1.
What is the CIE?
The Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) provides a facilitated
hands-on environment where business and IT decision makers test drive
Microsoft technologies including Office 365, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync,
Project, Visio, Windows, Windows Phone, Dynamics CRM and System Center.
2.
How does it work?
Unlike traditional product presentations and demos, the CIE puts a customer in
the driver’s seat for a rich, interactive experience. It is a unique, risk-free
opportunity to explore Microsoft’s Office applications by role playing in a
“true-to-life” environment. A trained facilitator leads our customers to discover
the right solutions for their business and helps them experience the “future of
productivity”. The CIE is usually set up at a Microsoft or partner office location, a
conference room in a hotel or onsite at the customer location. It is designed to
be interactive, experiential, and fun.
3.
Which products and solutions are covered?
The CIE demonstrates the richness of Microsoft’s Information Worker (IW)
product stack with its out-of-the-box functionality and integrated feature set.
Only Microsoft products currently available to our customer (on the standard
Microsoft pricelist) are showcased (no product betas or 3rd party software).
The CIE highlights the following products:

Office 365

Office 2010

SharePoint 2010

Lync 2010

Project 2010

Visio 2010

Windows 7

Windows Phone 7

CRM Dynamics 2011

System Center
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4.
Where does the CIE fit within the sales cycle?
The CIE is most effective during the earlier stages of the sales cycle (20%-40%).
In particular, schedule a CIE for a customer when:
5.

It is time for their Microsoft EA or updated EA renewal

The customer is interested in the purchase of a new EA

The customer is evaluating switch to a competitor (compete situation)

The customer has right to but hasn’t deployed the latest Microsoft products
Why should I leverage CIE for sales opportunities?
An increase in the number of projects, a faster sales cycle, and a reduction in the
number of POCs are all attributable to successful CIE sessions. Customers are
more likely to jump in and explore new solutions/ products as it pertains to their
business in a risk free environment. CIE can help partners to:

Accelerate sales cycle

Increase deal size

Reduce cost of sales

Improve partnership with local Microsoft account teams

Help drive closure in competitive situations
A testimonial from one of our partners in Mexico says it all – "The CIE shortened
our sales cycle (up to 65%). Also, because the customer 'lives' the value of the
solutions they’re buying in a CIE session, CIE helped us close volume licensing
contracts more quickly, made it easier to sell the enterprise desktop, and to set
deployment targets." - Mario Moreno, Perifel
6.
How do I qualify? Is the CIE for everyone?
The CIE showcases Microsoft’s Information Worker (IW) product stack. To ensure
that our customers derive an unforgettable experience, we require that partners
have demonstrated BPIO competencies to qualify as CIE partners. In particular,
we require our partners to meet both these criteria:
1. Be an actively managed partner with an assigned Microsoft Partner Account
Manager♣
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2. Have
competencies
in
both
Portals
and
Collaboration
&
Unified
Communications with gold competency in at least one
♣
The Microsoft Partner Account Manager or the local CIE Lead approve all
requests of onboarding a new partner
7.
What is the upfront investment?
The setup costs vary widely depending on hardware costs in your region, the
need to localize content, and your choice of facility/ facilitator. Here’s a rough
breakdown and estimates of the costs to consider:
Description
Hardware◊
Facility Setup
Facilitator Training
Platform Localization+
Setup Costs
8.
Low Estimate
$10K
$0
$0
$0
$10K
High Estimate
$20K
$3K
$2K
$15K
$40K
◊
Significant cost saving opportunity by partnering with local OEM providers
+
Cost applicable to non-English-speaking subs only
Can I customize CIE for my customers? Can I build on top of CIE?
Microsoft provides the CIE environment (made available as 6 virtual machines)
featuring rich out-of-box functionality. If you believe that adding your custom
solution on top of this stack, enhanced customer value, please feel free to do so.
However, Microsoft will not provide any support in such a situation.
9.
Can I leave it as a customer location?
The software made available through the CIE virtual machines leverage standard
trial licenses (which means they will cease to fully function after the expiration of
the trial key, usually 180 days). As long as the customer plans to use CIE for
training or demonstration purposes, they are in full compliance of Microsoft’s
EULA.
10.
Can I use my MSDN or partner licensing to activate CIE so I do not have to
deal with rearming the environment?
The entire CIE 3.0 platform is meant to be deployed before each CIE session,
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thus there is no need to activate the clients or servers. If for some reason the
platform must be activated (not to be confused with the Windows Server 2008
R2 Evaluation activation), then keys may be obtained online through MSDN or
TechNet.
11.
Do I need to buy any licenses to run a CIE session?
The software made available through the CIE virtual machines leverage standard
trial licenses (which means they will cease to fully function after the expiration of
the trial key). So, under the current EULA, you are not required to buy any
software licenses to run a CIE session.
12.
How often do you refresh the CIE images?
The CIE team at Microsoft refreshes the virtual machines as needed to ensure
that the product stack is up-to-date. Updates usually include bug fixes and
additional scenarios to further strengthen the overall business plot.
13.
How do I stay abreast of all the latest on CIE?
The CIE partner portal (www.microsoftcie.com) should be your first stop for all
the latest information on CIE. In addition, please contact your local Microsoft
Partner Account Manager or local CIE Lead for specific questions.
14.
Is the CIE focused on a specific industry vertical?
The CIE content is not industry focused and has been intentionally kept generic
to support all our customers.
15.
Do you have a version of CIE for the public sector and/ or the education
sector?
The CIE has been used successfully to showcase the value of the Microsoft
product stack to governments and educational institutions across the world with
a few innovative tweaks to the story line (the underlying infrastructure remains
unchanged). At this time, the CIE core team has no plans of providing
prescriptive guidance on how the CIE can be used for our public sector and
education industry customers.
16.
Why should I use the CIE vs. individual product demos?
The CIE is not a replacement for the individual product demos; instead, it is a
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complement. The CIE focuses on how our products help solve real world
business issues. It allows our customers to experience the Microsoft productivity
platform and appreciate how it improves efficiencies in real world business
situations. In a typical CIE, dwelling on products/ product features is secondary;
the discussion tends not to be around what the features are, rather, they tend to
be around why one would them.
17.
How do I get the right customer audience to come to CIE? Who is the right
audience?
Identifying and securing the right audience for a CIE session is critical to the
success of the overall session. Business Decision Makers (BDMs), like Line of
Business Managers, and IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) are the right audience to
invite for a CIE session. It is imperative that the CIE be positioned as a business
session and not a technical session (in fact, it is not uncommon for the facilitator
to be a non-technical person). Use your champion inside the customer
organization to identify and pull in the decision makers (e.g. department heads)
and influencers.
18.
How do I get customers to spend so much time out of their day with us?
A typical CIE session is approximately 4 hours in duration. While this might
appear to be a lot of time to get on the calendars of senior leadership, it is
possible for the senior leaders to come for 2 hours while their direct reports
partake in the entire session.
An alternate strategy, if travel is an issue for your customer, would be to take the
CIE onsite to their location.
19.
Where do I set up the CIE facility?
Our customers are experiencing the CIE all over the world. The CIE program is
currently available in over 135 Microsoft locations. Depending on your situation,
many options are available to you:
3. Deliver CIE sessions at a Microsoft office ▲
4. Delivery CIE sessions at a MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) ▲
5. Delivery CIE sessions at your own office■
6. Deliver CIE sessions at the customer location ■
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7. Delivery CIE sessions at a public location (hotel, conference, etc.) ■
▲
Work with your Microsoft Partner Account Manager to assess the feasibility of
delivering CIE sessions at a Microsoft location.
■
A few locations/ partners have opted for their CIE infrastructure to be mobile.
So, instead of investing in a permanent facility, the hardware is housed in a
special case (www.customcases.com) that can be wheeled in and out of a
customer location or offsite with minimal oversight.
20.
Can I deliver CIE’s at a Microsoft location?
The CIE program is currently available in over 135 Microsoft locations.
Depending on your location, you have two options:
1. Deliver CIE sessions at a Microsoft office ▲
2. Delivery CIE sessions at a MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) ▲
▲
Work with your Microsoft Partner Account Manager to assess the feasibility of
delivering CIE sessions at a Microsoft location.
21.
Does Microsoft have any special pricing if I want to purchase a set of
hardware?
Microsoft provides only the virtual machines and guidance on how CIE sessions
should be executed. We do not offer any special pricing on CIE hardware. We
encourage you to liaise with local OEMs to get optimal pricing on hardware in
your region.
22.
Does Microsoft provide any funding towards CIE?
Microsoft doesn’t provide any funding toward building, owning and executing
CIE sessions. We strongly believe that the ROI on CIE is very high and the upfront
investment pays for itself in a relatively short period of time.
23.
How do I get involved in the program? What do I need to get started?
If you are a qualified partner, please visit us at www.microsoftcie.com and submit
your information to request the CIE virtual machines. Once approved, you will be
provided detailed instructions on downloading the CIE virtual machines to get
started.
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24.
Is there a CIE certification process?
There is no formal “CIE certification” program. However, diligently reading
through the CIE guide, reviewing the end-to-end recording (a click through
demo with voice over) of a CIE session (only for the all-up scenario) and
observing a CIE session run by a trained CIE facilitator are the first steps towards
getting ready to leverage CIE. We encourage you to attend at least a couple CIE
sessions in your region. Please contact your Microsoft Partner Account Manager
to learn more.
25.
How do I get trained to be a facilitator?
The key to delivering an optimal experience for our customers is a good
facilitator. While effective facilitation is an art, every CIE facilitator should have
the following minimum qualifications:

Functional Expertise – The facilitator should possess functional knowledge of
the BPIO capabilities – Unified Communications (UC), Collaboration and
Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Content Management and Enterprise
Search. Even though the CIE is not a technical session, the facilitator should
be comfortable answering technical curveballs in these areas.

Facilitation Experience – The facilitator should have experience presenting,
demonstrating and facilitating technology discussions with business
decision-makers and high-profile executives. The facilitator should be
comfortable driving an interactive experience and be flexible to improvise in
real-time based on customer feedback.
Speak with your Microsoft Partner Account Manager or local CIE Lead to find out
if there are any readiness sessions near you.
26.
How much time does it take to set up?
The initial actual set up should take between 1 to 2 days. Detailed guidance is
included in the technical section of the CIE guide on www.microsoftcie.com.
27.
What kind of support do you provide for CIE?
Microsoft provides guidance on deployment and technical support for the
platform (as long as the virtual machines have not been enhanced or localized to
a non-English language). In addition, the marketing and sales collateral along
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with detailed facilitator guidance is provided. For general questions about CIE,
please send an email to [email protected]; for technical support, send an
email to [email protected]
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