Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 405: ⚒️ Balancing Functional and Technical Skills in Business Central ⚒️
🚨 In this engaging conversation, Brad and Kris welcome Andy Wingate, a recent Microsoft MVP for Business Central. 🚨
The lively discussion covers various topics, from dry January to the transition from customer to partner roles in the tech industry to the importance of community engagement and the Reskill Program initiated by Microsoft to develop talent in the Business Central ecosystem. In this conversation, Andy Wingate shares his journey from being an end user in a large agricultural cooperative to becoming a consultant in the ERP space. He discusses the importance of honest communication, managing expectations, and leveraging end-user experience in consulting.
Listen to the full episode to hear about these points and more:
💡 The Microsoft community is incredibly welcoming and supportive.
💡 Engaging with user groups can lead to valuable connections.
💡Transitioning from customer to partner roles can be challenging but rewarding.
💡Sharing knowledge is essential for community growth and success.
💡Personal experiences, like dry January, can influence professional life.
💡Belief in problem-solving is crucial for success in projects.
💡Learning from others is a continuous process in tech.
💡Difficult conversations should happen early to avoid bigger issues later.
💡Understanding the end user's perspective enhances consulting effectiveness.
💡Empathy is key in managing change and user adoption.
💡Managing expectations is vital during ERP implementations.
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner, from client to partner and now an MVP. I'm your co-host.
Speaker 2:Chris, and this is Brad. This episode is recorded on January 31st 2025. Chris, chris, chris, what a journey that sounds like To go from a user of Business Central or NAV over to the partner. What it is like to go through that journey, some of the perspectives and challenges and views of that journey, as well as some low-code, no-code conversation, and we even touched upon the Reskill program to help bring additional talented individuals within the Business Central community With us. Today, we had the opportunity to speak with Microsoft MVP Andy Wingate. Good afternoon, good afternoon, sir, howdy. Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing? Well, hello, hello. How are you guys doing? Excellent, excellent, not too bad.
Speaker 2:I would love to say jolly good day over the pond.
Speaker 1:He could have butchered that, I butchered it.
Speaker 3:I don't know so it's all gone. A bit slow, is that? Oh, now it's snapped in there you go.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah okay, it says uploading what are we uploading?
Speaker 3:any descent oh the.
Speaker 2:The uploading is it's using your local recording, your local audio and video recording. It uses that to upload for the post-production edit. It gives us that crisp quality video and audio sound so you can look your best.
Speaker 3:Not that you don't ever look your best.
Speaker 2:I can get. No, no, sir, not that you don't ever look your best and you look great now, but that gives Chris the opportunity, when he does the wonderful post-production job, that he can really have that high def, high quality audio sound of you. So we can get the true. Okay, you know, andy Andy Wingate persona on there.
Speaker 3:Oh Jesus, that's what I've been trying to hide all these years, right well, we let the cat out of the bag with this one now.
Speaker 2:So now the the spotlight's on you, sir. So, um, that's good. How are you doing? How is the week going? How are things over in london?
Speaker 3:yeah, um, yeah, good, I think it's a bit, you know, gray and rainy. Uh, three o'clock on a fr, I think it's a bit, you know, grey and rainy. Three o'clock on a Friday afternoon. It's the end of the month, right, january the 31st, so which brings me to the end of dry January that I've been suffering through. So my wife said to me who's also like convinced me to do this stupid dry January thing. She's like oh, you know, and you're looking so much healthier. She's really trying to like convince me not to go boozing anymore. The reason I look so healthy is because I'm looking forward to that beer on saturday.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to it so much. It's made me healthy. You'd fit out. Here in the pacific northwest it's always gray and rainy it'd fit right in.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's right now it's gray and rainy but he wanted a dry january. Well, it's sunny and warm here, but go back to that dry January in the non-drinking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right. Dry January like no booze. The whole of January Not a sniff.
Speaker 2:I understand, but your wife does have a point because if you do consume alcohol it does take several days for you to see the effects of it not being in your system, even when you drink alcohol. Alcohol it takes several hours to process that alcohol, to have it remove some your system, never mind the side effects of alcohol in your body. I understand what you're saying because I enjoy a good whiskey and a good smoked whiskey and I was saying the other day I have the smoker, uh, the little taigan or whatever it is smoker that you put on it and I smoke it smoke some meat, it's so nice I'll have to.
Speaker 2:I'll send you a link to it afterwards, but I think they need non-alcoholic whiskey. Right, we have mocktails. I enjoy mocktails now, um, when we go to conferences or we go other places, because I can walk around feeling like I'm having a drink yeah, looking like I'm having a drink experience.
Speaker 3:The cocktail experience is a huge amount of it. Is they there like, just like you know the anticipation and the the arts, the like, the drama of the preparation and like do you go somewhere super fancy and they're carving the ice cubes?
Speaker 2:and all this kind of jazz. Well, that's it with the round ice cubes the square ice cubes fancy cocktails.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, Like a?
Speaker 3:what is it Like? A rusty nail or something like that with a big square, old-fashioned, old-fashioned is a good one. I love an old-fashioned.
Speaker 2:If you're ever, Brad, I mean have you been to Scotland? That is on Scotland and Ireland is on my bucket list.
Speaker 3:You've got to go.
Speaker 2:I need to get to Europe, just even from a heritage point of view. I traced a lot of my family to Scotland and Ireland. So I think I'd like to get over there. Just to you know, everybody in America not everybody, but a lot of people in America come from that portion of the country, considering that's where the original settlers came from. Well, it depends on how you look at history before anybody starts getting on to me and saying, well, who came here first?
Speaker 3:Who discovered it first?
Speaker 2:And all this other stuff. You know it's 2025. You have to be careful here. But I'm looking at a certain portion of history books and it says that a lot of the settlers came from England. I mean, I guess there was a Revolutionary War and other things over here.
Speaker 3:Just a very little quick thing before we go Like I want them to put any blur on, is that there's the background. There's nothing horrendous in my background is there. Normally I always put like the little blur on so it's not like people can't see what I've got back there.
Speaker 1:But um, it's always fun, though, when you have guests where like yeah, you know, that's the first thing you look, it's like what do you have in the back, you find out I'm a huge nerd because I've got like all the game stuff up yeah, yeah, which games doing? Doing in there in games kingdom like, oh I can't see because okay yeah, what's too small for me?
