August 26, 2025 • 53 mins
Insights from the Frontlines of Digital Transformation
In this engaging episode of IAMCP Profiles in Partnership, host Anthony Carrano sits down with Matt Einig, CEO of Rencore, to explore the evolving challenges and opportunities in the modern digital workplace. With a career spanning over two decades in Microsoft technologies, Matt shares his journey from consulting to founding Rencore, a leading SaaS provider specializing in governance for Microsoft platforms.
Throughout the conversation, Matt discusses how organizations, especially large enterprises, grapple with collaboration chaos, data sprawl, and the rapid adoption of AI tools. He emphasizes the vital role of strategic governance in ensuring security, efficiency, and adaptability. Drawing on real-world examples—including a major food and beverage company—Matt explains how tailored governance policies and automated solutions help companies tame their Microsoft 365 environments, cut unnecessary costs, and streamline processes.
Key takeaways from the episode include:
• Modern Governance is Essential: Manual solutions and point tools can’t keep up with the scale and complexity of today’s digital workplaces. Automated governance is the key to managing collaboration, AI, and workflow platforms like Microsoft 365 and Power Platform.
• Early Wins Build Momentum: Focusing on immediate, visible results—such as cost savings and process automation—creates excitement and buy-in, laying the groundwork for long-term success and strong partner relationships.
• Adaptability Drives Value: Every organization is unique, and governance solutions must flex to address specific needs, evolving as new challenges arise.
Matt also shares candid lessons learned from partnering with consultancies and service providers worldwide, stressing the importance of finding initial traction and aligning on shared goals. The episode serves as an insightful guide for companies looking to scale their governance practices, boost operational efficiency, and foster meaningful partnerships in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Tune in for actionable insights, real-world stories, and expert advice for harnessing the power of governance and collaboration—whether you’re an emerging Microsoft partner or a global enterprise seeking to future-proof your organization.
Listener Links / Resources
IAMCP: https://www.iamcp.org/
Guest:
Matt Einig, CEO at Rencore
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthiaseinig/
Corporate LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rencore/
Corporate Website: https://rencore.com/
Hosts:
Anthony Carrano, Principal at Dunamis Marketing: LinkedIn
Rudy Rodriguez, Principal at Dunamis Marketing: LinkedIn
Corporate Website: Dunamis Marketing
Podcast Website: IAMCP Podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Anthony Carrano (00:00):
Welcome to the IMCP Profiles and Partnership,
the podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your cohost,Anthony Carano. In each episode,
I'll be talking to some of themost innovative and successful
partners in the Microsoftecosystem. The International
Association of Microsoft ChannelPartners, otherwise known as
(00:22):
iAMCP, is a community ofMicrosoft partners who help each
other grow and thrive. Memberscan find and connect to other
partners locally and globallyand access exclusive resources
and opportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IMCP can help youachieve your goals. We hear
their stories, learn from theirexperiences, and discover the
(00:43):
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this episode and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou do, please subscribe, rate,
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform.
And don't forget to follow us onsocial media and connect with us
(01:04):
on our website,www.profilesandpartnership.com,
where you can find moreinformation, resources and
opportunities to partner forsuccess. Thank you for
listening, and now let's getstarted with today's episode.
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you, what
does it really take fororganizations to stay ahead in a
rapidly changing digitallandscape? And how can strategic
(01:26):
governance transform the way wecollaborate, innovate, and
protect our most valuableresources? And what are the most
effective ways companies andtheir partners can achieve early
wins and lay the groundwork forlong term success?
We dive into these questions andmore as our guests discuss how
being a Microsoft partner hascontributed to building a robust
partner relationshipsinternationally and share
(01:48):
examples of successfulcollaborations that have driven
significant achievements. Areyou ready to join us on this
journey? Then stay tuned becausewe have a great guest show for
you today. Our guest is MattEinig, the CEO at Runcor, the
leading provider of softwarehelping organizations to stay in
control of Microsoft three sixtyfive Copilot and agents in the
(02:09):
Power Platform. Let's hear whathe has to say.
Welcome, Matt, to the podcasttoday. Thanks for joining us.
Matt Einig (02:18):
Thank you very much for having me.
Anthony Carrano (02:20):
Well, excellent. Well, we're really
looking forward to gettingstarted and having a a great
conversation, you know, with youtoday. Let's start off. Tell us
a little bit about yourself.
Matt Einig (02:29):
Yeah. So my name is Matt or in long Matthijs. I'm
from Munich, Germany, currentlybased in Munich. 47 year old,
married three kids, know,holding three girls, so Nice.
Don't have much to say at home.
(02:49):
Studied studied computerscience, went into consulting,
started in the Microsoft world02/2004, so quite a while ago. I
have been doing SharePointconsulting, started with
SharePoint portal server in02/2003, so I've been around
quite a bit. Ten years MVP inOffice service and services. Not
(03:12):
anymore. I have to focus on mybusiness too much, but since
last year, I'm no longer in theprogram.
But, yeah, I have been aroundquite a bit in all areas.
Anthony Carrano (03:23):
Nice. Nice. Now I know so you started, you know,
Remcor. Why'd you start thecompany?
Matt Einig (03:30):
It was actually out of coincidence, I would say. I
was a consultant at a largerenterprise consultancy, and we
did intranets and extranetsbased on Microsoft SharePoint at
the time, and well, as itusually is when you're in a
large consultancy and thecustomer is threatening you with
a contract, then you have tosource the people to deliver
(03:54):
project, and then we figured,yeah, at the time this was still
on premises, of course,SharePoint development, WSPs, so
on, all that stuff, probablyrecall if you have been around
that long. We built forourselves initially a tool to do
static code analysis of ourSharePoint customizations. So we
(04:17):
did basically in order todeliver better quality projects,
didn't intend to build a productout of it, but then suddenly
customers came to us and askedus if we can buy that, and then
we figured, okay, why not, let'sgive it a shot. And then things
kind of snowballed from there.
We grew as a company, then lateron we figured out, okay, there
(04:41):
are even more problems that wecan tackle, and a couple of
years ago then we switched overand saw a big need for
governance in the Microsoftspace, and this is where we're
at now. So it's almost twelveyears in the making so far.
Anthony Carrano (04:58):
Wow. Wow. Now can you elaborate a little bit
more and share a little bitabout, you know, RENCORE's area
of specialization?
Matt Einig (05:06):
Yeah. So nowadays, we offer a governance solution
for Microsoft Microsoftplatform. It's a SaaS solution,
so classical software as aservice hosted on Azure in
multiple data centers worldwide.Governance, of course, is a
very, let's say, broad term. Itcan mean a lot of different
(05:27):
things.
So what we do is basically, wecall it AI and digital workplace
governance, and basically westructured it in three different
areas. The first area iscollaboration governance, so
anything around M365,SharePoint, Teams, VivaEngage,
OneDrive, Entrite, Planner, andall these kind of services that
(05:52):
are mostly used forcollaboration. Second area is
anything around Power Platform,so it's Power Automate, Power
Apps, Power BI, DataWorks,Fabric, so everything around
building applications on the nocode, low code platform. And the
third area that we are currentlyadding is anything around AI in
(06:12):
Copilot. So that's Copilot,Copilot Studio, Azure AI
Foundry, helping organizationsto stay in control of these
environments.
Anthony Carrano (06:22):
Wow. Now okay. So I know we're gonna get into
our partner story, you know, abit that's around more around
the collaboration governance.But let's talk a little bit
before we do. Let's talk aboutwith AI.
I'm gonna ask a really openquestion. Like, what are what
are some things that you're justyou're seeing in general, you
know, around AI governance witha lot of the the concepts you're
(06:44):
working with?
Matt Einig (06:46):
Yeah. I I I think with AI, we are basically
experienced the same that wehave been experiencing with the
rollout of Teams. So during thepandemic, everybody rushed into
Teams. They didn't have anyother choice. They needed to
somehow make their workforcecapable to continue working, so
(07:07):
they rolled out their serviceswithout any plan, and then as a
result they created a lot ofchaos, a lot of sprawl, clutter
that nobody really took care of.
Things got created, nobody tookcare of who owns it, who's in
charge, who has access, what'sinside, what data is shared with
(07:28):
whom internally, externally, andso on. And with AI we see now
exactly the same thingshappening. Everybody is trying
to very quickly adopt it becausethey feel like, okay, we cannot
miss that bus because we mightlose our ability to remain
competitive on the market, so weneed to leverage AI. So we are
starting to build agents, buildour own applications with LMS in
(07:52):
the background and so on, andthen we face the same problems.
Now it's not team sprawl, thenit's agent sprawl eventually,
that suddenly people startcreating AI enabled solutions,
agents, and then again, whocreates it, who owns it, who has
access to it, which data does ithave access to, what happens
(08:14):
throughout this lifecycle, howdoes the risk also change?
Maybe on day one when you createan agent maybe only a handful of
people have access, and there'slimited knowledge behind that
agent, and then throughout thelife cycle more people are
added, then suddenly the riskprofile is changing, and if
you're not governing that AIenabled resource, then you might
(08:39):
run into data loss, into dataprivacy issues, and general also
IT operations issues that datamight be exposed.
Anthony Carrano (08:51):
I've got and you just opened up. I've got a
lot of questions now.
Matt Einig (08:57):
Go ahead.
Anthony Carrano (08:58):
So as you've kinda, you know, stepped in in
the sit with the with the AIgovernance, what's been one of
them in a without, obviously,you know, sharing, you the the
customers' names and revealingtheir identities, but who like,
some of the most creative waysin which they've are utilizing
AI and how their governancesolutions had to, you know, you
(09:21):
know, protect them and keep, youknow, the right boundaries and
things in place so they cancontinue to leverage that
creativity to, you know, givethemselves an advantage and grow
their business.
Matt Einig (09:31):
Yeah. I think creative ways. Well Or or maybe
the most creative
Anthony Carrano (09:36):
instance where you've seen a company using
using AI that you've had to comein and provide your governance
solution.
