How Partners Are Building Alliances to Win Bigger Microsoft Deals

Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles in Partnership Podcast, where Microsoft partners come together to share stories, strategies and successes. I'm your co host, Anthony Carrano, and today we're diving into how IAMCP members work side by side to grow their businesses and make a bigger impact, both locally and globally. IAMCP is more than just a network. It's a thriving community where partners help each other thrive in today's rapidly changing tech landscape.

Whether you're a longtime member or joining us for the first time, you'll discover insights for building powerful, lasting business relationships. Today, our guest is Devesh Aggarwal, CEO at Compusoft Advisors, an APAC winner and global finalist for P2P Solution Provider Awards and an APAC winner for the P2P Advisor Awards. But before we jump in, ask yourself, what would happen to your business if instead of competing with your peers, you built alliances that turned rivals into collaborators?

And how do you build trust with your business partners? And how long does that really take? And finally, what could greater transparency and clearer communication do for your collaborations? These are some of the questions and more that we're going to discuss in this upcoming episode.

Get ready to hear inspiring stories and proven tips from partners who've turned teamwork into growth. Let's get started. Well, Devesh, really glad to have you on the show. Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for hosting me. I'm very happy to be here. Excellent. Excellent.

Well, let's, as we kinda get started here, tell us a little bit about yourself and and the company. So, basically, I'm Devesh Aggarwal. I started this company way back in 1997. So it's more than twenty five years I've been in this company.

And one thing that we started with was always application, enterprise application. We started with small financial accounting packages, and then we migrated to Microsoft Dynamics. And so we've I've been doing Microsoft Dynamics since 2006, so it's twenty years we completed this year where we've been working with Microsoft on Dynamics. Wow.

So you've seen a lot of change. You bet. You bet. And every year, surprises us more.

Always, always. That's the one constant, right? Excellent, excellent. Well, thanks for being on.

Devesh, can you tell us, you know, the story that we're about to embark on? Can you tell us a little bit about the client, you know, what what industry they were in, the size, the tech that you implemented, and the challenges that they were facing as you were getting started? Basically, the the story that we're talking about for which we won the award was there were two there were two separate stories. So I will talk about both separately.

One was a big IT services. It's a global IT services something. Okay. So before I get into the story, I'll set the context for that.

So like I said, we have we we are strong in Microsoft Dynamics, but we don't do all the workloads of Microsoft Dynamics. So we do the Dynamic CRM part of it and then the dynamic business central or the or as well now vision. These are the two that we focus on at Compusoft. So when we were talking to this company, which is an IT services company, we understood that they are deploying Dynamics Financial Operations or FNO as people call it, worldwide across all the geographies.

And they were looking for a partner to deploy it in India because India has its own logistic, the taxation, the compliance challenges, and they wanted a local partner to do that. So they approached us. They said, can we do that? And as I was very transparent from day one, I said, see, I don't have the skill sets, but I can can partner with somebody and do that.

And that's when this whole, engagement started. And, so we identified one partner, who has the similar ideology as what we do. They've also been in the industry for fifteen plus years, and they've specialized in FNO, and they have done similar multi country deployments. So that was the reason why we partnered with them because we had to check the credentials.

We checked what they have done in the past. The ideologies matched. So that's how we came together, and we bid for this project, and we got the project. And we have completely deployed it.

They've gone live in India. And in fact, they've liked it so much, the the combination. They are using our team now to deploy in Australia and some other countries where they have not yet gone live. We all know that award winning collaborations, working with partners, don't just happen by accident.

What what practices, frameworks, or agreements did you put in place to make this partnership work? So there are see, one thing which I have learned over the last twenty years in working with partners is the partnerships that last are not transaction based, and they have to be long term. They have to be strategic. And they need to coexist not just for one transaction and across multiple transactions, and which is where we define a role between the partnership that we have formed with IAMCP is that the job of we we our team gets involved in the project management piece of it.

Since we also have the domain expertise, we also have it was just that we did not have the product expertise because we are not an F&O guy. We didn't have an F&O team. So we got involved more from a project PMO perspective. We were doing the client interfacing and they were bringing the knowledge, the domain, as well as the product expertise.

So that's the kind of governance that we set amongst ourselves. And like I said, transparency was very key. The customer knew he is talking to two partners, though technically they are two different legal entities, but they we come to them as single voice. Anthony, I know you have some questions.

Alright. Absolutely. Well, what you know, I'd like you to you said something really interesting. You said about, like, with the partnerships that they're not transaction, but they're really, like, with strategy based.

Could you could you elaborate on that a little bit more? Sure. Sure. So in fact, the other so before I get into the the elaborate of that, can I complete the other other story also?