Speaker 2:because after we spoke with a previous guest he was told us about that.
Speaker 3:Elagato prompter which I I I was at the airport where I was like that was hilarious, listening to you guys talking to mark. That was, yeah, like you were guys. You guys were like your tech does what it's like and he's got all the gadgets, and it was. It was, I mean, mark smith is an incredible guy, you know, he's very interesting to listen to, uh, but like that, that episode was especially funny because you were like. You guys were like kids in the sweet shop yeah, we were like and like the whole.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we, we watched that right about the like. You know, like you can just add another phone for another angle.
Speaker 2:Oh my god yes, it was, it changed. So I, after that episode, when we recorded obviously it was released I think this week, but we recorded it several weeks ago I binged silo after that. I ended up getting really sick and that's the show that I put on. I think I was texting you about that and I bought this elegato prompter. I'm like I have to stop talking about I've talked with him quite a bit over the past couple of.
Speaker 3:So what is the elegato? Is it another screen? What is it exactly?
Speaker 2:it's a teleprompter. It's a teleprompter, but you can also put your screen on there. So I put this screen on there and it has a camera behind the teleprompter, so if I wanted to scroll text, I could scroll text.
Speaker 3:Or, in this case, I have the application up where I can see both you and chris, but I'm staring at the monitor and the camera is in the center but behind, so it looks like I'm looking at the camera, right, I mean I've got, I don't have any fancy setup whatsoever, I've just got the laptop camera and I always put the team's window, in this case riverside, in a browser on the same screen, like because my other screens, like if I ever like have like teams over there, I'm like looking here. It's like oh, you're like that.
Speaker 3:You're over there now yeah, that annoys people. It's better to have the people on the screen where you're looking.
Speaker 2:Yes, even if you're looking a little, slightly off, but my hope is that it gives us when I'm talking with someone the recording will appear that I'm looking at whomever's watching it, but also when we're speaking, to have a better viewpoint, instead of me looking down at the bottom and the cameras at the top or something.
Speaker 1:So so far, no one would notice it before, because you know why we edit that out. So you know, even if you look down all the time, no one would know. Oh really, I won't say anything.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, uh, but uh, as we get into it. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We really do appreciate it.
Speaker 3:I've been looking forward to speaking with you like the dislike with the legends here, like that first, that first intro call, like where you're like just to check the tech and all the rest of it, I was like, wow, it's like, it's like, it's like Brad and Chris, it's like, wow, I'm really here with these guys, these amazing guys.
Speaker 2:That's not us, that's you.
Speaker 1:We're honored with our guests coming on. It's always fascinating to hear from their perspective.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we appreciate the time that everyone speaks with us or spends with us, because it's fulfilling. I learned so much from the guests that we speak with and we have such a wonderful community of people, and I'm so happy that technology affords us the opportunity to all connect from afar.
Speaker 3:You know like it's amazing you guys have the time to do it. I think it's like the time commitment is big. But the I learned so much from you know like I listen to various different podcasts when I can, like you know there's some great ones out there and it's like you learn so much from the, the kind of the. You know that's a little bit topical. Maybe it's nice this release wave. Maybe it's an old problem that you know, maybe it's a new thing you never heard about. You always learn something. It's like, oh my god, yes, like that will help me, you in the future, to do like great delivery for whoever right. Absolutely, it's definitely time well spent. Yeah, so thanks for providing an amazing service.
Speaker 2:No, thank you and thanks for participating. And before we get into talking about some great things, would you mind telling us a little bit about you?
Speaker 3:Of course. Yeah, so my name is Andy Wingate. I'm a recent Microsoft MVP for Business Central, which was everyone says it's a huge surprise. It's like, well, you do have to apply, so how much of a surprise, but it really was a big surprise. So I'm really really, you know, honored, humbled and honored, as they say, but I genuinely am to join that.
Speaker 2:Congratulations on that. By the way, I meant to put that. I did have the on that. By the way, I meant to put that I did have the note that you were recent and sometimes I forget when someone received the mvp. You, you, just you know that they you know they have a green horn. Whatever they call it like fresh off the boat yes, a green horn, that's an old uh I.
Speaker 2:I grew up hearing that saying in my area, by the way, it's a term for yeah. We'll get backlash on that one too, but that's okay, so yeah so that's I.
Speaker 3:currently I work for a Microsoft partner in the UK called Venture. I'm heading up the business central practice there. About three years before then, I've been working for a couple of different Microsoft partners incremental group, telephonic tech and before that I was on the customer side. So I started, I was like a head of IT, head of business systems, type role and I started working with Nav back in 2015 on the customer side, you know, to deliver the solution for the business I worked for at the time and we worked together with a partner in the UK, obviously, and I learned a huge amount. But I had also, like I was in charge of all the stuff for that IT stuff for that company. So I was dealing with all sorts of different systems and just, you know, keeping the lights on type IT business systems. It was an SMB company right, we're using that, Of course. We're an SMB company and I didn't really have the time to kind of drill into one particular vendor when I eventually made the choice to to go on to the partner side. So you know, that's my journey end user to partner side and I ended up working for a Microsoft partner because I've had so much fun on these projects and I got friendly with some of the.
Speaker 3:I was actually, you know, mary hunter from columbus she was the uk md for columbus back in the day, I suppose and she said, andy, you know you should really, you know you'd love it, they'd love you. Why don't you go and do it? I was like, oh, I'm not sure if I can, blah, blah, blah. You know all those like worries that you have, anyway it's. And then I went across and you know they immediately threw me into like tricky, tricky, difficult problems. But I've come from a real boots on the ground operational business and I was like the first thing you do when you get in the room is like, ok, guys, like don't worry, you know, whatever problems you get, we'll solve them. Ok, I'll be here to solve the problems. And you just bring the people on the journey of belief first. Then you worry about how you're going to solve the problems.
Speaker 1:And of course, you stole the problem. They threw you into the fire.
Speaker 2:That is, they threw you into the fire right away. That is great. You go along the journey of belief and the rest will follow so it's like, don't worry you do. You do have to have that belief and uh, that's an interesting story.