Matt Einig (09:44):
Yeah, so I can only tell things from what customers
are telling us because we arenot ourselves looking at the
data. It's all encrypted andonly accessible for the
customer, so we kind of say likewhat did you do there? This is
crazy. This is not happening, sowe're not consulting here. This
(10:06):
is where our partners come in,but we are providing the
solution for discovery, forimplementing policies, for
managing, automating, also themanagement at scale, but what we
see, there are quite somedifferent approaches, and some
companies are more having thisWild West approach where they
basically open up the platformfor everyone, and then people
(10:27):
start building things, similarlike with Power Platform also.
People just start building appsand flows and whatever, and it's
sometimes amazing what comes outof it, but then I think the
crazy things that happen that,for example, people build an
agent and expose that agentpublicly with company data, and
(10:52):
nobody's aware of that, and thensuddenly you are basically
having an open door into yourcompany data, and other people
are adding data and knowledge,and totally unaware that this is
actually a public accessiblecomponent, and of course there's
a lot of risk, and there's a bigmoment when they suddenly
(11:16):
realize, okay, what are we doinghere actually? Okay, we need to
put some guardrails in. But someapproaches are, I would say,
questionable, and others aremore from the other perspective.
They lock everything down andrather don't want to allow
(11:36):
anything, and have a very, verytargeted, structured approach,
but that then of course slowsadoption, then it's harder to
justify the ROI, to see the ROIand justify the investment into
it. So it all has its pros andcons if you like.
Anthony Carrano (11:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Now what because obviously, I know
you you do business globally.
Matt Einig (12:00):
Yes.
Anthony Carrano (12:00):
What have you seen or have you seen, you know,
different parts of the world,how, like, people are
approaching implementation withAI differently and just
situations that you have to stepthat you have to step into?
Matt Einig (12:15):
Yeah. Definitely. There's quite some AI
difference. In particular, ifyou look at North America and
Europe, or even more if you lookinto Germany I think Germany is
the prime example ofcautiousness in that case so
here in Western Europe it's morelike, okay, governance is
(12:38):
basically a necessity to evenget started to build something
on AI, and they're really,really careful that things could
go wrong, so rather not do itbefore they go wrong. I think
the North American approach ismore like, Okay, let's break
some eggs and then fix it later,so let's get started, and we
(13:02):
need to adopt and we need toshow that this actually can help
us to make a leap forward in ourbusiness, in our efficiency and
whatever, and if there is anissue, then we'll fix it at a
step labour.
I think from our perspectiveit's also in our go to market a
quite different approach. Herein Western Europe we are more
(13:24):
like, okay, we are the enablerand help you to prevent bad
things from happening, and inNorth America it's more like,
okay, are the ones who help youto rein in that chaos and get
some control and guardrailsaround it.
Anthony Carrano (13:43):
What are and without maybe giving up too much
of the secret sauce, what arejust for companies that are
looking, you know, that need tohave governance and they realize
they've implemented it. What aresome, you know, just some
suggestions that you would havefor companies to avoid maybe
(14:05):
some really catastrophicpitfalls as they're implementing
AI across their enterprise?
Matt Einig (14:11):
Yeah, I think a general pitfall is always with
any of these new tools in theiradoption, you just let people do
things and don't give them anyguidance or training or
whatever, because then theymight invest a lot of time also
without any value getting out ofit, so one part where basically
(14:34):
wasting money, or you get a lotof things created that you might
need to shut down later becauseyou actually didn't want that to
happen. So I think having someplan at least doesn't need to be
in super detail, but having someplan is certainly something that
you should think of before youstart enabling things. Maybe,
(14:55):
okay, if you're still in a POCstage that's a different thing.
Maybe then you play more aroundwith it. And then if you take
that analogy to how Teamsrollout was also, when everyone
can just create Teams, then theywill create Teams, and then they
are there, and then they forgetabout it, and then these things
(15:18):
are left behind, and then nobodyknows do we still need that, and
What do we do with that, and isthat actually used anywhere, and
what's with the data inside, andcan we delete it?
If we delete it, does anythingbreak? Do we lose anything
important? The same thing ishappening on the AI part as
well. You have to think aboutthe life cycle of what's
(15:40):
happening and also how youmanage that life cycle, because
from a business perspective,when you are someone in an
organisation who has a need,well, they want to solve that
need somehow. Build something,they create something, a
resource, whatever, but as soonas that need is gone, they will
(16:01):
just forget about it.
They will just leave it behind.Nobody's ever cleaning up after
themselves. If a project isended, if, I don't know,
strategy is changing andsuddenly this is no longer
relevant, then these things areleft behind, and for that, some
proper lifecycle management is asuper important part, and this
(16:22):
is also what we address andwhere we come in, so that you
not only manage creation and whocreates and who has access and
so on, but also manage the lifecycle and identify what's no
longer used. Can we clean thatup? Who is deciding on that?
And so on. One of the corevalues that we provide also with
(16:43):
our solution, no matter if it'sAI or anything else that we
support, is that you delegatethat decision out to the
organization again. So if youare in an IT department of a
100,000 employee company, thenit's impossible for you to
decide on any of those resourcesif it's needed or not. So you
(17:07):
need to have a process todelegate that out to the
organization as it scales andlet the business users do the
decision, or if they don't takethe decision, have more the opt
in approach. So you say, Okay,if you don't say I need this,
then we will remove it, and thenyou basically have the same
(17:30):
result at the end that you keepthings clean and in order to
avoid that chaos.
Anthony Carrano (17:37):
Excellent. I know I wanna get to the the
collaboration governance partnerstory. But before I do, last
question from the AI is is forfolks that are listening, who's
the ideal customer for thissolution, and who's the what do
you look for as an ideal partnerfor this?
Matt Einig (17:57):
So in general, so no matter if it's now AI governance
or collaboration governance orpower platform governance,
Eventually the problems areeverywhere. It doesn't matter if
you are a 50 people company or a200,000 people company, you have
all those problems. We have theproblems ourselves and our
organization. But we learnedthat they become really painful
(18:20):
usually when the company is acertain size, so usually our
customers are a thousandemployees and above, and
eventually the bigger they get,the bigger the problem is also,
because then you can no longermanage it with point solutions
only focusing on a single bit,let's say just provisioning or
just access management or so on.You have to address that problem
(18:45):
in a more holistic way, and youcan also not DIY yourself out of
it, build a PowerShell scripthere, or I don't know, use the
admin center of x service teamsor Power Platform or whatever.
So for us, our ideal customerprofile is actually the larger
(19:07):
that they can get. Our biggestcustomer at the moment is
actually a US customer, has aquarter million employees in
that tenant, so it's reallylarge scale, or we have also
customers like Amgen orHoneywell, so that size of
customers have real pain therein those areas because I think
(19:28):
one of the core parts of thatproblem is that the problem is
never solved, because in anorganization, especially the
bigger it gets, is constantlychanging. There's constantly
people coming and leaving,There's constantly
reorganization. There are M andAs. There are carve outs.
There are projects that startand end and so on. So there's
constantly new data and chaosalways creating, and cleaning
(19:54):
that up manually is just animpossible task. So you have to
define standards, policies, andautomated remediation of those
policy violations, and this canonly be accomplished with a
technical solution.
Anthony Carrano (20:11):
That's
Matt Einig (20:11):
fantastic. Partners was the second question, sorry.
Partners, so we have basicallyclassical solution integrators
or consultancies who go tocustomers, who do workshops, who
sell their services, consult thecustomer in identifying what
(20:32):
their challenges are, ourproduct also, but maybe also
providing additional servicesout of it, so usually partners
start then maybe, okay, let'sstart with maybe Teams and
SharePoint, and then we expand,okay, let's govern our
enterprise applications inEntra, or let's look what we
have in Vivend Engage andimplement provisioning. So it's
(20:54):
a phased rollout often thatyou're not overwhelming
everyone. First it's maybe justinsights, and then based on the
insights you build your policiesand your automations.
So this is an ongoing business,and there's also a lot of
reproducibility for a partner,because our software itself has
multi tenant capabilities, andit's also built in a way that
(21:17):
you, for example, can build agovernance framework, a set of
policies, and export them, andthen import them for another
customer, so you can reuse thework you have done already for
one customer, increasing themargin of the partner, and also
providing better value to thecustomer at the end. And then
another type of partner is oftenan MSP, so managed service
(21:42):
providers who just incorporategovernance as part of their
service offering operating M365,so implementing those policies
helps them to deliver theirservice more efficiently,
consistently, across multiplecustomers. That's what MSPs is
all about (21:59):
high efficiency and standardization across multiple
customers, so this is where wehelp as well. Then of course
there are also other types ofpartners that we work with,
where there are value addedresellers and so on, but
different approach, I think, andalso different kind of target
customer that they approach. Sothe SIs are often more on the
(22:24):
lower end, the smallerorganizations, because those
organizations have usually lessinternal expertise and they need
some helping hand, whereas thelarger organization then it's
more like a bigger project andthere are different types of
partners usually that areworking with them.
Anthony Carrano (22:43):
Well, that's fantastic. Well, I really
appreciate you expounding andsharing about the AI piece. Now
I do want to get to the partnerstory.
Matt Einig (22:54):
Yeah. Go ahead.
Anthony Carrano (22:56):
In the story we're about to tell in this
Partner Showcase, tell us alittle bit about the client. We
don't have to reveal their nameor any of those pertinent
details. Share maybe a littlebit about some of the challenges
they were facing.
Matt Einig (23:11):
This particular case, this was a company in the
food and beverage industry,about 10,000 employees roughly,
and this is all aboutcollaboration, so the classic
M365, Teams, SharePoint,OneDrive, and they had actually
what I talked about a littlebit, they had this Wild West
(23:31):
approach, so they really whenthe pandemic hit, they rolled
out Teams, They didn't have anyreal rollout plan, so everyone
was creating Teams and sharingon SharePoint and they were on
premises before, so suddenlythey faced a lot of chaos. They
really, really figured, okay, wehave actually more teams than
(23:54):
employees. We so much data thatis also duplicated in multiple
places and abandoned resourcesthat nobody knew are they still
relevant or not. So there was alot of chaos, lack of structure,
and that was basically wherethey started. I realised, okay,
(24:16):
first of all we need to get thecurrent situation under control,
so we need to do some cleanupand implement some guidelines
and structure.
