Determine your goals with Oracle Cloud Applications (SaaS) Service Expertise

In a competitive marketplace, the challenge for any firm is how to differentiate yourself and increase your visibility. Customers are looking for companies with demonstrated and successful experience in specific product and services areas, as well as in their regional markets. Expertise is key – and Oracle PartnerNetwork provides you the opportunity to attain and market your specific Expertise based on technical proficiency and proven customer success. By achieving Expertise, you can promote your unique differentiation with proven skills in specialized areas across industries, use cases, and workloads as a recognized Oracle Solution provider. With Expertise, you can also earn incremental access to go-to-market Benefits, to further differentiate yourself as a cut above the competition.

Your first step as you begin your journey is to determine the Expertise you plan to attain and promote as your business differentiation. Since this journey is focused on Oracle Software as a Service (SaaS), start by exploring Expertise for Cloud Applications and / or Industry Applications as applicable.

• Video: Why Achieve Expertise (1:51)

At any time, you can EXPLORE the value that Service Delivery partners and Oracle Cloud bring to customers as well as these additional journeys focused on delivering professional or strategic business consulting services to:

• Architect, deploy, integrate or migrate workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Architect, deploy and Provide Managed Services for Oracle Cloud Solutions

Learn how we can help you gain knowledge, experience and certification to meet your goals

As you look to build your staff capabilities and capacity, consider the Enablers available through membership in Oracle PartnerNetwork.

Gain Knowledge
Your consultants will be able to access the learning tools needed to be successful with your clients through highly discounted Oracle University products and Oracle Unlimited Cloud Learning Subscriptions (UCLS). UCLS provide digital courses mapped to specific implementation and solution architect job roles as well as hands-on labs to apply new skills. These subscriptions include content aligned with each product release, access to live sessions with product experts, and assessment tools to gauge and measure readiness to ultimately achieving Oracle certification. If you’d like to expand your business, you can also get your whole workforce trained on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at no cost through Oracle University.

Gain Experience
A proficient and well-trained bench of Service Delivery consultants is key to delivering on customer success. To augment the foundation of fundamentals and advanced techniques learned through leveraging the Cloud Learning Subscriptions, your consultants have access to:

• a SaaS Demonstration Instance for enablement, and customer centric demonstrations for creation of delivery-specific solutions with a fully integrated Instance of Oracle Fusion and Oracle EPM applications.
• a selection of Oracle SaaS discounted applications for test, integration and demonstration purposes that offer greater flexibility in terms of product selection and the ability to configure to meet specific market needs and solutions.
• a feature-complete full-functionality Universal Cloud Credits environment to get hands-on practice deploying use cases – thereby further sharpening their skills to be ready for implementing with customers.

Get Certified
Certified individuals on your staff help drive higher win rates, differentiate you from the competition, command a premium for your services, and ultimately provide an advantage in your ability to deliver on customer satisfaction promises. To help reduce your firm's costs in achieving Oracle Certifications, each Oracle Unlimited Cloud Learning Subscription comes with access to Oracle certification exams, so your consultant can attempt each exam aligned with the training at no additional cost. That can potentially save you hundreds of dollars for each certification!

Get Connected
Explore the Oracle PartnerNetwork Community* and Cloud Customer Connect* where you can ask questions, engage with partners and Oracle experts, provide feedback and stay in the know. Your team can join regional and solution-focused enablement communities and forums, attend virtual and on-demand events, subscribe to newsletters and leverage PartnerHelp resources throughout your journey.

Plan your endgame by previewing Incentives to reward you for delivering customer success

Of course, customer success is a key driver in ensuring a strong service delivery business. It's also important to Oracle, so we incentivize you as you deliver on that success with targeted incentives.

As you contemplate your direction for Service Expertise, consider the end-game results of your efforts. Aligning with Oracle Cloud strategies for driving customer success and adoption, these incentives provide eligible partners the opportunity to receive financial rewards based on delivering value realization and desired customer outcomes.