Speaker 3:As well as having fun on like tricky, tricky projects which I which I love doing, um, you know, and um, but I also was like, oh, michael, so like, right, I might as well. You know user groups. Oh, there's one in Cambridge. I'm just live just outside Cambridge. There's a user group in Cambridge. I'll pop along. And I popped along to the user group and I happened to see, I happened to see on that day, like laura, laura, graham brown was there, she's a pow bi mvp, I think, and galiki was there, she's now an mvp.
Speaker 3:Um, there was, and there was a number of other like like great, like a whole bunch of a whole crew of people, really, really keen people and they, you know, they did, you know, you did the talks on this, that on the other, it was it was all like d365 stuff, not power, not, you know, there's no business central user groups, right. Um, so it was all like D365 stuff, not, you know, there's no business central user groups, right? So it was all like D365 power platform. But they were so keen and they were like, oh, and you know, are you coming to South Go Summit, which is a big like free conference that operates in the south of the country and you should come along. You know, like it's free, blah, blah, blah. So they kind of really encouraged me to engage.
Speaker 3:I was like, wow, this is, they're so welcoming. And then I went to these bigger ones and and it's like I couldn't believe it, it was unbelievable. The um, they're all from competitive organizations. You know big organizations that are like competitors, right, but they're all sharing, like okay, everyone in the room, here's this problem that you will have on your projects, here's how I solve it. Like this is a pretty sweet way to do it. I was like, wow, they're sharing the secret sauce of how, like, to make everyone's lives easier. And I just, you know, suddenly I discovered for the first time, like it had always been there, but I discovered this whole Microsoft community thing for the first time and I it like yeah, blew my socks off right, like I couldn't believe how welcoming the people were how willing they are to share all the stuff.
Speaker 3:and you know, getting chatting with these like big names, I was like, wow, you know. Like you know, sort of like well, I'm allowed to speak to you, and they're like, of course you are.
Speaker 2:But that is one of the great things about the community that we have is it's so large but it feels so small. And everyone, I think, now has, for the most part, exactly what you had mentioned they want to share, they want the product to be successful, they want everyone to be successful because it enriches the application and enriches the community, and all those successful implementations helps anybody that works with it, either from the customer side or the partner side. But speaking of that, so you made the journey from the customer side over to the partner side, so you worked with managing an internal system, and then you made the transition over to a partner.
Speaker 2:What were some of the considerations you had for moving from? As I'll say, as you were responsible for IT, which I know how sometimes, depending upon the size of the organization, you may have more than one hat. You could be a developer, you could be a functional consultant, project manager, or all of those together combined. So what were the considerations you had when you were moving from a customer to a partner?
Speaker 3:Yeah sure, a customer to a partner, yeah sure. So I had, um, I mean to be completely honest with you, I kind of I'd reached the top as far as I could go in the organization in that particular company. It was a. It's a large agricultural cooperative in the uk and, um, you know, smb company um, and I kind of had pitched to the. I had kind of pitched like to the board, like you board, for IT director role, and they're like no, that's not going to work here, sort of thing. And they made the right decision. They were bringing in a finance director. They didn't have a finance director, so they brought in a finance director role to help improve the business efficiency and performance, all the rest of it. So they definitely made the right call. So I was kind of like, ok, cool, I've had an amazing time here, you know, 12 years almost. It's time to move on.
Speaker 3:And I kind of had two thoughts in my mind. One was, you know, find an IT director or CTO role in another end user side or move to the Microsoft side. And it was, yeah, there was other people from the partner side that kind of really convinced me to go down the partner route, one of which was Mary Hunter. Another one was Nikki Stewart, who is a. She was my account manager at Columbus and there was various other interactions with the consultants. You know the project team I had at Cambridge Online that then became Columbus, and you know like there's not like on the delivery side. There's plenty of hard work and stress to deal with, right. But those guys, they also had a bit of fun and I, you know I was on one call with Chris Nichols and he we were like problem with Jet on-prem, you know, and we pulled in some other consultants like oh, try this, try that. And I was like wow, these guys, like they're working together to help each other out, like you can probably overcome any problem with this. So yeah, I was kind of convinced to make the jump. So you know, like a little bit of a sideways step.
Speaker 3:Oh, and also I had the most amazing help from a. I tried to apply various different places. I didn't really get too far, but when I got in touch with a really good recruiter, um called, uh, philippa, so she was, so she helped me, you know, she helped me. She helped me find the partner who valued the like end, no consultancy experience, right on the face of it. But I had a lot of end user experience and I've used now I've done a couple of deployments, done a whole load of crazy development stuff, right, um, so she was able to kind of, you know, find the partner that was hiring for that kind of person at the time. So that was a real. You know, I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for those people. So I'm really grateful.
Speaker 1:And that was the process. Curious about your perception is did your perception change, coming from, you know, from an end user as an end user? I came from an end user as an end user. I came from an end user as well. So I had a, a perception, perspective, perception of what consultants do. And then when you come in to doing consulting, was there like it? I was like, oh, that makes sense, why they're like that, or that makes sense, they do this kind of process that's a really great question.
Speaker 3:Actually, I've never thought about that. So what? What changed? Um? I think you know I needed to learn the. I needed to backfill missing bits so I'd use nav in a particular way for a particular organization. They'll hold chunks of the of the of the app that I've never used, right, so needed to learn those. Uh, I was really good on certain bits and other bits were missing, but also, so, yeah, so the.
Speaker 3:I mean, I was a little bit worried about that and I guess something that changed my perception was that actually you don't need to know all of it because you've got to have, you need to have a rich team, you should. You don't need to be an expert in warehouse and marketing or whatever. Like, pretty good, pretty useful to know finance in and out, right, but you don't need to be an expert in all the other stuff. Okay, um, so that that's. I guess that changed a little bit. Um, the um, yeah, I mean I can't think of anything else that really jumped out like a sore thumb. I'm. I had some really great people, colleagues, um at incremental with um.
Speaker 3:You know, when I first joined there and I saw how they they operated and I just learned so much from these people. You know the way. A little bit more care on. You know, when you're writing a requirements document about you know what's in scope, what's out of scope, being super clear and also the. I guess I'm not afraid to have difficult conversation and like immediately learning, like it's far better if you're with a client to say right now, right guys, this has happened, let's have. Let you have the difficult conversation straight away. You know they're not going to want to hear it. It's a little bit nerve wracking all the rest of it, but you have the difficult concept. Don't let it like grumble on until the money's all run out out and then it's like massive change request everyone's surprised and like everyone's hair is on fire.
