July 11 is the deadline for Microsoft Partners to transition from CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) to NCE (New Commerce Experience).
Until last week, the advice was that all your existing CSP customer relationships were going to terminate, and you would need to renew on NCE as a manual process.
However, Microsoft have now stated that (in order to make the process smooth for customers) legacy CSP will auto renew onto legacy CSP, but it will not move to NCE – so you will lose rebates, but your customers won’t be affected.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to take action!
Here’s why.
- You still need to move to NCE. If you don’t, you will lose money as rebates will not be paid on legacy CSP in the future.
- Microsoft want all customers on NCE, and licence providers are calling every business offering to move them to NCE.
- Why should you do it? If you don’t move to NCE there’s a risk you’ll lose your customer.
- You also need to update your contracts to reflect the new NCE terms – for example, to protect your business from risk/loss if a customer terminates as well as being compliant to Microsoft.
Act now
We offer a free, no obligation contract review service, whereby we will check your contracts and tell you what needs to change – and we can even make the changes for you.
One less thing to worry about 😊
Do move your customers to NCE, either manually yourself, or work with your Tier 1 licence provider. They may have an automated solution via an API than can make the transition easier – then you lock in your customer and lock in your rebates.
October 2021 update
There has been a significant change to the cancellation policy since we last wrote about this topic in October 2021.
Cancellation can now take place within the first 7 days, which is a considerable extension to the original 72-hour period.
This presents a significant risk for Microsoft Partners. If you don’t have rapid processes or systems to be able to automatically process any customer cancellation, you could become liable for the full value of licences for the full term!
After the cancellation period, you will not be able to claim from the customer.
Microsoft has provided recommended steps and self-help articles for incentive-related questions on the Partner Center home page. Type “incentives” in the search bar. You can also create a support request directly in Partner Center.
We can update your contracts for you or provide a free review
Of course, Law 365 is here to help you navigate these changes and amend your contracts: Give us a call!
View answers to FAQs Microsoft Partners have been asking our experts on NCE and CSP:
Or submit your own question!
