Digital Revolution Awards

We were delighted to attend the Digital Revolution Awards, celebrating the organisations and individuals driving meaningful change through technology across the UK. It was a fantastic evening recognising real innovation and impact, and a great reminder of the quality of work happening across our industry. Congratulations to all of the nominees and winners on the night.

The sun came out just in time for our annual Summer Social at Bondi Green. Hosted with Seer 365 and sponsored by our friends at TrueCommerce, iDynamics Business Solutions, Yavrio - Open Banking, Vertex Inc., Xe.com, Formpipe, Revolent Group, and Binary Stream Software - Microsoft ERP Solutions, the aim was, as always, to keep things simple - no slides. no presentations or pitches - just great conversation and a few cocktails, all enhanced by the gorgeous backdrop of the canal, thanks to Bondi Green's superb location.


These kinds of nights are a reminder that real community matters. Thanks to everyone who joined us - if you'd like to join us next year, please just let us know at info@oaka.studio.

IAMCP Events:

European Power Platform Conference: June 29 – July 2

Most Microsoft partners can explain their value to a customer in their sleep. Plenty can explain it to Microsoft too, given a decent slide and a strong coffee. Explaining it to a buyer is a different conversation, and it's one a lot of owners don't know how to start. 

That was the starting point for September's Oaka Partner Insights. Consolidation across the channel isn't slowing down, and the partners we speak to keep asking the same things. What does a succession plan look like? How do I position my business? Which metrics actually matter to the people writing the cheques? 


Our consultant Nigel Ridpath put those questions to three people who have seen deals from different sides of the table. Adam Kerr is Managing Partner and Founder of Primas Law, specialising in corporate transactions. Jack Henry is a barrister and owner of Henry Chambers, who has been through acquisitions as a business owner. Neil Lomax spent 17 years at SoftwareOne, latterly responsible for around $22 billion in Microsoft revenue, before co-founding Onyx. Here's what we took away. 

Value is in the eye of the buyer 


Everyone starts in the same place: it's all about profit. Neil spent his early SoftwareOne years focused on revenue, gross profit and share of wallet. Then it was geographic reach, opening 20 countries a year for four years running. When private equity arrived, everything flipped to EBITDA. 


Adam's lesson came from doing enough deals to notice the pattern. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One buyer wants your customer base, another wants a strategic foothold, and very rarely do two want the same nuts and bolts. 


Jack saw the same thing in law, where the received wisdom is that more billable hours means more value. When his firm acquired another, the real questions were about which people would stay, which client relationships would follow them and how the customer base would grow. In his words, it's a full mosaic of colour rather than black and white. 


Know who you're selling to, and why 


Asked which value driver founders underestimate, Adam didn't start with contracts. He started with motive. A surprising number of sellers haven't thought hard about why they're approaching the deal market at all, and that answer shapes everything else. 


If you're selling to private equity, recurring revenue is likely the thing they care about most. A trade buyer making a strategic bolt-on cares about it too, but their decision making matrix looks very different. Decide where you want to end up, then work back. 


At Oaka we talk to partners constantly about their Ideal Customer Profile, and sometimes their Ideal Partner Profile. Nigel suggested adding a third: the Ideal Buyer Profile. It also needn't be a third party sale. Adam pointed out that MBOs, employee ownership trusts and private capital are all on the table. If the business is your baby and you've built a brilliant team, one of those may suit you far better than disappearing into a bigger beast. 


Hygiene is the invisible infrastructure 


Jack called it invisible infrastructure: the systems and paperwork that make a business work behind the scenes. When his firm made its acquisition, missing employment contracts, property documents and insurance details didn't just slow things down. They had a psychological effect on the deal, and frustration built on both sides. 


Adam has seen deals fall over at the data room stage. Take three months to get it online and the buyer starts wondering what else you haven't got together. Get it up in a week and you've set a very different tone. The whole process is one long negotiation, so that first impression earns you something every step of the way. 


For Microsoft partners, Lucy Bourne, Oaka's Director, added that hygiene stretches beyond legal documents. Pipeline, order book, delivery capability, billability and co-sell capability all shape how a buyer perceives your value. A strong Microsoft relationship can be worth as much as your pipeline. 


Is there a tension between running for growth and running to be deal ready? Jack thinks it's a false choice. Being deal ready is just good business management. Back when he started in law, one of his jobs was keeping the data room index for a 40 site acquisition. The index alone ran to more than 100 pages. Better to build that as you go than in a four week panic. 

Opportunities don't wait until you're ready 


Nigel shared an old adage: by the time you're thinking about selling, the things you need to have right should have been done a year ago. 