Speaker 3:Like don't do that. Even though you know you, you avoid the conflict. You've got to. You've got to face in, you've got to be honest. People appreciate honesty. No, no, no project has no problems. Right, like, and if you figure that out, please tell me. But there's always some kind of a problem. It's not about the problem, it's about being honest, you know, and figuring out the way we get past the bump in the road, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:That right there is critical, I think, in a project is, as you had mentioned, the honesty, the trust and what you have moving forward.
Speaker 2:And, like you had mentioned, it's oftentimes better I can't even say often.
Speaker 2:I would say it's always better to have those difficult conversations early versus late. So if you can foresee there's going to be a challenge having that conversation, as difficult as it may be on either side, because also, if someone comes to me and tells me that it's from the side of going through the implementation that you've uncovered a problem, or either direction, it's the one who's talking about the problem, the one who has the problem. I guess you can say I would rather know early on so that we could work together to solve it and not have it be so significant in the future. And then you find out, like you said, if the money has all run out, the budget's blown. Now we have a lot of change requests. Now everyone's like well, why didn't you tell me so long ago? It's just having that open and honest communication, which I think is important. But to go back to the customer and the partner first, something that you had mentioned, like everyone's having a good time and fun. We all do that, because that hides the tears right.
Speaker 2:So you have to laugh and have a good time, because that pain and suffering that you may be going through nobody can see. Right, it's a little bit cheeky from saying you should be honest on everything, but no, there is a lot of work that goes into ERP implementations and product implementations and dealing with multiple projects and the approach is just you can either complain and cry about it or you can laugh and have a good time and move through it with a smile on your face is the way I look at it, totally Similar to what Chris had mentioned. How do you think moving from a customer or do you think moving from a customer to a partner has helped you with business central implementations? So the experience that you had gained from a customer. Do you think it was advantageous for you to have that experience as a partner and, if so, how?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, for definitely, I say yes to that. I think that the often I yeah, yeah, I think one of the elements that you get when you're on, when you worked in one company for a long time, you know, and you like part of the furniture there or whatever, and you, as you're involved in projects over the years and it kind of like it wires your brain differently. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, I don't know, but like I'm putting a project in, I'm working with these people in my mind forever, okay, so like it really needs to, I don't, I can't just get to the implementation finish line and then like we're done, thanks very much. No, I'm going to work with these people for, like you know, going forward. So you've got to get to the finish line and it has to like genuinely deliver beneficial change to everybody. You know, otherwise they come and they come and knock on your door and it's like, no, the thing's still not working on me. It's like, no, my day's worse now. Why did we, why did you do that change? So you have that mindset from the very word.
Speaker 3:Go that the project, the success criteria for the project, is not just the finish line of the project, it's the you know genuinely making a difference and you know different projects of different sizes. What does that actually look like? Of course, that's a map, that's. That's a big variable in there, but it's that I think having that mindset I think you tend to have more of a mindset like that um, then, uh, I think it helps foster that mindset. I think that's a really healthy mindset, to have that kind of um looking ahead, you know, long-term benefit, um, the what else is there. I think also, and and because of that, you have to like really engage and build the relations with all the people who this change is going to affect. So, change management. I think you know, um, when you've got a whole team of shop floor people, like operations, people, boots, on the ground, people, they don't care about the buzzwords they don't care about, they just care about, like I want to get my job done on time, like correctly. You know, like what? What do you mean? We're not, we're not signing a sheet and it's now on a, on a handheld, like am I? Is it going to help me do it faster? Is it going to help me be more accurate, like what's in it for me? You know, like, you've always got to consider the what's in it for me, for everybody, because sometimes on a holistic view, sometimes like what's?
Speaker 3:A lot of small companies often end up perhaps this is true or not but really driven by the operations, because that's what earns the money. So sometimes the whole processes are like totally focused on the operations and then, like the back office, admin and accounting and all that kind of stuff, they're picking up the pieces left, right and center and sometimes you know, when you put in a proper system and you kind of look at the whole holistic thing and you make the whole thing efficient from end to end, sometimes the operations guys need to do like a little bit more steps and clicks and things like that, and so there's a real um, you've really gotta sell that one, the wider benefits and how you and how to figure out, um, how to figure out how to do that. So I think, um, yeah, I mean, does that answer the question? Maybe?
Speaker 1:like. So empathy, you have some empathy because you you know how it feels on one side, because you're right, like as a client, you kind of handle just your day-to-day and then you have a a single entity or a company that you are handling. When you go to the consulting side, you understand that they have to do day-to-day by, you know, day-to-day job and then at the same time you're also implementing in a brand new erp. That's a huge change. So it's a good, uh, a good reminder. When you're a consultant, like I understand, when you do, you have that perspective of what's important for a user, as Andy had mentioned.
Speaker 2:It's what is the change? What are some of the conversations they have? Because the conversations from the consulting point of view again, a partner is going to partner with you through the journey, but everybody has different concerns. I may have different understand, different focal points, as andy had mentioned. It's what is in it for me to make my life easier. I guess you could say everybody has that selfish, but also that may be important to a business, that, from a different lens, as a partner or someone working with an implementation, you may not understand.
Speaker 3:So so it's I remember the um. So when I was on the end user side, the transport manager had a great relationship with the transport manager there and we did a lot of development around the transport. We like we was working in a logistics company, effectively, and in the peak of harvest it was an agricultural business, the peak of harvest, like 600 lorry movements in the day anyway. So we we talked about the click economy, like on the new system, how many clicks do I have to do to go from end to end? And we kind of you know I have to promise him a click economy budget, a decreasing budget on clicks, and it's like, well, there's a few more clicks here, but then you know, to go end to end, actually the clicks do come down. So it's like, oh okay, andy, like well, we'll do it then.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I've been to that before. It is because it is. You brought up an interesting point there as well, because when you go through an ERP implementation, it's important to take a look at the entire process, because you may save a step early on in the stream which creates more work downstream. Or, as you had mentioned, you may create one additional click for a person to function somewhere early in the process, but you're saving hours for somebody on the back end. So it's important to really explain or walk through the overall process and the benefits of the process and also the downstream effects of any process changes you make, because that is where, in my experience, Chris kind of chuckles.
