And that's a wrap on Noteworthy Live 2026!

On Monday 28th September, we welcomed Microsoft partners from across the UK to Microsoft's London office in Paddington for Noteworthy Live 2026, our annual partner event in collaboration with Microsoft UK.

We were joined by our fantastic partners, Microsoft colleagues and friends of Noteworthy for an afternoon of insights, conversation and practical advice partners can put into action straight away. Thank you to everyone who spent the afternoon with us! 💜

Welcome to Noteworthy Live

Hosted by our CEO Sian Herrington, alongside our PDM Celia Matthews from Microsoft, the afternoon kicked off with a warm welcome and a quick hello from the Noteworthy team: Sian, Lily Parkinson, Chris Johnston-Leigh, Jaime Lloyd, Dasha Jilkova and Molly Ridley. Here's a look back at each session.

Keynote: Liz Leigh-Bowler, Microsoft

Liz Leigh-Bowler, Partner Development Leader at Microsoft, opened with our keynote, Delivering Frontier Transformation in FY27.

Frontier Transformation means putting AI in the flow of human ambition, not bolting it on at the side. It rests on two foundations: Intelligence, which makes the work possible, and Trust, which makes it safe to run in production. Customers are moving from the efficiency era of cost savings and siloed AI pilots into the frontier era, where AI becomes a core operating capability that drives growth. Our job as partners is to help them make that shift.

Liz shared four angles moving deals right now:

• One governed platform, not bolt-ons
• Trust that's enforced, not assumed
• From experiments to execution
• Land and expand by persona, rolling out by role rather than all-or-nothing

With CSP as the hero motion, co-sell as the go-to-market engine and a huge SMB whitespace across 480 million Microsoft 365 seats, this is a genuine growth moment. Liz's ask of the room: build an ambitious FY27 plan around Copilot, agents, data and security, own a business process and be the best at it, and make speed of learning your competitive advantage. 💡

The state of partner marketing: Nathan Selby, Resultful

Next up, Nathan Selby, founder of Resultful, The Microsoft Partner Marketing Agency, officially launched their new report, Microsoft Partner Marketing, Measured, and the room were the first to get a printed copy!

The research asked 250 UK and Ireland Microsoft partners how they market, how it's funded and whether it can be proven. A few headlines:

• Standing out is the top priority: building brand awareness in a crowded market is partners' biggest marketing priority this year (27.2%)
• Funding rules are a barrier: their complexity was named the biggest limitation holding marketing back
• Microsoft funding props up a lot of marketing: 60.6% of partners would stop or reduce marketing if it was removed
• Proving value is hard: marketing drives 22% of pipeline on average, yet fewer than half of partners have basic reporting in place

Compared to the US, UK partners invest less in marketing (3.84% of revenue vs 4.8%) and get less from it (22% of pipeline vs 40%). Nathan's takeaway: for UK partners, positioning is the biggest risk.

Report: Microsoft Partner Marketing, Measured - UK&I edition 2026 | Resultful

Leaders aren't born, they're built: Yvonne Matzk, Coachere

Yvonne Matzk, executive coach, author and founder of Coachere, brought 25+ years of IT channel experience to The Human Skills That Make Great Leaders.

She opened with a show of hands: who has been promoted into leading a team without anyone teaching them how? Most hands stayed up, and the numbers back it up. 82% of UK managers start out with no formal leadership training, and 69% of employees say their manager affects their mental health more than their doctor does.

Drawing on her own journey at CDW, Yvonne explained that being brilliant at doing and brilliant at leading are different skills. As she put it: a promotion is a new job, not a reward. She walked us through the four Cs every leader needs:

• Confidence and Courage: back yourself and others, and have the hard conversations
• Communication: know how you come across, and flex to the person in front of you
• Coaching and Delegation: ask, don't tell, and let go of the right things
• Connection: the channel runs on relationships

AI can support these skills, but it can't replace them. Yvonne's call to action: ask one person who leads a team in your business, "What do you need from me to be the best leader you can be?" Then listen. 💡 Find out more at coachere.com.

