Modern workplace in a VAR: what customers actually ask for
A decade in a VAR selling and delivering modern workplace solutions has given me a clear picture of what customers actually want vs what they say they want.
After a decade in a VAR that specialises in Microsoft modern workplace, you hear a lot of different organisations describing their problems and start to notice the patterns.
I've noticed a consistent gap between what customers say they want and what they actually need.
"We want to move to the cloud"
The most common opening statement. Almost always means something more specific once you dig in:
- Sometimes it means "we want to move email off an on-premises Exchange server" (a reasonable and achievable goal)
- Sometimes it means "our leased datacentre contract is ending and we need a plan" (this is actually an infrastructure conversation, not a Microsoft 365 conversation)
- Sometimes it means "we read about Microsoft 365 and want to do what that means" (which requires you to figure out what they think it means)
The "move to the cloud" framing is rarely the right lens for the conversation. Getting specific early (which workloads, which timelines, what's driving it) saves a lot of later confusion.
"We want better collaboration"
This usually translates to "we want Teams" and specifically "we want Teams to do what Slack does" or "we want Teams to replace email" or "we want people to stop using WhatsApp for work conversations."
The collaboration conversation is real and valid. Teams is a good product. But collaboration problems are usually organisational problems that technology surface but don't solve. If your collaboration is broken because people don't share information, don't trust each other, or have silos built by organisational structure: Teams makes those problems visible, not better.
The customers who get the most value from Teams are the ones who do the cultural and process work alongside the technology rollout, not just the technology rollout.
"We want Autopilot so IT doesn't have to touch new laptops"
This one's usually genuinely meant. The scenario (IT orders a laptop, the manufacturer registers it, the user receives it at home, turns it on, signs in, and it just works) is real and achievable.
But the conversation always has a second chapter: "We have 800 existing laptops that aren't Autopilot-registered. What about those?" The answer is that you either run a script to gather hardware hashes and register them, or you wait for attrition, or you do a staged refresh project. None of those is a quick fix.
What customers actually need (that they rarely ask for directly)
A data governance review before everything else. Microsoft 365 capabilities (Copilot, information governance, compliance tooling) are all predicated on having your data organised, labelled, and governed. Most SMBs and lower mid-market companies have years of unstructured data in SharePoint, Teams, and shared drives. Getting value from advanced Microsoft 365 features requires addressing this.
Change management, not just technology delivery. The technical delivery is the easy part. Getting 200 people to actually use Teams the right way, to stop attaching documents to emails, to stop using their personal OneDrive for company data. That's where projects succeed or fail.
A realistic licensing conversation. Microsoft's licensing is complex. What's included in Business Premium vs E3 vs E5 is a genuine decision that needs business context. Too often this conversation happens at the end of the project, when the customer discovers the feature they most wanted is in the tier they don't have.
The customers who get the best outcomes from modern workplace projects are the ones who understand it's a business transformation project that happens to use Microsoft technology, not a technology project.