Yeah. Absolute yeah. That'd be great. Oh, yeah?

Okay. So, like, this was an IT services company that I spoke about and we partnered with Acxiom. There was another customer where, we identified that that's a manufacturing company getting into global, modern trade, setting up an ecommerce practice. And they want they are India based manufacturing, and they wanted to go international.

So why and they also wanted F&0. So we identified F&O as the right product for them in in during a pre sales cycle. Then we identified another partner who had done something similar, and who had done and who had that expertise. And we got them along for that project, and we delivered that project as well.

Now when now coming to the point of strategy. So how do we ensure that we this strata these partnerships, remain long term? So between Acxiom, Compusoft, and ABS, these are the partners we are talking, we actually formed an alliance. So if you see, there's a website by the name of acaglobal.

in. So ACA is Acxiom, is Compusoft, and the last is ABS. So between the three of us, we do the entire Dynamics workload, whether it is project ops or Econo or com or CRM or Business Central. Between the three of us now, we have a a team strength of more than 500 people.

And between the three of us now today, we we boast of almost the biggest dynamics partner in India. Wow. Wow. That's fantastic.

Well, what so I know because, know, you started your company in, yeah, I think you said in '97. Yep. What and obviously that, you know, now, you know, fast forward here to, you know, 2026, and you've got, you know, you formed this alliance, you know, the largest dynamics provider, like you said, you know, with this alliance, you know, in India, what's a pivotal moment, right, in your journey that shaped how you approach partnerships? Second question would be is how would you think things look if that moment hadn't happened?

Okay. So the pivotal moment in each see, okay. All the three of us are more than fifteen years or twenty years in business. Let's put let me put it So all of us have seen the market, won a lot of deal, lost a lot of deals.

But the pivotal moment started coming when the large SIs, like the big fours, started coming to the market and eating our business, which we thought we were always good at. And they they came in with the consulting arm. We were always the implementation partners. We didn't have the so called consulting arm, what the big fours have.

And they came in with the strength. We're saying talking about finite numbers, 4,000 numbers, or whatever it is. So that became a pivotal moment in our in our journey that we realized that we need to collaborate. Collaborate.

We cannot take on those big brothers alone. And if we need to sustain in this market, we need to coexist. How, in that, I know we'll kind of get into a little bit more about, you know, balancing strengths and weaknesses, but just, I'm gonna kinda take a little track, you know, on that. It's like how do you, I'm trying to think the question is like, thinking about like just managing it like with, I mean there's obviously the logistics for project management, that's you know, some things that are pretty set there, but just like the cultural, like company culture, and aligning around that, Also, like, to tag on to that is where, you know, you had this alliance, but you're all also trying to, you know, grow, get your own business mission, and goals, and things that you're trying to achieve individually.

How do you balance all that? So it all happens at the trust level. See, at the end of it, the three owners that we are talking about, the three partner owners that we we working together, it is the trust and the maturity that we have at our level. We know that where we stand, what is my strength versus what is an Acxiom strength or what is an ABS strength.

And so does an Acxiom owner, so does an ABS owner. So for me, the partnership happens only when there's trust, when there's faith in each other. So I feel a partnership, at this level is no different than a marriage where somebody has to compromise somewhere. Mhmm.

Mhmm. Okay. It's so we all know that we've all lived through that. And many so luckily for us, between the three of us, so if you know India, I'm based out of Mumbai, which is in the West Corner of India.

The Axiom is based in Delhi, which is the North Of India. And ABS is based in Bangalore, which is the South Of India. Okay. So geography also, we cover the entire India.

So that was one big advantage that we had with each other. CRM as a platform, nobody does other than our company. BC, all of us do. And F&O between Axiom and ABS, they have specialized in their industries.

So by default, it was like we know if a project comes, who can do what. It was all well it was not planned, but it all fell into place. How long did it take to build up to that level of trust to create the alliance? So if you ask me, we started talking about something sim small at first, I think, my level or ABS my level or ABS exam level.

Sometime in 2015, 2016. We did one or two transactions. We got the comfort. The teams got the comfort.

And then post I think this was just before COVID or post COVID. I mean, forgetting post COVID, we formed this alliance. Okay. I don't think partnerships can be made in one day or one transaction.

That's something which I believe in. So it sounds like you guys have been working together on some projects for, you know, a good at least five years or so, and then you you formed the alliance. Yeah. So those were more transactional.

They were not formalized. We were not going to the customers saying that we are in alliance. It was like, okay. I you want this done.

I can get it done from someone, but then it was not a formal alliance. Now today, we can go to market. We go and announce that, okay, we are in alliance. Nice.

