ACP
ACP Doubles Revenue with New Marketplace
IT and managed services leader automates its reseller program, offering a consistent portfolio across all subsidiaries
Challenge
ACP is one of Europe's most innovative IT and managed services providers. It is a leading source for customized, end-to-end solutions for companies, government agencies, and organizations of all sizes, delivering a vast 360° IT portfolio.
ACP Group’s localized subsidiaries each operate as their own business and profit center. While this structure is a source of constant innovation and knowledge sharing, it led to challenges in selling Microsoft cloud services and delivering consistent support for customers.
Solution
ACP needed a platform and marketplace that would unify its catalog of as-a-service solutions across its subsidiaries and locations. The intent was for subsidiaries to act as resellers of both external, third-party solutions such as Microsoft 365 as well as ACP-developed offerings from individual subsidiaries.
ACP also recognized that to scale its as-as-service business, it needed a solution that offers a high level of automation, including all the processes around onboarding products and ISVs, billing, customer management, and more. Once ACP decided to partner with AppDirect, the migration to the new platform and creation of the marketplace happened in record time.
The same can-do approach from the AppDirect team later helped ACP prepare for a major change to the Microsoft Cloud Service Provider program called Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE). Through close collaboration, ACP was able to use functionality within the marketplace platform to ensure readiness and enable new features, including new contractual agreements, licensing and subscription options, pricing and promotions.
“We had estimated that it would take 12 months to migrate all of our data, customers, and products to AppDirect.Thanks to the AppDirect team, the migration was completed in six months. In my career, I’ve never seen anything like this. It was amazing.”
Tony Wehrstein, Strategic Business Development Manager at ACP
Results
Today ACP has 1,500 customers and counting using its marketplace and 500 products listed in its unified catalog. ACP now has the ability to offer one package to the customer that combines products and services into a single solution. In the first year after the marketplace went live, ACP doubled its revenue for as-a-service products with revenue expected to double again in the coming year.
“We quickly achieved an excellent conversion rate and now have more than one-third of our customers on board with at least one NCE service."
Julian Klima, Licensing Administration Lead at ACP
The introduction of NCE to ACP customers went extremely well, driven by the combination of a comprehensive communication strategy to inform ACP customers about the changes and the readiness of the marketplace to handle the new program.
Going forward, the unified catalog, bundling flexibility, and features that support NCE will help ACP attract larger companies than its traditional small and medium-sized customer base.
