Dynamics Corner

Episode 347: In the Dynamics Corner Chair: End User to BC Master: Shannon Shares Invaluable Insights

• Shannon Mullins • Season 3 • Episode 347

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🚀Join us for an inspiring chat with Shannon Mullins, Microsoft MVP and CEO of A BC Consulting Group!

 

In this lively conversation, Shannon shares her incredible journey from being a #DynamicsGP end user to becoming a #BusinessCentral consultant with hosts Kris Ruyeras & Brad Prendergast. We dive into insights from the recent #SummitNA conference, the crucial role of data cleansing during migration, and how businesses can gear up to prepare for the transition from GP to Business Central.

 

🔑Key Takeaways:

 

1️⃣Prepare for the big move: Understand the differences between GP & Business Central and why re-implementation is often better than migration.

 

2️⃣Master the tools: Take advantage of Business Central's robust features and automation tools to supercharge your business processes.

 

3️⃣Documentation, documentation, documentation! Learn why proper documentation and customer education are vital for managing inherited code and ensuring smooth transitions.

 

4️⃣Training FTW: Consider the importance of continuous training & learning for both partners and users to maximize Business Central's full potential.

 

5️⃣Community is everything: Reflect on the power of community at events like the recent #BCBash at Summit NA and the opportunities that come from taking career risks.

 

⏰Don't miss out on this thought-provoking discussion with practical tips and Shannon's personal insights. Tune in now and make way for the bright BC future! 🎧🌞

 

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#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner

Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/

Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner, the podcast where we dive deep into all things Microsoft Dynamics. Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting your journey into the world of Dynamics 365, this is your place to gain insights, learn new tricks and what GP to BC re-implementation means. I'm your co-host, Chris, and this is Brad.

Speaker 2:

This episode was recorded on October 25th 2024. Chris, Chris, Chris, Look at that fancy shirt.

Speaker 3:

I like these fancy shirts Look at that, look at that, look at that.

Speaker 2:

Fancy shirt, new logo and new stickers. New stickers Many had the opportunity to get these at Summit, and if anybody wants a sticker, they know where to find us and pins we get some pins, all this fancy stuff going on, and when it has it, we may have a new website soon too I don't know yet, though we have to see, we'll have to talk about that later.

Speaker 2:

Uh, also, we are fresh off of the summit conference and this was a lot of talk about gp to bc, bc, gp being this big bc bash with us. We had the opportunity to speak with Microsoft MVP Shannon Mullins I guess Microsoft MVP is redundant because the M means Microsoft, but MVP Shannon Mullins about what a customer can do to prepare to migrate or we're not going to use the word migrate, as you'll hear Re-implement. Gp to BC is what also what partners can do to prepare themselves for BC and also some other cool conversation tips and tricks for GP to BC is what also what partners can do to prepare themselves for BC and also some other cool conversation tips and tricks for GP to BC.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm on my audio with my phone. Got it, got it Okay, so the dog starts barking or the you know, someone goes crazy and I can walk away.

Speaker 1:

All right, perfect, perfect. Look at that llama behind you, oh look at my llama.

Speaker 3:

Look at it. Is that tilted?

Speaker 1:

From my perspective, it looks tilted All that.

Speaker 3:

It's like one of those tilted bookshelves.

Speaker 1:

I thought it was just like all the badges.

Speaker 3:

You can't see it, but I've got all my friends all my InsightWorks friends there, nice. This is my newest friend that Brian brought me because I miss TechWorks and that was really sad. What's his name? Do you name them? Well, they all have names.

Speaker 2:

This is the TechWorks Tamarin. Oh, I miss tech work, so and that was really sad.

Speaker 3:

What's his name? Do you name those? Um well, they all have names. This is the tech works Tamarin.

Speaker 2:

Oh I have a lot of those, to be honest with you, and I didn't know. They had names on them.

Speaker 3:

They have names. I have to go. Yeah, the names I wish I had. I wish I had you didn have the frog.

Speaker 2:

I have the bird. You know what is it? The toucan, not a toucan. The um puffin puffin I have several of them I didn't get any in san diego.

Speaker 3:

I got the llama in san diego yeah, I didn't get any at summit.

Speaker 2:

Speaking of summit, welcome back to our first week back. How are you settling in after the conference?

Speaker 3:

oh, wow, um, wow. How am I settling in? I don't know if I'm settled in yet, I think. Just trying to recap on everything you know, that kind of happened. I had three crazy PAC sessions at Summit, which was really kind of cool, especially our GP to BC. One on the last day was very, very well. We had a session with Mariano. Well, I had a session with Mariano and Mariano and I have been friends for a long time Him and I go way back in the GP days and McCormick is now in Business Central. We worked with McCormick for like over a decade, so that was a great session we had. 70% of our audience is considering moving to Business Central from GP.

Speaker 1:

I will say the same thing, because my session I would say 80% were all GP.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we actually polled the audience, so 70% were end users and on GP for over 20 years, mostly average and all considering moving to Business Central.

Speaker 2:

That's great, I'm happy to hear that. And I did poll the audience in my sessions as well. I didn't ask about products because my topic, I don't think you know, warranted polling them. But you both had mentioned the number of end users. I had the same percentage. It seemed like there were far more end users in my sessions and from hearing from both of you and others, they felt the same way. So it's nice to see a conference that's intended for you know, it's by the community, for the community, for end users as well as partners as well, to share some knowledge, just to see a lot of end users there. And I will say I hold the gp to bc topic thought because I have a lot of questions for you on that but the riverwalk area was beautiful oh, it was stunning.

Speaker 3:

We did it at night, it was. It was fantastic. And I drugged my 15 year old. He was working with me at the booth, he was our intern this year and, uh, I made him go out and he hates touristy things. But I said we're gonna do a touristy thing and we did, we did the, we did the boat ride. I love boat rides in cities and that was lovely and the restaurants and it was great.

Speaker 2:

It was a nice area I'm happy that I was able to get out and walk the river walk. I went out for lunch and dinner a couple of times just to see the. A lot of times I always say I've been everywhere but have been nowhere. So to finally this time I said I'm made a conscious effort to say I'm going to get out and explore. Where time permitting was nice to get out and I too enjoy those historical boat rides. So the boat ride was beautiful going through downtown San antonio, but the history of it as well, I know a lot of cities.

Speaker 2:

Boston has it florida has it in many cities where you can go through the canals and you just get the history I enjoy it and you learn so much about a city, a city in the history of it, which just enriches the experience, and I think you appreciate a little bit more so well, I'm happy to hear that you had it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, those people who are going to DynamicsCon I would say live, because I'm so used to saying live but DynamicsCon, so Molly won't correct me later In Chicago my favorite thing to do in Chicago every time I go is to do the architectural boat tour, so it's the best boat tour in Chicago.

Speaker 1:

Sign me up, yeah.

Speaker 4:

I'm ready, let's do it.

