“Before we started the program, we had an opportunity in the pipeline that the sales representative was struggling to close. I shared my Investible Partner™ learning and they went on to close the deal … for a great price, too!”
Established in 2000, Metanet is now Korea’s largest independent business services firm. With 1,200 employees across 8 companies, in 2019 Metanet reported revenue of USD $735M with plans to grow even further.To help reach this goal, Metanet Tplatform recently began their journey to becoming and Investible Partner™ through Microsoft APAC’s Offer Design as a Service offering, delivered exclusively through Partner Elevate’s Investible Partner™ program to selected Partner organisations. We sat down with Assistant Manager of the Public Cloud Strategy Team, Aedric Kim, to talk about his journey so far.
What were the things your business was challenged with before starting your Investible Partner™ journey?
Our focus during the program was Application Modernization. So, before joining the program, we didn’t have a clear view of what we were actually offering as Application Modernization solutions.
Don’t get me wrong, we had opportunities in the pipeline, projects in flight, and successful references for our Apps Modernization projects, but the solution was not well known enough for new clients to link our solution with the problem they needed to solve. We found that our messaging was too technical and wasn’t generating enough new business from our c-level target market.
Our proposals were full of technical jargon but didn’t explain the benefits of engaging with us.
We needed a way to create clear and concise explanations about the value and benefit of our solutions that would resonate with engineers, all the way along the chain to the end customer. Our ultimate aim was to make our offer more appealing through our marketing messages, so our ideal client would start coming to us to help them.
What was your initial reaction when you first came across Partner Elevate?
My initial reaction was that I was too busy. I didn’t have enough time to commit to completing the program. We had a large number of projects in flight, as well as a lot of customers needing urgent solutions, so I was concerned about increasing my workload again.
After speaking with our Partner Development Manager at Microsoft, I learned that the weekly time commitment was much less than I thought it wasn’t going to be.
What did you think in those first few weeks?
When we started, I was extremely busy, so I was running a bit behind on my progress. Because there is a schedule of coaching calls and momentum calls needed to move through the Building the Pathway, Market Readiness and Customer Win units, I did fall a little behind.
But, Des reached out to me directly to check in, and we sat down and went through the requirements in more detail. After that I managed to focus on the work and completed the program in just two days.
Tell us about your journey so far – were there any surprises?
Before this, we never thought of making a solution offering that targeted a specific industry.
We believed that Cloud could be adopted in any industry, so we never focused our solutions offer with an industry-specific message. What we realised was that while the solution we offer is exactly the same, customers across industry like construction, financial services or education have different wants, needs and frustrations.
This meant we needed to unpack our customers across those industries and make sure we were creating messages that really spoke to the things they need, specific to their situation and industry requirements.
What are some of the processes in the business where you’ve seen improvement?
The biggest achievement I’ve seen in the business is our ability to communicate the value we deliver to our customers without sounding technical. We have created outcome-focused messages that show the customer we understand them, and can help solve their problems.
We will definitely be adopting the Partner Elevate framework to unpack our customer, communicate our value and generate market messages for other solutions and industries within the business.
Lastly, what outcomes or results have you seen after working through the program, so far?
Before we started the program we had an opportunity in the sales cycle, and the sales representative was struggling to sell the solution to the customer. At the time, I talked to Desmond about how we should communicate the value of our solution specific to the construction industry.
I shared the learning with our sales representative who went on the close the deal … for a great price, too!