Determine your goals with Cloud Solutions Provider 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 Managed Services, start by exploring Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise.

• 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, implement and integrate Oracle SaaS Applications

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 can access feature-complete full-functionality Universal Cloud Credit environments 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 OCI Implementation Incentives* and Cloud Managed Services Provider Incentives (CMSP)*.

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 and Cloud Sell Tracks
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 and Cloud Sell Track provides a bundle of unique Enablers that will help you quickly attain Expertise.

• Service Expertise (service delivery) is a complete and integrated approach for performing a specific project type. This Expertise establishes deep technical and delivery knowledge as well as demonstrates practical application.
• Sell Expertise (solution positioning) requires understanding Oracle's product strategy and function which is key to positioning Cloud Solutions. This Expertise builds knowledgeable account managers and sales engineers validated by assessment for specific product families.

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 and Cloud Sell Track enrollments. However, your best approach would be to enroll in the Cloud Service Track and Cloud Sell 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 want to select the option to utilize your $3,000 credit towards the Universal Cloud Credits environment that you can use for your consultants' hands-on learning with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and deployment of use cases.

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

Prepare to quickly attain Cloud Solutions Provider 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 Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise and review the associated qualifiers. This will include reference to achieving and publishing at least 1 Service Expertise and 1 Sell Expertise in the same product family, in the same regional market. Review the Expertise Catalog to determine the appropriate Service and Sell Expertise.

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 MyLearn Partner Sales 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) Don't pass up the opportunity for your staff to get hands-on practice deploying use cases in the Universal Cloud Credits environment you 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.

5) 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).

6) 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 to provide managed services as an Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider

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 MyLearn Partner Sales* – 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 Partner Finder.
• Demonstrate proficiency and applied knowledge with a Sales Demonstration Environment - These environments are available for partners who have published Sell Expertise and have registered opportunities. Review the Sales Demonstration Environment Guidebook to help you get started.
• 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 managed service success

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 customer success in managed services in addition to your successful customer implementations. Partners have the option to either:

• Demonstrate customer success in managed services with 2 customers under a managed service contract using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure by submitting a Request for a Customer Satisfaction Survey to be delivered to your customers
• OR
• Demonstrate customer success in managed services with 1 customer under a managed cloud services contract using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure by submitting a Published Customer Success Story which also helps you maintain and promote your Service Expertise.

Customer surveys and Customer Success stories submitted towards attainment of initial Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise do not require the customer to be a current customer of Oracle, however, for submissions toward annual maintenance of Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise the customer referenced must be a current customer consuming Oracle Cloud. Specifics can be viewed in the Expertise Qualifier Validation Guide.

Prepare for your Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider audit

The audit is a truly independent review with no influence from Oracle. This allows you to use a successfully completed audit as a market differentiator. Review the Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise Audit Criteria* that will demonstrate your capability to assist customers in data center migration and digital transformation initiatives in rapidly deploying and managing Oracle Cloud solutions. Once you've attained your Cloud Service and Cloud Sell Expertise and have demonstrated managed service success, you can initiate the 3rd party audit for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

*The audit criteria is available to authorized OPN members.

Review Agreements and Publish your Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise

A valid Cloud Services Agreement (CSA) and Cloud Solutions Provider Amendment (CSPA) to the CSA is necessary to allow partners the ability to buy, build, deploy, run, and manage both Oracle and non-Oracle workloads with Oracle Cloud services for their end customers. Once your Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider audit has been completed, you can initiate the CSA review and CSPA.

With the CSPA in place, 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.
• Annual Audit: An annual 3rd Party Audit for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is required to attain and maintain an Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise. Review the Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise Audit Criteria prior to requesting the third-party audit and track this Expertise qualifier in the Expertise Dashboard.
• 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.

Engage Customers as an Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider

With your Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise published and Addendum executed, you will be ready to engage customers and place Cloud Services orders. Our transaction tools and resources make it easy for you so you can quickly go to market with your managed service business.

