A guide to simplify your licensing management and giving your customers the chance to test Copilot without having to pay for 12 months up front
As a Microsoft reseller, you might be familiar with the challenge of managing multiple licenses with different expiration dates. You might have to renew some licenses every month, while others have annual or 3-year terms. This can create a lot of administrative overhead and confusion, especially if you have a large number of customers, users, subscriptions and devices. Moreover, you might end up paying more than you need to, as you might not be able to align your licenses with your actual usage.
Fortunately, one of the best features of the Microsoft New Commerce Experience (or NCE as it is more commonly known) is the Co-Terming feature. Co-terming allows you to align the expiration dates of your licenses to a single date of your choice. This way, you can simplify your license renewal process, reduce your administrative burden, and save money by paying for only what you use.
Co-Terming has been available since the launch of NCE, and while it has previously proved to be useful to reduce some of that administrative overhead, it can now play an even more important part in discussions with your customers. Since it’s General Availability launch back in January Copilot for M365 has taken the IT industry by storm. It is the most talked about product in the Microsoft space right now, and there has been significant uptake both within the Dicker Data partner base, as well as globally.
However, one of the big barriers to selling Copilot for M365 that our partners have been raising is the requirement to commit to an annual term that is paid upfront. This requires a substantial investment from customers, which has sometimes limited the number of seats that the customer has been able to initially commit to.
Co-Terming can help change that discussion. For example, if your customer has a Business Premium subscription that is due to expire in November, you could Co-Term Copilot for M365 to that underlying license, effectively giving your customer the opportunity to try Copilot for M365 for the next few months.
This can dramatically reduce the cost of entry for your customer, so if you have had customers that have raised that as a concern but have indicated they would love to try it out without committing for a full year, this could be your answer.
How to Use the Co-terming Feature for Copilot for M365 Licensing
You can check the renewal date of your customer’s subscriptions by either checking within the customer’s tenant in the Dicker Data portal, or if you would prefer to download a report where you can check multiple customers, then you can download the Annuity Information report by clicking “Download Excel” on the Microsoft CSP page as per the below screenshot:
Once you have accessed the report, you can find the renewal date of the subscription by selecting the tenant and then looking at the “Revaluation Period” column:
As Copilot for M365 is an Annual Commitment, it can only be Co-Termed to other Annual Commitment subscriptions. The tenant will also have to have one of the Copilot for M365 Prerequisite Subscriptions active.
Once you have identified the underlying subscription that you would like to align your new Copilot for M365 license to, select “Add New Product” in the NCE Subscription blade of your chosen tenant:
Copilot for M365 is an NCE add-on, so ensure you have selected “New Commerce Experience – Commercial” the Add-On slider is set to “Show Add-On”:
Once you have selected the Copilot for M365 Subscription, progress through to the final confirmation page. From there, ensure your MPN is correct, and then select the “End Date Alignment” drop down and select Co-Term:
From there, select the Subscription you would like to align the End Date with, and purchase the subscription.
Note: Once purchased, the default state of the subscription will include Auto-Renew being turned on, and if renewed, it will renew into a new 12-month term.
If you are interested in selling Copilot, then please make sure you check out Dicker Data’s Copilot Workshops. Reach out to your Dicker Data Microsoft Rep for more information.