Once you join Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), visit the OPN Incentives Resource Center* to preview options available for your business and determine what's right for your company's strategic success and Service Expertise targets. As part of this journey, you'll be most interested in the Service Delivery Incentives and Referral & Influence Incentive.

Let's get started

Before you begin, please review the remaining steps so you'll know what to expect in your journey once you join Oracle PartnerNetwork. Then, if you're ready to go, follow the outlined path – and once you join OPN, you'll be able to access all of the resource links you'll need.

Join OPN and Enroll in the Cloud Service Track
If you haven't already become a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork, learn more about OPN Benefits and follow these steps to join OPN.

Enrollment in the Cloud Service Track provides a bundle of unique Enablers that will help you quickly attain Expertise. Once you begin your OPN membership, you can go to the Oracle Partner Store at any point in time to start your Cloud Service Track enrollment. However, your best approach would be to enroll in the Cloud Service Track by selecting it as you join or renew your membership in OPN since the term dates are tied to the OPN membership date and you can get started right away!

Since you're on this specific journey, within your Service Track enrollment form, you'll be able to select the option to utilize your $3,000 credit towards:

• a SaaS Demonstration Instance for enablement and customer centric demonstrations for creation of delivery-specific solutions; both Oracle Fusion and Oracle EPM products that provide you opportunities to work with Oracle Cloud applications, train your staff, and prepare and deliver customer demos OR
• Universal Cloud Credits you can use for a new cloud environment for your consultants' hands-on learning with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and deployment of use cases or for replenishment of an existing cloud environment secured under OPN

Once the Service Track is activated, you'll receive communication on next steps regarding your SaaS Demonstration Instance or provisioning information for Universal Cloud Credits, along with activation of your 5 Unlimited Cloud Learning Subscriptions.

Prepare to quickly attain Oracle Cloud Applications (SaaS) Service Expertise

Now's the time to spring into action with the immediate goal of attaining Expertise so you can differentiate and showcase your company's skills and offerings aligned with Oracle products and services. Expertise in a specific cloud service or product family is attained by fulfilling focused qualifiers within a declared regional market and opens the door to targeted go-to-market Benefits. To get started on your Expertise:

1. Identify the Expertise your company would like to achieve by browsing the Cloud Applications Expertise and Industry Applications Expertise (as applicable) and review the associated qualifiers.

2. Identify where you have resources and potential customers. You'll want to focus on training and certifying individuals in your target regional market so that your customers see you are committed to understanding their local market.

3. Evaluate your bench. If your staff needs training, explore the recommended guided learning paths on the Partner Learning Center where you'll be able to target Oracle skills development by learning type, role and Oracle solution. Use the Oracle University Unlimited Cloud Learning Subscriptions you received as part of your Cloud Service Track bundle to access the training and undertake the certification exams associated with your targeted Expertise. If you need more seats, you also receive a 60% discount on additional Cloud Learning Subscriptions, so you can build your capacity further. Learn more about activating the Cloud Learning Subscriptions*.

4. Demonstrate proficiency and applied knowledge with a dedicated, global environment pre-populated with a robust set of products that can be used for enablement, customer centric demonstrations for creation of delivery-specific solutions. Review the SaaS Demonstration Instance Guidebook to help you get started with a subscription you may have opted for in your Service Track enrollment. Should you need greater configuration flexibility to meet specific market needs and solutions, leverage your opportunity to purchase Discounted SaaS Applications. Review the Discounted SaaS Applications Guidebook to help you get started.

5. Don't pass up the opportunity to provide your staff with hands-on practice deploying use cases in the Oracle Universal Cloud Credits environment you may have opted for in your Service Track enrollment. Review the Oracle Universal Credits Guidebook* to help you get started with your OPN provided Universal Cloud Credits.

