by Julie Golding, U.S. MPN Lead

imagePartner advisory hours are used as currency for technical presales and advisory services offered by the Microsoft Partner Services team. As part of your company’s Microsoft Partner Network membership, your organization receives partner advisory hours for attaining a Microsoft competency, membership in Microsoft Cloud Accelerate, and subscribing to Microsoft Action Pack Develop and Design.

You can track the hours you have available, and your usage of them, by selecting Support > My support benefits and incidents from any page of the partner portal. imageApply your hours today to these offerings that can help your company build product knowledge and expertise, increase sales, and delight your customers:

  1. Deploy the latest Microsoft products and technologies internally. Microsoft consultants can provide your organization with hands-on experience in deploying  new Microsoft products and technologies in your environment. The Get Current offering allows your organization to become better equipped to understand, sell, and deploy the technology to your customers.
  2. Build skills and knowledge with Practice Accelerator. Practice Accelerator enables organizations to build repeatable practices based on Microsoft products and technologies, helping you increase win rates and revenues, reduce average days to close, accelerate deployments, and improve efficiencies. Practice Accelerators are 200-level training designed for practice leads, technical planners, implementers, and consultants. Check out our schedule at http://aka.ms/ustrainingpracticeaccelerator to register. Practice Accelerator topics include:
    • Business Intelligence
    • Data Center Consolidation and Migration
    • Data Center Management
    • Microsoft Exchange Server
    • Microsoft Lync Server
    • Microsoft Office 365
    • Microsoft SharePoint Server
    • Optimized Desktop
  3. Close deals faster. Use  technical presales assistance to get the information you need to close more deals. Partner Technical Consultants have the expertise to propose the correct deployment methods, assist with competitive assistance, and provide proof-of-concept guidance, solution architecture guidance. and test environment support.
  4. Get expert advice. Advisory services consist of consultative engagements to help you deploy and develop with Microsoft solutions. You will receive one-on-one guidance and support from Microsoft consultants that help you save time, mitigate risks effectively, and leverage best practices. 
  5. Chalk Talks. These free-form sessions are a relatively new offering created in response to partner feedback. Facilitated by a Partner Technical Consultant, Chalk Talks allow you to ask questions and receive real-time feedback from Microsoft experts on a specific solution area like Microsoft Lync Server, Microsoft Office 365, and Desktop/Application/Presentation Virtualization. 

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imageFind out why IDC says your membership benefits may be worth up to $320,000

Learn about the core benefits of your membership and how to download your company’s statement of benefits

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