Speaker 2:I find a lot of challenges that implementations have. It's oh, I can make it so much easier for the sales order entry process, for example, but by making it so much easier now I just totally shifted the way we have to pick and lay out the warehouse, so now it's saved one person five minutes, for example. This is figuratively. Now I added hours in the requirement for more manpower because I made it so much easier for one person, but not everybody else.
Speaker 1:So I had to laugh on that click your click budget because when the moment you mentioned that, it just triggered this old memory of mine where, like one of my first, you know nav implementation, where I was working with somebody in the customer service side and they were upset that they had to press an extra button, an extra button, even though it was going to save them manual process on the backend. But I remember having to speak to them a couple of days. We were killing days just because to convince this person. It's like it's one click, I understand, but here's the result. These are the things that you'd be saving time. It was fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, managing expectations. A recent project we had a client there and it's kind of like I expect the system to do this, I expect the system to do that. Managing expectations is really important. Yeah, people, I think, brad, you mentioned earlier understanding that end-user client people, especially finance teams, month-end every single month, you know, like getting their time. So, as a consultant, I'm always, I always. You know the first thing I say after any workshop on the email, like where you go back with all the actions, and now the AI generated meeting notes, which saved me a whole pile of time Exactly.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for your time because you know you have to be. Thank you so much for your time because you know you have to be. Their time is precious. They've got their. It's just on the half a day workshop that helps me do my job, to deliver the stuff or whatever. Yeah, and then I went half a day behind on their whatever they were supposed to be doing on a normal day. You know, without this extra project stuff that they've got to do.
Speaker 2:That's a key point, because that is when structuring we can go down so many tangents. We also, chris, need to have an episode of implementation horror stories We'll have to get everybody, or?
Speaker 1:maybe one of these conferences.
Speaker 2:I know One of these conferences we'll have to just corner everybody, because you both made me think of some crazy situations that I've been in over the course of my career.
Speaker 2:But you had hit on a key point there that when you're going through an implementation as far as scheduling, training or setting expectations and thankfully I'm a big fan of, like the incline, you know, page scripting to help with testing and user acceptance a separate story but to have understanding that individuals also have to complete their job as well as go through the training, and this is not just from the partner side, it's also from an organization point of view.
Speaker 2:If you're going to go through the undertaking of implementing an ERP system, whether it's a migration to a new system, migration to a new version of the existing system, an upgrade, depending upon the terminology it does take time and the time is important so that it can help make for the efficiency of the business. Because if you don't take the time to do it and have an understanding of people need to work and either shift some of that if possible or afford them the opportunity to properly test, it could be far more damaging in the back end Because no one really may know how to do what they need to do or they may not test it properly or review it properly to make sure it does exactly what they need properly, to make sure it does exactly what they need. And those few minutes that you think you're saving because you're trying to get some things done or for whatever reason, it can be costly in the sense of time or even fulfillment of product, I guess you could say downstream.
Speaker 3:I remember when I was back on the customer side and we had implemented a change and the invoices processing had gone wrong and there was this big backlog of invoices and I was kind of like fighting with, like, the senior team. It's like, well, I need this person, this person, this, but I need them for three days to do this the thing. And it's like, well, if you do that, are the backlog of invoices going to get bigger? It's like that place is on fire and we need to turn the gas off, otherwise the fire is never going to go out, and it's kind of like that. You know, I guess that's a common thing, right? Sometimes the problem is going to get worse. And again, communicating right, the problem is going to get worse, we can solve the problem, we've got the solution. Hooray, everyone's right, the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Oh, okay, right, get on with it, sort of. You know, like you've got to communicate that stuff, right?
Speaker 2:no-transcript and on the flip side, they may hear it but not hear it the way that you said it. So it's oftentimes beneficial, I found, to make sure you have that back and forth to ensure that they can explain back to you what you said, basically not truly technical or not, but an understanding of it. So, with your Business Central experience, are you more on the functional side or on the technical side? Do you do any development or you work primarily on the implementations?
Speaker 3:So yeah, I mean, my background is kind of IT, so I used to work in Azure, you know, on kind of the Active Directory or Entra as it now is, m365 admin. I wouldn't say I'm a super-duper Azure techie guy, like with you know, like complicated resources. You know that I can spin up a VM and stuff like that. That was from my like what they talk about like accidental DBA, you know, like you're the accidental database administrator because the only one that knew anything about it. So that was part of my role that I used to have. I'm definitely more functional than technical. I love doing the AL development. I love, you know, I love the ability. So I've got this. There's low code, right, and there's pro code.
Speaker 3:The proper developers have massive respect for all the developers I've worked with and I've worked with some real legends and it's kind of like you just it just amazes me sometimes how they can create like functionality and all that. You know they just it, just it's just truly incredible. But, um, I think there is an area in the middle it's a real big thing of mine where, like simple dev, okay, I think that every functional consultant should know how to create an AR project, you know, and like move a cube tile on the role center. You know like that's. Oh, we want the Continua. You know document stuff, we want it on this role center that you made for us.
Speaker 3:You know, don't have to wheel out a developer for that, that is so easy to like. Go and look and see what the code is on the Continua role center. Drop it onto the other one small extension. There's the whole rules of the road thing that you know when you're dabbling as a functional consultant with a little bit of development, it's so important to agree the rules of the road with your development team. What? Where are the repos? I'm sure it was you guys were talking, or it was maybe steve endo talking about like nightmares of like open source, the source code and all that kind of stuff oh, you gotta have the have the rules of the road.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that's a whole. We could you could spy on me there but I just like to take back to a few key points that you're saying. So it's good to have an understanding of the application and development, and you mentioned low code, no code. I'd like to circle back to that, which was kind of a lead in with where I was going with the conversation. But I also think, from the development point of view, developers need to understand the functionality of the application because it helps them create solutions. But also to your point where you're talking about moving things around, it's important to know is the modification required? Is it a personalization? Is it a customization, or is it something that we may have to use another tool such as low-code, no-code? So there's a balance of I can do anything, I can create anything with development versus architecting a solution for an implementation to meet the requirements.