6. If you have offices or subsidiaries in multiple regions, those entities can join OPN as an Associate to your membership and leverage your investment in the Service Track as well. Learn more about the Principal/Associate relationship and how you can share Enablers between entities. View the Video: Understanding the Principal-Associate Relationship (2:19).

7. A few other suggestions on resources available to use applied knowledge with solution development through hands-on practical application include:

• Oracle Architecture Center for proofing solution ideation of Oracle's cloud, hybrid, and on-premises workloads using our catalog of cross-product reference architectures, solution playbooks, and best practices.
• Oracle LiveLabs for discreet practical application with access to Oracle's tools and technologies to run a wide variety of labs and workshops.

Kick off your go-to-market plan and begin your customer engagements

Leverage Oracle's sales and marketing resources as you go to market with your Oracle-based services solutions. Below are a few that you can get started with immediately.

• Access Sales Tools and Resources through Sales Accelerator* – the same online portal leveraged by internal Oracle Sales provides easy access to high quality and targeted customer-facing content including battle cards, sales guides, customer presentations, and call scripts. Other selling tools include: Presentation Builder, Value Navigator, Customer Success Video Library, Industry Value Maps, and Industry Solutions Catalog.
• As you prepare to go to market, familiarize yourself with the Compliance & Business Practices* to thoroughly understand and adhere to Oracle's Compliance and Ethics policies and report any conduct that deviates from Oracle's policy standards. This course provides helpful guidance on the professional behavior expected of all Oracle partners when dealing with both public-sector and private-sector customers.

Learn about additional Marketing and Sales Benefits* available through OPN.

Document your successful customer engagements

As you build your bench of certified specialists, go to market, and begin your customer engagements, you'll want to survey your customers to document your success. Besides providing you with the opportunity to learn what your customers think of your work and identify areas for improvement, this will put you into the final phase of earning an Expertise.

To achieve an Expertise, you'll need to demonstrate successful customer implementations. Partners have the option to either:

• Demonstrate 2 successful implementations by Submitting a Request for a Customer Satisfaction Survey to be delivered to your customers as your implementations go live
• OR
• Demonstrate 1 successful implementation by Submitting a Published Customer Success Story which also helps you maintain and promote your Service Expertise.

Publish your Oracle Cloud Applications (SaaS) Service Expertise

You now have the building blocks to attain and publish your OPN Expertise. Publishing your Expertise initiates your promotion on the Oracle Partner Finder. When you publish your Expertise on Oracle Partner Finder, you show the world you've got Expertise in specific products and services. Customers are looking for companies with certified prowess in the areas they need, and Oracle Expertise demonstrates your company's proficiency to the marketplace!

How do you know when you can publish your Expertise?
At any time during your journey, you can start tracking your company's Expertise Status* in the Expertise Dashboard. This powerful tool will tell you what you need to do to complete each of your targeted Expertise. Your company's Partner Administrator will have full access to the Expertise Dashboard and may grant others access to track status as well. Find out about the Partner Administrator Role* and how to activate access for other users.

Below are a few points to note when tracking, publishing and maintaining your Expertise:

• Certifications: Make sure the individuals taking certification exams are badged to your company so you can track skillsets and determine where to deploy specific individuals in your customer engagements. Individuals use the Oracle University CertView Portal to manage their certifications. Before they log in to CertView, they need to make sure their Oracle.com account is registered to the correct OPN Company ID. Once in CertView, they will follow the online directions to ensure their training profile is aligned to their Oracle.com account.
• Project Manager Certification: One of the Qualifiers for Service Expertise is to have a certified project manager on staff. Having these individuals helps ensure your implementation projects stay on track. Oracle has an Oracle Cloud Project Manager Practitioner guided learning path and an associated assessment that counts towards this qualifier. Or, if you have individuals with an accepted industry-standard project manager certification, find out how you can Submit Project Manager Details for Expertise Qualifiers*.
• Successful Go-Lives and Customer Success: As you go live with your customer implementations, you should immediately Submit a Request for a Customer Satisfaction Survey to be delivered to your customers and consider Submitting a Published Customer Success Story to highlight customer cloud adoption and value realization with successful outcomes. Successful Implementation Go-Lives and Published Customer Success Stories will be recorded on the Expertise Dashboard and count towards the Qualifiers as long as the implementations have been completed in the last 18 months.
• Publishing: After you've met the qualifiers defined within a specific Service Expertise, approve your Expertise from within the Expertise Dashboard to publish your achievements and Display your Expertise to customers on Partner Finder.
• Maintaining Expertise: Expertise is based on certifications and demonstrable customer success with the expectation that partners will continuously meet all Expertise Qualifiers throughout the partner lifecycle. In the event there is a lapse, you will have a 90-day grace period to meet the Qualifiers and return to published Expertise status. All of this is tracked for you in the Expertise Dashboard.

