In this article: FastTrack Benefit vs. Value-Added Services | FastTrack Benefit | Value Added Services | How to determine what is in and out of scope of the FastTrack Benefit | Areas that are out of scope of the FastTrack Benefit
FastTrack Benefit vs. Value-Added Services
When eligible customers and endorsed FastTrack Community Partners (all FastTrack Ready Partners and FastTrack Community Partners who elect to deliver the Benefit) are paired the objective is to create the most beneficial combination for the customer and the partner. By clearly and accurately presenting the FastTrack Benefit and the value-added services (VAS) individual partner organizations can provide to the customer, trust is established, the customer's needs are addressed, and the partner can build a successful business relationship.
FastTrack Benefit
Microsoft 365 FastTrack is a service designed to help organizations seamlessly deploy Microsoft 365 solutions (in scope) to better allow users to work effectively and productively. FastTrack provides remote guidance to help organizations learn, prepare, and deploy Microsoft 365 services quickly and efficiently.
To effectively deploy Microsoft 365, Microsoft Viva, and security services, FastTrack utilizes step-by-step deployment guides. These guides simplify the deployment process and help organizations utilize Microsoft 365 services as quickly as possible.
For a full understanding of the Benefit, the remote guidance (Advanced Deployment Guides), and the partner’s role, review the FastTrack service description.
Value Added-Services
Value-added services are partner skills and resources that are outside the scope of the FastTrack Benefit that the customer can purchase directly from the partner. Partners are encouraged to market their individual VAS to their customers. If a customer requests services that go beyond the scope of the FastTrack Benefits, partners are responsible for advising them of the benefit boundaries.
Some examples are that the customer requires:
- Hands-on keyboard and/or onsite presence to assist with remediation or configuration tasks
- Domain or industry-specific expertise
- User adoption planning and change management
- User training
- Business process redesign
- Managed solutions (hosted applications, etc.)
- Business solutions integrated with Microsoft Cloud Services (CSP)
- Tools and scripts that accelerate onboarding tasks
- Workshops and solutions to assist customers in deriving business value
- Data migration services that are out of scope for FastTrack
Partners should make it clear to customers that VAS agreements are between the partner and the customer and are not covered by any Microsoft agreement.
Partners will enter an appropriate services contract with the customer for the provision of VAS.
Partners should make it clear to customers that VAS agreements are between the partner and the customer and are not covered by any Microsoft agreement. Partners will enter an appropriate services contract with the customer for the provision of VAS.
How to determine what is in and out of scope of the FastTrack Benefit
A way to understand what is in scope for the FastTrack Benefit versus what a value-added service (VAS) is would be to answer the following questions:
- Given an understanding of what customer success looks like, can all the required customer guidance be delivered remotely and through the use of Advanced Deployment Guides?
- Can the customer run the remediation tools, analyze the results, and remedy the situation with minimal remote assistance?
- Does the customer have the project management, technical, and training resources to perform all their onboarding tasks and responsibilities?
- Does the customer have the sponsorship and project management leadership capabilities to lead a successful onboarding effort?
If the answer to these questions is yes, the customer is a candidate for Benefit-only assistance.
If the customer is not confident that they will be successful with the resources they have, there’s an opportunity for the partner to provide additional assistance outside of the benefit. Customers often purchase a suite of products and services and when they arrive at the point where they are ready to adopt a workload they don’t have experience with they may require professional services.
Areas that are out of scope of the FastTrack Benefit
The areas that are out of scope for this engagement include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Modifications to the Office 365 Service beyond the configurable options
- Managing end-user and organizational communications, documentation, training, and change management processes
- Help-desk documentation and training
- Formal user training (such as workshops, classroom, and books) or development of custom training courses or materials, except as explicitly defined as in-scope
- Producing customer-specific reports, presentations, or meeting minutes
- Pre-work required at the customer site
- Architectural and technical documentation specific to the customer, except as explicitly defined as in-scope
- Design, procurement, installation, and configuration of hardware and networking
- Procurement, installation, and configuration of software, except as explicitly defined as in-scope
- Configuration, packaging, and distribution of client software required for the Office 365 service
- Management, configuration, and activation of mobile devices
- Applying security policies on mobile devices
- Implementing network configuration, analysis, bandwidth validation, testing, and monitoring
- Approval of technical change management process, and producing supporting documentation
- Rationalization and definition of group policies for the user, workstation, and server management
- Modification of a current operational model and operation guide
- Co-branding of Office 365 user interfaces
- Decommissioning and removal of on-premises environments (such as messaging and collaboration)
- Construction and maintenance of the customer test environment, except as explicitly defined as in-scope
- Installing service packs and any required updates on infrastructure servers