Speaker 3:And we had a good balance. We kind of did this simple dev policy. And because we had a good balance, you know, like we kind of did this simple dev policy and because we had all the source code in Azure DevOps we happened to use right, haven't quite got across to GitHub and you know. And then so you've got the pull request, so you can review the pull request and, like you know, a low-risk pull request is one that doesn't change the ultimate database schema. You know, kind of it's a surface change, something like that, is change, something like that, and you have the ability to talk to developers briefly as opposed to like pulling one off and having them do all the like crunching on the keyboard for simple dev stuff. Right, there's so many great tools out there, like the Waldo templates and the AZAL wizards for API pages, for example.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, but the standard API pages vendor are 144 fields on the table, 40 on the API page. It's like oh, it turns out I did want like reason code or purchase a code. That's a pretty handy field, but it's not in the standard. How easy is it if you know how to wizard API page Bosh? You know, obviously there's considerations if it's a critical workflow, or if it's just for a report you need or for a simple. You know you want to do something in Power Automate but the field's missing. So like that's another example of maybe a simple dev thing, but you've got to be in the team, you've got to have your developer buddies close by to you know, check on you from time to time so that you don't do the madness.
Speaker 2:And you know I tend to agree with you and that's where I'm going. You do need to have, as you said, the rules of the road to make sure that you have proper management of whatever you're going to do, whether it's a source code modification or even if you're going to move something over, as you had mentioned, power Automate, or if you wanted to have an additional API page to work with Power Automate just to make sure that you have all that there and everyone's aware of what's being done. If you need to address an issue or reconstruct or do something With having an understanding, a basic understanding of development, what goes into development? This is another big one.
Speaker 2:I have these questions and I think about where Business Central now you can make modifications with extensions or you extend it. You're not modifying the base application, you're extending it. Where there may be some functionality that isn't in there, that's unique to a particular business, they have an edge case use. Thankfully, the application has a lot of feature and functionality, but now we can also connect with other systems. So there's Power Automate for you to be able to do tasks with workflows. There's Power Platform, where you could do other pages or cards to interface with Business Central. Where do you see ERP software in development and implementation going in the future, with all of this stuff available to bolt together.
Speaker 3:Great question. A lot of the community stuff that I go and visit it's not BC-focused, it's all Power Platform and D365 apps. You know that's the major focus of the community things and ever since the first one I went along there I'm like oh, how can I get this stuff to like help me with Business Central and figure out those like and I'm kind of also thinking with the like boots on the ground, but it needs to actually make my life better today. You know, in this moment, on this task I'm doing sort of thing. So it's kind of like I think there's a huge opportunity to leverage these tools. There was, for example, a recent Phil Kermeen. I've been chatting with Phil. He's a developer, he does like connectors, he does custom connectors is one of his things that he does and you know, like with Business Central, then a custom connector into Power Platform to achieve some end, some goal, right, but it's reusable. And you know, like for me I was like, oh, that's really handy Because if you just go, you know the BC world is there's a lot of developed like.
Speaker 3:Bc is. Like there's lots of developers for BC and you know the real kind of heroes of BC. They're all developers. You know all the great guys and girls, and so if you give a problem to someone who's just always solved stuff with development, then of course they botch. They botch it out straight with development. But you know this kind of the modular approach that you know getting that, getting a little bit more time with Power Automate so that you can expand and like I and like I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in the UK we've got like a resource shortage. So developers are like there's more functional people.
Speaker 3:I think you can get into functional consulting more easy than you can get into development, because like development is for like the true geniuses, right, whereas with functional you kind of like you know, you can go from an end user, you know, to a consultant to become, and that journey, I think, is less pain than becoming a full-blown developer. It's a different kettle of fish, okay. So can we solve the resource problem by doing less stuff through just pure development? Some stuff, yeah for sure. You need all the ISV apps. They're all through development, right, that's not power automate stuff. But there is this gray area and I always try to go along to to all the like some of these, the d365 meetings, and tell people about business central. Oh, you do business central. I think you know like wow, like never heard. You know what does everyone care about business central?
Speaker 2:like yeah, yeah and I kind of like I'd engage.
Speaker 3:And actually, you know, microsoft have been pushing business central super duper hard and so they're like oh, oh, like Business Central, okay, right. And so I've been starting to do more stuff together with the community and it's like how can we do Power Pages and Business Central? How can we use Power Automate to like hook into the admin API and do something handy for a customer, like there was a recent one which was do a fresh? It was like on nav, it was on-prem nav. They're like oh well, we've got a script that makes a fresh copy of the database every night, so we've got a test environment. It's like what if we could do that in Power Automate? And, yeah, by getting a little help from one of my Power Automate buddies, power Platform they helped me with the API side of it and then, yeah, we can set up a fresh copy sandbox overnight, automatic, don't have to do anything.
Speaker 3:So every time I talk to that side of the community, I'm always trying to like tease out because also, it's there's a lot to learn and low code is not no code and honestly, like you need to get the syntax on the bit where it is code. It's like you're straight in full monty code on the syntax. So, oh, data um filters. You know, like who knew? You know I didn't know how to write, write those or how you're supposed to interpret it. There's like the low-code bit is. There's like these bear traps of like full-on tiny box coding, I think they call it. Like you need to know how to do the tiny box coding, at least in AL dev the whole thing's in code and you can like see examples and you can follow it through, whereas with low code you're dragging and dropping things maybe, and then bosh, right, got a bit of code here. Better be spot on or no dice.
Speaker 2:It does go back to the importance of a team and I forget who said it and I know someone said it it's low code. Low code, no code is not no code, it's somebody else's code.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't matter what you're doing. It's low-code, but you're stressing, I think to me and what I'm hearing is the emphasis of having what you said early on as a quality team, because the expansion of the application in the ecosystem it's difficult to be an expert in everything, so it's important to know who you can rely on and have awareness of what's available to, where you can go, ask the questions to have a proper solution. To me, it's very difficult to keep up with the application power platform. You know everything that you have that you could use to satisfy a requirement for an implementation. So it is important.