And second, we want to make surethat it's no longer happening
again, that this whole chaos isnot recreated. So first of all,
well, they implemented oursolution initially to get the
(24:40):
insights. What's actually goingon? Were lacking already the
insights. One of the coreproblems with Microsoft three
sixty five is that all the datais in silos.
So if you, I don't know, I thinkMicrosoft has about 150 admin
centers in the Microsoft cloud.So Teams is their own admin
(25:01):
center, SharePoint is an admincenter, Power Platform is an
admin center. So there's noconnection. Of course, it's all
connected, the data, but there'sno connection apparent, so it's
very hard to see how things areactually connected. If I look
for you, Anthony, then I cannotsee, okay, which SharePoint
sites do you own, which apps doyou own, which flows to your
(25:23):
own, and so on.
This is the first step that theydid with our software. We create
a massive inventory ofeverything and connect
everything together and allowthem to build reports and
dashboards on that to basicallysee, okay, what's going on? And
based on that, they couldalready identify, okay, there's
unused SharePoint sites that wecould archive, so we can save
(25:47):
also additional storage costs.There are unused licenses. There
are over licensed users who havemaybe an E3 and an E5 which is
overlapping, or things likethat.
So they could already initiallygain a lot of value out of it in
the cleanup process, and then inthe next step, in order to avoid
(26:08):
that clutter from happeningagain, first implemented
policies in order to structurethings, so policies like
redundant ownership of resourcesso that you don't have any
orphaned teams, for example.Whenever our tool finds a team
that has no or only one owner,inform someone, maybe the
(26:31):
remaining owner or someone else,to appoint a second one or IT to
decide should we still keep thisor should we remove it.
Implementing those policies andautomating the processes, that
was the next step. Then theyimplemented a provisioning
process, so standardizedtemplates. What type of teams,
(26:53):
what type of chatbot sites do wewant to actually offer to our
organization?
So they standardize templates,let's say a project template, an
onboarding template, adepartment template, and so on,
making sure that the sensitivitylabels are set correctly, naming
conventions are implemented, andso on, and then they offer those
(27:17):
through our Teams app instead ofthe standard experience that you
can just create the resourceyourself, or Teamify your
SharePoint site, and so on. Sotaking away the standard
approach from Microsoft andputting a more structured
approach on Hub where they cancontrol who sees which
templates, or not every templateis relevant for everyone. Maybe
(27:39):
let's say an onboarding teamtemplate is only available for
HR members, so you can applythose to specific security
groups. So building out thatpart. Then as a next step, it
was also implementing accessreviews, so automating the
process that, for example,resources that are shared with
(28:01):
external files that have maybeexternal sharing and the
external hasn't accepted thesharing invite to clean that up,
to delegate to the owners of theresources to perform a regular
access review.
For a Power App, for example,does everyone still require
(28:22):
access to that once per quarter,once per year, depending on the
criticality of the app, or forSharePoint site, similar way.
And this is one step further.And then step by step, they
basically replaced also custombuilt components like PowerShell
scripts or flows that they'vebuilt and used our solution for
(28:46):
that. Sometimes they maybe putthe existing script into an
Azure function and we justtrigger it so they didn't have
to re implement everything, ifit was something more complex
that was maybe talking to someother LOB systems, or we could
just rebuild this entirely inthe governance platform. So
quite a lot of things thathappened.
(29:09):
They didn't happen all at once,but this was like a phased
rollout over several months.They are now our customer for a
little over three years, soquite a while already, and they
went step by step, and they useda partner of ours to actually
(29:30):
guide them through this journey,because they didn't have the
resources themselves. Also, hadalready a relationship to that
partner before, so that was ajoint success for all of us,
because the partner could expandtheir business. They offered now
governance services. They werealso due to this, and we could
(29:52):
together succeed with thecustomer on that journey.
Anthony Carrano (29:56):
Okay, so this was the situation, this was your
partner's customer and theybrought you guys in, brought
Rinkor in?
Matt Einig (30:03):
Yeah, I think now actually the customer reached
out to us, so they were activelylooking for a solution. They
reached out to us and found us,but we had already a
relationship to the partner inthe past, not with a specific
customer, so it was acoincidence in this case. And
then we brought in the partnerand said, You are there already.
(30:26):
They were in a differentdepartment. How about we join
forces here and help thecustomer as they had already,
also their trust relationship tothe customer, so that was a win
win for everyone.
We don't provide servicesourselves, so we always do that
together with partners. If thecustomer requires services, that
is for us, of course, a bigbenefit as well, that we have
(30:49):
somebody on the ground that cando the handholding and guide the
customer through their journey.
Anthony Carrano (30:54):
So what was your criteria now? I know you
mentioned you had a priorrelationship with that
particular partner, but I knowyou work with a lot of partners.
Matt Einig (31:02):
So what
Anthony Carrano (31:03):
would friend for this, you know,
particularly, you know, big, youknow, project, what was your
criteria for selecting apartner, you know, for this
client?
Matt Einig (31:12):
This specific partner is more a boutique
consultancy, so rather small,like less than 10 employees. So
they're very focused on M365consulting, and they had a very
high level of expertise, I wouldsay, and of course also a
(31:33):
criteria for us in this specificcase that there was already a
relationship also to thecustomer, so it's of course
always easier to bring somebodyalong when a customer has
already some experience with. Itdepends very much on the
customer, but in this case thiswas a no brainer that we bring
them in and work together onthat deal. In other occasions we
(31:56):
sometimes propose a partner tothe customer and say, Hey, there
is this partner. We have donealready two, three projects with
them together.
We had a good success with them.They bring the experience in our
solution also and in governance.How about you two have a talk
with each other if you're a fit?And if they don't think like it,
(32:17):
we're not forcing of course thecustomer. Sometimes also the
customer says, hey, we havealready a solution provider who
we work with, who is alreadyunder contract.
That's actually much easier forus. They might have not a
relationship with us yet, butfor the customer it's easier
because they can just send outanother SOW and say, okay, let's
(32:41):
do this also, instead of havingto do the whole contractual
part, let often the customeractually guide us. So it depends
very much from where thisrelationship is triggered. It
can be also coming from thepartner itself, of course.
Anthony Carrano (32:58):
Now with a project like this, this is
something I think you mentioned,if I heard correctly, took over
several years, process. How doyou measure success? Or I should
say, how does the customermeasure success with something
like
Matt Einig (33:16):
this? So initially so what we try also, when we do
our direct engagement, so it'snot always that a partner is
involved. Many customers havetheir own resources, and of
course we want to be successfulwith those customers as well.
Usually with our own customersuccess team, at the beginning
(33:37):
when we start the rollout withcustomers, we define success
criteria with them, and alsodefine some kind of a roadmap,
and that doesn't have to beyears. It can be also months
only, depends on what thecustomer is trying to achieve
and also what resources theywant to invest.
Usually we focus on quick winsin the first step, so what is
(34:00):
really currently a pain? Wheredo you currently have a problem
that we need to address, wherewe can maybe support you? Maybe
a process that needs to beautomated, maybe an incident
that needs to be resolved, andwe want to make sure that such
an incident is no longerhappening in the future, so
finding something very currentthat is creating an immediate
ROI for the customer (34:26):
Okay, this really helped us. In this
particular case it was costs, sothey identified very quickly:
Okay, we have over licensing,we're paying a lot of money in
storage to Microsoft foradditional SharePoint storage,
so identifying what can becleaned up gave them a very
(34:48):
quick ROI, and that course ROIis a good measure for success,
of course. But it depends verymuch.
What we recommend oftencustomers also, especially the
larger ones, the bigger theyget. There are so many
stakeholders usually that oftenthey have people for each
(35:12):
individual Microsoft services,they have multiple people, and
then we try to split it up andseparate it and have separate
streams and say, 'Teams' team,what is the pay that you need to
solve?' and don't know, 'entrateam' what can we do for you? We
have individual success criteriaand then they fuel each other in
(35:33):
the organization as well. Itgives you also a much better
visibility what's going on.
Anthony Carrano (35:38):
That's awesome. Obviously this project was a big
success. What were some of thechallenges that you had during
the engagement?
Matt Einig (35:48):
Well, there are always challenges, of course. In
this particular case, guess, oneokay, was a European customer,
so they were hesitant at first,as I would say, so they wanted
to start in a test environmentfirst and really had this very
(36:10):
cautious approach like, okay, wedon't want to let a new tool
onto our production environment,and it might do whatever we
don't know and cause a lot ofharm or whatever, so they used a
test environment that had astaging M365 tenant with data in
(36:32):
it, and they started building upon that, and then they rolled it
up on the productionenvironment. This is actually
not such an uncommon approachthat there is a staging
environment. We also providestaging environments to our
enterprise customers, we havethe ability that you can build
your policies, reportdashboards, test them out, your
automations, and then you canexport them and import them to
(36:54):
another environment. That helpsyou also to make sure that not
suddenly accidentally yourentire organization gets an
email that they were notsupposed to be getting only
because you did a mistake inyour automation.
So I think this is a sensibleapproach in general. But also
the way our solution is built,as we are aware that customers
(37:16):
are worrying that a new toolthat is rolled out might cause a
lot of harm unintentionally, theway we have built our solution
is that you do not have to giveus full access from the start.
So we have a very granularpermission model where you can
grant in the initial step readonly permissions to our
(37:40):
solution, maybe even only forindividual services, and once
you start adopting it step bystep, then you gain insights and
you realize, okay, there'ssomething we need to do, then
you can add additionalpermissions, say, okay, now I
want to do an automation onSharePoint, okay, now I give you
full control on SharePoint, oh,now I want to maybe deactivate
(38:03):
users, okay, I give youpermission on M365 user or
Entra, and so on. So we havethis ability that also
differentiates us from any othersolution on the market, that you
can have a very structuredphased rollout where you can
(38:23):
mitigate that risk that due tosome user error maybe you cause
havoc unintentionally, and thatgives a lot of trust.
