beqom co-sell success

Compensation management provider beqom accelerates success in new regions and with new customers through co-selling with Microsoft.

Co-selling helps beqom access new regions and win new enterprise customers

Collaborating with Microsoft helps beqom accelerate success in Latin America and Turkey and leads to wins with DPDHL and Capgemini.

Early success

Microsoft and beqom collaborate for a series of wins in the telco industry.

Enterprise wins

Co-selling leads to wins with customers like DPDHL and Capgemini.

Future plans

beqom explores generating more revenue faster through co-innovation.

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A history of collaboration

According to Stephan Pohl, global compensation management solution provider beqom has a long history of collaborating with Microsoft. “Our collaboration with Microsoft really goes back to 2009, when we were still selling on-premises solutions,” said Pohl, who is beqom’s Chief Operating Officer. “When we first started, we knew that it was important to work closely together with Microsoft because it would increase awareness of our business and give us much better access to larger accounts.”

The first joint successes that Swiss-headquartered beqom achieved with Microsoft were in the telecommunications industry. “One larger deal that we won jointly in the very beginning was Turkcell, one of the largest telco operators in Turkey,” Pohl said. “It was a big sales performance management project for over 30,000 dealers in Turkey, and the lead came through a Microsoft account manager who had heard about us. We provided solution expertise with our presales experts and executive support from our side, whilst the account was managed by Microsoft in Turkey. After this, we were able to attract Vodafone, Swisscom, Telecom Italia, and other big players in this industry together, hand-in-hand with Microsoft in these accounts.”

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Accelerating success in new regions

Current beqom co-sell activities with Microsoft occur on a variety of levels, Pohl said. “What we do on a local basis with the countries are joint account planning sessions, initiated with web briefings first; then we try to get more specific. We go through Microsoft account plans and look at where we could position our solutions,” he said.

According to Pohl, the benefits of co-selling with Microsoft have been clear. “Collaborating and co-selling with Microsoft has helped us accelerate success in new regions and countries around the world, including in Latin America and Turkey, and has led to wins with enterprise customers like DPDHL and Capgemini,” he said.

Pohl elaborated on how collaborating with Microsoft sales teams helped beqom accelerate success in new regions. “We meet companies that have never heard of beqom, especially in countries where we are not present yet,” he said. “For instance, we had a case where we wanted to connect with a large retailer in Latin America, but we had no presence there. It took us literally 30 minutes to figure out via our account manager at Microsoft who the appropriate contact would be to get better access to that customer. It was the same with Turkcell in Turkey. We didn’t have any presence there. Turkey became a real beqom operation after the first successes we created with Microsoft.”

“Collaborating and co-selling with Microsoft has helped us accelerate success in new regions and countries around the world, including in Latin America and Turkey, and has led to wins with enterprise customers like DPDHL and Capgemini.”

–Stephan Pohl, Chief Operating Officer, beqom

Global compensation for Capgemini

One notable win that beqom achieved with the support of Microsoft was with Capgemini, a global consulting, technology, and outsourcing services company that has over 200,000 employees in over 40 countries. Capgemini was looking to address compensation, performance, and rewards needs across its complex, worldwide organization. The company needed a single, integrated, global compensation system that allowed them to centralize all processes and maintain flexibility at the local level.

To secure the win, Microsoft and beqom sales teams collaborated to address Capgemini’s scalability needs, cloud deployment concerns, and security standards. “Whenever we have security or compliance aspects that need to be validated, we get good support—including technical support—from Microsoft experts. That was also the case with Capgemini,” Pohl said.

One advantage beqom has when their sales teams go into meetings with Microsoft is that Microsoft itself is one of their largest clients. “Microsoft uses our solution to manage sales incentives internally. This of course helps us when we approach potential clients jointly,” Pohl said. “I think that when we go out with Microsoft account teams, it’s always good if Microsoft can say yes, we’re using beqom’s compensation management solution internally ourselves.”

Future opportunities

As a next step in their evolving sales process, Pohl said they are planning to organize meetings with executives of large global organizations at Microsoft’s Executive Briefing Center (EBC) at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, and elsewhere. “The first one is most likely to happen in Redmond, inviting prospects and existing customers to this EBC, and then extending this EBC to other locations here in Europe. We believe that it might be the most effective way to get larger organizations excited about what we did together successfully with Microsoft, showcasing the beqom solution and one of the largest and most complex projects in the industry.”

Pohl discussed future plans regarding beqom’s offering as well as upcoming opportunities with Microsoft. “When we look at our roadmap, we are continuously evolving from a total compensation platform covering all aspects of salary reviews, short- and long-term incentives, and sales incentives to a total rewards platform including flex benefits and all kinds of recognition and awards, no matter how you want to reward your people,” he said. “To accelerate that development, we are discussing co-innovation options with Microsoft. It’s clear the broader we make our portfolio, the more we offer to our clients.”

Pohl continued: “We’re discussing with Microsoft how we can generate more revenue faster together. This can be achieved through more joint go-to-market campaigns. This can also be achieved through co-innovation, be it creating packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or enhancing our Total Rewards Portfolio or joint investments into artificial intelligence and machine learning services in order to automate processes, provide a better user experience, or optimize compensation models. I think there’s a lot more potential.”

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