That's that's a great that's fantastic. Well, me ask you this then. Is there within just as a I tell you what, you can answer this one or two ways either when working within the alliance or, you know, working with partners maybe outside of outside of the three. Can you share a time when maybe just things didn't go as planned?

And what did you learn about resilience or leadership from that experience? Yeah. Yeah. I have enough stories where the things didn't fall in place.

And luckily, none within the three of us, but more about the other partners outside the line. So those I learned in the hard way where they were more transactional based. So they approached us. They told us that, okay.

There's a project that we want to do in CRM. We are more than happy to help. But then many times, the scopes were not defined. And since they were not in our geography, we are not meeting the customer on day one, understanding the scope.

So the biggest challenge that happens in when the partnership fail is if that both the partners are not involved in from presale stage. So learning from that mistake, I now today, I can boast of having partnerships in Singapore, in Australia, in Middle East, across APAC, basically, and Middle East, where I have spoke the way I work with the partners with whom I work is I don't give them a rate today. I say, I want transparency. If you don't want to work with transparency, don't want a partner.

It's that's the that's my approach of partnership. And we say that what whatever price you feel like you want to get an order at, I know my delivery skills. I know what I am capable of, but involve me at presale. I will set that expectation right whether it can be delivered.

Yes or no. If it cannot be delivered, we will say no at that stage. Mhmm. It should not happen that somebody overcommits and then get the order that we need this to be delivered.

That could get you in all kinds of trouble. You bet. You bet. Well, what, I know I know, Rudy's gonna have a just kind of a a few questions here.

I know especially, you know, covering things around AI and and just kinda things juggling, you know, with with the companies, but before, yeah, so I wanna just within the I wanna go back to, like, a question about, like, within, you know, the alliance, and obviously, you've got, you know, a lot of trust and maturity. For those, so obviously that's the foundation, but for those that would, you know, really, that are listening to this and like that idea, the concept of the alliance, what would be maybe the top, in addition to having trust, maturity, and transparency, alright, so I'm gonna press you for some other things here.

Some other keys they say, listen, if you're creating an alliance, make sure you do these two or three things that like, so in addition to having, you know, the trust and maturity and and and transparency? The biggest thing you need is at a leadership level, you need your thoughts need to align with each other. You one cannot be over aggressive, and one cannot be over conservative. They need to match.

Then the wavelengths need to match. If at a leadership level, you if all are talking the same language, we understand each other, that everything will work out. Even though if like, today, I can tell you that even though it is not my customer or it is not an Exiom customer, an ABS customer, but they're having problem with the project. They don't have a hesitation in calling each other and saying, okay.

Can you help me out with the project? My team is not able to solve it. So that's the kind of comfort we get work with. Nice.

That's that's really good. Thank you. Okay. Devesh, you know, you've been a Microsoft partner for a long time.

And, you know, as a Microsoft partner, we're constantly having to reinvent ourselves. Right? And so now AI is front and center for all of us partners. With AI automation reshaping the partner landscape, and we know it's a pretty dramatic shift for everyone, What's the one area where you can see partners both leveraging and underestimating the opportunity and or the risk?

Okay, I'll answer that question in two parts. One is from an alliance perspective, how we are approaching AI, And then I'll say more from a partnership for every other partner in general. So from an alliance perspective, like like I said, we are doing CRM. We have we are the ones who have started working with Copilot and the Microsoft OpenAI and Azure AI since almost two one and a half year now.

And we've already got some five, six custom agents in the marketplace. We already have a lot of agents in production environment. So today, within the alliance, if anybody has a requirement in AI, they we they know that they can count on us. So that's that's how we have positioned ourselves.

So that that's one. Now how does that current partner position AI and how do they adopt AI as a practice? That's something that I would want to highlight. And that's something where I personally feel Microsoft is also going on.

That's my opinion because AI is not a transactional product. It's a solution. We need to understand how in Dynamics my sales cycles can be anything between three months to six months. Sometimes it goes up to one year.

Even for an AI, I have a longer sales cycle. I need to make the customer understand how an AI can be put to use. My pre sale cycle can be minimum one, one and a half months. I may need to do multiple workshops with them to identify the right use case.

And what I am seeing in the market, at least in India and even the ANZ market because I also have an office in Sydney, so we operate out of ANZ as well. So the Dynamics partners or the partners focusing on enterprise applications, they are the ones who are being more successful in AI compared to the non Dynamics or the non applications based partners. The reason being, we understand the processes. Our team understands the processes.