Launching CSP Growth Ops with Onyx 🚀

One of the moments we were most excited about! Neil Lomax, Co-Founder of Onyx.ai, joined us to launch our brand new service, CSP Growth Ops, by Onyx and Noteworthy Support.

Microsoft has changed the question it asks partners: not "how much did you sell?" but "how much growth did you drive?" With CSP as the hero motion, more than $150bn in potential market is shifting towards CSP and services-led partners. MSPs already hold the customer relationship, so the right to win is theirs. What's often missing is the commercial machinery, and as Neil put it, the barrier isn't price, it's process.

CSP Growth Ops closes that gap, combining Onyx's commercial intelligence to find growth with Noteworthy's operational expertise to fund it. Customer tenant data becomes a value assessment your sellers can walk in with, showing where customers are overspending, what they aren't fully using, the funding available and where to grow next. It runs across three motions:

• Right-size and optimise: licensing optimisation, incentives, rebates and funding
• Adopt and realise value: Copilot, AI, security, Azure and Dynamics
• Expand and roadmap: upsell, cross-sell, competitive displacement and services attachment

Want to see it in action? Our Commercial Growth Sprint runs two of your real customers through CSP Growth Ops, using your own data.

Want to find out more? Head to cspgrowthops.com or get in touch, we're always happy to help.

Allyship in Action: Lee Welch, Microsoft

After the Growth Ops launch, Lee Welch, CAIP Sales Leader and Women at Microsoft (WAM) Allyship Lead, led a powerful session on allyship in action, built on a belief we share: diversity is a superpower in high-performing teams.

Lee explained that allyship is about active advocacy, not passive support. At Microsoft UK, it's defined as "an informed, consistent and empathetic practice to uphold the culture of inclusion." In practice, that comes down to three words: understand, empathise and act.

He also shared the story of the WAM Active Allyship Community, which has grown from around 40 members to more than 120 in nine months. From International Women's Day panels and mentoring to the first ever UK National Allyship Summit, the community is now extending allyship to customers and partners, and the partner community is invited to get involved. 💜

Straight from the PDMs

After a well-earned tea and coffee break, we closed the sessions with a panel of three Microsoft Partner Development Managers: Chris Williams, Charlie Harris and Simon Sharkey. With questions coming straight from the room, it was a rare chance for partners to hear first-hand from the people who work with partners every day, and to get honest, practical answers on how to get the most from their Microsoft relationship.

Pizza, drinks and good conversation 🍕

Of course, it wouldn't be Noteworthy Live without some time to socialise! We finished the day with pizza and drinks at HEIST Paddington, where the conversations carried on well into the evening.

Thank you 💜

A huge thank you to:

• Our brilliant speakers: Liz, Nathan, Yvonne, Neil, Lee, Chris, Charlie and Simon
• Celia Matthews and Microsoft UK for hosting us, and the 2KS events team for looking after everyone so well
• Every partner who joined us, asked questions and made the afternoon what it was
• And the amazing Noteworthy Team behind the scenes

If you came along, we'd love to hear what you thought. Please share your feedback here: Noteworthy Live: Attendee Feedback -- Fill in form

What's next?

We're already looking forward to next year! In the meantime, here's what's coming up across the community:

• Microsoft AI Tour, London: Microsoft's free one-day event on AI innovation, customer stories and hands-on sessions. Wednesday 21st October.
• Microsoft Ignite, 17th to 20th November: Microsoft's flagship conference in San Francisco, also streamed online. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn for our take on the biggest partner announcements.
• Ignite Recap Webinar, Thursday 26th November at 2pm: not attending Ignite this year, or short on time to catch up? Join Molly Ridley from Noteworthy alongside Ingram Micro as we break down the biggest announcements at Ignite, and what they mean for Microsoft partners. Register here 👉 Ignite Round Up Webinar

If you'd like to stay connected with the Noteworthy community, join our community call, or get in touch with the team, we're always happy to chat. 📎

See you at Noteworthy Live 2027!

#NoteworthyLive