Speaker 1:It's much more important now to collaborate than ever before because, like, like you guys said, there's a lot more tools to consider and maybe, as you know I think andy had mentioned it's like you know, the, the old school developers. It's like, oh, we just develop right now you're gonna have to kind of slow down a little bit to see, okay, uh, your developer should be aware of the other, uh, you know software tools out there that will consume your code. So, if you're structuring your code you got to make now, you got to think beyond than just providing a result. You got to think about how can other tools consume my, my, my solution? Like, like you said, you know you can create a solution and code it, but you also have to consider, okay, if a client decides to use Power Automate or they use Power Apps, I want those tools to be able to see my solution. And it requires your you know, a good functional consultant to work with a developer and vice versa, to consider the business aspects of that, not just the solution that you're just building.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think outside the box now and a bigger picture. I just thought of something from a little bit earlier which is around the like oh, are you a functional or are you a technical person? And one of the things that I-. That's a loaded question by the way, I just want to let you know.
Speaker 2:I know we don't talk about this stuff, but some of these questions really are unintentionally loaded.
Speaker 3:I mean, if I ever I'm trying to like find the time to kind of go through the learn stuff, maybe I'll pass the MBA 20 one day. But like there's a lot for me to learn, like a huge amount Like, and it's a lot, it's a lot. It's a lot simpler for me to to like have a team. You know, go to the experts. You know a lot of the, a lot of the recent content that I did. I was kind of like trying to take it to the next level and the only speak to someone. So you know, like I spoke to one of my colleagues, lee, who helped me with some development al development stuff that was just beyond my capability, you know like I've got an example of it now. Great, I spoke to aj, who helped me with some power platform stuff. Like he showed me some stuff. I'm like, oh, my god, yeah, like I never, I never would have. It would take me forever to sort of figure that out and that and you like, you leapfrog, you're, you're learning when you talk to other people. But but it all comes back to, you know, for a functional consultant, I think, because I had the old in the old days, sql, and we used, like SSRS, we used to write a lot of TSQL for you know, getting data. So, understanding databases which you kind of you know, if you were just never used any system before on this, like here's Business Central, would you even know what a database is, Because you don't even see the? I guess you've got the tables in there. It's just, if you've never used SQL before, perhaps you would perceive the whole of the Business Central backend architecture differently.
Speaker 3:Anywho, like when end users are asking for you know interesting requirements and kind of like well, we need to do this, it needs to do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's useful to understand. Well, you know, can we extend that table? Do we need a new table? It's useful to have a kind of an understanding because often there's a number of ways to get to the outcome and some of those ways are tons of extra tables and pages and some of them are less tables and pages.
Speaker 3:We'll do it this way. Oh, does this meet your requirements? Well, I guess it does. Why have you done it that way? Well, it's because it's a bit simpler to. I know that will be like make the developers lives a bit easier, um, sort of thing. So I think that's really important. When you are getting to that like final two percent of whatever process and it's like, yeah, business central out the box does this, but it doesn't do that, oh, how are we going to solve that? And it's kind of sometimes, uh, people are, you know, people are throwing their hands up and saying, you know, well, we can't use, it's unusable and these sorts of things, and you need to. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:That goes back to the change management and the user adoption that it's it's. It's the path of least resistance and it's so much easier to give up sometimes instead of embrace it, because you knew, you know what you knew. You don't know what the future is, and then you become comfortable with it. Then that becomes your, what you know.
Speaker 3:So it's a challenge there I'm pretty sure it was on. It could have been with mark, where you talked about the like, that there was a special report, the president's report, and like it had been handed yes, yes, lots of different people Turns out. The president just put it in the bin you know, I mean that's a great kind of hilarious anecdote, but the reality is that with Business Central there's so many like you know, like analyze mode, for example, love that feature Just live lists.
Speaker 3:There are certain things where, oh, we had this report, we must get this. This is a day zero report lists. There are certain things where, oh, we had this report, we must get this. This is a day zero report, We've got to have this report to answer that particular question. Well, actually it turns out in Business Central, if you go to the purchase lines and filter in a certain way and turn on pivot mode and save that tab, does that not give you the outcome? Oh yeah, kind of it does. But how do I print that? What about the answer? Everyone. But what about the answer Everyone can get to this. Oh, yeah, I suppose they can. Everyone in the whole organization can get to this through Teams. They don't even need a license. Oh right, really. Oh well, you know. Okay, fine, it's that. Rethinking the staff.
Speaker 2:It really is, because in an age of you had mentioned the reports, where now you can see it online, it gives you what you need. Do you really need?
Speaker 3:that Like LiveList. Do you need that report? Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:So, gosh, I have so many more questions that I have for you because of where you are and what you do. So what are you talking about? Analysis mode or when analysis mode? I believe Jesus, I'm going to try to date myself.
Speaker 2:I think it came out 2024, wave one, or 23, wave two, or about that time. It's been out for a while and I have enjoyed it ever since it came out and it's a saver, and this is what I even emphasize to some individuals on implementations. It's a matter of collecting the proper data so that you can analyze it, instead of having to have a separate report. Every little thing that you do, you can create these views and save them. What are some other underutilized features or unknown features?
Speaker 2:Do you think of Business Central? And I ask this because every month we get new features and functionality and it's important to keep up with it. But from a partner's point of view, because every month we get new features and functionality and it's important to keep up with it. But from a partner's point of view, you have some that are online, so they're relatively close to the latest release, depending upon their update schedule. You have some on-premises implementations where they may not have migrated to the latest implementation, which is its own challenge in itself. May not have migrated to the latest implementation, which is its own challenge in itself, but based on the implementations, what you see, what are some of the underutilized or unknown features of Business Central? Or, if you can't think of those, what are some of the most beneficial features that users can get from the application the most from your point of view?
Speaker 3:Great question. So what? So you think, I mean, when I did the jump from kind of on-prem to then the partner side, where we were just purely, we were really just delivering sass, you know, I was kind of like, oh my goodness, like why were we still on-prem? There were so many, there were so many great features. I got like a whole load of stuff. I, I think 2022, what version of VC would that have been? Well, anyway, whatever, it wasn't like 14. It was kind of like a little bit past then and there was a whole load of stuff. I mean, the classic crowd pleaser is like change dimension.
Speaker 2:So like anyone who's going.
Speaker 3:I always bring that up If we're doing a nav to VC migrate and like da, da-da-da-da. One of the little things I'll throw in there is like oh, and, by the way, everyone in the finance team, look at this, change dimension, what you mean. We don't have to journal everything out and back in again if we just want to change the dimension, correct, and it's got a full audit, blah-blah-blah, it's all fine, the crowd go wild, sort of thing. So that one obviously has been in VCSaaS for quite some time now.