Our team understands the domain of the customer. And then we can say, okay, where we can adopt AI to streamline the process, to automate the process, and where AI would be a better fit, which is where I keep on telling partners, I keep on telling Microsoft guys that please use AI as a solution sale approach and not as a transitional approach. Don't try to just give AI credits and people don't consume them. It's of no use.

So adoption of AI is more important than selling of AI. Does that answer your question, Rudy? Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

There's just an awful lot of opportunities there for any partner if you take that approach. A lot of opportunity. You've talked about building the alliance and collaborating with your partners. So can you share a story from your collaborations where you've had to juggle the technical execution, the team dynamics and customer expectations, and how you found the balance that made it a success.

I can talk about one of the scenarios that we're talking about, IT services company who was looking at deploying multiple geographies. So even in an IT in that customer environment, their project team was not based out of India. They were a European company. So the cultural difference was too much.

The expectation of what happens across geographies culturally is different. So, even though the team with whom the partners with whom I am working, they may have a team, sometimes language becomes a barrier. So, those also become something where I can if required, I put in a guide to ensure that become a the communication doesn't stop. Because at the end of it, for any project to become successful, communication is the key.

If the if things are not communicated properly, if the the expectations are not set properly, no project can be good. That's dynamic that we feel. And many times, the partner who whoever is frontending that entire opportunity or that entire deal, we go that extra mile to ensure that even though the team may fall short sometimes, I I don't mind putting it with some additional functional resources as required to ensure that the customer gets what they're looking for. Oh, definitely putting your your customers' needs first definitely comes first.

Always does. Always does. So how do you balance your own company's capabilities? You talked about this alliance.

How do you balance your own company's capabilities with your partner's strengths to ensure that the customer experience is a seamless value rather than just two vendors working side by side? And I think you've alluded to that during the story. So, see, to balance, like I said, first of all, for the customer, the customer doesn't see us as two separate legal entities. That is something which I always keep on telling everybody whom I talk about this partnership and why we are successful.

For the customer, are talking to the partner who who is the front ending partner. So we amongst ourselves, we call whoever is front ending as the front ending partner. So if I'm the front ending partner in these two opportunities that we are talking about, the these two projects that we were talking about. So for the customer, if they're talking to anybody from Devesh's team, irrespective of whoever's delivering, he or she would take the ownership of that entire project.

So that accountability comes with the front ending partner because at the end of it, it's my word to the customer that this is what we are delivering. All right. So have you ever run into a situation mean, you've mentioned taking ownership. That's very, very important, and I've always stressed that with my teams as well.

So have you ever run into a situation where multiple ownerships take place? And then how do you deal with that? Because that could happen. Have you ever had that happen?

That happened. Happened. Let's face it. That happened.

And that's where our leaders like us, we need to step in. Sometimes we need to control our team, tell our team that, okay, that's why I said the marriage example where we need to compromise sometimes. So we, we need to, that's our balance at the leadership level that we need to identify between the leaders, and we we talk regularly and say, okay. For this project, I may need to take a step back or I may ask my team to take a step back because there may be some I won't say an ego clash, but something about a view that one team member may have different from the other team member.

Yeah. Well and I think you've mentioned communication is very important. So whether it's a marriage or a business partnership. Right?

Yeah. It's very important. And compromise. Don't forget the word compromise.

And they will forget that. They will forget that. Anthony, you got any questions? Yeah.

No. That that's been great. This has been just a really insightful conversation. I mean, I love just hearing about how, you know, you take things like intangibles around, you know, relationship, trust, and maturity, but how it's really been, you know, utilized to create real business impact, right, with the alliance and with your respective firms, and what you've been able to accomplish, and so I think, you know, Rudy, correct me if I'm wrong, I think out of, you know, we've been doing this podcast a year and a half, I think this is probably the first story, at least I've heard, where you're hearing about this alliance type approach.

So this has really been refreshing, so I wanna thank you for that on the, just in the onset. You know, my question is if you can give your younger self one piece of advice about building partnerships in this ecosystem, and I say like with your younger self, still a young man, Devesh, but you've got a lot of, you know, maturity and you and your alliance, you know, partners, know, a lot of, you know, obviously, you know, senior level leadership. But if you can go back to, you know, 1997, right, what would you say?

I would say first, build your expertise. Ensure that have whatever you are delivering, people have confidence in what you can deliver. If people see that you you whatever you say you actually deliver, people would want to partner with you. That's point one.

Secondly, don't partner just for a transaction. Never ever look at a partnership which is transaction based. Look at a long term because a long term transaction, partnership will depend only on trust. I have a like, today, I'm in India.

I'm associated with a lot of partners association. Like, we have IAMCP. I've been an active member of IAMCP. There's another partner association in India, which is not just Microsoft Partner, which is across all all OEM partners.