Speaker 2:

Let in Chicago Sign me up. Yeah, I'm ready, let's do it. Let's do a free day. I'll commit to doing that. I mean a lot of this. We don't get the opportunity to spend some time. You know this one. I was there for quite a period of time so I didn't have the opportunity to have extra time. But I think DynamicsCon will be able to get the schedule to have like a down day somewhere to be able to go and see Chicago Again. I've been to Chicago many times, but this time I want to go through and explore.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a stage in our lives where, as you get older, you're more interested in history, because when we were over there in San Antonio, I did the ghost tour and they were doing historical conversation as well. So I'm excited about Chicago tour, and they were doing historical conversation as well, so I'm excited about chicago. So uh, shannon, if you have any ideas like that historical museums or even like museums I'm always uh perusing around yeah, let's all uh have a little fun day in chicago, maybe a pre-day or a post-day absolutely, absolutely chicago.

Speaker 2:

Uh, before we jump into the conversation, would you mind telling everyone a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my name is Shannon Mullins. I'm Microsoft MVP for five years now, so just hit my five-year mark, which is exciting.

Speaker 2:

Congratulations, congrats.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, feels like yesterday, so it flies by five years. And I am the CEO of ABC Consulting Group, so we're a business central practice. And then I'm also the CEO of my new app company, bc App Maker, which we just launched and got on AppSource within the last month. So that's exciting. Yeah, congratulations on the MVP.

Speaker 2:

Congratulations on the MVP, congratulations on the BC app maker. I think there's a definite need for that. Uh, I saw you doing that and I was like damn, she took my idea. But that's okay, uh, and congratulations also on your company. I know you did that a couple of years and it seems to doing extremely well, so I'm happy to see that for you. And as we started talking about, we started talking about the sessions you had mentioned in your sessions of GP to BC and Chris talked about in his sessions and we've had conversations with many at the conference there on GP. You're looking to potentially move to Business Central. Could you tell me a little bit of your history with GP?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I have two degrees in accounting.

Speaker 3:

I have a master's degree in accounting but when I was finishing my bachelor's degree, I actually got a position as an accounts receivable clerk for a mortgage company down in Tampa and they actually pulled me off of that and put me on a project moving us from QuickBooks to Dynamics Great Plains At that time it wasn't even Dynamics, it was just Great Plains and so I was on that. That was actually like one of my first projects coming out of college was doing this migration and I was working with Microsoft Partners. At the time Microsoft had a group called Microsoft partners and I got to be part of that process and really just enjoyed it. You know, I enjoyed the whole process of migration and integration and at the end of that project they actually wound up offering me a job, which is a long story because, you know, back then I was like there's no way I could travel and leave my kids and I had young kids at the time and uh, here I am, you know, 20 years later, over 20 years later, doing exactly what I turned down.

Speaker 2:

Uh, at that point, you really are a jet setter. These days, it's always like you know they have like the where in the world is Waldo back from when I was younger. Now it's where in the world is Shannon.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so that was my history of it. I mean, I started as an end user and a super user, obviously as part of the project, and then went on to take four more roles in private accounting before I finally got into consulting.

Speaker 2:

So my history with GP is very, very rich and goes back very, very far so you were an end user for gp and you use it for many years, many years, and you have a deep understanding of the application. When did you transition to bc?

Speaker 3:

yeah, my last year of like private accounting, um, I was like an acting cfo slash controller and, uh, part of our project was to get all of our sql reports uh converted from Crystal Reports. So I actually learned how to do SQL reporting and got a lot into the database admin stuff and so I really found it fascinating. You know, accounting is kind of repetitious, you do the same thing over and over again and I was like Are you saying it's boring?

Speaker 3:

I mean, I love my accountants and I still love accounting, I still use it a lot. But yeah, it's kind of boring who's to say how it is.

Speaker 3:

So when I moved to Charlotte I had the choice of going back into private accounting or I thought, well, maybe I could be a consultant. You know, maybe at this point this is a good time to get into the consultant uh type roles. And I applied for a lot of accounting jobs. And I applied for uh one consulting job with enderdine artists, which was out of charlotte, and I thought they're not going to hire me because I don't have consulting background. And sure enough they did. They took a chance on me and the rest is kind of history. That's all it takes. One chance, one chance, one chance, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You both hit it. It's true, sometimes you just need that one opportunity or that one chance that somebody will give you, and I'm more attentive to that, and this is what I even say now it's sometimes it's somebody's ability to be able to do something, as the drive and the energy that they have you know their aptitude as well to be able to do something, that makes for a great consultant, for a great, whatever right, whatever they want to do, the passion that does it. It's not necessarily the experience because, even more so in this bc world, because it's changing by the day, like I have to spend time every day keeping up with it. So being in it for 20 years in one year doesn't, you know, make someone more, uh, more of a fit. It's the personality, their ability to learn and maybe some of their other experiences that will help them.

Speaker 1:

But sometimes it's not about waiting for opportunity. It sounds like I mean, I've been following, you know, your path to success of like also creating your own opportunities as well, because sometimes it's not, you know, waiting for opportunity. It may never come, so you have to put yourself in a position where you could create that opportunity yourself. That's awesome.

Speaker 3:

I love that because I, you know, I was afraid of even before I started. I thought, oh goodness, what are they going to put me into? You don't know when you're getting into consulting. And they actually put me into support to start with and that was an exciting challenge. But yeah, I think you get into it and you just have to take a chance and, like you said, chris, don't wait for someone to. Just no one would have knocked on my door and said, hey, do you want this role? So if you're an end user and you're listening to this and you're like I really dream of getting into consulting, maybe do a sanity check before you do that. But also, you know, just apply and you never know. I mean, if you have the application background, that's huge. You know. You guys both know you're in practices like getting a consultant that has application background is worth its weight in gold, even if you don't have the consulting experience.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And understanding how it's used, because that's what consultants do is they help with the implementation and implementation for it. So that's. It's great. If you know, microsoft recently announced, prior to Summit the whole, what people are calling the end of life of GP or the, you know, the death of GPp. What does that mean? Like what? What's the significance of the announcement that they had?

Speaker 1:

made yeah coming from someone's gp? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So let me give you a little background of how I got to where I'm at, because you know I'm not I. I do some gp work, but I'm now mostly team bc.

Speaker 3:

But uh, wait a second, you can't be a trader I'm not a trader, I'm a migrator or something like that, I don't know how to put it I still, you know, gp gpug forever, because you know that's my roots, my history, and I have lots of friends and, and you know, still a passion for the product. But you know, at the same time things change, technology changes. I used to be a Windows phone user and now I'm an Apple user, so you, can change.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I like to know you can change. I still like you If you would have told me you were an Android user.

Speaker 3:

Oh, no, no, no, sir, I remember Windows Phone. I mean, people can change.

Speaker 4:

I remember Windows Phone.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, chris and I we might have been the only ones, but we had Windows Phones.

Speaker 1:

I had the Nokia. I got the Nokia Windows Phone. I love that phone.

