Testing-as-a-Service: A new high-margin, recurring revenue stream for D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management Partners

This article is sponsored by XPLUS.

The Microsoft Dynamics partner ecosystem is once again undergoing a major transformation. Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the economics of service delivery - automating tasks that once required entire consulting teams. From requirements gathering and configuration to migration and support, everything can now be done faster, cheaper, and with higher quality.

For Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&SCM) partners, this shift brings both risk and opportunity. The risk is commoditization - when every Microsoft partner offers roughly the same implementation and support services, clients naturally choose the lowest price. The opportunity lies in redefining what partner value means: moving from hours billed to guaranteed outcomes, proactive insights, and recurring subscription-like services.

This is where Testing-as-a-Service (TaaS) becomes a game changer. Let’s explore some of the challenges for which a partner’s differentiated expertise and fit-to-purpose tools, like those from XPLUS, can determine an implementation’s long-term success.

Continuous updates, continuous risk

Unlike traditional on-premises ERP systems, D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management operates in the cloud. Microsoft delivers updates directly to customers, major ones twice a year, and smaller patches every month. While this ensures innovation, each update also introduces risk: even a small change can ripple across processes or customizations, causing unexpected disruptions.

For customers, downtime can cost hundreds of thousands per hour. For partners, the damage is reputational. Clients who experience post-update issues will inevitably question whether their partner is truly adding value. In this new landscape, continuous, automated testing becomes essential - not just to protect systems, but to protect credibility and margins.

Turning support into a profit center

Support has always been a double-edged sword for partners. It generates recurring revenue but also consumes vast amounts of consultant time. A single ticket can take days to resolve, as consultants try to reproduce the issue, apply fixes, and retest them manually.

The XPLUS platform changes that dynamic. When a customer reports a problem, replay functionality allows consultants to reproduce the exact user journey that led to it. Automated regression tests then confirm whether the fix works across all related processes. Mean time to resolution drops dramatically, from days to hours.

By automating these steps, partners can confidently offer premium service-level agreements (SLAs) backed by guaranteed response and resolution times. Clients are willing to pay more for this assurance, particularly when downtime costs reach six-figures per hour. As a result, support becomes a high-margin differentiator rather than a cost center.

Empowering Customer Service Managers

For many Customer Service Managers (CSMs), conversations with clients tend to focus on issues and outages. It’s difficult to position new services or upsells when the dialogue is purely reactive. The XPLUS platform provides a new lever for CSMs: observation data.

By analyzing which business processes are untested, under-monitored, or prone to manual intervention, CSMs can proactively recommend additional services - from expanding automated test suites or adding monitoring, to offering Testing-as-a-Service subscriptions for monthly Microsoft patches.

This data-driven insight transforms the role of the CSM from a problem-solver into a strategic advisor. Conversations shift from “we fixed your issue” to “we’ve identified an opportunity to strengthen your system.” This approach not only increases billings per customer but also deepens client trust and long-term engagement.

Testing-as-a-Service: recurring, automated, and high-margin

Traditionally, testing has been delivered as a project-based service: Partners design scripts, execute them manually, and bill for time spent. Once completed, the revenue disappears until the next update. It’s repetitive, labor-intensive, and hard to scale profitably.

Testing-as-a-Service changes everything. Using automation, Partners can build an automated regression suite once and reuse it indefinitely. Each Microsoft update or customization is automatically validated, and results are delivered without manual effort. Instead of billing per project, partners can introduce monthly subscriptions for continuous validation.

For partners, this means predictable recurring revenue, higher margins due to minimal manual effort, and a strong competitive differentiator. For customers, it means lower risk, peace of mind, and audit-ready evidence that every update has been safely tested.

This shift from one-off billing to recurring subscriptions doesn’t just improve cash flow - it also enhances company valuation. Investors place a premium on predictable, recurring revenue streams, making Testing-as-a-Service both a financial and strategic advantage.

The economics of automation

Manual regression testing for Dynamics 365 can consume up to 25 working days per year -costing around $30,000 or more per client. Automation, by contrast, delivers savings and ROI from the very first year.

Studies show that 60–80% of test cases can be automated, and organizations typically achieve a 39% return on investment by the second year. For partners, that translates into more billings, higher margins, and greater predictability.

Simply put, automation allows Partners to serve more clients, more efficiently and at far higher profitability.

Why it matters in the AI era?

AI is reshaping the entire consulting landscape. Documentation, configuration, and even support triage are becoming increasingly automated. The value of “hours worked” is collapsing and traditional consulting models are being squeezed.

Partners who continue to sell manual work at hourly rates will find themselves in a race to the bottom. Those who embrace automation-driven, outcome-based, and subscription-like services will thrive.

The XPLUS Observation and Testing Platform embodies this new approach: it delivers results faster, reduces risk, and guarantees outcomes. It transforms testing from a manual chore into a strategic, high-margin, recurring business.

Conclusion

The economics of the Microsoft Partner ecosystem are changing faster than ever. With AI compressing traditional service margins, Finance and Supply Chain Management partners must find new levers to protect profitability and drive growth.

Testing-as-a-Service provides exactly that. It allows partners to guarantee faster ticket resolution, empower CSMs with actionable insights, and build recurring, automated revenue streams.

Discover how the Observation and Testing Platform transforms Dynamics 365 F&SCM support into a profit center, powered by automation and real user data.

Book a meeting with our team to learn more.