425 Consulting experiences 35% Growth with help from Stratos Cloud Alliance

Partner Overview

425 Consulting was founded in 2013 with a desire to bring its large enterprise experience around business processes, systems, and business intelligence to small and medium sized organizations. 425 Consulting provides solutions that empower organizations to envision new possibilities, achieve goals faster, and operate with greater efficiency.

Meeting the Challenge

425 Consulting Group is a Microsoft partner that focuses on providing Azure data warehousing and Power BI reporting to small and midsized companies. The company wanted to expand its offerings to include Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Sales Professional, and Dynamics 365 Marketing. Rather than go through the time intensive process of hiring a team of professionals, 425 Consulting decided to partner with Stratos Cloud Alliance which allowed them to go to market quickly and offer a full range of services and support.

“By partnering with Stratos, we hit our goals for growth much faster and served our customers so seamlessly that you couldn’t tell where 425 ended and Stratos began,” says Rich Berry, Managing Partner at 425 Consulting. “I really think that without Stratos, we wouldn’t have experienced 35% growth in 2022, and we would have had to pass on some of the deals we sold. Stratos opened the door to our growth.” Berry reports that 2020 and 2021 were the company’s two best years, predominately related to the additional Dynamics revenue stream and ancillary work. “Dynamics is now a critical part of our solution,” says Berry.

425 Consulting is made up of former CPAs and members of the Finance team at Microsoft. As former CPAs, their approach is to be a trusted advisor to their clients. They want to build long-term relationships with clients and continue working with them over many years to help them achieve their goals using technology. “Without Stratos, there would be a big hole in the trust that we build with our clients,” says Berry. “Stratos has the Dynamics expertise to backup 425.”

Onboarding Experience

425 had a seamless onboarding with Stratos Cloud Alliance. “We joined Stratos, read the marketing materials, and onboarded with some great people,” says Berry. “I recommend that future partners understand that you need to go all in and assign a full-time employee, or at least someone who is committing a significant part of their job to the relationship. The payback will be big.”

Marketing Campaigns in a Box

425 Consulting has taken advantage of Stratos Cloud Alliance’s Marketing Campaigns in a Box, which provide blogs, emails, images, and instructions to execute marketing campaigns with premium content. “We have been all over the marketing campaigns, and boy, what a timesaver it is for us,” says Berry. As he describes, they are no longer staring at a blank piece of paper trying to figure out how to market to potential clients. Campaigns in a Box allow them to not only execute as-is, but also use them as a model to create their own campaigns around the idea of transparency and trust.

Broadening Horizons for Future Growth

By joining Stratos Cloud Alliance, 425 Consulting broadened the company’s horizons to now support plans for significant growth. They are looking at developing repeatable solutions for underserved industries. “In the next three to five years, we want to be three to five times bigger, and we can get there with help from Stratos,” says Berry. “I’m constantly surprised by how much paper is still used in this world, and how many email servers are in closets, or outdated accounting systems are out there that don’t integrate with CRM. There are opportunities for verticals when you keep your eyes open.”

Stratos Cloud Alliance serves as an extension of the 425 team. Their most successful project over the past year is one they did with Stratos. The client wanted to be the prototype of everything Microsoft, from CRM to accounting and reporting; the client’s President is a visionary and wanted to equip the company for future growth. Stratos worked with 425 together as one team—to create a proposal. As an integrated team 425 and Stratos developed a phased solution for execution over 18 months. Together, Dynamics 365 Sales Professional was successfully implemented, Dynamics 365 Marketing added, and Business Central was implemented to pull it all together.

“I don’t believe that 425 consulting would have the opportunities we have today, or as bright of a future without our relationship with Stratos Cloud Alliance,” says Berry, “Our partnership supports and enables 425 Consulting’s vision to be a trusted technology advisor for finance teams, CEOs, CFOs, and Controllers. I’m so thankful that we found Stratos Cloud Alliance to help us achieve our goals and ambitions.”