ISV Talks
ISV Talks
Expanding Your Microsoft Cloud Practice with xMonthly
In this episode of ISV Talks, Carol Livingston interviews Jeffrey DeMaria, founder of xMonthly, to explore how Microsoft and ERP partners can unlock new revenue streams and accelerate their cloud strategy. Learn how the Microsoft AI Cloud Tour helps partners rebrand and extend their services across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Discover how xMonthly’s Agent Services, licensing expertise, and Partner Center support can help you grow your business, protect client relationships, and lead the cloud conversation with confidence.
Ready to expand your Microsoft cloud practice? Reach out to xMonthly for a quote or get your branded Microsoft AI Cloud Tour embedded on your website and start onboarding clients today.
Well, welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Carol Livingston of Dynamics Connections and your host of ISV Talks. And on this episode, I have Jeffrey from X Monthly. Welcome, Jeffrey.
SPEAKER_02:Hey Carol, thank you so much for having me today.
SPEAKER_01:Great. I'm so glad to have you. And can you give us an introduction of yourself and your company and give us a little background?
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. Yes. So my name's Jeffrey DiMaria. I'm the founder of X Monthly. And as I was developing the business model for X Monthly, I've been thinking about this for many, many years. I bought the domain in 2014 when I was running a trial system, Rose ASP. We were a hosting provider for Dynamics GP. And we ran trials on Go Earp Cloud and X Monthly. We built nurture marketing campaigns and different resources, highlighted partners, provided apps and widgets for partners to add to their website. And I had an opportunity to work at the Stratus Cloud Alliance as the director of partner enablement, helping bring Business Central to market. Having been stewing on this idea for almost 10 years, I was like, wow, why don't we develop a whole trial system for the entire Microsoft stack? So that's one of the things that we developed. We developed nurture marketing campaigns for trial users and have created the ability to extend that capability off to our partners and their agents. So that's kind of a general concept of what X Monthly is able to do. We have deep, deep expertise in Microsoft cloud licensing. We have deep expertise in Partner Center. So we help partners take advantage of capabilities within Microsoft's own partner center as a service so that partners can access Microsoft Commerce incentives, be able to obtain their solution designations, and then through our app that we developed, and I can't wait to share, highlight agent capabilities. So those are our partners. We highlight their focus, their capabilities, and really bringing that partner-to-part motion into play in a nice systematic way.
SPEAKER_01:On the agent side, I know some partners have specialties, right? So they could become a referral partner to the agent community too, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. We're trying to build a home. Technology is moving insanely quickly. If you didn't know anything about AI and copilot two, three years ago, wow, it's the number one thing that's being talked about right now. So we're trying to help partners adapt and change and be able to offer the full Microsoft Cloud because it's not just ERP. It's M365, it's Power Platform, it's CRM, Dataverse, Azure, all the different elements within the Microsoft Cloud. That's a lot to learn.
SPEAKER_00:That's a lot.
SPEAKER_02:And our intent is when we're working with our partners and marketing their services to be able to pair them up so that a partner will be able to maintain, maintain control of that client relationship, the messaging that goes through with select capabilities that they're willing to provide and offer to their client base. Now that's why we're kind of focusing on lots of different ERP applications, Dynamics 365 finance operations, business central, even GP. GP integrates with Microsoft 365. If you're offering Dynamics GP and you're not having a cloud conversation with a client, here's a great way to start.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Get those cloud subscriptions going and help them in that journey, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yep. I mean, building a practice is difficult. It's expensive. So by us pairing up partners and delivering the full cloud experience, it helps reduce the risk with a trusted partner and it allows for rapid expansion of service offerings. That's important because let's just say one of your clients is getting M365 from an MSP. And that MSP gets convinced to market a solution that you don't support. There's a lot of risk there of losing that client when they're ready for migration. So we're trying to help solve and accelerate that cloud conversation for partners with their clients, providing them many of the best Microsoft resources, highlighting AI capabilities, and providing those nurture marketing campaigns to help clients learn about these solutions and engage.
SPEAKER_01:So it sounds like you're kind of a hub for Microsoft licensing, for Microsoft support services, for implementation. And it sounds like you do more than just licensing, right?