But this specific example, wherea customer was very cautious,
okay, let's test this out first,and then let's try this, and
then before we let this onto thelive environment.
Anthony Carrano (38:46):
Now, based on this partner experience, did
this engagement increasecustomer satisfaction and or
grow revenue for the customer?
Matt Einig (39:02):
I cannot really claim, I believe, grow revenue.
I think this is very hard tomeasure because, well, of course
you could argue an efficiencygain in the organization due to
de cluttering the environmentcan make customer make it easier
for the customer to make money,but I think it's a really tough
(39:26):
sell to correlate more revenueto cleaner M365 and standardized
processes. You can do that, ofcourse, but
Anthony Carrano (39:38):
There's it's probably a big impact on
employee satisfaction andexperience, I
Matt Einig (39:46):
would imagine. That's definitely. Of course,
end users can find data easier.They are less confused with all
the different teams, they have aclear process how to create what
they need, so definitely thishas an impact. But it's
extremely hard to measure it,that's what I'm saying.
It's really hard to measure,okay, you saved five minutes a
(40:09):
day because we have a cleanenvironment. You can claim that,
and anyone can claim that, butnobody can ever prove that
really, that this is correlateddirectly to implementing that.
Where you can prove something iscost savings, so you can
measure, okay, we spend lessmoney in licenses, we spend less
(40:33):
money in storage, we may be moreefficient in IT, like we have
more time for other things thancleaning up the mess of our end
users, because we can actuallyautomate these processes, we can
focus on the fun part and not onthe annoying part basically,
(40:54):
maybe less you can measure maybeless support tickets, things
like that. This is somethingthat you can measure certainly,
and where we can make an impact.And then of course on the
security posture also, okay, wehave better control of our data,
we have cleaned up unnecessaryaccess, we have cleaned up
(41:14):
external access that was nolonger required, these kind of
things that you can alsomeasure.
All of that contributes somehowto a more efficient and
hopefully more successfulcompany at the end. Putting a
number and dollars on it is, Iwould say, a little bit of a
(41:34):
stretch or a hard hard to
Anthony Carrano (41:37):
sounds like there's there's a lot of there's
a lot of really great benefit,you know, to to this, especially
we're seeing at the with I knowyou've talked a lot about, like,
with large companies. What's isthere do companies need to be a
certain size to get the most useout of these these governance
modules?
Matt Einig (42:00):
In general, the problems or the challenges that
we address play everywhere. Nomatter how big the company is,
you have these challenges atsome point. But I would say up
to a certain size you can stillignore them. I don't know if you
have a 500 people company, forexample, well, some of these
(42:21):
things you can just ignore, oryou can solve them by writing a
PowerShell script and runningthat once per month and getting
the report out of it, or youcan, I don't know, buy a point
solution just for provisioningor things like that? So you can
get your way around in the smallorganization, but we learned
(42:42):
that when a company goes beyond,let's say, a thousand employees,
then this becomes not feasibleanymore.
You need a more holisticapproach. You really need to
think of it from the start tothe end. What happens from
creation of a resource to thedeletion or archiving of
(43:02):
resource, and how do you managethat process and scale also that
process as these organisationsare constantly changing, and the
bigger they get, the more changeis in the organisation. If
Anthony is leaving the company,what happens to all the data
that you own? The things in yourOneDrive, the apps that you have
created, the teams that you own,what happens to all of that?
(43:24):
The bigger the company gets, themore often that happens, and the
more you need an automated,scalable approach in order to
resolve these kind ofchallenges.
Anthony Carrano (43:36):
Now I've got two more questions, Matt. First
is like, so from this partnerexperience, this larger food and
beverage company, what did youall, Remcor, learn that enabled
your company to improve?
Matt Einig (43:58):
With every customer that we actually work with,
well, every customer has thesame problems, but there are
always nuances to each problem.So especially the larger
enterprises, they have sometimesvery weird things that they have
going on, like, I don't know,not using actual users but
(44:19):
creating internal accounts andjust naming them external or
things like that. Like, whereyou think like, okay, why don't
you use what Microsoft hasrecommended? And then suddenly
you realize, okay, we have tocover that use case as well
somehow. This is not how weexpected it to be, but some
customers deal it that way, orthere are customers who are
(44:43):
never deleting user accounts.
They always stay behind, andthey keep them forever
apparently, so they have moredeactivated users than actual
users and things like that, andthen you learn, Okay, this could
be a new policy. This could besomething that we can add to the
product for future customers togain value out of that, because
(45:06):
they might have the sameproblem. So this is an iterative
process, and one of the coolthings about our solution is
that it's basically a platform,and anything like a policy, a
report, an automation, adashboard, an access view this
is all just content in ourplatform. So it's very easy to
(45:26):
add additional policies. You cancreate hundreds of policies with
every individual Nuance that youwant to build, and that allows
us very quickly to add new valuefor future customers, or also
existing customers, and alsopartners can build their own
governance framework.
They can build their own set ofpolicies of their learnings and
(45:48):
then sell that to theircustomers. So there's a lot to
be gained, and the flexibilityof that platform allows us to
adapt very quickly on thosequite different demands.
Anthony Carrano (46:05):
Now, Niasus, in closing, what advice would you
give to companies like yoursregarding partnering?
Matt Einig (46:13):
Well, think, so I've been in the Microsoft business
for twelve years and we had ourfair share of partnership
experience, I would say. So wehad successful partnerships, we
had unsuccessful partnerships,we had real partnership
failures. So I think initiallyto start a successful
(46:36):
partnership everyone needs to bealigned in finding a relatively
quick success story, so findingrelatively quick a common way of
making together business,because interest at the partner
and also at a vendor in apartnership degrades the longer
(46:59):
it takes to actually getsomething new. It's natural, of
course, because if you are apartner, let's say you are a
consultancy, and you have agreat partnership with Rancor
and announce that and so on, andthen no customer is there, and
then you invest time in tryingto gain customers, and then you
don't get the interest, then atsome point you dial back your
(47:20):
efforts, and then when you dialback your efforts then you will
not really get that successresult, and then it degrades,
then the partnership fails.Similar for us, of course, and I
think this is an honestadmission that every vendor
needs to do well, a partnershipthat lasts a year with an own
business to be made and no realprospect also of a business to
(47:42):
be made, well, then you need toprioritize where the business is
to be made.
So finding initial traction isactually the fuel for a
successful partnership. Initialtraction, let it be something
small, doesn't really matter,and we go the extra mile there
(48:04):
also. We help the partner, webring our solution engineer in
and help them when they are notenabled yet maybe to close that
deal, but that gives them thejustification to invest more,
because well then they have thefirst customer, they can build
services around it, they learnwith it, that they can repeat
(48:24):
doing that and resell it to thenext customer, so then you gain
traction. But if things take toolong or if they're only half
hearted, yeah, okay, we put yourlogo on our website and you put
ours on your website, then thiswill eventually fail, and we
want to focus on successfulpartners, and there's no hard
(48:47):
feelings to be honest, so thisis just business. At the end we
want to do business, the partnerwants to do business, we want to
do business, and the customerwants their problem solved.
If you don't find a customer whowants their problem solved, then
it's hard to make businesstogether. So you just have to be
honest in that partnership also,and to each other also.
(49:09):
Otherwise, this is bound tofail.
Anthony Carrano (49:11):
Mhmm. That's fantastic advice. I can tell
you, in all the episodes thatwe've done so far, that that was
a unique piece of advice. I'lljust leave it at that. That that
was great.
And I love it. I love it. That'sgreat because at the end of the
day, it's I mean, you're notpartnering. I mean, just to, you
(49:31):
know, to to partnering just tokinda get along and have kicks
and giggles. Yeah.
You you want to create in comingtogether to create, you know, a
unique value, you know, to solvea customer's, you know, problem,
And it's it's finding thoseearly wins and getting that
initial traction. That that wasjust fantastic. Really
appreciate you sharing that.Very on point. Well, so how how
(49:54):
do folks, you know, find out,you know, more about you and how
can they connect?
Matt Einig (50:00):
Well, you can go to our website, franco dot com. So
everything you want to know,will find there. You can reach
out to us. We have a partnerpage where you can contact us if
you want to become a partner. Wehave dedicated partner account
managers who work with you, whoenable you, who help you to
(50:21):
build also your offerings aroundit.
So the offerings are we havestandard offerings that you can
get white labeled from us,basically, that you can slam
your logo on and get started andshow it around and see what
sticks, but you can put yoursecret sauce into it as well,
and we advise you on that. Sothat's one way to reach out, and
(50:43):
then of course we are atconferences. So next one is I
think May in Las Vegas is theM365 conference, so just come by
our booth there, talk to myguys, they will tell you all
about it, about our solution,what we can do for you, how we
(51:05):
can do business in Europe. Wewill be at the European
Collaboration Summit May, I willbe at the Gartner Summit in
London in May if you want tomeet me personally. I will be in
San Francisco next month ifanyone wants to have a drink
with me.
So just reach out. Reach out onLinkedIn. Any any channel is
(51:29):
fine with us.
Anthony Carrano (51:30):
Excellent. And I'll include any of those kind
of relevant links in the shownotes, you know, as well. Well,
Matt, thank you. This was a lotof fun. Really appreciate your
time.
Matt Einig (51:41):
Thanks very much for having me, Anthony. Same here.
Anthony Carrano (51:44):
All right. Have a great day. All right. Before
we rock back, let's hit on a fewstandout insights from today's
conversation. First, asorganizations scale, it's clear
that the old way of doing thingsjust doesn't cut it anymore.
Managing collaboration, AI, anddigital workplaces really
demands a modern, automatedapproach to governance. Relying
(52:06):
on manual processes or ad hoctools leads to all sorts of
challenges from data sprawl tosecurity risk. Second, quick
wins and strong partnerrelationships are absolutely
essential. When teams focus onearly visible successes like
saving time, cutting costs, orautomating routine work, it not
only builds trust but also getseveryone excited for what's
(52:29):
next. That early momentum goes along way toward building lasting
partnerships and delivering realvalue.
