Biz Apps Partner Digital Summit: Increase Scale of Deal Sizes by Creating Funded Engagements

Developed by Microsoft and Dynamics Communities, each of the five modules of the Biz Apps Partner Digital Summit delivers executive insights, plans, and ideas that System Integrators (SIs) Consultants and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can put to work for their business. Each module features Microsoft leadership explaining the “why” behind these initiatives and programs, and business applications partners defining how they’ve successfully been put to work.
Module 2 of the Biz Apps Partner Digital Summit, “Creating Funded Engagements,” highlighted the level of scale that creating funded engagements brings to deal sizes that are happening at the point of the customer. If organizations start to formalize some of these elements and put them to work for their business, then deal sizes can increase now.
In this session, Adriana Bade, Partner Marking Director, Microsoft, and Dalia Grinberg Silverstain, Director of Partner Marketing, Microsoft, talk through what funded engagements are and how to get started with them. Landon Boogaard, VP of Sales, JourneyTeam, and Addie Rodman, VP of Marketing, Boyer provide partner perspectives with funded engagements.
An Overview of Funded Engagements
Kicking off Module 2, Bade and Grinberg Silverstain discussed various aspects of funded engagements, breaking down how they can enhance the ability to drive customer success and achieve business goals, the importance of maximizing funded engagement, the different solutions place availability for FY25, and more.
Benefits
Grinberg Silverstain jumped into the benefits of funded engagements. She described it as a “powerful tool that can significantly enhance our ability to accelerate customer deals, drive innovation, increase deployments and consumption, and improve win rates.” Stressing the importance of understanding different types of funding engagements, Grinberg Silverstain explained how they provide businesses with the resources and support needed to create compelling value propositions for customers.
Microsoft’s Solutions Place Strategy
For FY25, Microsoft’s solutions place is “designed to inspire and empower to achieve realized value and manage and optimize,” Grinberg Silverstain stated. It encompasses various funded engagements tailored to different solution areas. Each engagement is crafted to address specific customer challenges and opportunities, which ensures they can provide targeted and effective solutions. “By aligning our efforts with this solution place, we can ensure a more strategic and impactful approach to customer engagement, driving greater success for both customer and the organization.”
Vision and Value
The Dynamics 365 (D365) pre-sale vision and value engagement, Grinberg Silverstain explained, are designed to assist customers with modernizing their on-premise ERP systems to D365 Finance and D365 Supply Chain Management. This involved a workshop to build the customer’s transformation vision and a business value analysis, providing the customer with a clear roadmap for their digital transformation journey. “The goal is to drive customer intent for modernizing their ERP through an assessment phase and the well-crafted vision of the future state with clear business outcomes and success metrics,” Grinberg Silverstain said.
The D365 post-sale engagements target scenarios specific to customers – including vision and value optimization. “By establishing goals with business decision makers and identifying adoption brokers, we can formulate high priority transformation scenarios…to achieve innovation within the customer environment,” Grinberg Silverstain stated.
The deliverables include understanding the problem and defining the problem statement, creating solution blueprints and performance plans, and following the success by design framework. Grinberg Silverstain emphasized that post-sales engagements are essential for maintaining customer satisfaction, driving continuous improvement and ensuring the long- term success of the solution.
Power Platform
Bade reviewed the role of Power Platform with funded engagements. She described three pre-sales funded engagements and one post-sales. “When you’re thinking about funded engagements, you always want to think about how you can stack that,” she said. She walked through the low code needs assessment, vision and value, governance strategy, and deployment accelerator.
Business Central
Moving to Business Central, Bade talked about three funded engagements. The first was needs assessment, which involves talking to partners early on in the sales cycle to identify pain points and deliverables. The second was migration assessments, which involves functional, technical, and customization assessments. The third was deployment acceleration, which identifies the project’s description, deployment plan, and implementation phases.
Partner Perspectives
The conversation turned over to representatives from JourneyTeam and Boyer who provided their experiences utilizing funded engagements.
JourneyTeam
Throughout his time at JourneyTeam, Boogaard has been hands-on with leveraging Microsoft funding. “One of the benefits of being a Microsoft partner…is we have the opportunity to work closely with Microsoft and leverage a lot of the different funding programs that they offer,” he said. He continued sharing best practices to “close the gap on what’s possible” and increase customer satisfaction.
One of the biggest keys to success with the Microsoft funding programs, Boogaard described, was making full-time hires to understand and optimize the funding programs. These roles are responsible for owning the funding process, making sure the sales teams understand it, and ensuring the delivery teams are aware of what customers are leveraging.
Another key aspect is having a strong marketing leader that has had success with Microsoft funding in the past. For instance, they have a strategic AI and low-code roadmap that they’re leveraging funding for. Being a full-stack Microsoft partner, the company also has offerings around Microsoft services. “Having offers that are tied directly to funding programs makes getting funding very, very simple,” he stated.
A next step that Boogaard recommended was aligning your sales process to Microsoft’s sales process – making sure you’re following the different stages and staying on the same course with Microsoft. This way, when you go to put together an offer for a customer, it’s already aligned with Microsoft. Boogaard shared that this “has been super, super critical.”
Boyer
Rodman jumped into providing an overview of Boyer’s processes with funding programs. Sharing her personal experience, Rodman explained that after recognizing Boyer didn’t have anyone own overseeing these programs, Rodman stepped into that role. She encouraged organizations to assign a single, dedicated resource to be the Microsoft Commercial Incentives (MCI) subject matter expert. It’s vital to have someone “that speaks Microsoft’s language, to be able to first go in and learn all of the programs, understand which ones are relevant to the business and then bring that back internally.”
Once that role is aligned, the incentive engagements relevant to your business will then get others to start thinking about potential claims that can be made the minute you engage with a new potential client, Rodman said. She walked through Boyer’s claim process and shared key internal resources.
Rodman concluded with tips for MCI claims that she has adopted. If you can’t tell if a customer is eligible for claims, she suggested a few things to do to get that information. “Every time you get a lead, just go see what they’re eligible for. If they’re not showing as eligible, get them added, so that when you do want to claim them. They are in the system for you to claim.” She shared further examples of these processes and things she has found helpful in getting over funded engagement hurdles.
If there are engagements that don’t meet your exact business model, Rodman emphasized sharing feedback with Microsoft, as it can help the company create offerings.