The Record - Issue 21: Summer 2021

62 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om I NT E R V I EW One of the key reasons that partners come to us is to find ways to grow their business through P2P engagements. To further this motive, we seeded the concept of Partner Opportunity Groups (POG) – groups of specialised partners who focus on solutions for a specific industry or technology platform. As an example, a POG for manufactur- ing would include partners who have either great domain experience to offer services to customers in that industry or they would have ready-to-use solutions that help solve some key pain areas for that industry. As a start, we piloted our first set of POGs in the Americas and these have been hugely successful. We are now actively working towards expanding these globally and creating close-knit groups of partners that work together on opportunities providing highly specialised business and technology solutions to customers. Another area we feel where our members need help is to keep abreast with the lightning pace at which Microsoft is moving and introducing products, services and benefits for customers and the partner community. We started Quarterly Partner Briefing (QPB) events virtually last year while I was in my previous role, and it was widely appreciated by partners. The Microsoft leader- ship team extended their support with active participation to make it a huge success. I aspire to grow this event further and ensure that we bring a wealth of knowledge and an active plat- form for collaboration for our partners to enable partnership opportunities, education and close interactions with the Microsoft leadership. Two years ago, the International Board entrusted me with the task of introducing the philosophy of diversity and inclusion to the partner community, a subject extremely close to my heart. I had the privilege of setting the ball in motion, aligning with Microsoft and promot- ing this whole new concept amongst the IAMCP members. Nothing gives me more pride and satisfaction than the fact that today the global partner community is successfully sensitised to the importance of adopting this philosophy and many partners have made it a bedrock of their businesses. I believe diversity and inclusion are a journey and not a destination. We still have a lot more to do and I am fully committed to lend my support and active participation to further reinforce this philosophy amongst our partners and community at large. During the past 18 months, how has IMACP empowered its members and what benefits have members leveraged? Our organisation has had to adjust like most other businesses as we moved to a completely virtual operating model. We implemented Microsoft Teams globally and conducted the majority of our business and engagements via the platform. With this transition, our members have gained valuable user and implementation experience that has helped them build solutions for their clients. Two benefits of this model are the fact that we have much higher engagement throughout the organisation across all geographies and that we now collaborate in ways we never used to in in-person environments. This is foundational experience for helping clients in different seg- ments and industries respond to the pandemic while also creating a roadmap for coming out of it. Tell us a little more about IAMCP’s relationship with Microsoft. Where are your members powering the Microsoft technology stack and what advantages are end users gaining from the relationships you are nurturing? Our relationship with Microsoft has never been stronger. We are working closely together to ensure that partners have access to development roadmaps, skilling opportunities and can chan- nel the client voice directly to Microsoft. The open dialogue and interaction that we share with