So I've been actively involved in that as well. And I have seen a lot of partnerships fail purely because they don't trust each other. It's like they treat each other as always competition while we may compete in one transaction. But let's look at a longer picture.

Picture. We all need to coexist. And there's always a bigger big brother waiting to take our share. So are you do you want to fight with each other and let the big brother take it?

Or do you want to actually win together? Mhmm. Mhmm. That's that's fantastic.

Well, Devesh, I really appreciate your time. This has been insightful. So thank you. What are some ways for the for folks who, would like to kinda reach out to you?

What are some of the best ways they can get in touch with you? You can always, email me on devesh, devesh,@CompassoptAdvisors.com. So that's the best way to reach me.

Or if you I'm more than happy to share my number. It's an Indian number, mobile number. Feel free to call me. So it's India so it's +91, and then (982), 006-2181.

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate your time. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks. Thanks.

And I hope I could give some value to the listeners and share my journey as how we are in '20 last twenty years of Dynamics Practice or more than twenty five years in business, where we have been successful and where we have failed. Absolutely. We need to learn from our mistake and hope that, it's insightful for us. Absolutely.

No. It's been great. Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks a lot, Anthony Carrano. Take care, Devesh. Wow, that was a great episode. I really appreciate the great insights Devesh shared.

Asbolutely. I think he shared a lot of good advice for all of us. Especially as a senior, you know, and a seasoned, you know, leader with a lot of, you know, maturity, I really appreciated, you know, what he had to say, you know, especially, mean, everything was really good. I was taking a lot of notes throughout the interview, but specifically at the end we talked about the advice he would give his younger self going all the way back to '97 and just how he hit on, you know, build your expertise, you know.

You wanna have people to have confidence in what you deliver, and that's not only good for the customer, but it's also then good, you know, for those when you're attracting partners. And the second thing he said is, you know, on that note is don't partner just for a transaction. Look at the long term, you know, look at, you know, the just the quality of the relationships. I really appreciate what he had to say about that.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that that he shared in this was about having really good transparency and communication in your business relationships, especially now in the world of AI because, you know, you've gotta go out there and sell the solution and put your the customer's needs first. And I thought he shared some really good advice there. And that is something for that we've always stressed at IAMCP in just having those those key principles helping you build your business.

Know, whenever working in partnerships, you have to have to you have to be transparent, and you have to keep communications front and center and and just keep working towards that. And the more you do that, the the more that'll help you build bigger, deeper business relationships and will help you grow your business. What did you think about because, you know, we've interviewed a lot of partners, you know, through just through this podcast. And, you know, I really found fascinating, you know, how they they not only they just went beyond just, hey.

You know, partnering, but they actually created an alliance. That that's something that that that partners have done, but this one was a very much more formal in the fact that they've built a website and they're using that to build a business. So they've built a formal business relationship separate from their individual practices, And and I found that really interesting. So that's one question that that, you know, again, how did these guys meet?

How long did it take them to build that that business business relationship that they trusted each other enough to go out and do that. That's really, really interesting. Yeah. Well, I really, you know, appreciate the fact that, you know, where he started off, I think he said, they started working together, you know, this this group of partners, like, in around 2015.

And it was just a series of, you know, just individual projects over the course of, you know, you know, four, five, you know, six years. And then, you know, it was after, you know, COVID, then they really formalized, you know, that alliance. But, so it's just, you know, that's a lot of time, you know, to be working with folks. I mean, you know, to eventually form that alliance.

But I thought it was interesting too is what caused them as a as a tipping point to actually, you know, you know, take, take that next step into that alliance was as they were trying to create a, you know, competitive advantage as they saw some of these other larger, you know, companies trying to come in, you know, into the market, that they needed as a way to, you know, stay relevant, stay competitive, and, you know, grow their practices, you know, provide value to their customers.

But doing so, you know, just require just a level of trust and maturity at that at that senior business level levels, you know, to make that happen. So I and like I said, I I found his insights really fascinating and I and and appreciate everything that he had to say. Yeah. And, you know, I think one one critical thing that came up there is they understood, and they did not use this term, which other people have used in this in the podcast before.

They understand each other's swim lanes very, very well. I knew you'd like that. They understand each other's swim lanes, and they stay within those. But then by understanding that, then they understand how to build the alliance alliance to to to grow their business.

So that was that was a a good tip, a very good tip, and I give them kudos for for recognizing that. Yeah. Great episode. A lot of great insights for sure.

Yeah. It really was. So thank you all of you for joining us on this episode of IAMCP Profiles in Partnership powered by Dunamis Marketing. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and find it useful and inspiring.

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