Kevin Machayya is a 15-year veteran of Microsoft and Great Plains Software. He has held various roles in technical support, customer service, and sales operations. For the last 11 years, Kevin has focused on the Microsoft Dynamics partner channel through partner account management, readiness, marketing, resourcing/staffing and development programs.
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The US Microsoft Dynamics team is inviting you to join us in kicking off FY12 with the Partner Business Excellence Series of events. This series will further define Microsoft Dynamics commitment to helping our partners improve their productivity, efficiency and profitability. Learn how you can grow your business and achieve competitive differentiation by understanding the strategy and commitments, engaging in the planning process, and leveraging training, marketing, and sales programs available.
Visit PartnerSource for complete details and to register for any of these events. Attend the relevant events designed around your organization’s current focus as a Microsoft Dynamics partner as well as sessions you are evaluating for your business practice.
FY12 Partner Business Excellence Primary Sessions
Drive Alignment to Increase Effectiveness – Principles Overview | Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Join the US Microsoft Dynamics Partner Leadership Team as we kick-off FY12! By attending this ninety-minute session you will gain an overall understanding of our key strategies this year. In addition, you will learn what to expect from the upcoming training days and how to best align your internal resources to attend the training and sessions that are most relevant.
Industry 360° - Driving Industry Excellence with Microsoft Dynamics AX | Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Microsoft Dynamics AX Partners! Attend two sixty-minute web seminars to learn more about accelerating growth with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Our opportunity is significant and we will share some breakthrough resources, readiness, programs and events to help drive success together through Industry 360° (I-360°).
Drive Microsoft Dynamics ERP Customer Adds in SMB | Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Attend two sixty-minute web seminars to learn more about how to drive customer additions to your Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics SL business and Microsoft strategy around SMB. Learn how to build your technical and sales/pre-sales capacity to meet your growing business needs and learn what "The Road to Repeatability" really means for you!
Grow CRM Share Everywhere | Thursday, July 28, 2011
Attend two sixty-minute web seminars to learn more about how you can grow Microsoft Dynamics CRM everywhere and how to best compete in the CRM marketplace and win! We will share the overall CRM strategy and our industry and solutions strategy around CRM hosted on-premise and cloud. Learn how to best ready your team-members in technical, sales and pre-sales areas.
FY12 Partner Business Excellence General Sessions
FY12 Field Partner Planning & Tools | Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Understand how to make the most of FY12 Partner Planning and about the tools available to help make FY12 planning a valuable experience.
MPN and Dynamics Support Services | Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Attend a refresher on the new service offerings and the new incentive structure. Learn how the Dynamics Support Services can assist you.
Staying Connected & Existing Customer | Thursday, July 28, 2011
Review partner communications strategies that will keep you connected and plugged-into what is most important to you and learn about ways in which Microsoft continues to be committed to maintaining long and happy relationships with our existing Dynamics customers.
This is content you truly do not want to miss as we head into FY12!
--Kevin
Yesterday, Steve Ballmer announced the worldwide availability of Office 365, Microsoft’s next generation productivity service. Office 365 is the culmination of more than 20 years of experience delivering world class productivity solutions to people and businesses of all sizes. It brings together Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync in an always-up-to-date cloud service. Customers may try it and buy it here.
Now, you may be asking…
Well, I’ve completed some preliminary research for you, and will be on point to provide more as it rolls out.
Existing PartnerSource Content
Additionally, visit Eric Ligman’s Microsoft SMS&P Partner Community Blog to find a robust listing of Office 365 information and resources.
We know you are driving really hard to complete a successful close to your Microsoft Fiscal Year 2011 sales, and to assist you, we’ve recently launched some new compete resources.
We are pleased to announce the following 3 new compete courses that are now all live on the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Academy.
Visit PartnerSource for information on these compete courses and the variety of competitive resources including sales guides, training, case studies, and sales support available to partners.
Thoughts or suggestions on additional compete resources or information to aid you in your sales efforts? Let us know by providing a comment below.
Our partner readiness team shares this information regarding an upcoming course targeted at people responsible for managing, leading, coordinating and working on projects who have limited experience or knowledge of practical, formal project management methods.
The workshop will be conducted August 2, 4, 9, and 11, 2011 from 9:00am – 12:00pm Pacific Time.
Learn how to complete projects on time and within budget in this twelve hour virtual-led workshop. Many projects are performed by highly competent and effective people who have little or no project management training. They perform projects like process improvement, marketing campaign development, new product development, event planning, production and other "tasks" which are projects. Learning project management on the job is an unnecessary burden in an already challenging position.
This course provides practical skills, concepts and principles you can take back to the job, along with insights you’ll need to adapt them to specific project environments.
The goal of this course is to achieve quality performance through effective planning and control. We use a process orientation and an analytical, systems-oriented approach to problem solving and decision making. Throughout the course, we integrate the need for collaboration and clear communications among people, often in multiple organizations.
For more details and to register, visit PartnerSource.
Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail is an end-to-end retail solution for mid-sized retailers and two-tier enterprise scenarios. It is the first retail ERP solution designed with a fully integrated point-of-sale component, giving retailers more control over their retail chains. Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail provides capabilities to connect people, processes, and technologies, helping retailers create a "Connected Retail Experience" that can develop lasting customer relationships.
For more information, visit PartnerSource.