Speaker 3:

Mario and I said that in our session. We said you know, it's funny how people are very resistant to change, you know, especially when it comes to software and hardware. But then look at us all who didn't have cell phones growing up or didn't have all this technology, and we adapt over time. Right, and so I think that's what I had to do. Um, but before I moved to Nashville I was with inner dine still, and, uh, one of my coworkers had went to a Microsoft conference and he came back and he said at this conference you wouldn't believe what I learned. He said GP is going to become nav and nav's going to the cloud. And I go. That literally makes no sense. Why would Microsoft do that? Because no.

Speaker 3:

I'm being serious Like nav's going to the cloud and GP users are going to move to nav. And I was like are you, are you sure, Like you know, doing like a sanity check? And I think at that point it was kind of the writing on the wall because, you know, doing like a sanity check, and I think at that point it was kind of the writing on the wall because you know, Errol had mentioned it and a lot of partners were upset and I mean, this was a long time ago, you know, compared to now, and when I moved to Nashville, part of my job or part of my role here was to build the Business Central Cloud practice, having zero Business Central Cloud experience or nav background. So I was already kind of prepping for that, I was already aware of it, and there were several partners who are currently still GP partners, who are also aware of it, but chose a different path of mindset of we'll just keep supporting GP forever, which is fine.

Speaker 3:

But I think for the customers, the thing that's been the saddest for the customers is that Microsoft has been very transparent about the path that was going to happen for many years and a lot of customers were being told, hey, we're going to let it live forever. We're going to keep it going, and that was never Microsoft's messaging. And so now I think this end of life is actually surprising to some customers, which is surprising to me, because it's never been a non-transparent message to the partners. But end of life doesn't mean you have to jump off of it tomorrow. It just means you need to figure out what you're going to be doing over the next five or six years, getting a plan together and deciding which you know, which software package you know fits best for you and your company.

Speaker 2:

So with that you bring to another important point and something I've been thinking about and again paying attention to this and talking with GP users last week, as well as other individuals such as yourself, chris, and many others in the community week, as well as other individuals such as yourself, chris, and many others in the community A customer that realizes that there's an end of life, gp again. They don't have to make the decision today or tomorrow and, you know, just for selfish reasons, I'll say they're moving to BC. Right, because that's my passion. I'm one of those, you know. I think I would be the same way. I'd hold on to BC even if the writing was in the wall until I went into the grave.

Speaker 2:

But if a customer was planning to move or they made the decision, okay, I'm using GP today, I need to move to Business Central. I choose to move to Business Central, not need. What are some things that they can do? Someone who has experience with both applications and successful Business Central implementations what do you think customers can do to prepare themselves to move from GP to BC?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so a few things, and we mentioned this in our session last week. So first thing is data cleansing and data cleanup. We have a lot of tools in the GP stack that still don't exist in BC. I don't know if BC consultants are aware of this, but like we can mass combine and delete GL accounts so you can take history from two accounts, combine them together and delete the old account. We had mass customer combiner, mass vendor combiner, mass item combiner. Like, we have some tools in the GP stack that just don't exist in the BC stack.

Speaker 3:

So when you're considering using something like a migration tool and you're going to take your data, that's at 20, you know most of the users that I met last week 20 year users, right, 20 years of data and then you're just planning on dumping it into the cloud. Not a very good plan, especially when you're going to get out of the box Power BI reports dashboards. Maybe you want to do reporting on state and all your states are a mess. You plan on using email functionality, but your emails are all a mess. I mean some of the data that we take out of GP. I'm just like wow, I can't believe people were living with this data. So data cleansing is one thing that is very important to do during this process. Redesigning a chart of accounts, I always recommend if you hate your chart of accounts in GP, you hate all the segments. Now is the best time to do that change as you're making that move.

Speaker 3:

But I think the other thing that has really made us successful as a company is we do not do any implementation without a discovery. We don't use any kind of tool where we just throw a database into a tool. I literally hate the idea of that because you could miss integrations, you could miss custom processes that people are doing that you just don't hear about. But also you know a lot of the GP users that come to me and they're like I don't know what my. I don't know what BC is, I don't even know what it looks like. So why would I buy it? And I'm like I wouldn't buy it without seeing it and seeing how my data is going to look inside of it. So we do like a custom discovery with them and say, hey, let's see your data in GP or GP data in BC. Let's kind of run through some of your processes, see what those will look like so that you can envision it, right Cause once you can envision it, then you're oh okay, that makes sense, but it's scary when you don't know the product.

Speaker 2:

Um yeah, it's scary it's yeah, you'll send me off on a tangent on that, so I want to hold that thought. So, chris, okay, and let's just say brad, hold that thought I wrote it down.

Speaker 2:

This is a sidebar that I want to have with you, because you hit on a key point and I had similar conversations last week and I wish I had the opportunity to include you in the conversation. I know we were all running around it's. You know, I feel like I saw nobody. I saw everybody, but I saw nobody. It was so hard, it was difficult, but let's go back to some other things. I mean, I think you're hitting on some key points and I have this excitement and I'm using my best discipline to not just cut you off because the information is so great, but I have so much bottled up in me that I want to just spew.

Speaker 3:

We love it.

Speaker 2:

So what are some other things they can do to prepare, as you talked about? You talked about ensuring you have a discovery. Analyze your data, your data cleanup, you know? Look at your business.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think, also doing some like pre-training before even getting into the product. So something that I've, you know, told a lot of the GP customers last week is like spin up a trial, because you can go and spin up your own trial and here's some of the learning paths and learning courses that you can do online on your own. You know, as an end user, just to start to prep. It's kind of nice to get in there and, like before you go through thorough training or a conference room pilot, just kind of know what BC is, how to navigate around, how to get it. I mean, you get a free 30 day trial, and I think you can extend it for 30 days as well with Microsoft, and so you can just kind of use that as your base to explore it, play on your own, and that's kind of fun, you know, to have a sandbox.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I have a 30 day trial that I signed up, but I think I've had it for like 90 days and I think I don't know what the rules are. I don't know what the rules are, but I didn't create a production company. I only created a sandbox and I, my Cronus is sandbox.

Speaker 3:

I think you can keep Cronus going. Yeah, I think you can keep Cronus going, but if you plan on using production and then you want to actually have it as production, then I think at that point, I think that is the differentiators.

Speaker 2:

If you set up your own company, that only has the 30 day trial, but if you keep Cronus listen, I didn't see that anywhere. I guess I could read or ask. I mean, I know enough people to ask, but I figured I'm keeping it. Cronus, I'll stick around and, as Chris's point, I actually probably should look voices to see if I'm being charged you probably have so many subscriptions man you forgot I love it yeah

Speaker 1:

to go back in your discovery really quick. I I want to add a little bit on the importance of the discovery. But during the discovery, one of the things that works well for me and I mentioned this in the past is having business central up uh along the way. And so any, any short wins where you can, where they may be sharing a process that they do now, you can quickly jump into business central and say here's how you would do it and, and that alone, a small little win, get them super excited about the product and then after that, yeah, you'd want to give them a trial, or they get a trial and they can play around a little bit further.

