Tech Data and Mandarine bring a fresh taste to Microsoft partner training

By Simon Meredith | 25th March 2019

Ecosystem of complementary solutions for Microsoft cloud enables partners to drive growth in managed services, subscriptions and consumption

Basingstoke, 25 March 2019 Tech Data (NASDAQ: TECD) is working with Mandarine Academy, the specialist provider of MOOC (mass online open courses) training, to help resellers drive Office 365 adoption.

As part of Tech Data’s growing ecosystem of complementary solutions and services for Microsoft cloud offerings, Mandarine enables partners to increase customer productivity, return-on-investment and satisfaction, as well as reducing support calls and costs. It also aligns with the Microsoft billing model and thus enables resellers to drive subscriptions services revenues.

The Tech Data cloud solutions ecosystem includes offerings for backup and disaster recovery, cloud migration, voice and compliance, all of which enable partners to build-out their managed services offering around Microsoft 365 and the Azure public cloud platform. Resellers can access, provision and manage the entire ecosystem through Tech Data’s StreamOne aggregation platform, to grow their sales and drive additional consumption via Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) programme.

Tech Data has been making significant investments to grow Microsoft cloud business. It has more than doubled its dedicated team, adding further support and resources for resellers on the Tech Data Velocity programme, which provides a complete enablement path for resellers looking to achieve Silver or Gold Microsoft cloud competency.

Nick Stancliffe, Business Development Manager, Modern Workplace Solutions at Tech Data UK, said: “Mandarine provides Microsoft cloud partners with a great way to address customers’ skills gaps, drive consumption and reduce support call traffic on simple tasks. It’s ideal for businesses with remote workers, new starters or those adopting new technology, such as Teams or Windows 10.”

It’s a particularly useful solution for resellers that focus on meeting the needs of smaller businesses, he noted. “It’s often more of a challenge for SMBs to get all the benefits that are available within Office 365. Mandarine provides an easy way to unlock the power of features such as Power BI analytics, Teams and Flow. That drives additional value and ROI for the customer and also gives resellers more confidence in selling Office 365 to SMBs. It also builds momentum for partner sales teams and gives them positive, referenceable feedback that can be used to further accelerate cloud solutions sales.”

Mandarine provides end-user organisations access to consistent, structured, self-learning programmes and pathways, including live training courses and interactive communities. Reporting tools enable results to be measured, giving management clear visibility of ROI. Bespoke learning paths based on individual job profiles can be created and gamification encourages users to engage with training by making it competitive and fun. Resellers can also set up their own-branded MOOC site using the Mandarine content.

Picture: Nick Stancliffe, Tech Data.

Tech Data Nick Stancliffe

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