Compliance and Business Practices*

• As you go to market, keep in mind Oracle's Compliance & Business Practices to adhere to Oracle's Compliance and Ethics policies and report any conduct that deviates from Oracle's policy standards.

CSP Sales, Consulting and Support Offerings

• Oracle Cloud Lift Services: With Cloud Lift Services, you can augment your services and engage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure engineers for assistance with planning, architecting, prototyping and managing cloud migrations.
• Oracle Support Rewards: Oracle Support Rewards is an offering that rewards Oracle's on-premises software customers who consume Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Cloud Services. The customer earns Support Rewards when they consume OCI Cloud Services. The Support Rewards can be applied to software support renewals for Technology programs as a form of payment for their on-premises support. Since the Oracle partner ecosystem is a key influencer and driver with our customers for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle strives to ensure that our customers, working with partners, can benefit from this program. Review this Oracle Support Rewards* knowledge article to learn more or check out the OPN Support Rewards* page, which includes FAQs for partners.

Opportunity Management and Incentives*

• Incentives: Earn incentives for delivering Customer Success. Through OCI Implementation and Cloud Managed Services Provider Incentives (CMSP) there are opportunities to earn incentives across the customer lifecycle: OCI Implementation Incentive and Cloud Managed Service Provider Incentive. Visit the OPN Incentives Resource Center to learn more about these incentives as well as how to register your opportunities accordingly.
  • Registration: Registering your OCI Implementation opportunities informs Oracle of your intent to deliver services as well as meet eligibility requirements for accelerators and incentive offerings.

Transacting*

• Oracle Price Lists & Discount Schedules: Review view relevant price lists and associated discount schedules for Oracle Cloud Services, Oracle Software, Oracle Systems Hardware and Software, and Oracle Services.
• Quote/Orders: Order submission for Cloud Solutions Providers is currently an offline process. Please review the Knowledge Article on How to submit an offline order for Cloud Solutions Provider. Need help with OPS, deals, and orders? Find Quick Answers to Common Questions, Contact Us for Assistance, Transactions OPS Supports (XLS)
• Tracking: Once your order is booked, it can be viewed in the Oracle Partner Store (OPS) under Order Tracker.

Billing, Support and Incentive payments*

• Customer Billing Support: Familiarize yourself with Customer Billing Support, all you need to understand cloud invoicing basics, subscription invoicing, how to avoid overage and burst charges, and submit inquiries regarding an invoice. View the Oracle Invoicing FAQ.
• Incentive Payments & Reporting: Partners who are eligible for incentives across the customer lifecycle (Buy & Activate, Implement & Adopt, Manage & Grow) can view incentive payments and associated reporting in Oracle Content Experience Cloud(OCE) SecureSites. SecureSites are small, secure websites for collaboration and engagements.
  • SecureSites accounts are established for Oracle Cloud Solutions Providers. Emails with instruction to access SecureSites are sent to partners prior to incentive payment issuance.
  • Partners must have an active Oracle Supplier account with current banking details in order to receive eligible incentive payments. Learn how a supplier or partner can update their bank details.
  • Incentive payments in the form of credit memos are applied to partner general accounts per partner instruction. Partners are responsible for engaging regional collections contacts to provide credit memo payment application instruction.
  • Partners should refer to the OPN Incentives Resource Center for payout eligibility details and address inquiries by submitting a help ticket at PartnerHelp. Select Category – Go to Market > Incentive Payments.

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 or VAD to plan your ongoing go-to-market plan.

Manage and grow your business engagement with Oracle

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

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 the following:

• Would you like to deploy new Workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Use this Search tool to view associated Service Expertise you can attain to meet your business goals.

Review sales plays: Partners may consider available sales motions based on cloud consumption growth. Engage your Partner Manager for guidance.

Pursue new incentives: Be sure to visit the OPN Incentives Resource Center* frequently to learn about other incentives you might qualify for or be interested in pursuing as you attain new Expertise and register your opportunities to inform Oracle of your intent to deliver services and/or meet eligibility requirements for accelerators and incentive offerings.

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