MBS Lines Up with Industries

Partner marketing efforts for the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) division will be reorganized around 14 specific industries, and MBS will expand its vertical and ISV marketing teams. The changes (announced Mar. 2005) mean that MBS partners, especially software vendors, will get more industry-specific training and marketing resources. This could help improve overall sales effectiveness, based on experience in regions where the new arrangement has already been tried. However, current MBS partner account managers will remain in place.

Under the new plan, Microsoft hopes to classify 50% of current MBS partners into one of 14 specific industries. (See the illustration”MBS Target Industries“.) Market data, solution guidance, customer referrals, systems integration tools, marketing collateral, and many other resources will be created to target each industry, supplementing the product-specific resources partners have today.

Microsoft will also create new vertical marketing teams under the heads of its Small and Midmarket Sales and Partner Group (SMS&P) for the United States and the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions, analogous to the enterprise vertical sales teams that already exist in those regions, and will add developer evangelists to find ISVs to extend MBS products for particular verticals.