Microsoft’s First Sensible Dynamics NAV Promo?

Microsoft has announced a new promotion aimed at the small to mid-market. This is in line with their targets to gain market share, particularly against competitors such as Sage and Infor. This campaign applies to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, GP and SL and although there is no restriction to the total number of users that can be added to the licence, the "Give Me 5" clearly sets the expectation that this is aimed at small businesses and therefore is more likely to be successful for GP in the US than for any other product in any other geography.

This is not the first campaign aimed to make the solutions more accessible to smaller businesses. 3-4-1 earlier this year also tried. However, partners had no notice to build campaigns, the offer was valid for such a short period so all it managed to do was bring a few deals forward that would probably have closed in their own good time. Therefore, the 3-4-1 campaign reduced margins for all without having a significant impact on the total number of Customer adds that would have been achieved regardless.

The "Give Me 5" campaign is a giant leap in showing Microsoft's understanding of the market and sales cycle. Two elements of the campaign fill me with joy:

• Timescale: although as usual we had little notice that this was on the way, the campaign will stay in market until June 22^nd 2012.
• Partner Rebate: partners who achieve well with this campaign will be rewarded so whereas previous campaigns have shared the discount 50/50, this time Microsoft is recognising that partners should be compensated.

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