Customer Association Using DPOR/CPOR/PAL

Recently, I spent a lot of my time reading Microsoft docs and talking to Microsoft Partners about the best way to get recognized for the work they do with customers and how they can best earn incentives for that work. I’m absolutely terrible at remembering all the details so this blog post is as much a reference for me as it is for you!

First, I will explain the old way of doing the association and then I will explain how it should be done according to the new ways. 

DPOR - Digital Partner of Record (The old way)

Digital Partner of Record associates servicing partners to a Microsoft cloud subscription. It is an online capability to attach a partner to a customer’s Microsoft online subscription. DPOR benefits the customer, the partner, and Microsoft. Partners can qualify for competencies and incentives by being the DPOR and enable them to help customers optimize their usage for desired business outcomes. 

DPOR can be configured for the following below services 

  • Microsoft Office 365 
  • CRM Online
  • Dynamics 365
  • AX7
  • Microsoft Intune,
  • EMS,
  • Power BI 
  • Azure subscription

DPOR Frequently Asked Questions can help you to understand and will provide answers to many of your questions.  

To improve the incentives experience, Microsoft has introduced new ways of doing the association which are mentioned below

  • PAL - Partner Admin Link applies to Azure 
  • CPOR - Claiming Partner of Record applies to OSU-Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 under OSU-Business Applications and OSA Sell. 

Note: Partners who want to receive incentives for PowerBI will still need to become associated via DPOR. Here are step by step instructions for attaching a DPOR for Power BI

Before diving deep into PAL and CPOR, it is important to understand why Microsoft has changed Digital Partner of Record (DPOR):

  • DPOR is limited to just one partner per subscription. This had two problems as customers were regularly working with multiple partners at the same time and the partner was dependent on the customer to define which partner could be associated with them.
  • The challenges of becoming DPOR meant many partners were never recognized for their contribution to a customer’s adoption of Microsoft services.
  • DPOR had limited reporting which did not provide actionable insights for customers or partners, thus limiting its usefulness.
  • For Microsoft, it was difficult to understand which partners were making a genuine contribution to customer success.
PAL and CPOR aim to overcome these issues and allows Microsoft to measure partner impact more accurately and with more precise granularity.

PAL - Partner Admin Link (Azure)

Simply put, the PAL is there to make it easy for partners to measure their influence over the Azure consumption they drive with their customers. Using Partner Admin Link (PAL), partners can associate their partner network ID with the credentials used for service delivery. PAL enables Microsoft to identify and recognize partners who drive Azure customer success. Microsoft can attribute influence and Azure consumed revenue to your organization based on the account's permissions (Azure role) and scope (subscription, resource group, resource).

PAL Frequently Asked Question can help you to understand the working and how it can be configured in Azure. 

By using PAL, multiple partners can be added and they will get incentives on the scope of the user's permissions. Some Incentive scenarios are mentioned below.



CPOR - Claiming Partner of Record

Microsoft has replaced Digital Partner of Record (DPOR) with a new customer association model; Claiming Partner of Record(CPOR). The new experience has been enabled and is fully operational. CPOR applies to OSU-Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 under OSU-Business Applications, and OSA Sell. 

It associates the partner or partners who are providing the deployment and/or adoption services to the customer. Multiple partners are now empowered to create associations for their customers. The customer association is created at a workload level and no longer at the subscription level as for DPOR meaning that each partner can be associated with specific tasks or platforms. You will do this by submitting a customer association through the Partner Center Dashboard and it involves five steps which are mentioned below.

CPOR Claim Guide provides step-by-step instructions for submitting the customer association. 

Conclusion

If you don’t start using PAL and CPOR, you’re leaving money on the table and making it much harder to demonstrate how amazing you are as a partner. Tracking your overall influence is important because it highlights where you’re being successful, helps you tell great stories about the transformative work you’re doing, and helps you to raise your profile to Microsoft’s CSP direct providers and partner and sales teams.

If you have any questions in relation to PAL/CPOR, feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to help you to understand and feel confident in these changes.

Useful Links

DPOR Documentation

https://support.microsoft.com/en-za/help/3045939/digital-partner-of-record-dpor 

PAL Documentation

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/link-partner-id

Azure Incentives FAQ

https://support.microsoft.com/en-za/help/4469154/azure-incentives-faq 

Microsoft Partner Incentives

https://aka.ms/partnerincentives - Requires access to Partner portal


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