Axxon Cloud Practice Building Success Story

A Cloud Success Story The Sun is rising on a new generation of Cloud Computing Business Partners – Are you Ready? The stakes in Cloud Computing are starting to rise to levels that have never been seen before. As the sun starts to rise on a new generation of Cloud Computing business partners the race to establish on-line practices and service offerings is hotting-up. According to IPED research the Cloud is a game changing event for partners, profitability will be driven by the extent to which they can develop and deliver a continuous set of repeatable services in the Cloud (Source: IPED Research: Partnering for success in the Cloud). One Microsoft Dynamics partner has recently turned their headlights-on to doing the critical business planning and readiness work required to prepare for the Cloud. Alejandro Bauvin, Director General at Axxon Consulting led a substantial business planning and re-engineering initiative to have all aspects of the business come together to define a vision and plan to build the leading Cloud Computing practice for Microsoft Dynamics across Latin America. Alejandro turned to Cloudtorre and senior business coach Alan Dowzall to help facilitate the work that was required to engineer a completely new vision in the minds of the Axxon leadership team and every person in the company. “The Cloudtorre Cloud Practice building program has enabled us to define a vision and business plan for our new Cloud business in a way and to a level of depth that would not have been possible on our own. We are 110% committed to the plan that we built and signed-up to!” – Alejandro Bauvin, Director General, Axxon Consulting. March 2012. “The work exceeded our expectations. Alan Dowzall delivers your moneys worth and much more. He provides the framework, market insights, tools & processes that you need to shape a world class Cloud business strategy. What’s unique about the work Alan did was it helped us address challenges we had with our traditional business as well as helping us build a strong plan for tomorrow.” – Francisco Nelson, Director of Cloud Business, Axxon Consulting. March 2012. Axxon Consulting is an example of a Microsoft Dynamics partner who has taken a big leap to build a strong Cloud Computing vision and business plan. In their regular Leadership meetings discussions about the progress being made against the plan to optimize the traditional business to support investments in the new Cloud business are common place, along with the stories of how the work being done is helping them to close deals and exceed the expectations of customers.

A Cloud Success Story In the words of Felipe Girado, Director of Sales at Axxon: “The Cloud Practice building program enabled us to re-purpose our sales approach across our traditional business. Before we started the program our focus was a very horizontal product centric approach leaving little room for us to differentiate our value proposition in the mind of a customer and vs. our competitors. This has changed and based on the results of the market opportunity work we completed within the program we have re-aligned our sales teams around those industries we defined as having the highest potential in the markets we serve.” As part of the Cloud practice building program Cloudtorre provides a range of tools and methods to help partners ease into the process of building a Cloud business plan. Cloudtorre recognizes that business planning is not always a core competency for partners and as such the program approach is designed to make it easy for partners to quickly assess their current business situation and to identify ways that the existing business can be optimized and improved vs. benchmarks of best practices such that the resulting profitability improvements can be used to invest in the new Cloud business. The Cloudtorre practice building takes the following approach: Define the Cloud Computing market opportunity across the territories the partner is envisioning doing business. Align the leaders on the critical factors that impact the success of building a new Cloud business. Optimization of existing business to fuel investments in new Cloud businesses requires Building a compelling special focus. vision for the Cloud and landing it in the minds of the entire company is of high importance. Defining the intellectual property owned by the business that can be packaged into a Cloud Building a Cloud business requires a offering will make or break the new approach to Sales & Marketing. strategy. New skills and methods must be learnt.

