How Partners Get Value Without Shrinking Their Margins (The Wedge Audit)
If you've been managing Microsoft 365 for a while, I'm sure you've seen it. In the early days of Microsoft 365, everyone was migrating to Microsoft 365. That was easy business to pick up. You could easily offer migration and management services to a new Microsoft 365 customer. Those days are over.
Now, many partners are struggling to find customers. Everyone is already in Microsoft 365. Unless the customer has had a bad experience with their current provider, why would they switch? Introducing The Wedge Audit.
The Wedge Audit is a unique proposition from Gitbit. In short, you run Gitbit's license optimization report on your prospective customers' environment. You find accounts that are licensed but are no longer in use, or accounts that have been overlicensed, and you provide the report to your prospective customer. By showing them how they've been wasting money month after month, you can provide your value to the prospective customer, without cutting into your own margins.
The uncomfortable truth about Microsoft 365 licensing
Microsoft 365 licensing is a mess. Not because customers are dumb, but because the cloud is unforgiving.
How many employees leave a month? How many employees leave in a year? Imagine a great IT department. One that has checks and balances. How many accounts will be missed a month? How many will be missed a year? Let's take an example of a great IT department. Let's say this IT department missed removing licenses from 3% of accounts.
The average annual employee turnover rate in the U.S. is generally considered to be around 17% to 20%. Let's assume 18%. Let's make the numbers easy and say the company has 100 employees.
Let's take a quick example and say 3 out of those accounts are still licensed after leaving. That's 3% of the Microsoft 365 spend that is not being used. But the number doesn't get automatically fixed after 1 year. That number compounds. After 2 years, you have 6 accounts. 3 years, 9 accounts. Now they have approximately 9% of their spending on accounts they no longer use.
Why the Wedge Audit works when everything else doesn’t
After running Gitbit's reporting across hundreds of environments, we found that most organizations aren't very good at managing licenses. Most companies have 20% or more of their spending unused.
20%. You can offer to reduce a prospective customer's spend by 20% without cutting into your own margins. That's huge. And it's super simple.
- Explain the report to your prospective customer and ask them to run the report.
- Run the report.
- Review the results.
- Share the results with your prospective customer.
It really is that simple.