Refine your marketing strategy with additional benefits associated with Expertise

Whether you want to continue to focus in one Cloud area or grow into more diversified Cloud-centric use cases, achieving your first Expertise is just the beginning of your journey to transforming your business! Oracle has built its go-to-market framework around Expertise as the foundation for you to earn rich incentives for driving customer success as you continue to build your business on Oracle Cloud. Expertise is increasingly demanded by customers as a pre-requisite before awarding Service engagement contracts. To help you promote your Expertise and successes globally, we encourage you to leverage our vast marketing resources and platforms. Below are a few key tools to start with.

• Promote your Service Expertise with Oracle Expertise Logos*. Oracle partners with Expertise are among the industry's most elite solution providers. Leverage the power of the Oracle brand by using your Expertise logo on collateral, web sites, advertising, stationery, business cards, and signage to identify your unique capabilities.
• Enhance your presence on Oracle Partner Finder to make your company more searchable and add marketing content to complement your Oracle credentials.
• Publish approved Press Releases* with quotes from Oracle executives using helpful templates.
• Showcase your Customer Success* to promote and share how you're innovating and enabling customers to be successful! Partner podcasts, Guest Blog articles, Customer Reviews and Joint promotional Customer referencing help you amplify and emphasize your wins and successful customer engagements through various social media channels.

Review the full list of Marketing and Sales Benefits* and engage with your Partner Manager to plan your ongoing go-to-market plan.

Manage and grow your business engagement with Oracle

Once you've achieved your Cloud Applications Expertise and/or Industry Applications Expertise and are successfully going to market, we encourage you to consider a few ways to enhance and grow your engagement with Oracle.

Register your opportunities and earn incentives: You can earn the incentives you previewed earlier in your journey for delivering customer success. Please visit the OPN Incentives Resource Center* to learn about Service Delivery Incentives*, the Referral & Influence Incentive* and other incentives you might qualify for or be interested in pursuing including how to register your eligible opportunities. Registering your opportunities informs Oracle of your intent to deliver services and/or meet the eligibility requirements for accelerators and incentive offerings.

Maintain and advance your Expertise: As you grow your number of successful customer implementations, you may qualify for Advanced Expertise in your specified area. You can review the Expertise Qualifiers, track your Expertise status and your progress towards Advanced Expertise in the Expertise Dashboard*.

Expand your services: Expand on your services offering by considering one or more of the following:

• Would you like to deploy Workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Review the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Service Delivery journey. You can also use this search tool to view associated Service Expertise you can attain to meet your business goals.
• Are you interested in providing managed services for Oracle Cloud solutions? Review the Oracle Cloud Solution Provider journey.

Stay connected with the Oracle PartnerNetwork ecosystem: Leverage OPN communities, events, newsletters and other helpful resources as part of the most competitive ecosystem Oracle has for our partners. Ask questions, engage with partners and Oracle experts, provide feedback, stay in the know or get help. Review* all the great resources available to:

• Join regional and solution-focused enablement communities and forums
• Attend virtual and on-demand events
• Subscribe to newsletters
• Leverage PartnerHelp resources