Speaker 3:

But that is super helpful. We did that yesterday. We actually were doing a big NAV2VC project. A customer that has like 18 legal entities. They've been on NAV forever, nav 2009. And so they're explaining how they are getting contracts signed for vendors and they're using DocuSign for every vendor sign up and I was like, oh, that's super expensive. I go here, let me show you this Power Automate flow that's free, using Microsoft forms and approvals and you know. And so I like brought it up and I showed them and they're like, ooh shiny. So it's exciting you know, it's a win.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's cool to envision it. I think that's great practice, chris, for sure no, it is important.

Speaker 2:

It is important to look at everything as you're moving to a new system, whether you're upgrading or migrating, or even a fresh install. If you'd like to do a fresh install, when you talk about bc, to me bc now has expanded it's. We're implementing a system. Bc is one of the pieces you brought up. A key point that you can, you know, ensure that someone's aware of what you can also integrate with, because the solution doesn't always have to be within BC. Power Automate works well with BC, you know, and the Power Platform, power BI for reporting, you know, data warehouse integration with the business. So those are all options that you can go with to warehouse integration with the business central. Those are all options that you can go with.

Speaker 2:

So we talked about a couple of things that customers could do to prepare themselves for business central implementation. Let's flip it around right. So now let's you know GP has, you know, the death of it in the crosshairs, I guess GP's in the crosshairs. So there'll be a lot of GP users looking to migrate to Business Central and there'll be partners that will need to implement GP users in Business Central. Is there anything partners can do to prepare themselves for the influx of GP customers looking to move to Business Central.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I'll just give you kind of a history of what I've been working on with this. I started last year I think you had Cecile on the show, so Cecile Amber Bell, who's also a GPUG, all-star training last year and so we went through, you know, just intro to BC, setting up BC administrative, and I was like, well, this is kind of fun to kind of share the knowledge because I don't think a lot of people know this. But when I got started there was no training courses for partners to become BC and BC was new even to the nav community. So like we all were on the struggle bus of the cloud, right, and there was no resources. And I felt like a lot of people in the nav BC community they're just weren't willing to help. Um, you know, especially you're coming from another product as a partner. It's just, yeah, it was a different world and so now it's really cool because we have the resources. So I started doing these paid training classes for partners. Um, I started out with Brian Hacks Group in Canada. I went on site and trained them how to do GP to BC and then all of a sudden people were asking, hey, can you do that class again? And so I did it again.

Speaker 3:

Well, back about four months ago, Microsoft called me and said hey, we're thinking about doing this GP to BC cohort where we're training partners in not only the transactional training, the admin training, but also pre-sales marketing, go-to-market everything like that. So do you want to be the trainer for the product from a GP to BC perspective? But then we will also do the other trainings as part of the cohort. So we started our first cohort in September. We ended that one just a few weeks ago. It went really really well.

Speaker 3:

So I was training GP partners that I've known a long time. It was really kind of cool to do an administrative training and then a transactional training and pretty much show them core finance start to end, how you do that from both an admin setup and a transactional setup. But while we're going answering the questions of okay, does it have this, does it have this, what about this in GP, what about that in GP? And that's going to be hard for NAV BC partners to help a GP partner because you don't know what we had and we are still missing features in BC and so, yeah, being able to train people that way. So it's been really fun. So we have our next cohort that starts Monday. That's a four-week cohort, and then we have one more planned that's going to start in February. So, brad, I can give you the link if you want to put it with the video for those people who are watching.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

But so, brad, I can give you the link if you want to put it with the video for those people who are watching. Microsoft is leading that. Microsoft's investing in it, so they're calling it the Reskill program. They already had the Skill Up program that they were doing for folks coming from other backgrounds coming into consulting, and now this is taking GPSL partners and bringing them into the BC Nav world and really helping skill them up. So, yeah, it's really cool. I wish they would have had this program when I started. It wasn't even an option. So I feel I feel fortunate to be part of it, to give back, you know, because a lot of people gave to me and helped me out during my process. So it's really kind of cool to give back to the community. It is nice to give back.

Speaker 2:

It's also helps for the success of the product I look at you know I keep saying rising tides raise all ships. We've been saying for a while and you know, successful implementations lead to more successful implementations lead to people wanting it, so anybody who works in the industry.

Speaker 1:

Everybody wins.

Speaker 3:

Everybody does win.

Speaker 2:

Customers also win, which is most important, because they have successful implementations. Back to that link. Can you tell us what that link is, just to anybody who may not be able to see the show notes, just so they can search and look it up?

Speaker 3:

My guess is, and I don't know it. Off the top of my head but it's probably akams slash reskill. But yes, I will definitely get you the link If you just look at the Microsoft reskill program. And Microsoft's also got for the customers listening. We'll also include the link. They have a GP transition page where there's a lot of resources out there for you to. You know, do your own research on moving to BC and you know different offers that are involved and things like that. So I'll include the links for both of those.

Speaker 2:

Yes, definitely, please. We'll have to share those, because I know that individuals get a little nervous when they see that happening. They do have time to prepare, which is good, you know it's not something somebody has to worry or stress about it today.

Speaker 2:

But, as with anything else, if you wait until the last day you may have a problem. Right, you still can maybe run the software, run the applications, but as technology changes and things change you, you may have a challenge. So, as we've been talking about, there are things you can do to prepare for.

Speaker 1:

Did NAV. People still have the same amount of time to prepare as well. I felt like it was cut pretty short, Like NAV 2018, it's like done, you're BC 14 now.

Speaker 2:

That was it. Well, I mean, technically, you can still run NAV 2018. You're just not getting any of the maintenance type issues. And I do think that the adoption from NAV to Business Central was a little easier. I mean, again, it's different look and feel, but a lot of the core functionality hadn't changed. It was a little bit easier. It was a little bit easier, but I think individuals going from GP to BC might have a wider gap of transition, which leads me to ask you this I have a list of questions for you.

Speaker 2:

What are some of the key differentiators between GP to BC that aren't in there? And one thing that I hear and I'm happy that you mentioned maybe even not directly is even the differences of I have a chart of accounts here. It's called chart of accounts. Is it called chart of accounts here? I have a process for accounts payable here. What is it called here? Because some of the naming is not the same. So I know that some of the processes and even if you're going through an implementation, talking about one from business central speak, as I'll call it, to someone who doesn't understand business central speak is like someone speaking two different languages, trying to communicate and understand each other.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's not a one for one mapping right, so I think whole systems can accomplish the same goal. It's just how you get. There is different terminology and different processing, so I really hate the word migration. I'm writing a book on how to re-implement from GP to BC because I think that's the best path and part of that process I'm talking about is, hey, be aware of in BC. This is how we're going to process, right, and it's not the exact same how you do it in GP. So some things that are missing that we just don't have.

Speaker 3:

I talked about the combiner modifiers. We don't have that in BC yet Rob Del Prado had messaged me last week he had a customer who's running scheduled. We called it like scheduled invoicing, scheduled financing in GP. That was a functionality we had in GP where we could do a loan amortization with scheduled payments. That was part of out-of-the-box functionality. We don't have that in BC. You could do multiple ship-to addresses on sales orders and purchase orders. Every line could be a different ship-to or drop ship or whatever you wanted. You could have one sales order with multiple addresses. You can't do that in BC. We don't have mass ride-offs in BC. We don't have mass supply in BC, so we're missing some of the functionality that we had is the biggest thing. It's okay, but we also gain a ton of benefits on the BC side.

