FY27 Incentives: Most acquisitions in the Microsoft partner ecosystem have traditionally been justified by familiar metrics: scale, market share, recurring revenue, customer count, and geographic expansion.

However, Microsoft’s FY27 Incentives are changing introduce a new perspective on value creation—one that could significantly influence how partners evaluate both acquisition strategy and growth opportunities within their existing customer base.

1. Growth Is Becoming More Valuable Than Run-Rate Revenue

For Business Applications CSP partners, Microsoft is shifting incentive emphasis away from traditional run-rate revenue and placing greater value on customer growth and expansion.

Under the FY27 framework, the Dynamics 365 Growth Accelerator offers Indirect Resellers the opportunity to earn up to 12.5%, with total earnings capped at $312,500. Incentive calculations are based on year-over-year incremental billed revenue at the customer tenant level.

The message is clear: growth is increasingly becoming one of the primary mechanisms for partners to offset declining baseline incentive earnings.

2. A New Lens for Acquisition Value

This shift creates an important consideration for acquisitive partners.

Historically, acquisition success was measured through factors such as recurring revenue, customer retention, operational efficiencies, and expanded market presence.

Today, another question is becoming increasingly relevant:

How quickly can an acquired customer base be activated, modernized, and converted into cloud growth?

Many acquired portfolios contain substantial numbers of NAV, Business Central on-premises, and other legacy Dynamics customers. While these customers provide maintenance revenue, they also represent a significant untapped opportunity for cloud migration, subscription growth, and broader digital transformation initiatives.

For partners focused on maximizing acquisition value, the speed at which these customers can be converted to cloud services may become a critical success factor.

3. Migration Capacity Is Emerging as a Strategic Asset

The challenge is not identifying the opportunity—it’s executing on it.

Many partners have proven acquisition expertise and strong commercial organizations. Far fewer have the operational capacity required to modernize large ERP customer populations within ambitious timeframes.

Across the European Microsoft partner ecosystem, one trend is becoming increasingly apparent:

Migration capacity is evolving into a strategic asset.

Partners that employ structured migration frameworks are often able to execute modernization programs involving hundreds of ERP customers within a 12-month period. This enables faster cloud adoption, greater operational standardization, and quicker realization of acquisition value than traditional migration approaches.

As incentives increasingly reward growth outcomes, the ability to scale migrations efficiently may become a competitive differentiator.

Based on our hands-on experience supporting large-scale Business Central migration programs across Europe, one lesson is clear: successful modernization is rarely about moving one customer at a time. It requires a structured framework, a repeatable execution model, and the ability to help partners turn both acquired and existing customer portfolios into scalable cloud growth.

4. The Opportunity May Already Be in Your Installed Base

Importantly, this dynamic extends beyond acquisitions.

Many Dynamics partners are sitting on considerable growth potential within their existing installed customer base. Legacy ERP environments, on-premises deployments, and underutilized cloud customers represent opportunities for expansion that can directly contribute to FY27 growth objectives.

In an environment where growth is increasingly rewarded and passive revenue maintenance is becoming less valuable, partners that systematically activate and modernize their installed base may be better positioned to protect profitability and accelerate cloud growth than those relying solely on net-new customer acquisition.

5. A Strategic Question for FY27 Incentives

As partners refine their growth strategies, two important questions emerge:

Is your next growth engine the company you acquire next?

Or is it the installed base you already own?

In FY27, the most successful partners may not necessarily be those completing the largest number of acquisitions. Instead, they could be the organizations best equipped to transform both acquired and existing customer portfolios into scalable cloud growth.

Across the Nordics and wider European market, partners are taking very different approaches to this challenge—with equally different results. The common factor among the strongest performers is increasingly their ability to execute modernization and migration programs at scale.

As incentives continue to evolve, the ability to unlock growth from existing customer relationships may become one of the most valuable assets a Microsoft partner can possess.

Curious where your growth opportunity really sits?

Whether you are evaluating acquisitions, planning a cloud migration strategy, or looking to unlock growth within your existing Dynamics customer base, we can help challenge assumptions, structure the opportunity, and share practical experience from large-scale Business Central migration programs.

📅 Book a meeting directly through the calendar, and let’s discuss your opportunities, challenges, and growth priorities.

This perspective is shaped by direct experience supporting Microsoft Dynamics partners in building structured migration programs that move beyond isolated projects and into scalable, repeatable execution.