SPEAKER_02:We're trying to be an aggregator, right? So if you look at the history, let's let's take a look at like Priceline. Okay. You go to Priceline.com, booking, whatever you call it, and you want a flight. Well, now they offer they came out with auto and hotel and all those different pieces that provide an amazing experience for their clients so they can bundle all these services together. So X Monthly bringing in different products, different services, tries to provide a great experience for clients. And we're aggregating those capabilities and sharing those through our new Microsoft AI Cloud Tour, which is an amazing culmination of about a year's worth of work where we help provide product education, we offer trials, we offer supportive agents and their services to allow them to further understand the capabilities, bring that story to market, working with their clients.
SPEAKER_01:And you've been doing this for how long?
SPEAKER_02:I know the idea was kind of back there 10 years ago, but so November 10th is our one-year anniversary. It's the first business day since we really kind of announced that we're starting this program. I have a very unique background. When I was an undergrad, I got a bachelor's of science and biology, which really helped me learn ways of learning, ways of testing, trying things out. I had a bug to start a business outside of graduation. So this isn't my first business that I've ran. I had a bunch of success there. Enough to get into grad school, so MBA in marketing and finance, and really got into technology, websites, those capabilities. And through that, I've been able to help a couple cloud organizations grow their ARR or annual recurring revenue by$30 million a year.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. I did not know that.
SPEAKER_02:So I've been a partner person, a partner channel marketing, partner onboarding enablement expert, really walking in the shoes of partners and understanding what's important to their business. And if you're new to the Microsoft ecosystem, trying to understand Partner Center is a maze. What roles, what permissions, what programs, how do you get measured? If you're let's say an on-premise legacy partner and you're just getting into the cloud conversation, there's a lot of different pieces to pull together. So I've been able to help a lot of partners figure that out. And it's a service I truly love. It's it's one of the first engagements I do with partners. It's an easy way in to our ecosystem. And yeah, it allows to really provide some opportunities.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It's almost you do need a almost a full-time person internally to manage the partner center, right? With Microsoft because there's so many deadlines and requirements, and just to keep your partnership on not, and then there's opportunities, right? They have incentives. So yeah, definitely you've got some good experience to help kind of recognize some of those areas with partners. Probably don't have the time to investigate or research and get those things updated.
SPEAKER_02:One of the big things that I think partners should take advantage of right now, two things within Partners Center, just in general. If you were getting your legacy or gold benefits, right, those are those are pretty much gone, right? So leveraging the launch or core or extended benefits packs, that's a great way to run your business. It can help reduce a lot of your cost. Our goal is to help get partners to the solution designation status to unleash a whole bunch of additional IURs to run the business. Second thing is staying up to date with the changes. So right now, there's modern work and biz apps. Microsoft has hinted at AI business solutions.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So right now is the perfect time for partners to really engage in adding M365 to their practice that they're going to be measured together. They're going to be measured for partner success. And one tool is CPOR process. And that's the claiming partner of record process. There might be an MSP out there who has provided the M365 seats. Let's say that you go in with a security assessment or locking down your stuff for your clients. Well, that engagement there can help a partner increase adoption of M365 so that you can get credit for that. So you're best prepared to be able to achieve some of the qualifications that may or may not be happening in January. So that's that's that's just a general tip.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't know it seems like at the beginning of fiscal year 2026, right? They're combining those apps with modern workplace. So that new AI business solutions, right, is the new kind of organization and structure going forward. So that makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_02:Just trying to be prepared. Following Microsoft or even attending a lot of the different events, Inspire, Community Summit, these called WPC, Ignite. Our job, our role as partners is to find the gap, right? And when you go to these industry events, you identify, well, here's what Microsoft's doing, and this is where I fit. So trying to identify those gaps is critical for a partner. I love it. I had a call with a partner this week. Again, thanks for the introduction. They're a manufacturing expert, right? Microsoft has built this amazing ERP application, business central, SCM, whatever, but you need an expert in those capabilities. And that's kind of the niche that the partner's fitting. They have some capabilities for discrete manufacturing to help them leverage these tools and take it the final mile. That partner understands where the gap is, and they're providing extreme value to their clients. They have some really good adoption programs as well that makes absorbable from a deployment perspective. So it's good for clients and partners alike.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I know we talked a whole lot about Microsoft partners, but do you also work with other channels and other ERP ecosystems?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Thank you. So when I was thinking about the original business model with X Monthly, we want to help ERP application, CRM application type partners monetize the N365 seeds within their base, get credit for them one way or another. Right. So beyond the dynamics apps, we went to Acumatica Summit last year. That was a really exciting opportunity to learn about what Acumatica is doing with their AI and views platform. Well, in ERP, CFOs really like Excel. Right?