A Cloud Success Story Results Business Plan Success Factors Sales & Marketing  Developed a detailed business  Aligned the leaders around the  Detailed the changes in Sales & financial plan built from the critical success factors of & Marketing skills and top down and bottom-up by building a new Cloud practice methods required to be the business leaders and key successful both in optimization members of the Axxon team  Benchmarked the existing of the existing business and in through a series of facilitated business against best in class the Cloud coaching sessions examples of comparable businesses. Identified areas for  Run coaching sessions with  Defined the size of the market optimization of the existing Sales and marketing leaders opportunity in specific revenue, business – ways to be more and teams to re-skill them on customer and industry terms profitable. the new methods required. for the targeted markets  Detailed the importance of  Built a compelling new vision developing existing intellectual for the business presented to property into Cloud offerings the entire company The Cloud Practice Building Program One of the most valuable aspects of the Cloudtorre Practice building program is that it’s not a 1 or 2 day training intervention that provides partners with little time to have the right discussions and do the focused work that is required to build a Cloud practice. The program starts with a 5-day immersion program that enables the leadership team of the partner business to learn about how to build a successful Cloud business as well as having very focused discussions about the right strategy and approach for their individual business. The program continues with an additional 7 days of momentum based coaching days through which Dowzall’s talents as a business coach makes sure that the right discussions are taking place and that there is clear alignment and decision making. The results obtained were due to the holistic approach Dowzall takes with the program. This means bringing together Sales & Marketing teams, Consultants, Project Managers, Developers and Human Resources to build the business plan. In the words of Alejandro Bauvin “It was only when we all sat around the table in the immersion week and analyzed the state of our business, and the factors for success in building a new Cloud practice that we were able to open our minds to the realities of our situation. To be blunt, we were obviously not as well prepared as we thought.” “Alan made us sit up and grasp the importance of optimizing our existing business to enable us to be more profitable and therefore find the required investment. Results from the immersion week enabled us to identify in-effective and inconsistent processes and overall gaps in our methods that we have been able to

A Cloud Success Story address to make us more efficient.” Through this approach the value of the program is immediately obvious because it connects the real world development of the existing business with the new world imperative of building a Cloud business. In the words of Felipe Girado: “The program enabled us to bring together the old world with the new world and connect the dots.” The Axxon team created an on-line presentation to share their vision and results of the detailed work carried out by the team at company meetings. It proved to be a great way to engage the entire company in the mission to build a Cloud practice. The benefit from doing this was that the employees got a real sense for the ambition and forward thinking of the company. This helped generate a sense of excitement within the employees. The Axxon team created a Prezi used to share their passion, vision and the results of their detailed work at regular company meetings To view the Axxon Consulting Cloud Practice Building Presentation go to: http://prezi.com/jp-6rjflzteu/copy-of-one-axxon/ The Tipping Point The clock is ticking. This is one of the important messages Dowzall shares throughout the program. A Tipping Point is on the horizon; by 2014 forecasters are predicting that the Cloud Computing market will be larger than the traditional On-Premise market. This means that partners have 2 years to establish their Cloud practices. If they don’t get started right away they will experience increasing levels of pain that Dowzall predicts will become unbearable. If they do they open the door to a borderless universe of customers significantly larger than anything seen before.

A Cloud Success Story Dowzall predicts the Cloud Computing market will be larger than the traditional On-premise market by 2014 – The clock is ticking! Next Steps The recommended next steps are: Leadership team completes the 1 five day Cloud Practice building immersion week Add coaching days to develop 2 the new people and process skills required to be successful Add momentum days to review 3 the business plan once per quarter through the 1st 12 months of building the new practice

A Cloud Success Story First, the leadership team should immerse themselves in the Cloud practice building program for a full five day period. Nothing less will provide the level of depth required to be ready to do Cloud practice business planning. Second, partners should be prepared to invest in re-tooling their people to develop the new skills required to be successful in Selling & Marketing in the Cloud. Partners make the mistake of thinking the skills learned over the past decade are equally applicable and relevant in the Cloud, they soon find out that they are not. Finally, partners should invest in momentum based work to keep the business plan fire burning. At least once a quarter the leadership team needs to come back and do detailed work to review the business plan and make sure that everything is on-track or to make necessary adjustments as the environment changes. In Summary: In summary the message for partners is clear, the time to act is now. With the Tipping Point on the horizon there is less and less time for partners to prepare themselves for the Cloud Computing opportunity. New entrants in the form of new competitors are getting ahead and entering the market every day, the landscape is changing fast and so partners must act or find themselves left behind. For more information on the Cloudtorre Practice Building Program go to: www.cloudtorre.com For more information on Alan Dowzall go to: www.alandowzall.com or contact ad@cloudtorre.com Follow at #Dowzall Contact the Axxon Consulting team: Alejandro Bauvin, Director General, ABauvin@axxonconsulting.com Felipe Girado, Director Commercial, FGirado@axxonconsulting.com Francisco Nelson, Director of Cloud Business, pancho@axxonconsulting.com Pablo Iannucci, Director of Services, PIannucci@axxonconsulting.com German Zelada Director General Bolivia, gzelada@axxonconsulting.com.bo Francisco Mulhall Director Commercial Chile, FMulhall@axxonconsulting.com

Axxon Cloud Practice Building Success Story

by alandowzall on Mar 13, 2012

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