Speaker 2:

That's what I was going to say. Now let's talk about the ads of what you're going to get.

Speaker 3:

Huge, so one. It's so funny we're doing a Power Automate project for a GP customer. It took us four weeks to get in, to get credentialing, rdps, vpns, to just get into the server to help the customer. Right, bc, I've never had this issue like maybe a day delay in someone accepting the link, but that's the most delay we're seeing. So the ability to access BC from anywhere is probably the greatest one that you're going to get. One single sign on one Microsoft World access, worldwide Huge.

Speaker 2:

BC Online has a big benefit, just that whole ecosystem, like you said.

Speaker 1:

And that's a small fraction. Yeah, it's all tied together.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and we talked about the Power Platform. So you know, I don't know I'm sure you guys have heard this but Project Yellowstone is now becoming live. Kenny was publishing 15 apps on AppSource for Power BI alone, so 36 out-of-the-box Power BI dashboards are going to be available on this new release for BC users. That's huge. You've got Power Automate, you've got Power Apps, you've got the combination of being able to connect to Excel and SharePoint and OneDrive without all these complex mappings and things like this. So you're really walking into a product that has so many benefits.

Speaker 3:

And one of the things that really bothered me in the last few weeks is I was seeing rumors after the end of life announcement that well, BC doesn't have the ISVs that you're you know you're currently using for GP. That's not true. Mariano and I listed at least 12 GP vendors who have made the BC switch who are now in BC, Binary Stream being one of the biggest ones that I've worked with for, you know, over a decade um, they're in both products. Mccormick's now in both products. Integrity data is in both products. So people that we were used to using in the gp space are now in bc um building apps. And then we've got what is it 8 000 apps on app source for business central?

Speaker 3:

now, I think it's I can't keep up I mean six, I think it was over six thousand, I think it's like I can't keep up. I mean Six. I think it was over 6,000. I think it's creeping up fairly quickly.

Speaker 1:

It's still an ad. It's huge.

Speaker 3:

It's massive right. There's a lot of opportunity in again with anything, yeah, so even if BC can't do it, there's probably an app already for it or somebody's building one, and so you know it's so cool.

Speaker 1:

It takes time. It takes time Eventually, you know solution is going to move there. Obviously, the path is written. And just to go back to what you were saying you know earlier about migration, yeah, you really have to look at a re-implementation, a brand new implementation, because, like you said, there's some features that doesn't exist in Business Central, but there's also features in BC that never existed in GP, that they could take advantage of.

Speaker 2:

So you got to look at it. All right, you did it. Now I have to go back to my thoughts.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you started talking about this all right with an implementation.

Speaker 2:

I like the new implementation versus migration process. You also said something in conversation where, you know, with a discovery and understanding someone's business process, for many, many years in Business Central I've seen people go through a discovery. Someone explains their process as it is today and then they say, ok, well, you need to have these modifications. We're going to make these modifications, we're going to put it into the system and have it to work with you. Okay, I'm of the mindset now and I'm going to say and I want your opinion on this and don't agree with me if you don't why do we do it that way? Why don't we say here is the application, let's put your business in it, see how it works with no modifications? Along the way, we can determine. Maybe you need a modification for a specific process or maybe you can change your process slightly to have the efficiencies of using it.

Speaker 2:

Because I can't tell you. I'm furious about this in a sense, but you can't tell, because these are some of the conversations I had last week and I was talking to them. It was like why are we doing it this way? Are many partners doing it this way? Because the modification may be unnecessary? And how can you tell someone they need to make a change before they even touch it?

Speaker 2:

Two, I can't tell you the amount of modifications. I went in afterwards and found they couldn't use business central a certain way because the modification prevented it, because they wanted it to go a certain way. And three, I'm not counting, but let's just pretend I said. Three, what was I going to say for three, the modification that you're making, that's a business requirement, may not be a real requirement. It may be a limitation of the previous system. Because I will go back to the very early days of my consulting One of the first implementations. I went on back when I was a young boy, because I've been doing this for a long time when I was in kindergarten and we used to do things differently.

Speaker 2:

This was actually before, like the internet. We used to use pc and dial up. I said this on many episodes. I went to an implementation. We did the sales and the guys and the president of the company and the management said, well, if you can replace this president report with the vision, we'll do it. And we looked, we looked at it. We said, yeah, we can. Long story short, that was the core. One of the core requirements that they had to go to Navision at the time was Navision. They'd love the product for other things, but this was the most important report. So I said, okay, we can do it. And we looked at it and it really wasn't a big thing. But back then it was like the green paper, you know, cause everybody was coming from those old systems. So it was like this thick Right and we'd like put it on like, oh, now you can do it online, you can preview it. It was great.

Speaker 2:

I traced through what they did with that report. Okay, it ended up on the president's desk. He threw it away. Why Hold on? Hold on, because that report was printed by a woman in the office. She then handed it to someone else. Implementations ask why someone's doing something, and if they can validate why they're doing it, or they can articulate why they're doing it, then it reaffirms that they're doing it the way they need to. You know, because oftentimes, how many times have you heard oh, we've always done it this way. I don't know why I'm doing that. I don't know why I put the external document number in there, but it has to be there.

Speaker 1:

I understand doing that. I don't know why I put the external document number in there, but it has to be there. I understand the value.

Speaker 1:

I went on a tangent. No, that's valid, brad, because we get a lot of those all the time. It's just they don't understand the value. They just did it, and they may understand why. Someone may understand go. Oh, I know why. Because our president needs it and that could be enough for them. That could be enough reason for them to want to do it, but they don't understand the value of it. You know, is it a decision-making value?

Speaker 2:

I see Shannon wants to talk too, but I'm going to say the last thing. And this is why I like the re-implementation versus the migration. Because the re-implementation you talked about with the data cleanup you can get it ready for the new system versus trying to force that data over. It doesn't mean you can't report on it, like you can't put it in a data warehouse and report alongside of it. But that reimplementation, if you're just going to move bad poop over to a new system, it's still the same poop, just with different lipstick. What are your thoughts on that? I want to hear you.

Speaker 3:

I think it's the same with just using these migration tools. We're taking the same processes that we did and we're assuming BC can do them, and then we're getting frustrated at BC because it doesn't do what we expected it to do. And so, having this mindset and I think you were in my session in wherever we were I go to many places Denver with DynamicsCon, where I talked about app source versus customization versus, you know, core product.

Speaker 2:

We still have to do one together. We absolutely do. Let's submit it this week.

Speaker 3:

We'll do it together, but it was a good session.

Speaker 3:

I mean because you know we always lead with the mindset of we want to customize last and that's the way your partner should be leading. And you guys it sounds like you do the same thing because you know we get into these discoveries and I always tell them we need the people actually doing the product in these discoveries, right, whoever's working in GP right now. I need them on the calls, but I also want some executive people on the calls. And why is that? I want them to hear what their end users are doing, because a lot of times, as we get into these discoveries, the CFO will be like timeout, what the heck are we doing? Like, why are we doing that? They had no idea that.