Neil had the stories to back it up. SoftwareOne's multi-billion dollar IPO was expected in 2020 or 2021. In August 2019 they were told they were going in September. More recently, Onyx raised VC funding barely 18 months in, and suddenly the questions arrived. Where's the paperwork? Where's key person cover? Where's your Microsoft accreditation? He admits he should have known better than most. 


He also made a point that doesn't come up often enough. Sometimes you think you want an exit and then you don't. Within months of launching, Onyx was close to selling to a much larger player. They pulled back because that wasn't why they'd built the business. A merger offer followed, and after one conversation with the team they realised they didn't want to work with those people either. Knowing what you actually want saves you from deals that look good on paper. 


Could the business survive without you? 


Adam's test is blunt. If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, would the deal still be doable? If not, you're probably not ready for market. Most owners carry far too much knowledge in their heads, Adam included, by his own admission. 


Nigel told the story of an owner with 20 salespeople, himself among them. Over the two years before selling, he deliberately went from top performer to the worst on the leaderboard. Counter-intuitive, as Adam said, but the business was better for it. 


Small partners are punching well above their weight 


At SoftwareOne's peak, with more than 10,000 staff, Neil reckons around 500 people really ran the business. Everyone knew the handful of names to call when something went wrong. 


His view now is that the barriers that once protected big partners have gone. The intelligence is accessible to smaller organisations, and they're more focused, more nimble and often better at managing their Microsoft relationship. He saw plenty of practices die on the vine after being acquired by larger firms that were never as fast as they thought. 


The value driver for a smaller partner, in his view, is the intelligence layer built across its customer base. A 50 person partner that consistently outperforms a 1,000 person one is proving something in the market, and buyers notice. 

AI: use it, don't just sell it 


Adam broke the AI silence nearly 40 minutes in, which we're choosing to see as restraint. Buyers in the Microsoft ecosystem are increasingly interested in AI as a foundation of how you run the business, not just something in your product catalogue. Being able to show the business is scalable and resilient because of it can move a multiple from 5 to 7, or 7 to 10. 


A comment from the audience sharpened the point: you need a clear AI thesis and a sense of whether you're defensible against AI disruption. Lucy added that AI for AI's sake still has to survive due diligence. You should be able to explain why you adopted an agent rather than hiring another team. 


Neil offered a warning from his own funding round. The lawyers rang to ask whether his CEO was using Gemini, because one minute he didn't have a document and an hour later he did. Their advice was simple: just tell us you haven't got it. AI can do a lot of things. Retrofitting your hygiene isn't one of them. 


What if Microsoft changes the rules? 


The question that got the Oaka team giggling: when you rely on a single ecosystem, how do you reassure a buyer that the rug won't be pulled with the next round of fee or incentive changes? 


Neil reckons he's been asked it more than 1,000 times, including by a PE firm that morning about a target with 83% of its business in Microsoft. His answer to acquirers is to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Change in the ecosystem comes by a thousand cuts, roughly 5% or 6% a year. Adjust each year and you're fine. Miss a few and it compounds. What a buyer really wants to see is a management team, not just an owner, that has handled it before and will keep handling it. 


Nigel linked this to ambiguity tolerance, one of the seven traits in Oaka's Partner Genome. Lucy, whose strapline at Microsoft was getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, agreed that the partners who pull ahead are usually just half a step in front of their peers. 


Adam added a longer term play. If your exit is three to five years away and 80% of your work is Microsoft, use that time to get it to 60%. Not by doing less with Microsoft, but by doing more elsewhere. Then you can answer the what if question with evidence rather than reassurance. Lucy, who says she bleeds Microsoft, found that hard to hear but conceded the point. 

Three things to do on Monday morning 


Nigel closed by asking each panellist for one thing to do next Monday. 



  1. Get it out of your head. Jack's advice: write down the one thing your business does that only exists in your head, then make it your mission that everyone else knows it too. 
  2. Do the thinking first. Adam would start with why. Why do you want to be in the deal space? Who are you selling to and what will they care about? Getting your house in order matters, but the cognitive bit comes first. 
  3. Count your CSP customers. Neil's tactical tip for Microsoft services partners: how many customers do you have, and how many do you sell CSP to? Not for the resale margin, but because CSP is your intelligence layer for selling services and the backbone of your co-sell relationship. Microsoft now pays on growth and ties accreditations to revenue, so it also gives you a growth story a buyer can believe. 


Thinking about what comes next? 

Get in touch

Whether a sale is five years away or five months, or you're simply not sure yet, the work that makes a business valuable is the same work that makes it run well. We talk to Microsoft partners about this every day, and we work with associates like our panel who have been through it from every side. 


If you'd like to talk through your succession plan, your Microsoft narrative or which metrics will actually move the dial for a buyer, email us. Our inbox is always open. 

info@oaka.studio

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