At PowerObjects, an HCL Technologies Company, we routinely refer to ourselves as an award-winning Microsoft Partner. What not everyone may recognize is that this partnership we advertise can reveal itself through several different types of relationships.
- The most common scenario is that a business decides to implement Dynamics 365 and/or Power Platform – and they need help getting it up and running in their organization. They may come to HCL-PowerObjects independently or Microsoft may recommend us to them, but either way, we partner with that business to implement Microsoft products.
- Also common is the scenario in which Microsoft and HCL-PowerObjects join forces in pitching Dynamics 365 and/or Power Platform to a prospective customer – a united front is tough to beat in the sales process, and in this scenario we partner with Microsoft to earn the right to then partner with the prospect to implement Microsoft products.
- A third scenario tends to get the least amount of attention despite the fact that it arguably speaks the loudest with respect to the value we bring to Microsoft. Here, Microsoft taps HCL-PowerObjects to design, develop, and demonstrate Microsoft technology on behalf of Microsoft at Microsoft events. In other words, we partner with Microsoft to showcase the capabilities of their products to their prospective customers.
In today’s blogpost, we want to stray from our usual Microsoft technology tips ‘n’ tricks to instead offer some much-needed awareness about this third partner scenario. We do so in part to pat ourselves on our collective back (after all, only a few select partners in the ecosystem are afforded these “third scenario” opportunities) but more importantly to recognize the work being done by the team within HCL-PowerObjects responsible for this groundbreaking work
Dynamics 365
For starters, our Dynamics 365 R&D team (both CE and ERP) designs and develops solutions on Dynamics365 environments for various Microsoft Business group. The innovative work we are doing is showcased throughout the year to demonstrate how Microsoft technologies enable various prospects and customers to achieve their digital transformation and modern workplace solutions.
This innovation applies to many of the Dynamics 365 workloads:
- CE: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service, as well as Customer Insights and Customer Service Insights
- ERP: Finance, SCM, HQ, and Fraud Protection
In 2020, we also built a full Dynamics 365 Commerce website from the ground up, including product imagery, marketing videos, and other assets.
Power Platform
Similarly, our Power Platform R&D team builds dozens of apps and flows each year for Microsoft. Some of these apps are quite substantial, having been iterated and enhanced many times and routinely showcased at industry events, with each app innovating in a new area for several industries, including Automotive, Banking, Consumer Retail, Healthcare, Hospitality, Insurance, Nonprofit, Professional Services, and Quick Service Restaurants.
As with our Dynamics 365 partner work, HCL-PowerObjects’ Power Platform innovations are shared when Microsoft is demonstrating the capabilities of Power Platform:
- For prospects and customers
- For top rating agencies
- At annual events like Ignite, Microsoft Build, and Business Applications Summit in North America and EMEA
In fact, in the last year, Microsoft partnered with HCL-PowerObjects to demonstrate Power Platform innovation for several industries. A few specific examples:
- Power Automate and Power Virtual Agent Apps
- Team Bot
- Invoicing RPA
- PVA on Portal
- Home Improvement Portal with PVA
- Streamlining Order Management with Power Platform for rating agencies
- Power Apps
- Crisis Communication Template App
- Return to the Workplace App
A Mutually Beneficial Partnership
HCL-PowerObjects’ partnership with Microsoft has mutual benefits in different ways. It gives us opportunities to showcase our expertise, which helps position HCL-PowerObjects as a potential partner of choice for these businesses. From Microsoft’s standpoint, they benefit when their technology is on display in innovative and cutting-edge ways, helping to differentiate the Microsoft stack from their competition.
The reason the partnership works so well is that HCL-PowerObjects is able to deliver a consistent storyline and branding across the workloads and apps, helping to make the apps more appealing and closer to actual real-life business scenarios. The Microsoft team provides these pre-configured instances for various stakeholders to showcase their solutions. The demo environments are readily available to see the modules of Dynamics 365 in action on various scenarios.