Speaker 3:

You know someone's pressing the button. They've been pressing a button for 30 years. Or they're taking an Excel file. They're spending two days formatting it so they can import it into a system and someone's going you do what? Why are you doing that? We could have integrated that you know years ago.

Speaker 3:

And so, um, this idea of like trying to automate as much as possible, going into a new system is my mindset. Like you should try to automate as much as possible, you should try to leverage the free tools that Microsoft's giving you, um, and then you should get a fresh, clean start on your data, how you're processing and, like you said, brad, try to use the core system. Like BC is a very robust system, especially compared to GP. I personally think it's got more robust functionalities, especially when it comes to distribution, manufacturing, service projects like we have. We have some really robust features and so why are we not trying to leverage the system first and I've come in, like you, I've come in where other partners have done the implementation I had I literally have seen customizations where their field already existed and the partner didn't know what they were doing and they created the field again and I go, can you want to personalize?

Speaker 3:

and I'm like, go to personalize, add field. Bam, there's the field that they never saw because the partner didn't know what they were doing Too many of those.

Speaker 2:

And the application is evolving so rapidly and the functionality is being added that you really need to, and this goes back to where you had mentioned training and working with someone who understands the application, because the days of oh, we're just going to develop it because we don't know the application, don't work anymore.

Speaker 2:

I mean back in the early days in the vision. I've seen people rewrite entire systems because they didn't understand how sales are processed. That's not going to work because there's a carrying cost of the modification and the features that are coming out. You actually do put yourself in a box.

Speaker 2:

In some cases it's replicating it, so kick in the tires as I call it and just go through your entire business cycle and see what works and it will save you. It may sound like it's timely up front, but it will save you so much time in the end and ongoing time Developments.

Speaker 1:

Actually, the development option is actually. I feel like it's further out now because if you look at on the NAV Navision days, brad and Shannon said where you know you look at it, can you do it out of the box, can you change your process? And is there an ISV? And an ISV is typically something that a partner has maybe a handful of them that they always recommend and then do development, a handful of them that they always recommend and then do development. Now, with Business Central, it's now further out, not only with new features coming out consistently that Microsoft's putting out, but you know, of course, look at out of the box, can you do it, can you change your business process? You look at the app source. There's now thousands of choices. You don't have to depend on your partner to only sell you three things. Right Now you have 6,000 plus or so and then you have Power Automate as another option right Before you even do a customization. So now it's extending that path for you before you even decide to do a customization.

Speaker 2:

It is amazing. Again, I will say there are 6,000 apps or whatever the number will be whenever this is out today. But just because there's 6,000 apps, it's like anything else. You should evaluate those apps before you assume they're going to work well for you. And I will always say anytime someone talks about apps just because two apps don't work well together doesn't mean they're bad apps. So I don't like to see someone say, oh, this app doesn't work well because I tried to do this. Apps have a specific function. They may not work well together. They may be great individually, but they may not work well together because they serve two different functions that compete each other. I did see someone put in two apps that didn't work well together because one had a specific action on a field, the other one had, like the exact opposite action on the field and they wanted these. You know, simply put, but they wanted these apps to work together but they didn't because they weren't intended to do the same thing.

Speaker 2:

Other areas were what they needed, but there was an overlap.

Speaker 3:

Well, and a good partner will help you figure out what those conflicts might be and then may work with both app providers to say, hey, can we slightly modify, you know one of these apps to to make it work together. Um, I will say, like my relationship with binary stream, we kind of do a lot of app uh relationship building between apps that we recommend and binary stream. But I always recommend to customers, like, get a partner involved. When you're, you know, summit's a great, a great way to explain this.

Speaker 3:

You guys were in the expo hall I didn't even get through one aisle of the expo hall in two days and the the users walk in and they're like, holy, ap automation tools and ar automation tools. And you know they're walking through and like this is so cool, this is great. But they're talking to an isv that doesn't know their system, doesn't know their solution, doesn't know what was built and so they could fall in love with something that just is not going to work in their you know, their current environment, their current status. So that's where your partner having a good relationship with your partner comes along. Who can give you like good advice and say yeah, that'll work or that won't work, because you know it's overwhelming for a customer to try to figure that out on their own oh it is, and they can find every it is shiny new, uh, shiny new object, which is good too.

Speaker 2:

So I went on that tangent. I don't know if you, anyone, I give anyone even the chance to respond, but that's kind of been the thing that has been on my mind for the past several months, as I'm seeing these implementations.

Speaker 2:

It's developed last and, like you said, it's, it's aj. I did the development uh track or academy session prior to, and we even did something where I created an api page quickly to expose some information. Aj then was able to again. We did this live how quickly it was to create an api. And then AJ was able to develop because he does really well with Power Platform as well was able to create something in Power Platform to ingest that API to read some of the data so they can then go continue to process. So it's important to take a look at the stack that's available to you and how you can solve a solution, because anything that you put in, you do have that carrying cost with you to maintain that as you move forward.

Speaker 3:

So, taking advantage to piggyback on that something that I'm seeing because we've inherited, you know, a couple dozen customers in the last year, um, cleanup work, uh, from another partner. But I will say, uh, one of the worst things that we're seeing is that we have customers who have code that they don't even know what the code does, why the code's there. The partner created the code as like a PTE. There's no GitHub, there's no DevOps, there's no deployment tool that this code is kept in, nobody has contact with it, and so what I'm seeing is a lot of I'll call them ad hoc developers creating code and then just leaving it stranded for these customers to deal with, and it's such a horrible practice. It's terrible because-.

Speaker 3:

You're going to get me on a fire right now Steve Andrew and. I talked about this at that point.

Speaker 2:

I'm just going to be quiet because I want to have another episode on that and I'm trying to line that up, but you just triggered me. I'm a functional person. I'm a functional person.

Speaker 3:

It's frustrating for me because you know we're working with one customer we just inherited. We have code in their environment that's named after SOWs, or work orders, so it's like QX-75. No description of what the code does. It's sitting there and we can't download the code and the customer doesn't know where the code is and the developers aren't responding. And so here we are with this customization that the only thing we can do is uninstall it and see what breaks wait, wait, wait wait, wait, because then you get that email saying oh, your extension's not compatible with 25.

Speaker 3:

You need 20 emails over the weekend. 20 emails over the weekend against 25 saying saying oh, your extension's not compatible with version 25. You need to upgrade it. 20 emails over the weekend 20 emails over the weekend against 25, saying all of these extensions are going to break.

Speaker 2:

Wait, I got 20 emails from somebody too. I have to see if you're on that same list 20 emails.