And third, we heard thatadaptability is non negotiable.
Every organization is a littledifferent, so governance
solutions need to flex andevolve, and that the best
outcomes come from learning,adapting, continuously improving
(52:49):
as new challenges pop up. Ireally want to thank Matt.
Appreciate him taking time hereon our podcast today. I thought
there was a lot of fantasticinsights.
I want to thank you all, ouraudience, for joining us on this
episode of IMCP Profiles andPartnership powered by Dynamics
Marketing. We hope you enjoyedthis podcast and find it useful
and inspiring. If you did,please subscribe, rate, and
(53:10):
review us on your favoritepodcast platform. One of the
best ways to partner for successis to join IMCP, a community of
Microsoft partners who help eachother grow and thrive. IMCP
members can find and connectwith other partners locally and
globally and access exclusiveresources and opportunities.
So whether you're looking fornew customers, new markets, or
(53:31):
new solutions, IMCP can help youachieve your goals. To learn
more, visit the website atwww.iamcp.org.
Welcome to the IMCP Profiles and Partnership,
the podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your cohost,Anthony Carano. In each episode,
I'll be talking to some of themost innovative and successful
partners in the Microsoftecosystem. The International
Association of Microsoft ChannelPartners, otherwise known as
(00:22):
iAMCP, is a community ofMicrosoft partners who help each
other grow and thrive. Memberscan find and connect to other
partners locally and globallyand access exclusive resources
and opportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IMCP can help youachieve your goals. We hear
their stories, learn from theirexperiences, and discover the
(00:43):
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this episode and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou do, please subscribe, rate,
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform.
And don't forget to follow us onsocial media and connect with us
(01:04):
on our website,www.profilesandpartnership.com,
where you can find moreinformation, resources and
opportunities to partner forsuccess. Thank you for
listening, and now let's getstarted with today's episode.
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you, what
does it really take fororganizations to stay ahead in a
rapidly changing digitallandscape? And how can strategic
(01:26):
governance transform the way wecollaborate, innovate, and
protect our most valuableresources? And what are the most
effective ways companies andtheir partners can achieve early
wins and lay the groundwork forlong term success?
We dive into these questions andmore as our guests discuss how
being a Microsoft partner hascontributed to building a robust
partner relationshipsinternationally and share
(01:48):
examples of successfulcollaborations that have driven
significant achievements. Areyou ready to join us on this
journey? Then stay tuned becausewe have a great guest show for
you today. Our guest is MattEinig, the CEO at Runcor, the
leading provider of softwarehelping organizations to stay in
control of Microsoft three sixtyfive Copilot and agents in the
(02:09):
Power Platform. Let's hear whathe has to say.
Welcome, Matt, to the podcasttoday. Thanks for joining us.
Matt Einig (02:18):
Thank you very much for having me.
Anthony Carrano (02:20):
Well, excellent. Well, we're really
looking forward to gettingstarted and having a a great
conversation, you know, with youtoday. Let's start off. Tell us
a little bit about yourself.
Matt Einig (02:29):
Yeah. So my name is Matt or in long Matthijs. I'm
from Munich, Germany, currentlybased in Munich. 47 year old,
married three kids, know,holding three girls, so Nice.
Don't have much to say at home.
(02:49):
Studied studied computerscience, went into consulting,
started in the Microsoft world02/2004, so quite a while ago. I
have been doing SharePointconsulting, started with
SharePoint portal server in02/2003, so I've been around
quite a bit. Ten years MVP inOffice service and services. Not
(03:12):
anymore. I have to focus on mybusiness too much, but since
last year, I'm no longer in theprogram.
But, yeah, I have been aroundquite a bit in all areas.
Anthony Carrano (03:23):
Nice. Nice. Now I know so you started, you know,
Remcor. Why'd you start thecompany?
Matt Einig (03:30):
It was actually out of coincidence, I would say. I
was a consultant at a largerenterprise consultancy, and we
did intranets and extranetsbased on Microsoft SharePoint at
the time, and well, as itusually is when you're in a
large consultancy and thecustomer is threatening you with
a contract, then you have tosource the people to deliver
(03:54):
project, and then we figured,yeah, at the time this was still
on premises, of course,SharePoint development, WSPs, so
on, all that stuff, probablyrecall if you have been around
that long. We built forourselves initially a tool to do
static code analysis of ourSharePoint customizations. So we
(04:17):
did basically in order todeliver better quality projects,
didn't intend to build a productout of it, but then suddenly
customers came to us and askedus if we can buy that, and then
we figured, okay, why not, let'sgive it a shot. And then things
kind of snowballed from there.
We grew as a company, then lateron we figured out, okay, there
(04:41):
are even more problems that wecan tackle, and a couple of
years ago then we switched overand saw a big need for
governance in the Microsoftspace, and this is where we're
at now. So it's almost twelveyears in the making so far.
Anthony Carrano (04:58):
Wow. Wow. Now can you elaborate a little bit
more and share a little bitabout, you know, RENCORE's area
of specialization?
Matt Einig (05:06):
Yeah. So nowadays, we offer a governance solution
for Microsoft Microsoftplatform. It's a SaaS solution,
so classical software as aservice hosted on Azure in
multiple data centers worldwide.Governance, of course, is a
very, let's say, broad term. Itcan mean a lot of different
(05:27):
things.
So what we do is basically, wecall it AI and digital workplace
governance, and basically westructured it in three different
areas. The first area iscollaboration governance, so
anything around M365,SharePoint, Teams, VivaEngage,
OneDrive, Entrite, Planner, andall these kind of services that
(05:52):
are mostly used forcollaboration. Second area is
anything around Power Platform,so it's Power Automate, Power
Apps, Power BI, DataWorks,Fabric, so everything around
building applications on the nocode, low code platform. And the
third area that we are currentlyadding is anything around AI in
(06:12):
Copilot. So that's Copilot,Copilot Studio, Azure AI
Foundry, helping organizationsto stay in control of these
environments.
Anthony Carrano (06:22):
Wow. Now okay. So I know we're gonna get into
our partner story, you know, abit that's around more around
the collaboration governance.But let's talk a little bit
before we do. Let's talk aboutwith AI.
I'm gonna ask a really openquestion. Like, what are what
are some things that you're justyou're seeing in general, you
know, around AI governance witha lot of the the concepts you're
(06:44):
working with?
Matt Einig (06:46):
Yeah. I I I think with AI, we are basically
experienced the same that wehave been experiencing with the
rollout of Teams. So during thepandemic, everybody rushed into
Teams. They didn't have anyother choice. They needed to
somehow make their workforcecapable to continue working, so
(07:07):
they rolled out their serviceswithout any plan, and then as a
result they created a lot ofchaos, a lot of sprawl, clutter
that nobody really took care of.
Things got created, nobody tookcare of who owns it, who's in
charge, who has access, what'sinside, what data is shared with
(07:28):
whom internally, externally, andso on. And with AI we see now
exactly the same thingshappening. Everybody is trying
to very quickly adopt it becausethey feel like, okay, we cannot
miss that bus because we mightlose our ability to remain
competitive on the market, so weneed to leverage AI. So we are
starting to build agents, buildour own applications with LMS in
(07:52):
the background and so on, andthen we face the same problems.
Now it's not team sprawl, thenit's agent sprawl eventually,
that suddenly people startcreating AI enabled solutions,
agents, and then again, whocreates it, who owns it, who has
access to it, which data does ithave access to, what happens
(08:14):
throughout this lifecycle, howdoes the risk also change?
Maybe on day one when you createan agent maybe only a handful of
people have access, and there'slimited knowledge behind that
agent, and then throughout thelife cycle more people are
added, then suddenly the riskprofile is changing, and if
you're not governing that AIenabled resource, then you might
(08:39):
run into data loss, into dataprivacy issues, and general also
IT operations issues that datamight be exposed.
Anthony Carrano (08:51):
I've got and you just opened up. I've got a
lot of questions now.
Matt Einig (08:57):
Go ahead.
Anthony Carrano (08:58):
So as you've kinda, you know, stepped in in
the sit with the with the AIgovernance, what's been one of
them in a without, obviously,you know, sharing, you the the
customers' names and revealingtheir identities, but who like,
some of the most creative waysin which they've are utilizing
AI and how their governancesolutions had to, you know, you
(09:21):
know, protect them and keep, youknow, the right boundaries and
things in place so they cancontinue to leverage that
creativity to, you know, givethemselves an advantage and grow
their business.
Matt Einig (09:31):
Yeah. I think creative ways. Well Or or maybe
the most creative
Anthony Carrano (09:36):
instance where you've seen a company using
using AI that you've had to comein and provide your governance
solution.
Matt Einig (09:44):
Yeah, so I can only tell things from what customers
are telling us because we arenot ourselves looking at the
data. It's all encrypted andonly accessible for the
customer, so we kind of say likewhat did you do there? This is
crazy. This is not happening, sowe're not consulting here. This
(10:06):
is where our partners come in,but we are providing the
solution for discovery, forimplementing policies, for
managing, automating, also themanagement at scale, but what we
see, there are quite somedifferent approaches, and some
companies are more having thisWild West approach where they
basically open up the platformfor everyone, and then people
(10:27):
start building things, similarlike with Power Platform also.
People just start building appsand flows and whatever, and it's
sometimes amazing what comes outof it, but then I think the
crazy things that happen that,for example, people build an
agent and expose that agentpublicly with company data, and
(10:52):
nobody's aware of that, and thensuddenly you are basically
having an open door into yourcompany data, and other people
are adding data and knowledge,and totally unaware that this is
actually a public accessiblecomponent, and of course there's
a lot of risk, and there's a bigmoment when they suddenly
(11:16):
realize, okay, what are we doinghere actually? Okay, we need to
put some guardrails in. But someapproaches are, I would say,
questionable, and others aremore from the other perspective.