SPEAKER_01:They do. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And I like Excel. You can do some amazing things with that. Power BI. Those are great tools and reporting capabilities that are available that can reach into different applications like Acumatica or Sage Intact, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Infor because those CFOs, the ARAP clerks, all these people are using Excel. It's the number one business platform out there. It's M365. So attach to it. Have a play for it. Have a conversation about it. Protect your clients, right? Offer them service through some trusted trusted agents. Have an M365 support desk that with those specific issues. And monetize and control the conversation. We're helping partners do that. That's our goal.
SPEAKER_01:Great. So I think it kind of talked about that one partner. Was there a story of a customer that has worked with you? How were they successful and why?
SPEAKER_02:So this business is all about relationships, right? Getting feedback from people. There's lots of different partners that we've engaged with in this past year. Now, some partners are busy, they lack the resources to deliver the full suite. So we wanted to help make it clear how they can help support these different applications. And one of these days we had an epiphany moment. We wanted a systematic way to allow partners to expand into new service capabilities. So, what did we do? We built this app that a partner can configure and take the flexibility of the system to be able to support the product categories that they want to support, take the agent services that other partners provide that they want to support, as well as made the ability to put a skin on it so that it matches the look and feel of that partner's website. So you can install the Microsoft AI Cloud tour in a few seconds. Literally, it's like a couple lines of code, and it fits what a partner wants to support. And all of our X-Monthly agents who want to engage on this, it's part of the program, right? As we might get your service, we can deploy that service on other partner sites that are willing to help fill in those gaps.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_02:So you asked about a story, right? So one of our partners are doing that right now. And next week on the 10th, we're going to be showcasing this partner and how highly configurable this application that we've developed can work and how it can work for partners and their agents.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. So yeah, just to mention, because of your anniversary, you're having a celebration event next week, which when we see this, it'll probably already be happening, but on November 10th, right? And I'm assuming you'll have that recorded and available on your website afterwards, too, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. We this past year we've done all kinds of different presentations. This is kind of our new awakening, right? New energy, new excitement on here. So we'll be showcasing it. Our version of the AI Cloud Tour is already available. So if you go to xmonthly.com, partners can kind of experience what that looks like. And clients can kind of get a general idea about how AI is infused into all these applications as we leverage many of beautiful Microsoft resources that have been made available.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And when I talked to you a few months ago about X Monthly, and they said, hey, Carol, Microsoft 365 is the largest ISV. And they're really stuck with me, you know, like you're right. Like most partners and customers kind of focus on their ERP system, but there are a lot of other solutions in the Microsoft Cloud. So the AI Cloud tour helps kind of provide that overview and education, right? To help clients and partners understand what else there is in the Microsoft catalog.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So I think it's really exciting. And there's this concept. It's it's called a seeded license. Okay. So when you get assigned a Microsoft 365 user account, what is really exciting is the ability to access Power Platform capabilities. So Power Apps, Power Automate, all those different tools within the PowerPlatform begin to be exposed to those users. And again, if you're an ERP partner and you're like amazing at debits and credits and business process automation, these are just new tools in the toolkit.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, right?
