
manage it, and to identify and address any
challenges it encounters along the way.
Microsoft Office 365
Customer Solution Case Study
Mega-partner Insight sees the future of
cloud services in Office 365 and CSP.
Partner: Insight
Website: www.insight.com
Partner Size: 5,400 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: IT services and solutions
Partner Profile
Insight, based in Tempe, Arizona, is a
global provider of IT hardware, software,
and service solutions to business and
public sector organizations.
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
https://drumbeat.office.com/Pages/succes
ses.aspx

2. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published June 2015
In October 2014, Insight gained a powerful
tool to aid in these efforts: the Microsoft
Cloud Solution Partner (CSP) program,
through which Insight manages the full
lifecycle of its Office 365 customers,
including reselling, provisioning, invoicing,
service, and support.
Making it easier for customers
It also uses CSP to offer Office 365
alongside its own services at a combined,
packaged price starting at less than $10 per
user, per month. A typical offering includes
the Office 365 subscription, an expanded
administrative dashboard, mailbox
migration services, user administration, and
24 x 7 US-based support.
“CSP lets us control the entire customer
experience so we can make life easier for
our customers,” says Erhart. “The easier it is
for customers to use cloud services, the
more cloud services—including our
managed services—they will use.”
Insight made major investments to evolve
from a licensing vendor to what Erhart calls
“a true systems integrator” capable of
providing those managed services. One of
those major investments was acquiring
systems integrator Ensynch in 2011, to
become the foundation for Insight’s field-
based consulting services.
Another was to build out a remote
consulting services team both to augment
the field services and deliver standalone
remote services. To provide Level 1 and
Level 2 technical support, Insight expanded
its existing managed services desk of more
than 50 technicians. Insight uses all these
resources as part of its implementation and
ongoing management of its CSP offerings.
Ensuring smooth onboarding
To help ensure smooth onboarding of new
customers, Insight created a squad of
Customer Success Managers, with one
assigned to each onboarding team. These
advocates focus on ensuring that every
step of the onboarding process is
implemented correctly.
“Certainly we helped the customer before,”
says Erhart. “But now our engagement is
more formal and comprehensive. It’s not
an add-on to a licensing deal, it’s intrinsic
to the value we bring to the customer.”
The mix of managed services that Insight
provides depends upon the customer’s
needs. For example, if the customer plans
to administer Office 365 on its own, Insight
provides training so it can do so, along
with a centralized customer administration
portal that is part of the Insight’s value-
added IP. Otherwise, Insight administers
Office 365 as a part of its managed
services to the customer.
Selling services to drive use
Being proactive is another key to helping
customers drive active use. It’s also a way
to sell managed services that both help
the customer and power Insight’s growth.
One of Insight’s proactive tools is a
quarterly review of each customer’s cloud
use. The review identifies the cloud
services that the customer is using and the
active use of each service. Where active
use is low, Insight may deliver additional
training or technical solutions, as
appropriate. Part of driving active use is
ensuring the customer understands what it
has purchased—and what new capabilities
Microsoft has added to those services.
“We make a point of reviewing new cloud
functionality with our customers,” says
Erhart. “Microsoft can add features daily.
Customers need us to help them keep up
with the changes.”
“We give customers options”
Insight has made some changes to its sales
and marketing in order to implement
managed services and CSP. It presents
customers with more options around their
Office 365 purchases, showing them the
costs of buying managed services and
consulting services separately or combined
with Office 365 in a CSP offering. “We
don’t push customers to CSP,” says Erhart.
“We give them options and let them
choose what’s best for them.”
The company uses CSP to address sales
commission issues arising from the nature
of cloud services. Because its CSP offerings
have a one-year commitment, Insight pays
commissions on a full year’s sale up front,
when it’s booked, rather than as it’s paid
out over a year. “We want to keep our
sales people motivated to sell CSP
offerings,” says Erhart. “A larger
commission up front, rather than a ‘trickle’
over a year, helps to do that.”
Deal sizes up 25 to 40 percent
And it’s working. “With CSP we combine
Microsoft cloud offerings with our services
and end-user devices, increasing our
revenue per deal by 25 to 40 percent while
delivering more value to our clients than
we could if they purchased these solutions
separately,” says Erhart.
He attributes the increase to a larger share
of managed services in each CSP deal. And
with managed services providing higher
margins than subscriptions alone, the
increase is particularly valuable to Insight.