You don't apply for a designation. Microsoft calculates a score from data it already holds.
The score covers three things:
You have to clear all three. Essentially, Microsoft looks at whether a firm's past clients kept using what was built, based on the customers' own usage. You either have that track record, or you don't.
the tools people use to run operations day to day: Microsoft 365, Copilot, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
the Azure foundation underneath: data, analytics, applications and infrastructure.
identity, compliance and protection across the estate, kept as its own area.
Most organizations already pay for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform and use a fraction of what they can do, and most teams spend their day inside Microsoft 365 and Copilot. This designation is about getting more out of both. To hold it, our people are certified to configure and architect these tools rather than just administer them, with current certifications across Microsoft 365 security, identity, Purview governance and Copilot administration. Microsoft then checks that clients grew their usage over time.
In practice, it means the CRM or the workflow we put in is designed by someone qualified to design it, and the Copilot rollout actually gets adopted. Most of the trouble organizations hit with Copilot comes from switching it on before the governance is in place, and that's exactly the ground this designation covers.
This is the Azure side: the data and AI foundation, and the custom software that runs on top of it. Earning it meant getting people certified across the Azure data and AI stack, from solutions architects through to specialists in Azure Machine Learning, Fabric and Azure OpenAI, as well as developers holding current Azure, DevOps and GitHub certifications. Microsoft then looks at whether the clients we did that work for were still using it a year on.
Two things fall under this. The AI and analytics work has to have stuck, measured on the customers' own usage. And the custom applications we build (the ones for when the off-the-shelf option doesn't fit how you work) have to still be running in production, not stalled as a prototype that never shipped. Between them, the designation says we have the right people and that what we've built for other organizations is still in use.
These sit a level above the designations and take more to earn. A designation is scored from Microsoft's own data. A specialist accreditation adds an independent audit, where an outside firm reviews the actual architecture, the documentation and the customer outcomes, and talks to the people who did the work.
We hold three:
It needed the Cloud & AI Platforms capability behind it, a team of certified specialists, and a pass on an external audit of how we build analytics on Azure.
Deep, audited expertise in deploying and governing Copilot across Microsoft 365, earned against delivered client work rather than on paper.
We earned this on real Power Automate and Power Apps projects running in production. Microsoft has now merged what were two separate specializations (Intelligent Automation and Low Code Application Development) into this single one, which our existing status carries over automatically.
An accreditation is the strongest signal in the set, because the check comes from someone with no stake in the answer.
Beyond Microsoft, we're also SOC 2 certified and a Databricks Consulting Partner, both worth having when a project calls for them.
None of this guarantees a good fit. We could have every badge, but we might still not be the right fit. If the people, pace, or industry knowledge don’t match, it won’t work. What the accreditations do is narrow down firms that have proven to Microsoft they can deliver. It also shows that clients have stayed with them. That's a sensible place to start from, and it costs you nothing to check.
Want to work out what your data and AI roadmap actually needs? Talk to a Rocker. We'll tell you straight whether we're the right fit.