So, what exactly is NCE and what does it have to do with you?
WELL… The New Commerce Experience is a monthly subscription service based out of Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP). NCE gives you the ability to purchase your Microsoft 365 Licenses on a monthly basis without an annual commitment. This gives customers the flexibility to make monthly changes to their Microsoft 365 licenses plans and seat count.
With that being said, Microsoft has recently announced a price increase, as well as a new purchasing structure for Microsoft licenses effective March 1st, 2022. As of right now Microsoft has not yet released updated prices for Canadian clients but based on information we have been receiving over the past month, partners can expect somewhere between a 17-20% increase Depending on the term the client picks. Along with the price increase Microsoft announced a change to their subscription plan options.
Let’s break down the 3 plan subscriptions
12-Month Subscription (Pay Upfront)
- Licenses are locked in at an annual renewal date.
- Ability to increase the number of licenses throughout the annual term, but not decrease.
- Some flexibility in license changes (for example: uprgade from Business basics to Business standard.)
- Annual Billing
With this subscription you pay everything upfront and those are your licenses for the year. If you would like to add licenses during this term they will be prorated to line up with your renewal date.
12-Month Subscription (Pay Monthly)
- Licenses are locked in at an annual renewal date.
- Ablility to increase the number of licenses throughout the annual term, but not decrease.
- Some flexibility in license changes (for example: Upgrade from Business Basics to Business Standard.)
- Monthly Billing
This subscription is right now only offered to our managed clients. Some of the new changes with the New Commerce Experince locks us (Skycomp) as the reseller into an annual term, regardless of how our clients pay. So to protect us as the reseller, Skycomp will be requiring certain conditions to be met prior to any purchases under this subscription.
1-Month Subscription
- Ability to change the number of licenses month to month.
- Monthly billing.
- A 20% premium charge will be added to all licenses purchased under this model moving forward.
This option gives you the ability to tap in with a monthly commitment rather than paying everything upfront or being locked in for a year. However this term does come with a premium and is the most expensive option but does provide the most flexibility!
So with all these options which one do we recommend?
For our managed clients we recommend going with the annual commitment with monthly renewal as it adds a bit more flexability but still leverage that better price!
Some examples on when you would want to have more flexability and pay the premium charge with the 1-Month subscription would be if you have month to month seasonal staff. We’ve got a lot of accounting firms as clients and as tax season gets busy they hire extra staff for a few months. You wouldn’t want to lock in for a full annual term for that type of license, so the best option for that would be to pay monthly with annual renewal for your fulltime staff and for you seasonal staff, pay month to month!
Can you reduce seats with an existing contract?
Short answer is no. You are tied into whatever contract you signed whether that be month to month or annual. That being said, if you wanted to downgrade we would remove the user from that license so its floating in your account and ready to be applied to the user if you onboard someone else within that term. We are setting up a system that every Feburary our clients will be able to review how many seats they currently have and then we can make those adjustments as needed for the following term.