SPEAKER_02:So you want to excel your ability to offer it? There's agents for that. Great education available for that. So it's it's changing, and we're trying to help partners adapt to that change.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Great. Well, maybe changing gears a little bit. So we kind of talked about what you're doing and how you're helping partners and clients. Any observations about just the channel, whether it's dynamics or with partners and just changes that you're seeing in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I try I tend to read a lot, and I I may not engage so much within LinkedIn and all those different avenues, but I read a tremendous amount and follow what people are sharing. One of one of the people we work with, AJ Anasari, he's a MVP for Copilot and Business Central. Watching him and just following what he's doing, the knowledge he's sharing, and just building out these AI agents and co-pilot studio capabilities. It's like everything changed. All the conversations are all about like AI and copilot. It's it's not even about business and ERP. It's like, how are we going to leverage and expand the use of these tools? How are partners going to make themselves customer zero so that they actually know what they're talking about? And trying to adopt those. So I know a lot of a lot of partners are highly focused on earning the solution designations, trying to expand their use of AI and co-pilot, co-pilot studio in their activities. So building agents, I think that's a that's a massive trend, trying to keep up with that those changes. I also have seen a couple other partners. They're building apps, they're making these things consumable from Microsoft marketplace and being able to allow end clients to download these solutions as well. That seems to be working for several of them, which is kind of neat because it allows you to extend the Microsoft platform. So app source or agent marketplace, integrating with Microsoft, trying to best align with Microsoft is what I've seen a lot of those mid-sized partners trying to do. And again, yeah, navigating that whole partner center area, that's something that we're helping with. Because beyond just providing the core stack of Microsoft, the industry specializations is truly huge. So I think that's that's a big change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And trying to figure out too, like you said, with AI and using Copilot Studio to create and build agents, using them internally, obviously. If you're using it, then it helps you speak more confidently. But I I know like some partners are talking to clients, and clients are like, oh my gosh, we gotta get into AI, we gotta use AI, help us really coming in with like, and like you said, develop some apps that you can sell to your clients, right? Or find some that you can provide that gives them kind of low-hanging fruit, right? They get the activity started with AI, and now they can think of other areas, maybe how they can fill a gap. Another tool in the toolbox, right, is AI or co-pilot. So that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's an exciting time we live in, let's just let's just say. And usually we like to have conversations with partners or and clients about kind of what they're trying to achieve with this. Yeah, it is highly abstract, right? I think it was Project Sophia, I think it was in like 2013 when I was first exposed to WPC. That's when I was first exposed to the power platform, and it was mind-bending. And we're in this stuff. When a client really starts to dig in on this, I mean, beyond just using the co-pilot chat, right? Like you use it. That is a useful tool. It's free. You really have to like twist your brain on how these elements can be pulled together through this platform, and then from there, it's like, all right, then you got the Gen AI capabilities. Well, that that's kind of way more, right? Using them is like helping a client envision how they can do this to provide a better experience for their clients, right? That's yeah, so my I think it it's wise to kind of explore, wise to absorb as much information. Microsoft put out a book on 200 use cases and how businesses are actually using this capability. I think when you do dig into AI, you want to focus on, you want to give your definitely like a core team access to it, but you want to solve real problems. You want to see if you can take paper out of a process or take a manual process and automate it and pull in the right feeds, the right information, and start small. And then from there, once your mind twists the right way, then it'll open up a whole brand new platform of capabilities. They said like 90% of the Fortune 5 are using these things. If you want to compete, you need to start exploring and building and using these things internally so that you can recommend them to clients. And so we've teamed up with some experts in order to help educate this. They do shows across the world highlighting some of the different capabilities there and just trying to let people expand and determine how to make this. Well, I have the clients that many of our partners are more in the SMB space. They don't have the luxury of an enterprise account that just gets deployed out and rolled out, right? These are impactful financial decisions that need some guidance, ensure that there's a return. Yeah, that they're making their lives better, more efficient, productive. So yeah, there's lots of it.