They lock everything down andrather don't want to allow
(11:36):
anything, and have a very, verytargeted, structured approach,
but that then of course slowsadoption, then it's harder to
justify the ROI, to see the ROIand justify the investment into
it. So it all has its pros andcons if you like.
Anthony Carrano (11:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Now what because obviously, I know
you you do business globally.
Matt Einig (12:00):
Yes.
Anthony Carrano (12:00):
What have you seen or have you seen, you know,
different parts of the world,how, like, people are
approaching implementation withAI differently and just
situations that you have to stepthat you have to step into?
Matt Einig (12:15):
Yeah. Definitely. There's quite some AI
difference. In particular, ifyou look at North America and
Europe, or even more if you lookinto Germany I think Germany is
the prime example ofcautiousness in that case so
here in Western Europe it's morelike, okay, governance is
(12:38):
basically a necessity to evenget started to build something
on AI, and they're really,really careful that things could
go wrong, so rather not do itbefore they go wrong. I think
the North American approach ismore like, Okay, let's break
some eggs and then fix it later,so let's get started, and we
(13:02):
need to adopt and we need toshow that this actually can help
us to make a leap forward in ourbusiness, in our efficiency and
whatever, and if there is anissue, then we'll fix it at a
step labour.
I think from our perspectiveit's also in our go to market a
quite different approach. Herein Western Europe we are more
(13:24):
like, okay, we are the enablerand help you to prevent bad
things from happening, and inNorth America it's more like,
okay, are the ones who help youto rein in that chaos and get
some control and guardrailsaround it.
Anthony Carrano (13:43):
What are and without maybe giving up too much
of the secret sauce, what arejust for companies that are
looking, you know, that need tohave governance and they realize
they've implemented it. What aresome, you know, just some
suggestions that you would havefor companies to avoid maybe
(14:05):
some really catastrophicpitfalls as they're implementing
AI across their enterprise?
Matt Einig (14:11):
Yeah, I think a general pitfall is always with
any of these new tools in theiradoption, you just let people do
things and don't give them anyguidance or training or
whatever, because then theymight invest a lot of time also
without any value getting out ofit, so one part where basically
(14:34):
wasting money, or you get a lotof things created that you might
need to shut down later becauseyou actually didn't want that to
happen. So I think having someplan at least doesn't need to be
in super detail, but having someplan is certainly something that
you should think of before youstart enabling things. Maybe,
(14:55):
okay, if you're still in a POCstage that's a different thing.
Maybe then you play more aroundwith it. And then if you take
that analogy to how Teamsrollout was also, when everyone
can just create Teams, then theywill create Teams, and then they
are there, and then they forgetabout it, and then these things
(15:18):
are left behind, and then nobodyknows do we still need that, and
What do we do with that, and isthat actually used anywhere, and
what's with the data inside, andcan we delete it?
If we delete it, does anythingbreak? Do we lose anything
important? The same thing ishappening on the AI part as
well. You have to think aboutthe life cycle of what's
(15:40):
happening and also how youmanage that life cycle, because
from a business perspective,when you are someone in an
organisation who has a need,well, they want to solve that
need somehow. Build something,they create something, a
resource, whatever, but as soonas that need is gone, they will
(16:01):
just forget about it.
They will just leave it behind.Nobody's ever cleaning up after
themselves. If a project isended, if, I don't know,
strategy is changing andsuddenly this is no longer
relevant, then these things areleft behind, and for that, some
proper lifecycle management is asuper important part, and this
(16:22):
is also what we address andwhere we come in, so that you
not only manage creation and whocreates and who has access and
so on, but also manage the lifecycle and identify what's no
longer used. Can we clean thatup? Who is deciding on that?
And so on. One of the corevalues that we provide also with
(16:43):
our solution, no matter if it'sAI or anything else that we
support, is that you delegatethat decision out to the
organization again. So if youare in an IT department of a
100,000 employee company, thenit's impossible for you to
decide on any of those resourcesif it's needed or not. So you
(17:07):
need to have a process todelegate that out to the
organization as it scales andlet the business users do the
decision, or if they don't takethe decision, have more the opt
in approach. So you say, Okay,if you don't say I need this,
then we will remove it, and thenyou basically have the same
(17:30):
result at the end that you keepthings clean and in order to
avoid that chaos.
Anthony Carrano (17:37):
Excellent. I know I wanna get to the the
collaboration governance partnerstory. But before I do, last
question from the AI is is forfolks that are listening, who's
the ideal customer for thissolution, and who's the what do
you look for as an ideal partnerfor this?
Matt Einig (17:57):
So in general, so no matter if it's now AI governance
or collaboration governance orpower platform governance,
Eventually the problems areeverywhere. It doesn't matter if
you are a 50 people company or a200,000 people company, you have
all those problems. We have theproblems ourselves and our
organization. But we learnedthat they become really painful
(18:20):
usually when the company is acertain size, so usually our
customers are a thousandemployees and above, and
eventually the bigger they get,the bigger the problem is also,
because then you can no longermanage it with point solutions
only focusing on a single bit,let's say just provisioning or
just access management or so on.You have to address that problem
(18:45):
in a more holistic way, and youcan also not DIY yourself out of
it, build a PowerShell scripthere, or I don't know, use the
admin center of x service teamsor Power Platform or whatever.
So for us, our ideal customerprofile is actually the larger
(19:07):
that they can get. Our biggestcustomer at the moment is
actually a US customer, has aquarter million employees in
that tenant, so it's reallylarge scale, or we have also
customers like Amgen orHoneywell, so that size of
customers have real pain therein those areas because I think
(19:28):
one of the core parts of thatproblem is that the problem is
never solved, because in anorganization, especially the
bigger it gets, is constantlychanging. There's constantly
people coming and leaving,There's constantly
reorganization. There are M andAs. There are carve outs.
There are projects that startand end and so on. So there's
constantly new data and chaosalways creating, and cleaning
(19:54):
that up manually is just animpossible task. So you have to
define standards, policies, andautomated remediation of those
policy violations, and this canonly be accomplished with a
technical solution.
Anthony Carrano (20:11):
That's
Matt Einig (20:11):
fantastic. Partners was the second question, sorry.
Partners, so we have basicallyclassical solution integrators
or consultancies who go tocustomers, who do workshops, who
sell their services, consult thecustomer in identifying what
(20:32):
their challenges are, ourproduct also, but maybe also
providing additional servicesout of it, so usually partners
start then maybe, okay, let'sstart with maybe Teams and
SharePoint, and then we expand,okay, let's govern our
enterprise applications inEntra, or let's look what we
have in Vivend Engage andimplement provisioning. So it's
(20:54):
a phased rollout often thatyou're not overwhelming
everyone. First it's maybe justinsights, and then based on the
insights you build your policiesand your automations.
So this is an ongoing business,and there's also a lot of
reproducibility for a partner,because our software itself has
multi tenant capabilities, andit's also built in a way that
(21:17):
you, for example, can build agovernance framework, a set of
policies, and export them, andthen import them for another
customer, so you can reuse thework you have done already for
one customer, increasing themargin of the partner, and also
providing better value to thecustomer at the end. And then
another type of partner is oftenan MSP, so managed service
(21:42):
providers who just incorporategovernance as part of their
service offering operating M365,so implementing those policies
helps them to deliver theirservice more efficiently,
consistently, across multiplecustomers. That's what MSPs is
all about (21:59):
high efficiency and standardization across multiple
customers, so this is where wehelp as well. Then of course
there are also other types ofpartners that we work with,
where there are value addedresellers and so on, but
different approach, I think, andalso different kind of target
customer that they approach. Sothe SIs are often more on the
(22:24):
lower end, the smallerorganizations, because those
organizations have usually lessinternal expertise and they need
some helping hand, whereas thelarger organization then it's
more like a bigger project andthere are different types of
partners usually that areworking with them.
Anthony Carrano (22:43):
Well, that's fantastic. Well, I really
appreciate you expounding andsharing about the AI piece. Now
I do want to get to the partnerstory.
Matt Einig (22:54):
Yeah. Go ahead.
Anthony Carrano (22:56):
In the story we're about to tell in this
Partner Showcase, tell us alittle bit about the client. We
don't have to reveal their nameor any of those pertinent
details. Share maybe a littlebit about some of the challenges
they were facing.
Matt Einig (23:11):
This particular case, this was a company in the
food and beverage industry,about 10,000 employees roughly,
and this is all aboutcollaboration, so the classic
M365, Teams, SharePoint,OneDrive, and they had actually
what I talked about a littlebit, they had this Wild West
(23:31):
approach, so they really whenthe pandemic hit, they rolled
out Teams, They didn't have anyreal rollout plan, so everyone
was creating Teams and sharingon SharePoint and they were on
premises before, so suddenlythey faced a lot of chaos. They
really, really figured, okay, wehave actually more teams than
(23:54):
employees. We so much data thatis also duplicated in multiple
places and abandoned resourcesthat nobody knew are they still
relevant or not. So there was alot of chaos, lack of structure,
and that was basically wherethey started. I realised, okay,
(24:16):
first of all we need to get thecurrent situation under control,
so we need to do some cleanupand implement some guidelines
and structure.
And second, we want to make surethat it's no longer happening
again, that this whole chaos isnot recreated. So first of all,
well, they implemented oursolution initially to get the
(24:40):
insights. What's actually goingon? Were lacking already the
insights. One of the coreproblems with Microsoft three
sixty five is that all the datais in silos.
So if you, I don't know, I thinkMicrosoft has about 150 admin
centers in the Microsoft cloud.So Teams is their own admin
(25:01):
center, SharePoint is an admincenter, Power Platform is an
admin center. So there's noconnection. Of course, it's all
connected, the data, but there'sno connection apparent, so it's
very hard to see how things areactually connected. If I look
for you, Anthony, then I cannotsee, okay, which SharePoint
sites do you own, which apps doyou own, which flows to your
(25:23):
own, and so on.