Speaker 1:

No, but it's not about the functional side too. I mean, you look at it from a business aspect of you trying your very best to save this client and you literally can't do much if nothing is documented, which is really, really frustrating.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2:

It is, and, as a partner, anybody who's doing it, you know. Again, as a business owner, again, they work with partners or they work with other consultants, individuals, because you don't have to have a partner for some of these things. Right, you can work with people, work with independent consultants, but all the independent consultants, all the partners, and should work with the customers to educate them. And customers should also be educated. If somebody is making a modification for me, I should have access to that code, right, unless it's an app or an ISV or IP that they're purchasing. Again, depends on your arrangement, your agreement. But they do not realize how hurtful it could be to their business, to the point where, depending on what it is, you could shut them down if it's no longer compatible. Nobody can edit or nobody touches, nobody knows what it does, and automated testing. You need to make sure you have deployment against future releases and all of that we won't get into that, but I will say this from a gp from

Speaker 3:

a gp to bc perspective though just to reel it back into the conversation we're having today. In gp world it was probably similar to nav world. You could build a customization and then never upgrade gp, and so you never worried about this code until you had to do an upgrade. And this is why a lot of on-prem customers just an upgrade, because they didn't want to deal with the cost of upgrading their their you essentially what they created in GP. And so now you don't have a choice, right? You've got that five month window to figure out something, some kind of game plan, with your code. And so it's good for those GP customers to be aware that you are partly responsible for your own code, making sure you know where your code is, making sure someone can support it.

Speaker 3:

I've seen a lot of GP customers come in and they're like oh, I can do AL. They watch some Eric Hogard videos, and they're like I'm just gonna. I love Eric, but everyone who I talk to who is like an ad hoc developer that you know they, they watch some YouTubes. And so now they're like okay, I can do AL. And I'm like well, guys, where's your repo? Oh, we don't have a repo. We just opened this up in Visual Studio and coded it.

Speaker 2:

I'm like hmm, yeah, I mean, that's not the intention of what Eric's doing. Eric's is geared towards more developers and showing them, but, like you said, it's people take this and they're like oh, I'm now an AL developer code upload, so it's the responsibility and also keeping up with the upgrades, because you do have to keep up with the upgrades.

Speaker 3:

You know it's cool that Microsoft's releasing hundreds of new features next month, but a lot of customers just assume that the partners are going to take responsibility in BC world to do the testing and all of that for them. So there's an ownership that I'm seeing A lot of partners are not explaining to their customers. Right, as we go live, we're like okay, we're going to do admin center training. They're like what's admin center? I'm like this is what you're going to be responsible for as a customer, of maintaining your upgrades, knowing when your upgrades are coming, setting your upgrade windows. I want them to know because if they ever want to leave me, they should know. Hey, this is when upgrades happen. This is what I need to do and this is the testing I need to do. We didn't worry about that in GP world. You know it's just like you upgraded when you planned it.

Speaker 1:

That's good yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's the days of Oto, which is good. But just to jump onto another thing we talked about, I'm going to quiz you before I talk about the next thing. Did you we?

Speaker 3:

talked about. I'm going to quiz you before I talk about the next thing did you.

Speaker 2:

Did you get a sticker.

Speaker 3:

I didn't get a sticker and I didn't get a little badge for my lanyard wait, whoa Chris oh, I got some for you.

Speaker 1:

You didn't get her a sticker in a pen, so I will tell you this if you can get it to me by Thursday next week.

Speaker 3:

Then I will wear it in Vienna in honor of both you who I know can't go to Vienna. So Chris.

Speaker 2:

Yes, send it over to her. Chris has them.

Speaker 1:

Send me send me your address. Do you have?

Speaker 2:

stickers too, to send her. You can distribute them. Yeah, send her a pack pins, because you know I love stickers.

Speaker 3:

I've got, I love stickers, but I have stickers. Oh, I love the shirts too, fancy, I love it so I will say this look at that.

Speaker 3:

I know we're talking about me, um, but I'd love to talk about you guys because I was telling brad, uh, I just did the long drive to texas and back for summit with my son and I listened to probably at least 12 of your episodes on the road, and so I normally don't get to watch these. I get to listen to them, but it is really. I really appreciate what you guys are doing, cause it's really cool that I get to hear what some other partners are doing and Microsoft's doing and ISVs are doing. Like it's really kind of cool to listen in and and great to be part of this.

Speaker 2:

So thank to listen in and and, uh great to be part of this.

Speaker 3:

So thank you for inviting me. No, we appreciate it, we appreciate your time. Again, I tell everybody, time is the precious resource of life.

Speaker 2:

It's the currency that once you spend it, you can't get it back, and who you spend your time with, or what you spend your time doing, you have to be uh conscientious of, because that's time that, again, you're not getting back. Uh, speaking of that, and gp moving on, we used to have this fabulous gp, or we still do. I guess you could say I don't go but like a gp online party. At summit right this year, there was a new bc called the BC bash, which I am happy to see. We have a BC bash. It was the first annual BC bash, which also was the brainchild I guess you could call it of you and Tanya.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'll give you a little backstory on that.

Speaker 2:

I do want to hear the backstory. That's what I was going to ask you and I'm going to say this is Nashville will be crazy. That's all. I'm want to hear the backstory.

Speaker 3:

So I was going to ask you and I'm going to say this is Nashville will be crazy. That's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 2:

I'm not even saying anything else. I'm looking forward to Orlando next year and seeing what the BC bash is going to be, but I have a feeling Anyway.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was. It was very funny because I woke up the morning of the party and I was like, oh my gosh, we're hosting a party today, like you know. It's just the magnitude of doing that, because chris dawkins and I have been very good friends I don't know if a lot of people know that, but he owns power gp online longevity been very good friends with him and melissa for a long time in fact. We'll always go to their party and support them. And, um, I was with tanya a few years ago and we were like we should do a roller skating party at one of these conferences. Like we had this idea of doing a glow-in-the-dark roller skating party, um, and then we thought alcohol, roller skates, liability, and yeah, maybe we're not able to do this. Yeah, broken fingers, broken fingers. So that kind of went down the yeah, broken necks, chris, broken necks.

Speaker 2:

You fall, you break your leg and your neck.

Speaker 1:

I thought fingers would be calming because you fall and you try to catch yourself.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we don't want injured consultants or users, and so last, year we were in.

Speaker 3:

Portugal, people that don't know Tanya and I travel a lot together. You know, tanya and I travel a lot together. We both do kind of similar things. We don't compete against each other. We've been good friends for a long time now and so we travel together and we'll be in Budapest next weekend together planning next year.

Speaker 3:

But we were in Portugal and we're sitting there over a glass of wine and we're like we really need to have a BC party. And mostly because GP was a very tight-kn knit community, it was for a long time like GPug grew and grew and it was huge and everyone was very tight. And so the PowerGP party celebrating the GP community. We loved that idea of it. And so now you've got the GP people switching over to BC and there was no BC party. And we're like well, this kind of stinks, do you go back to the GP party every year and just be a BC user? And so we had this idea're like, well, this kind of stinks, do you go back to the GP party every year and just be a BC user?

Speaker 3:

And so we had this idea of like what if we did a similar party? We did not intend on having it in the same venue. It's very funny that the Dobkins and I both planned the same venue without knowing we announced within like a week of each other and both at the same venue. But yeah, it was just. It was really interesting. But that party we had, I think, close to 750 people our first year. We had mike morton out on the dance floor and, uh, blage and kenny and everyone having a great time dancing and having a good time no, I went over there, it was it was a pretty nice event and, uh, it was also co-sponsored by.

