Pinpoint Updates

Pinpoint provides an open commerce platform for you, a Microsoft partner, to market and sell technology and cloud solutions to small and mid-size business customers. Pinpoint increases your pipeline of qualified leads, while giving you the ability to connect with other Microsoft partners to meet the unique needs of customers.

We’re making improvements to help you capture more leads. Pinpoint offers an integrated and comprehensive lead referral service that will help our best partners capture more leads from our most qualified prospects. 

Here are some recent changes to Pinpoint:

1. Updates to the Pinpoint search ranking algorithm
   • Keyword matches are still the highest priority for search ranking
   • Gold competency is the next highest ranking factor, followed by Silver competency
   • The total number of Gold and Silver competencies aren’t weighted in the algorithm
   • Cloud competencies are now weighted equally with all others
   • Location isn’t part of the algorithm, but will affect search results (see #2 below)
   •  Search ranking and partner position are dynamic and will vary over time based on search relevancy
2. Changes to the way that location is interpreted in the search results
   • Search is now location-based to show customers the partners that are closest to them (previously, it was market- and language-based)
   • To ensure relevant results, customers will need to specify the location using the left hand navigation filter; partners closest to the center of that location will show up in the results
   • We are building an auto-detect feature to identify a customer’s location when suggesting appropriate search results; we expect this feature to be out by WPC 2016
3. Changes to the Services and Applications tabs
   • The Applications and Services tabs have been integrated into the partner profile overview
   • Customers can still search applications and services by name
   • Applications and services are no longer separately searchable from the home page

Watch for additional changes by June 30, 2016. 
 

1. Page views, visits, and other analytics will be removed
   • Customer analytics regarding leads will be reintroduced as part of our new solution and will be available after the 2016 Worldwide Partner Conference
2. Customer reviews will be removed
   • We will be replacing existing customer reviews with a more comprehensive customer review service that will give prospects a broader picture of a partner’s customer experience
   • If you have reviews you would like to keep, please capture them and feature them in other marketing assets with your customers

We’ll keep you posted on changes as they develop. In the meantime, don’t forget to keep your Business Profile current, since it will continue to be a key element in our new lead referral service.