IT support and services company: TSG has announced it has increased the amount of Microsoft Gold competencies it holds to 9 Gold accreditations.
The additional Microsoft Gold competency awarded to the business is Application Development, which relates to its intellectual property (IP) products Tribe 365 and Traveller, both of which are built upon a base of Dynamics 365/CRM.
The Microsoft Partner Network awards Gold and Silver competencies to its strategic partners who meet a number of criteria that demonstrates their expertise in delivering and supporting a number of Microsoft products. The competencies are designed to show current and prospective customers the business as a market-leader in Microsoft solutions.
Of around 640,000 Microsoft partners worldwide, fewer than 1% hold one Gold competency.
TSG’s 9 Microsoft Gold competencies are as follows:
- Gold Cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which covers Dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365
- Gold Cloud Productivity, which covers Office 365
- Gold Collaboration and Content, which covers SharePoint document management
- Gold Datacentre, which covers Microsoft Server
- Gold Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which covers Dynamics 365 and Dynamics NAV
- Gold Messaging, which covers Exchange Online
- Gold Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions, which covers Office 365
- Gold Windows and Devices, which covers the Windows platform
- Gold Application Development, which covers TSG’s IP products Tribe 365 and Traveller
The competencies reflect the level of staff training at Gold-accredited Microsoft partners; for each competency, which relates to a Microsoft service or product, the business must have a specific number of employees trained to a specific level in order to be awarded the competency.
Accredited partners must also evidence successful projects completed for each competency and associated product or service. Customer testimonials are required to support these projects to demonstrate that the company delivers an exceptional customer service.
Microsoft competencies are up for renewal every year rather than awarded for life, meaning partners must continually prove their capabilities in delivering and supporting the Microsoft suite of software and devices. TSG has continued to build upon its competencies year after year, growing from 6 to 9 between 2015-2018.
TSG’s Training and Development Manager David Filmer said of the achievement: “Our Microsoft Gold competencies are something we are incredibly proud of. There’s so much hard work that goes into achieving these accreditations.
“Not only do they demonstrate to our customers, and in fact any businesses looking to work with TSG, our ongoing investment in skills and training, but our commitment to delivering the best IT solutions.
“We’re quite often over-qualified for these competencies – so for example, we need 4 people to hold 8 certificates for our Cloud CRM competency – so we’ll get at least 6 people qualified. This also allows us to ensure we don’t have any gaps if someone moves on. What’s more, we’ve got an in-house Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) to ensure we can upskill our staff year-round.
“We first look at what capability we need to service the customer. That’s got to come first. Being a national business, we also need skills geographically; having just two people trained in one area won’t cut it.
“We don’t just train colleagues on Microsoft. We’ve also got Sage, Sophos, ITIL, PRINCE2 and many other best-in-class product and service certifications.”