As a Microsoft partner, managing your relationship with Microsoft through the Partner Center is crucial for accessing resources, incentives, and customer insights. If your organisation has multiple Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) IDs, merging them could bring significant advantages that streamline your operations and enhance your visibility within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Noteworthy Support have completed MPN merges for many partners, and they most commonly occur as a result of M&A (or mergers and acquisitions). M&A is common in the Microsoft partner channel, but Microsoft will not see the power of your consolidated entities unless your MPN architecture is correctly configured.
In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of merging your MPNs and provide a step-by-step guide to help you through the process.
Why Merge Your MPNs?
Over time, organizations often accumulate multiple MPNs due to mergers, acquisitions, or regional expansions. While having separate MPNs might seem beneficial for managing distinct business units, it can create fragmentation that prevents your organization from maximizing its partnership with Microsoft.
Here are the top benefits of merging your MPNs in the Partner Center:
1. Greater Visibility of Your Customer Work at Microsoft
One of the most significant advantages of merging MPNs is improved visibility into your customer engagements at Microsoft. When your customer success stories, deal registrations, and customer associations are scattered across multiple MPNs, it becomes harder for Microsoft to get a full picture of the value you deliver.
By consolidating your MPNs into a single ID, you provide Microsoft with a more accurate and holistic view of your work. This can help Microsoft recognize your contributions and include you in more programs, opportunities, and go-to-market activities, ultimately boosting your profile within the Microsoft ecosystem.
2. Consolidated Benefits and Resources
Each MPN comes with its own set of benefits, such as access to Microsoft tools, training, support, and incentives. When you operate with multiple MPNs, these benefits are distributed across different IDs, which can limit your ability to fully capitalize on them.
Merging your MPNs allows you to consolidate all your benefits into a single account. This can make it easier for your organization to track and leverage all the resources available to you, ensuring that nothing goes unused. It also simplifies license management, making it easier to allocate resources across your entire team.
3. Streamlined Administration and Reporting
Managing multiple MPNs can be cumbersome from an administrative standpoint. Each MPN requires its own reporting, contract management, and partner profile updates. By merging your MPNs, you’ll significantly reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, freeing up your team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
Consolidating your MPNs can also make it easier to track performance metrics, incentive earnings, and partner tier achievements across your organization, helping you make more informed business decisions.
How to Merge Your MPNs in Partner Center
Merging your MPNs is completed mostly via the Microsoft Partner Center, however there are a set of best practice rules that can help ensure that data is not lost or misaligned during the merge. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started:
Step 1: Assess Your MPNs
Identify the MPNs that you wish to merge and begin to build out an architectural diagram of how you'd like them to look post-merge. Ensure that they belong to the same legal entity and that you have the proper permissions to manage both accounts. Identify the Global Admin in each MPN.
Step 2: Prepare Your Information
You may be required to provide information such as your MPN IDs, legal entity details, and proof of ownership for the accounts. Having this information ready can expedite the process.
Step 3: Trigger the Merge
Once your request to merge entities has been processed, Microsoft will initiate the process. You’ll receive confirmation when the process is complete, and all your benefits, incentives, and customer associations will be consolidated under the new unified MPN.
Step 4: Assess the New Entity for Gaps
Once the MPN merge has happened in Partner Center you will need a plan to clearly reconcile whether all of your customers and subsequent data has carried across. This can be a timely exercise, but is crucially important for ensuring that your benefits and accreditations reflect all of your combined customer work.
Conclusion: Unlock the Full Potential of Your Microsoft Partnership
Merging your MPNs isn’t just about simplifying your operations—it’s about unlocking the full potential of your partnership with Microsoft. By consolidating your accounts, you’ll gain greater visibility of your customer successes, maximize your access to Microsoft resources, and streamline your administrative processes. This enhanced alignment with Microsoft can lead to new opportunities and a stronger position within the partner ecosystem.
If you haven’t yet considered merging your MPNs, now is the time to explore how this strategic move could elevate your business and strengthen your partnership with Microsoft.
Why do Microsoft partners use Noteworthy to manage their MPN merges?
Quite simply, because we're a safe pair of hands. Noteworthy have managed MPN mergers for companies around the world, assisting partners that range from ISVs to multi-million dollar MSPs. Noteworthy are responsible for clearly mapping the merge plan along with the subsequent data that must be migrated. Noteworthy assist with the MPN architecture and also work with the Microsoft support team to facilitate the merge. Noteworthy are able to offer the MPN merge management at a fixed price and provide a write-up for the leadership team once the project is coming to a successful close. Contact us today for more information: helpdesk@noteworthy.support