SPEAKER_01:It's the gateway drug. One thing in conversations that have a partner's kind of this new avenue for helping clients is it really is consulting one-on-one, right? Let's look at the processes, where are the gaps, and what tool is best suited to fill that gap. And it's pulling in data, maybe not just in your ERP. It could be in another e-commerce system or it could be the weather app from all these different sources to make and help those processes more streamlined. And like you said, kind of looking outside of maybe the ERP box, right? Don't always just look at what our ERP system can do and how can we facilitate a better workflow? It's actually looking at your business processes at the organization level.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, the client experience, huge. Now, I don't recommend everyone just go turn it on. Okay. I think it makes sense to kind of secure your environment, security roles, permissions, there's assessments, who needs access to what, structuring the data so that it can be leveraged against these bits of information. There's partners out there that can specialize that. There's agents that do this. Because the last thing you want to do is expose your client to new risks in this AI space. And all of a sudden, people are using the chat GPT and providing the company secrets. You want to provide the guide rails to ensure that you're not putting your clients at risk.
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good point. Yeah. You really need to think about data security and governance, privacy, and those things. Don't just open it up and let everybody come in and jump in, right?
SPEAKER_02:It's a risk. People that are dangerous can figure this out, but I really think the ability to kind of educate, learn, do, grow, connect. There's opportunities for everyone learning. There's so many workshops that are out there.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of opportunity to learn for sure. So kind of I wanted to loop back to you talked about on your website, you offer different services. So just kind of highlight again for us what services can be found through your website.
SPEAKER_02:So different services that we offer, we break them up into different categories. We do have some specialties. Microsoft licensing, weird out. Okay. We I understand how it works very well. Adoption, usage, those types of pieces. Other services, again, partner center, that helps partners become stronger partners. We actually log into different partners, partner centers to help support them there. But what we really want to help do is aggregate and bring in other organizations, like let's say value-added resellers or MSPs, and promote their services.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And through the AI Cloud Core, other partners can support their services to help generate a solid partner-to-partner motion. That's those are the different things that we do. For M365, there's security assessments, there's SharePoint Teams deployments, a security score improvement. For business central or other dynamics applications, there's implementation, support, customization, training available for those. And I think in this next year, as we get deeper with more partners, we're going to be targeting some industry capabilities like the one partner I mentioned earlier. Just trying to really target and focus. Because imagine you're an MSP and you found this great niche with manufacturing companies running their office. Wouldn't you want to recommend a manufacturing ERP partner to that? Well, that's how an MSP can grow their dynamics business. Help them obtain their AI business solutions designation. Through those partners, being able to offer the full cloud.
SPEAKER_01:That's excellent. I love that. So, Jeffrey, conclusion, kind of what's the one reason partners or clients will come back to you?
SPEAKER_02:I think from a partner standpoint, experience with Partner Center, maximizing the value that you can get out of Microsoft Partner Center, as well as marketing your services, marketing those capabilities. For a client, we've secured some of the best. And we want to help educate and allow clients to adapt and increase their adoption of Microsoft Cloud Solutions. We just have some of the best people that are out there. When our partners sign up, we'll showcase and make that happen as well. Things are changing fast. Business models are changing. How are you going to use AI to help deliver the best client experiences for your customers to drive growth as we go through this pivotal change with technology? So connect with your partners, expand growth, use, and adoption, and see what solutions, what products, services that you can build so that we so we can buy them, right?
SPEAKER_01:Right. We're probably already consuming some of those, so why not? Right.
SPEAKER_02:So thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to share. I think the excitement's real. We're building a home here for those in the Microsoft technology space. Happy to work, whether it just be referrals, whether it be strategic, whether it be working with Partner Center and earning your solution designation. We like to make it easy to work with us. Javing time with us is really the best time for us to really focus and build a plan.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Well, thank you, Jeffrey, for participating today in our ISV talk episode. Really excited about your first year anniversary celebration. So congratulations for that. And looking forward to seeing more partners get engaged with you in the channel. Here's Jeffrey's contact information. So, Jeffrey, you want to go over that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, again, my name's Jeffrey D. Maria, founder of X Monthly. You spell it J E F F R E Y D Maria D-E, capital M A R I A. You can reach me at J D Maria at Xmonthly.com. And if you want to learn more, go to H T T P S colon whackwack X Monthly. That's X M-O-N-T-H-L-Y dot com. And we would love to be able to work with you and supporting you and your clients.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, folks, we'll see you on the next episode of ISV Talks. Bye bye, friends.