Speaker 2:

We did so. We had a notice. We had erp connect consulting, which has been colin, all of his tools that he's building and it was also co-sponsored by we did.

Speaker 3:

We had some co-sponsors also for putting on the podcast. We had ERP Connect Consulting, which has been Cole and all of his tools that he's building for Business Central, and then my buddy, my lifelong buddy and friend, anthony from Cosmos. We go way, way back so to have those sponsors come in the first year and it was funny. I asked a lot of ISPs and sponsors to be part of it and they were like I don't know. You know we have already our sponsorship money and now we have like a line of people who want to sponsor next year, which is great because we need it I was going to say I bet you do, because that was such a success that it was on there.

Speaker 2:

Um, I, I was able, I was fortunate enough to to go for a short period of time myself too, when, when I put on the nice fluorescent glasses.

Speaker 3:

The blue drinks were good. Actually, that was Mike. Wharton's favorite drink the BC Buzz. I was buying him drinks and I said, mike, what do you like?

Speaker 2:

He says ooh, I really like this BC Buzz.

Speaker 3:

This is good.

Speaker 2:

So all. I have to say is for next year is I just need to make sure I just have that VIP?

Speaker 3:

Yes, so next year we are planning on having unlimited drinks and VIP passes for the BC folks, so that'll be really exciting. You know we're an open community party. We don't we're not going to discriminate, but it is cool to celebrate with the BC community and members and users, and some of the people that were at our party were actually GP users considering moving to BC, so they got to see how fun the BC community is and, yeah, that's what it was and again it is.

Speaker 2:

It's. It's the BC community. You're talking about the GP community. I'm not going to take away from that because I don't. I can't even comment on it because I'm not part of it, nor have I attended any of the events.

Speaker 2:

But the BC community, really is a tight knit community, even more so now than it was many years ago, and I think it's because we all have to move forward together and that community is partners, and partners as well as customers included in that too, because there are many customers that talk with many partners when they're there. They, you know, share knowledge and share stories, so I'm very appreciative that you had the BC badge.

Speaker 2:

I'm looking forward to it. As soon as you know, I complained about having to register, but as soon as the registration, opens up, I'll register for that one.

Speaker 3:

But I was able to get in. I do want to say something.

Speaker 2:

Even without my registration, I managed to get in.

Speaker 3:

Because, as I was getting ready and just thinking about talking about this topic today, I want to think of like BC and GP as the data, the data or not the dataverse. We like the dataverse but the multiverse. So my I'm a single mom of two boys, so I know all the marvel movies. I've watched them since my kids were little, which you know.

Speaker 3:

For a girl, you usually don't know all these movies, but spider-man right lived in two alternate universes and he didn't know they both existed and so I kind of like to think of that as the gp and bc communities coming together, like we both lived in different universes yeah, that is, and we're in one, even the old nav partners and the mbps are like the avengers. We're all helping. You know everyone come together into one universe and you know, trying trying to save the products.

Speaker 1:

And that soundtrack you play that soundtrack. Wait, man.

Speaker 2:

Wait, wait wait, wait wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 3:

I want to be Captain.

Speaker 2:

America Wait.

Speaker 3:

Chris, what are?

Speaker 2:

you, let's do this, let's do this next year.

Speaker 4:

Because we're going to be in Orlando right.

Speaker 2:

Orlando, the world of Marvel and Disney. You can do the GP parties of one universe right the alternate universe, or you can have you know, costume parties of the other one.

Speaker 1:

But then you can have it themed right.

Speaker 2:

This year you did the theme with the neon and everything. It was beautiful. Like I like the theme right With the ice cubes.

Speaker 3:

The neon glasses, the bracelets, everything that was neon. Is it called neon glow in the dark. But in orlando I kind of like this because we would be very close to universal yeah, it's a perfect spot for it.

Speaker 2:

We'll be there for universal and disney marvel. No, it's a disney um my kids would be yelling at me right now, mom. That's not universal. It'd be pretty at Disney, my kids would be yelling at me right now, mom. That's not universal.

Speaker 4:

It'd be pretty cool for characters.

Speaker 1:

But that would be good. That would be close to Halloween.

Speaker 2:

Yes, see, if you have a big BC Halloween, bash Big ideas coming next week.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, no, I think it's really cool that we have these two universes coming together and I think that is something that the customers are seeing is that the unity of the GP partners who are learning and moving over, still supporting their GP customers but now engrossing into this BC world that we now get to be part of. It's really kind of cool. And you know, bc Navug had a very strong robust group and GPug had a very strong robust group, and so now you bring these two groups together with people who are very passionate and I think the GP users, as they're learning to love BC, they'll become part of that BC community as well. So I expect the BC Bash will just continue to grow, because that community is going to continue to grow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and I like your message there about the two universes coming together. It's so cool. I together, I didn't know you guys, but I do like the message Six seven years ago I didn't know.

Speaker 3:

you know all of you and everybody who's part of the VC Navog board and advisory and programming committee. Like we both lived in the same universe summit, but we didn't know each other, which is just wild to say, okay, I didn't know these folks and now they're my friends.

Speaker 2:

It is, it's been really kind of cool honestly yeah, it is great it is. It's been amazing.

Speaker 2:

And definitely would like to thank you for your time today, taking the time to speak with us to share your knowledge on what customers can do to prepare for GP, what partners can do to prepare for GP and then also some of the differentiators of it.

Speaker 2:

And also thank you again for putting on a celebration or sponsoring a celebration with the other sponsors for the summit conference, because it does make for a little fun at the conference and it's nice to have something where a lot of people can go to. And again, you said you had 700 plus individuals attend. So it's nice to have a venue that, after the sessions, can get out, relax and it's big enough where you can meet several different people. See, that's the big part of it is having a venue that you can have that many people where you can find people to talk to, uh, while you're going through it. You just need to have a quiet room so people can talk. That's all, uh. But if anybody would like to get in contact with you to learn a little bit more on how you can help them learn how to use Business Central, migrate their GP not migrate, excuse me, re-implement their system in Business Central from GP or even implementation services.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so several ways. You can go to my main website, which is abccgroupcom, so we've got a full website there. We've got a contact us form. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at one shannon mullen one um without an s, that was taken um. And then I'm very, very active on linkedin um, as you both know.

Speaker 2:

so, uh, just look me up on on linkedin, you'll find me and follow me there we'll put a link to your linkedin profile on there and uh, so I just can contact you and again we appreciate your time and thank you for all that you do. I know we're really appreciative of it and you're doing a lot of great things. And I will say for the record, like I told you at the conference, I think your name's genius. That's all I'm going to tell you. The company name is just marketing genius.

Speaker 2:

You and I had a long conversation about it. I don't need to say anymore, but I will go on the record and say, like I told you when we were speaking, I think it's genius. Thank you, guys, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you again, have a good afternoon Bye.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair and thank you to our guests for participating.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-Ecom, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at Mattalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.

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Kris

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Brad

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