The course taking place in Atlanta, GA, held August 15-18, 2011, will cover Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail. This includes Hands-on experience and understanding of the retail industry and Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail Headquarters and Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail POS. This course is suitable for implementation consultants, presales consultants and developers.
In this course, you will learn about the following elements:
Learn more and register by visiting the Partner Learning Center.
If you missed the post earlier this month on the official Microsoft Dynamics CRM blog, the CRM team recently published a new white paper intended for enterprise architects within customer and partner organizations who are evaluating Microsoft Dynamics CRM from an architecture standpoint. It highlights architectural details on key components of Dynamics CRM, as it applies in an on-premises deployment model as well as in a cloud environment.
The CRM Horizontal Reference Architecture provides architecture guidance in the following areas:
You can access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Horizontal Reference Architecture whitepaper through the Microsoft Downloads site.
Huge congratulations today to all of our awesome Microsoft Dynamics WPC 2011 award winners and finalists! Your commitment and dedication to Microsoft and the Microsoft Dynamics technologies is top notch, and we appreciate your strong efforts throughout FY11.
For a complete list of all WPC Awards 2011 winners and more information on our winning partners go to Digital WPC and the Microsoft News Center.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year
Winner: Hitachi Consulting, United States
Finalist: Accenture/Avanade, United States
Finalist: Outsourcery, United Kingdom
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Solution of the Year
Winner: proMX GmbH, Germany
Finalist: ClickDimensions, United States
Finalist: CWR Mobility, Netherlands
Microsoft Dynamics ERP Partner of the Year
Winner: XAPT, United States
Finalist: InterDyn AKA, United States
Finalist: KCS.net Holding AG, Switzerland
Microsoft Dynamics ERP ISV Solution of the Year
Winner: Schouw Informatisering BV, Netherlands
Finalist: NovaVision Software, Denmark
Finalist: To-Increase, Netherlands
Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Business Excellence Partner of the Year
Winner: Zero2Ten Inc., United States
Finalist: Pareto Platform Inc., United States
Finalist: Rose Business Solutions/RoseASP Inc., United States
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence Partner of the Year
Winner: InsideView, United States
Finalist: proMX GmbH, Germany
Finalist: Sonoma Partners, United States
Microsoft Dynamics Distribution Partner of the Year
Winner: Accenture/Avanade, United States
Finalist: Columbus, Denmark
Finalist: KORUS Consulting, Russia
Microsoft Dynamics Financial Services Partner of the Year
Winner: VeriPark, Turkey
Finalist: NAVAX Consulting GmbH, Austria
Finalist: TRAVIATA, Belgium
Microsoft Dynamics Manufacturing Partner of the Year
Winner: Scalable Data Systems Pty Ltd., Australia
Finalist: TDCI Inc., United States
Microsoft Dynamics Professional Services Partner of the Year
Winner: Client Profiles, United States
Finalist: Singhammer IT Consulting AG, Germany
Microsoft Dynamics Public Sector Partner of the Year
Winner: Rock Solid Technologies Inc., Puerto Rico
Finalist: Hitachi Consulting, United Kingdom
Finalist: Tribridge, United States
Microsoft Dynamics Retail Partner of the Year
Winner: IGNIFY, United States
Finalist: Ideaca Knowledge Services, Canada
Finalist: New West Technologies Inc., United States
Once again congrats to all and enjoy your WPC 2011 experience in Los Angeles, CA next month!
The Microsoft Dynamics AX partner readiness team is pleased to offer a web seminar series highlighting the new features in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.
According to the team, these web seminars have been produced by Partner Technical Services and are available via the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Learning Plans on PartnerSource and the Partner Learning Center (PLC). Each web seminar includes a downloadable Workbook for additional learning. Courses range from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, with time specified in the PLC course description. Please check PartnerSource as new courses will be added regularly.
At the end of each course, we have provided additional information on the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) benefit Partner Technical Services. After viewing the course, if you have additional questions regarding the training, they can utilize their Partner Advisory Hours for assistance to engage a Microsoft Services Specialist. Through the Partner Technical Services offering, Partner Advisory Hours are allocated to your organization based on membership/competency level. For more information on the Partner Technical Services benefit please sign into the Microsoft Partner Network.
For readiness direction on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, please see the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 role tailored learning plans.
Course Titles
For more information regarding the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, visit the launch portal on PartnerSource.
Microsoft still has two weeks remaining in Fiscal Year 2011, but I wanted to ensure you are knowledgeable of the fiscal calendar changes starting July 1, 2011 by passing along this information from the Microsoft Dynamics Operations team.
Beginning in FY12 (July 1, 2011), Microsoft will align its fiscal calendar to our external reporting rhythm.
Microsoft's fiscal year will then be defined consistently moving forward as July 1 to June 30.
Microsoft is aligning all lines of business to the Gregorian financial calendar in order to better streamline accounting, record keeping and reporting. For Microsoft Business Solutions, these dates are reflected on the FY12 calendar posted on the PartnerSource Ordering Homepage under the 'Ordering Resources' section.
The Connector for Microsoft Dynamics is an integration solution which is targeted specifically at the Microsoft Dynamics product family. The Connector provides an out of the box integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions.
Watch this on demand recording of the Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Feature Pack 5 to learn more today!
Please note, the demo is of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online connected to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, however we tried to keep our demo points as ERP agnostic as possible so customers with Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics NAV will still find value in the video.
Also, feel free to visit the Connector Product Team’s blog site for additional information and best practices related to the Connector for Microsoft Dynamics.