This is the first step that theydid with our software. We create
a massive inventory ofeverything and connect
everything together and allowthem to build reports and
dashboards on that to basicallysee, okay, what's going on? And
based on that, they couldalready identify, okay, there's
unused SharePoint sites that wecould archive, so we can save
(25:47):
also additional storage costs.There are unused licenses. There
are over licensed users who havemaybe an E3 and an E5 which is
overlapping, or things likethat.
So they could already initiallygain a lot of value out of it in
the cleanup process, and then inthe next step, in order to avoid
(26:08):
that clutter from happeningagain, first implemented
policies in order to structurethings, so policies like
redundant ownership of resourcesso that you don't have any
orphaned teams, for example.Whenever our tool finds a team
that has no or only one owner,inform someone, maybe the
(26:31):
remaining owner or someone else,to appoint a second one or IT to
decide should we still keep thisor should we remove it.
Implementing those policies andautomating the processes, that
was the next step. Then theyimplemented a provisioning
process, so standardizedtemplates. What type of teams,
(26:53):
what type of chatbot sites do wewant to actually offer to our
organization?
So they standardize templates,let's say a project template, an
onboarding template, adepartment template, and so on,
making sure that the sensitivitylabels are set correctly, naming
conventions are implemented, andso on, and then they offer those
(27:17):
through our Teams app instead ofthe standard experience that you
can just create the resourceyourself, or Teamify your
SharePoint site, and so on. Sotaking away the standard
approach from Microsoft andputting a more structured
approach on Hub where they cancontrol who sees which
templates, or not every templateis relevant for everyone. Maybe
(27:39):
let's say an onboarding teamtemplate is only available for
HR members, so you can applythose to specific security
groups. So building out thatpart. Then as a next step, it
was also implementing accessreviews, so automating the
process that, for example,resources that are shared with
(28:01):
external files that have maybeexternal sharing and the
external hasn't accepted thesharing invite to clean that up,
to delegate to the owners of theresources to perform a regular
access review.
For a Power App, for example,does everyone still require
(28:22):
access to that once per quarter,once per year, depending on the
criticality of the app, or forSharePoint site, similar way.
And this is one step further.And then step by step, they
basically replaced also custombuilt components like PowerShell
scripts or flows that they'vebuilt and used our solution for
(28:46):
that. Sometimes they maybe putthe existing script into an
Azure function and we justtrigger it so they didn't have
to re implement everything, ifit was something more complex
that was maybe talking to someother LOB systems, or we could
just rebuild this entirely inthe governance platform. So
quite a lot of things thathappened.
(29:09):
They didn't happen all at once,but this was like a phased
rollout over several months.They are now our customer for a
little over three years, soquite a while already, and they
went step by step, and they useda partner of ours to actually
(29:30):
guide them through this journey,because they didn't have the
resources themselves. Also, hadalready a relationship to that
partner before, so that was ajoint success for all of us,
because the partner could expandtheir business. They offered now
governance services. They werealso due to this, and we could
(29:52):
together succeed with thecustomer on that journey.
Anthony Carrano (29:56):
Okay, so this was the situation, this was your
partner's customer and theybrought you guys in, brought
Rinkor in?
Matt Einig (30:03):
Yeah, I think now actually the customer reached
out to us, so they were activelylooking for a solution. They
reached out to us and found us,but we had already a
relationship to the partner inthe past, not with a specific
customer, so it was acoincidence in this case. And
then we brought in the partnerand said, You are there already.
(30:26):
They were in a differentdepartment. How about we join
forces here and help thecustomer as they had already,
also their trust relationship tothe customer, so that was a win
win for everyone.
We don't provide servicesourselves, so we always do that
together with partners. If thecustomer requires services, that
is for us, of course, a bigbenefit as well, that we have
(30:49):
somebody on the ground that cando the handholding and guide the
customer through their journey.
Anthony Carrano (30:54):
So what was your criteria now? I know you
mentioned you had a priorrelationship with that
particular partner, but I knowyou work with a lot of partners.
Matt Einig (31:02):
So what
Anthony Carrano (31:03):
would friend for this, you know,
particularly, you know, big, youknow, project, what was your
criteria for selecting apartner, you know, for this
client?
Matt Einig (31:12):
This specific partner is more a boutique
consultancy, so rather small,like less than 10 employees. So
they're very focused on M365consulting, and they had a very
high level of expertise, I wouldsay, and of course also a
(31:33):
criteria for us in this specificcase that there was already a
relationship also to thecustomer, so it's of course
always easier to bring somebodyalong when a customer has
already some experience with. Itdepends very much on the
customer, but in this case thiswas a no brainer that we bring
them in and work together onthat deal. In other occasions we
(31:56):
sometimes propose a partner tothe customer and say, Hey, there
is this partner. We have donealready two, three projects with
them together.
We had a good success with them.They bring the experience in our
solution also and in governance.How about you two have a talk
with each other if you're a fit?And if they don't think like it,
(32:17):
we're not forcing of course thecustomer. Sometimes also the
customer says, hey, we havealready a solution provider who
we work with, who is alreadyunder contract.
That's actually much easier forus. They might have not a
relationship with us yet, butfor the customer it's easier
because they can just send outanother SOW and say, okay, let's
(32:41):
do this also, instead of havingto do the whole contractual
part, let often the customeractually guide us. So it depends
very much from where thisrelationship is triggered. It
can be also coming from thepartner itself, of course.
Anthony Carrano (32:58):
Now with a project like this, this is
something I think you mentioned,if I heard correctly, took over
several years, process. How doyou measure success? Or I should
say, how does the customermeasure success with something
like
Matt Einig (33:16):
this? So initially so what we try also, when we do
our direct engagement, so it'snot always that a partner is
involved. Many customers havetheir own resources, and of
course we want to be successfulwith those customers as well.
Usually with our own customersuccess team, at the beginning
(33:37):
when we start the rollout withcustomers, we define success
criteria with them, and alsodefine some kind of a roadmap,
and that doesn't have to beyears. It can be also months
only, depends on what thecustomer is trying to achieve
and also what resources theywant to invest.
Usually we focus on quick winsin the first step, so what is
(34:00):
really currently a pain? Wheredo you currently have a problem
that we need to address, wherewe can maybe support you? Maybe
a process that needs to beautomated, maybe an incident
that needs to be resolved, andwe want to make sure that such
an incident is no longerhappening in the future, so
finding something very currentthat is creating an immediate
ROI for the customer (34:26):
Okay, this really helped us. In this
particular case it was costs, sothey identified very quickly:
Okay, we have over licensing,we're paying a lot of money in
storage to Microsoft foradditional SharePoint storage,
so identifying what can becleaned up gave them a very
(34:48):
quick ROI, and that course ROIis a good measure for success,
of course. But it depends verymuch.
What we recommend oftencustomers also, especially the
larger ones, the bigger theyget. There are so many
stakeholders usually that oftenthey have people for each
(35:12):
individual Microsoft services,they have multiple people, and
then we try to split it up andseparate it and have separate
streams and say, 'Teams' team,what is the pay that you need to
solve?' and don't know, 'entrateam' what can we do for you? We
have individual success criteriaand then they fuel each other in
(35:33):
the organization as well. Itgives you also a much better
visibility what's going on.
Anthony Carrano (35:38):
That's awesome. Obviously this project was a big
success. What were some of thechallenges that you had during
the engagement?
Matt Einig (35:48):
Well, there are always challenges, of course. In
this particular case, guess, oneokay, was a European customer,
so they were hesitant at first,as I would say, so they wanted
to start in a test environmentfirst and really had this very
(36:10):
cautious approach like, okay, wedon't want to let a new tool
onto our production environment,and it might do whatever we
don't know and cause a lot ofharm or whatever, so they used a
test environment that had astaging M365 tenant with data in
(36:32):
it, and they started building upon that, and then they rolled it
up on the productionenvironment. This is actually
not such an uncommon approachthat there is a staging
environment. We also providestaging environments to our
enterprise customers, we havethe ability that you can build
your policies, reportdashboards, test them out, your
automations, and then you canexport them and import them to
(36:54):
another environment. That helpsyou also to make sure that not
suddenly accidentally yourentire organization gets an
email that they were notsupposed to be getting only
because you did a mistake inyour automation.
So I think this is a sensibleapproach in general. But also
the way our solution is built,as we are aware that customers
(37:16):
are worrying that a new toolthat is rolled out might cause a
lot of harm unintentionally, theway we have built our solution
is that you do not have to giveus full access from the start.
So we have a very granularpermission model where you can
grant in the initial step readonly permissions to our
(37:40):
solution, maybe even only forindividual services, and once
you start adopting it step bystep, then you gain insights and
you realize, okay, there'ssomething we need to do, then
you can add additionalpermissions, say, okay, now I
want to do an automation onSharePoint, okay, now I give you
full control on SharePoint, oh,now I want to maybe deactivate
(38:03):
users, okay, I give youpermission on M365 user or
Entra, and so on. So we havethis ability that also
differentiates us from any othersolution on the market, that you
can have a very structuredphased rollout where you can
(38:23):
mitigate that risk that due tosome user error maybe you cause
havoc unintentionally, and thatgives a lot of trust.
But this specific example, wherea customer was very cautious,
okay, let's test this out first,and then let's try this, and
then before we let this onto thelive environment.
Anthony Carrano (38:46):
Now, based on this partner experience, did
this engagement increasecustomer satisfaction and or
grow revenue for the customer?
Matt Einig (39:02):
I cannot really claim, I believe, grow revenue.
I think this is very hard tomeasure because, well, of course
you could argue an efficiencygain in the organization due to
de cluttering the environmentcan make customer make it easier
for the customer to make money,but I think it's a really tough
(39:26):
sell to correlate more revenueto cleaner M365 and standardized
processes. You can do that, ofcourse, but
Anthony Carrano (39:38):
There's it's probably a big impact on
employee satisfaction andexperience, I
Matt Einig (39:46):
would imagine. That's definitely. Of course,
end users can find data easier.They are less confused with all
the different teams, they have aclear process how to create what
they need, so definitely thishas an impact. But it's
extremely hard to measure it,that's what I'm saying.
