April 27, 2023

Partner Investments Engine (PIE): A quick start guide

By Microsoft Americas Partner Team

A woman sitting down having an online meeting on her laptop, with a computer screen and a wireless keyboard in front of her.

Partner Audience: Managed Partners, Services Partners
Relevant to:
#ProgramOfferUpdate #GeneratePipeline #AccelerateDeals #GrowYourBiz


Microsoft offers a range of investments across each stage of the partner sales cycle. These investments are intended to enable deal acceleration and conversion, and help partners drive digital transformation with their customers.

Understanding partner investments 

Two investment categories are available to partners: offers and incentives. Offers are designed to fund specific pre-sales or post-sales engagements with customers and are not fundamentally tied to a transaction. Incentives are transaction-based, paid on a percentage of sales revenue or on the end–customer consumption or usage in the post-sale phase.

You can increase your sales velocity by taking advantage of the offers and incentives available through the Partner Investments Engine (PIE).

Offers and incentives align to the partner-customer sales journey phase, as shown here:

What is PIE?

The Partner Investment Engine (PIE) is a portfolio of offers and incentives through which eligible Microsoft US-managed partners can request funds to support the execution of key sales and marketing activities with their customers. are well-defined with specific eligibility requirements to provide agility and time to funding. The offers and incentives are well-defined with specific eligibility requirements to provide agility and shorten time to funding. If your engagement does not fit within the requirements of PIE, you can still request funding through the Area Win Room with the help of your Microsoft field representative.

Partners can stack pre-sales and post-sales PIE offers with an end customer. However, PIE is not available for customers with any other ECIF investment already applied in the fiscal year for the requested solution area. Partners are encouraged to leverage their PDM to ensure funding potential is maximized as they bring their customers through the investment win formula.

What PIE offers are currently available?

The FY23 PIE program currently includes three offers and incentives, each supporting pre- and post-sales engagements:

    • FY23 Azure Everywhere provides funding to help eligible customers along their cloud adoption journey through partner-led activities aligned to the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework.
    • FY23 Modern Work Everywhere funds activities that partners can leverage to drive sales, deployment, and consumption of strategic Modern Work products.
    • FY23 Security Everywhere funds activities that showcase the security capabilities of Microsoft 365 and Azure to drive sales, deployments, and consumption with eligible customers.

Get started and stay informed

US-managed partners can request access to the PIE Portal to begin onboarding. If you meet the general program requirements, an access code will be provided, allowing you to sign in to your personalized PIE dashboard. From there, you’ll have access to the specific offers you’re eligible for based on offer-specific requirements (such as Solutions Partner designations).

To stay informed and engaged with the PIE community:

If you have questions or need assistance, our support team will be more than happy to help.

 

Other posts you may like