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In this article: Expectation of FastTrack Ready Partners | Program Governance​ | What Success Looks Like​ | Landing the Program in Your Organization​ | Resources

Benefit Delivery Guide

Expectations of FastTrack Ready Partners​

As part of the FastTrack Benefit, partners who opt-in as FastTrack Ready Partners (FRPs) are accountable for assisting customers in onboarding and adopting qualified workloads.


During onboarding and adoption services delivery, partners will:

  • Submit a claim via CPOR for one or more services.
  • Assist eligible customers to adopt and increase active usage of all claimed or referred workloads.
  • Deliver the FastTrack Benefit Services for claimed or referred workloads:
    • Fulfill the FastTrack responsibilities.
    • Fulfill the FastTrack Guidance Details, as per the Advance Deployment Guidance.
    • Ensure the eligible customer receives the FastTrack Benefit. If the FRP does not support or is not endorsed for the workload the eligible customer requests, they may provide the FastTrack Benefit, agree to engage another FastTrack Ready Partner directly, or advise the client to submit a FastTrack Request for Assistance (RFA) to ensure the customer can receive the FastTrack enablement as part of any engagement.
  • Maintain a single point of contact for program administration.
  • Preserve the FastTrack brand reputation and goodwill in the market.

For more information, see Getting Started in the FastTrack Ready Partner Program and other resources in the Program Operations Guidance.

Project Governance

The governance structure and processes the team adheres to for the project are described in the following sections:

  1. Project Communication
    Use the following to communicate during the project:
    • Communication plan: This document describes the frequency, audience, and content of communication with the team and stakeholders. The partner and the customer develop this project plan together.
    • Status reports: The partner team prepares and issues regular status reports to inform stakeholders per the frequency as defined in the communication plan.
    • Status meetings: The partner team schedules regular status meetings to review the overall project status, the acceptance of deliverables, and review open problems and risks.
  2. Risk and Issue Management
    Use the following procedure to manage active project issues and risks during the project:
    • Identify: Identify and document project issues (current problems) and risks (potential problems) that could affect the project.
    • Analyze and prioritize: Assess the potential impact and determine the highest priority risks and problems that will need to be actively managed.
    • Plan and schedule: Determine the strategy for managing priority risks and issues and identify a resource that can take responsibility for mitigation and remediation.
    • Track and report: Monitor and report the status of risks and problems.
    • Escalate: Escalate the high-impact problems and risks (the team is unable to resolve) to project sponsors.
    • Control: Review the effectiveness of risk and issue management actions.
    • Active issues and risks should be regularly monitored during the project.
  3. Change Management Process
    During the project, either the customer or partner can request modifications to the Services described in the SOW. These changes only take effect when the proposed change is agreed upon by both parties.
    The change management process steps are:
    • Document the change: The partner documents all change requests in a Partner Change Request Form and submits them to the customer. The Partner Change Request Form includes a description of the change and the estimated effect of implementing the change.
    • Submit the Change Request.
    • The customer receives the change request.
    • The Customer accepts or rejects the change.
      • The customer has three business days to:
        • Accept: The customer must sign and return the Change Request Form to the partner.
        • Reject: If the customer does not want to proceed with the change or does not provide approval within three business days, no changes will be performed.
  4. Escalation Path
    The partner project manager works closely with the customer project manager, project sponsor, and other designees to manage project issues, risks, and change requests as described previously. The customer provides reasonable access to the sponsor or sponsors to expedite resolution. The standard escalation path for review, approval, or dispute resolution is as follows:
    • Project team member (Partner or the Customer)
    • Project manager (Partner and the Customer)
    • Partner delivery manager
    • Partner and the Customer project sponsor
  5. Project Completion
    Partner provides services defined in this SOW to the extent of the fees available and the term specified in the contract. If additional services are required, the partner uses the change management process and modifies the contract. The project is considered complete when at least one of the following conditions has been met:
    • All fees available are used for services delivered and expenses incurred.
    • The term of the project expires.
    • All partner activities and in-scope items are completed.
    • The contract is terminated.

What Success Looks Like​

Ultimately our Partners want to provide a great customer experience. A great customer experience can result in:

  • Creating business value for the customer.
  • Creating customer interest in onboarding additional products and services.
  • Providing the customer’s attached partner an opportunity to stay engaged with their client to continue to provide additional services and business value.
  • Renewal and/or expansion of customer’s subscription(s).

Partner’s cloud service offerings will continue to be expanded and enhanced and there will be many opportunities for partners to reengage with their clients to provide additional value-add services. The intent is not to create a one-and-done relationship but to build an ongoing relationship between the customer and partner that allows the partner to continually reengage when additional services opportunities arise. The intent of the FRP Program is to get our mutual customers deployed to the cloud, realize the business benefit from their purchase and build on their existing cloud-based infrastructure.

Landing the Program in Your Organization

The FRP Program is a worldwide program and is offered to MPN partners who meet the program qualifications. A significant benefit in becoming an FRP partner is that the Partner FastTrack Team will assign you a dedicated single point of contact to interface with. The Partner Success Manager (PSM) can provide your organization with a single point of contact (POC) into the FastTrack Team who can assist with obtaining product subject matter experts (as needed) and answer all your questions related to the FastTrack Method and the FRP Program, while also acting as a POC for customer deployment/onboarding escalations.
A challenge for large global partner organizations is that they have many offices and all offices do not necessarily deliver or participate in the same Partner programs. The PSM will work closely with your organization to develop an FRP program rollout plan to include all the appropriate office locations in your organization. Lead referrals are also a benefit of being an FRP partner, however, they will only be shared with qualified participants in the program.

Resources

For a full description of FastTrack Benefits and Services available to partners under the FastTrack Ready Program, refer to the following resources:

Keywords: expectations, program governance, deliver, benefit

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