It's really hard to measure,okay, you saved five minutes a
(40:09):
day because we have a cleanenvironment. You can claim that,
and anyone can claim that, butnobody can ever prove that
really, that this is correlateddirectly to implementing that.
Where you can prove something iscost savings, so you can
measure, okay, we spend lessmoney in licenses, we spend less
(40:33):
money in storage, we may be moreefficient in IT, like we have
more time for other things thancleaning up the mess of our end
users, because we can actuallyautomate these processes, we can
focus on the fun part and not onthe annoying part basically,
(40:54):
maybe less you can measure maybeless support tickets, things
like that. This is somethingthat you can measure certainly,
and where we can make an impact.And then of course on the
security posture also, okay, wehave better control of our data,
we have cleaned up unnecessaryaccess, we have cleaned up
(41:14):
external access that was nolonger required, these kind of
things that you can alsomeasure.
All of that contributes somehowto a more efficient and
hopefully more successfulcompany at the end. Putting a
number and dollars on it is, Iwould say, a little bit of a
(41:34):
stretch or a hard hard to
Anthony Carrano (41:37):
sounds like there's there's a lot of there's
a lot of really great benefit,you know, to to this, especially
we're seeing at the with I knowyou've talked a lot about, like,
with large companies. What's isthere do companies need to be a
certain size to get the most useout of these these governance
modules?
Matt Einig (42:00):
In general, the problems or the challenges that
we address play everywhere. Nomatter how big the company is,
you have these challenges atsome point. But I would say up
to a certain size you can stillignore them. I don't know if you
have a 500 people company, forexample, well, some of these
(42:21):
things you can just ignore, oryou can solve them by writing a
PowerShell script and runningthat once per month and getting
the report out of it, or youcan, I don't know, buy a point
solution just for provisioningor things like that? So you can
get your way around in the smallorganization, but we learned
(42:42):
that when a company goes beyond,let's say, a thousand employees,
then this becomes not feasibleanymore.
You need a more holisticapproach. You really need to
think of it from the start tothe end. What happens from
creation of a resource to thedeletion or archiving of
(43:02):
resource, and how do you managethat process and scale also that
process as these organisationsare constantly changing, and the
bigger they get, the more changeis in the organisation. If
Anthony is leaving the company,what happens to all the data
that you own? The things in yourOneDrive, the apps that you have
created, the teams that you own,what happens to all of that?
(43:24):
The bigger the company gets, themore often that happens, and the
more you need an automated,scalable approach in order to
resolve these kind ofchallenges.
Anthony Carrano (43:36):
Now I've got two more questions, Matt. First
is like, so from this partnerexperience, this larger food and
beverage company, what did youall, Remcor, learn that enabled
your company to improve?
Matt Einig (43:58):
With every customer that we actually work with,
well, every customer has thesame problems, but there are
always nuances to each problem.So especially the larger
enterprises, they have sometimesvery weird things that they have
going on, like, I don't know,not using actual users but
(44:19):
creating internal accounts andjust naming them external or
things like that. Like, whereyou think like, okay, why don't
you use what Microsoft hasrecommended? And then suddenly
you realize, okay, we have tocover that use case as well
somehow. This is not how weexpected it to be, but some
customers deal it that way, orthere are customers who are
(44:43):
never deleting user accounts.
They always stay behind, andthey keep them forever
apparently, so they have moredeactivated users than actual
users and things like that, andthen you learn, Okay, this could
be a new policy. This could besomething that we can add to the
product for future customers togain value out of that, because
(45:06):
they might have the sameproblem. So this is an iterative
process, and one of the coolthings about our solution is
that it's basically a platform,and anything like a policy, a
report, an automation, adashboard, an access view this
is all just content in ourplatform. So it's very easy to
(45:26):
add additional policies. You cancreate hundreds of policies with
every individual Nuance that youwant to build, and that allows
us very quickly to add new valuefor future customers, or also
existing customers, and alsopartners can build their own
governance framework.
They can build their own set ofpolicies of their learnings and
(45:48):
then sell that to theircustomers. So there's a lot to
be gained, and the flexibilityof that platform allows us to
adapt very quickly on thosequite different demands.
Anthony Carrano (46:05):
Now, Niasus, in closing, what advice would you
give to companies like yoursregarding partnering?
Matt Einig (46:13):
Well, think, so I've been in the Microsoft business
for twelve years and we had ourfair share of partnership
experience, I would say. So wehad successful partnerships, we
had unsuccessful partnerships,we had real partnership
failures. So I think initiallyto start a successful
(46:36):
partnership everyone needs to bealigned in finding a relatively
quick success story, so findingrelatively quick a common way of
making together business,because interest at the partner
and also at a vendor in apartnership degrades the longer
(46:59):
it takes to actually getsomething new. It's natural, of
course, because if you are apartner, let's say you are a
consultancy, and you have agreat partnership with Rancor
and announce that and so on, andthen no customer is there, and
then you invest time in tryingto gain customers, and then you
don't get the interest, then atsome point you dial back your
(47:20):
efforts, and then when you dialback your efforts then you will
not really get that successresult, and then it degrades,
then the partnership fails.Similar for us, of course, and I
think this is an honestadmission that every vendor
needs to do well, a partnershipthat lasts a year with an own
business to be made and no realprospect also of a business to
(47:42):
be made, well, then you need toprioritize where the business is
to be made.
So finding initial traction isactually the fuel for a
successful partnership. Initialtraction, let it be something
small, doesn't really matter,and we go the extra mile there
(48:04):
also. We help the partner, webring our solution engineer in
and help them when they are notenabled yet maybe to close that
deal, but that gives them thejustification to invest more,
because well then they have thefirst customer, they can build
services around it, they learnwith it, that they can repeat
(48:24):
doing that and resell it to thenext customer, so then you gain
traction. But if things take toolong or if they're only half
hearted, yeah, okay, we put yourlogo on our website and you put
ours on your website, then thiswill eventually fail, and we
want to focus on successfulpartners, and there's no hard
(48:47):
feelings to be honest, so thisis just business. At the end we
want to do business, the partnerwants to do business, we want to
do business, and the customerwants their problem solved.
If you don't find a customer whowants their problem solved, then
it's hard to make businesstogether. So you just have to be
honest in that partnership also,and to each other also.
(49:09):
Otherwise, this is bound tofail.
Anthony Carrano (49:11):
Mhmm. That's fantastic advice. I can tell
you, in all the episodes thatwe've done so far, that that was
a unique piece of advice. I'lljust leave it at that. That that
was great.
And I love it. I love it. That'sgreat because at the end of the
day, it's I mean, you're notpartnering. I mean, just to, you
(49:31):
know, to to partnering just tokinda get along and have kicks
and giggles. Yeah.
You you want to create in comingtogether to create, you know, a
unique value, you know, to solvea customer's, you know, problem,
And it's it's finding thoseearly wins and getting that
initial traction. That that wasjust fantastic. Really
appreciate you sharing that.Very on point. Well, so how how
(49:54):
do folks, you know, find out,you know, more about you and how
can they connect?
Matt Einig (50:00):
Well, you can go to our website, franco dot com. So
everything you want to know,will find there. You can reach
out to us. We have a partnerpage where you can contact us if
you want to become a partner. Wehave dedicated partner account
managers who work with you, whoenable you, who help you to
(50:21):
build also your offerings aroundit.
So the offerings are we havestandard offerings that you can
get white labeled from us,basically, that you can slam
your logo on and get started andshow it around and see what
sticks, but you can put yoursecret sauce into it as well,
and we advise you on that. Sothat's one way to reach out, and
(50:43):
then of course we are atconferences. So next one is I
think May in Las Vegas is theM365 conference, so just come by
our booth there, talk to myguys, they will tell you all
about it, about our solution,what we can do for you, how we
(51:05):
can do business in Europe. Wewill be at the European
Collaboration Summit May, I willbe at the Gartner Summit in
London in May if you want tomeet me personally. I will be in
San Francisco next month ifanyone wants to have a drink
with me.
So just reach out. Reach out onLinkedIn. Any any channel is
(51:29):
fine with us.
Anthony Carrano (51:30):
Excellent. And I'll include any of those kind
of relevant links in the shownotes, you know, as well. Well,
Matt, thank you. This was a lotof fun. Really appreciate your
time.
Matt Einig (51:41):
Thanks very much for having me, Anthony. Same here.
Anthony Carrano (51:44):
All right. Have a great day. All right. Before
we rock back, let's hit on a fewstandout insights from today's
conversation. First, asorganizations scale, it's clear
that the old way of doing thingsjust doesn't cut it anymore.
Managing collaboration, AI, anddigital workplaces really
demands a modern, automatedapproach to governance. Relying
(52:06):
on manual processes or ad hoctools leads to all sorts of
challenges from data sprawl tosecurity risk. Second, quick
wins and strong partnerrelationships are absolutely
essential. When teams focus onearly visible successes like
saving time, cutting costs, orautomating routine work, it not
only builds trust but also getseveryone excited for what's
(52:29):
next. That early momentum goes along way toward building lasting
partnerships and delivering realvalue.
And third, we heard thatadaptability is non negotiable.
Every organization is a littledifferent, so governance
solutions need to flex andevolve, and that the best
outcomes come from learning,adapting, continuously improving
(52:49):
as new challenges pop up. Ireally want to thank Matt.
Appreciate him taking time hereon our podcast today. I thought
there was a lot of fantasticinsights.
I want to thank you all, ouraudience, for joining us on this
episode of IMCP Profiles andPartnership powered by Dynamics
Marketing. We hope you enjoyedthis podcast and find it useful
and inspiring. If you did,please subscribe, rate, and
(53:10):
review us on your favoritepodcast platform. One of the
best ways to partner for successis to join IMCP, a community of
Microsoft partners who help eachother grow and thrive. IMCP
members can find and connectwith other partners locally and
globally and access exclusiveresources and opportunities.
So whether you're looking fornew customers, new markets, or
(53:31):
new solutions, IMCP can help youachieve your goals. To learn
more, visit the website atwww.iamcp.org.
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