Speaker 3:I always love to show people the access with M365 through Teams. In my kind of demo team environment I have, like, I always kind of show like oh, let's share this sales order and have a conversation in Teams. Isn't that fun. Oh, that's handy. But wait, you know, here's a team and I've pinned customers, vendors, sales orders. Wait, you know, here's a team and I've pinned customers, vendors, sales orders, everything you know like, by the way, everyone in the entire organization can access these. Read only, they don't need a bc license, you know. So that's that's. I think that's a. That's a good one to call out to, especially where you've got, you know, people on the call who are concerned around return on investment and all the rest of it, like we can get you access to this information. It's live. You're all working from the same version of the truth.
Speaker 3:So there's the Teams thing. I think that's. I don't know how. It's difficult to know how much it's used in the wider world. I know Microsoft have got no end of telemetry and they share from time to time a few little snippets. But it would be amazing, wouldn't it, to see all of the stuff. I mean they really collect the telemetry. I remember they must do, because kenny at one point said like there's a certain tool tip that people look at more. So they're obviously like confused by the back field. I can't remember which one it was, but they knew that more like a lot. There was a big spike in looking at the tool tip to try and understand what that field is. So, um, you know for sure microsoft collect the.
Speaker 2:Uh, how people I would like to see that, just to see which features and functionality are used the most. And it could not be it's. It's a double-edged sword with that, because you could say, well we'll, we'll put more investment into the features that are used the most because there's the most benefit. But also, just because the is used a lot doesn't mean that it's not a benefit. It could be that someone doesn't know about it. So you'd almost have to go through the process of let's look at some of the underutilized features, see what an education process could be to see if there is some benefit, because, again, a lot of features and functionality come out. And if somebody's not staying current with the features and functionality or thinking of ways how they could adopt the, the new feature, uh it, within their business, it would go unutilized. So I I would, I would really enjoy seeing something like that. I wish they could do that.
Speaker 2:And to go back to a point you made, it is true, with the erp software, everyone spends so much time relative or how you get it collecting all of the data right. It is so much data is collected if you understand the architecture of business central time, relative, or how you get it collecting all of the data Right. So much data is collected if you understand the architecture of Business Central, which is amazing. Now I'm happy to see there's a lot of emphasis on getting it out. Right now we have all this ability to do the analysis views. We can do the Power BI reports. We can have a number of other ways for us to be able to get the data out, which is wonderful.
Speaker 3:And another really great area is telemetry. Another one of my weekend projects is to get better at KQL, and it's actually. I went to a talk in the Scottish Summit on KQL from one of the people and it's pretty straightforward actually it's. You can learn it. It's not as far. It's not. It's no more difficult than sql or something like that.
Speaker 2:I don't think um I think that's underutilized.
Speaker 3:I always try to like I like, I always try to sort of sell it to the it teams on for clients and say, like guys, like, look at this, you've got a dashboard of all the errors. Look at this, you've got a dashboard of all the the. Look at this, you've got a dashboard of all the logins and your daily activity. And I think you know to really take it to the next level, especially if you've got like big APIs and integrations and all that kind of stuff. I think it's a must for those, because where you can see the long-running processes and API calls that failed and all that kind of stuff, that's it's kind of critical for that stuff. But you're like, yeah, you've got to spin up of stuff that's it's kind of critical for that stuff, but you're like, yeah, you've got to spin up like a resource in azure and you know, yeah, you might, it might cost you a few pounds per month or whatever. Um, so I think that one's on that one perhaps is underutilized.
Speaker 2:I'm sure the people that use it well are really really glad telemetry, to me, is one of those underutilized and misunderstood it's. It's one of those. There's a lot of information there. It's just a matter of making sure you know what to pull out when you need it, because to me, in some cases it could be a proactive or preemptive indicator of something where, simple, there's a number of ways to automate the job queue notifications. There's ways to. Chris published something on it recently explaining how you could set up with power automate. But even with telemetry you could get the job queue failures and you can alert and notify somebody through app insights that the job queue had failed. Something so simple as that uh, there are a lot of noisy.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of noisy events, though. I understand the reason for them, but I always monitor within the table, just for, you said, for the space and size, because you know one. One day something shows up and it was like purchase order this had posted. Purchase order, this had posted. I'm like we really don't need to collect all of those and put it into our storage because of you know the amount of space someone may need it. Don't get me wrong, but I'm just saying it's important to keep up with it and to see all of the events that they add with each release and then, take a look at the dimensions um that they offer, with some of those.
Speaker 1:Let me ask the both of you and I haven't really, uh, played much with telemetry. And I am curious though, because telemetry, once you get the data, you kind of have to translate and kind of read through that. And, uh, I am curious, have you guys heard from anyone where you could take telemetry and maybe have Copilot kind of summarize? It's like, hey, this, you know they're not using this area too much or they're using this area this, and gives you suggestions, rather than have a human aspect of like having to translate that and having to, you know, go through the whole thing and just have Copilot do that for you, so you can have like an automated report that says, hey, in the past month, here's what they did, and it's like much, it's like summarizing your meeting, right, like, have you heard from anyone that have done?
Speaker 2:that Personally, I haven't seen anybody using Copilot to do something that you had mentioned, like that.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a challenge for anybody that's listening. That would be really cool, because then you know how much time that would save you if it takes all the information I'm uh, I'm actually my plan for this weekend is a short uh video on the power bi multiple companies.
Speaker 3:We think that was just a short easy blog. That was that came up in a chat group and it's like actually actually it wasn't short. So I'm taking it easy this weekend. But if we're going to do challenges, I would love to know the answer to this next one. Okay, so the challenge that I'd love to find the answer for is process mapping. So inside Power Platform you've got the Process Explorer I can't remember what it's called exactly and Microsoft bought a couple of different firms that do this like process mapping thing where it kind of like has the process flow of the time people spend on different pages and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:I would love to figure out a way to take all the telemetry and pump it into that part of Power Platform to get this whole view of you know this department in this office. Here's all the ways they went through the system. They spent this much time doing a draft invoice. They spent this much time posting it. Some of the you know this many documents got credited. This many documents went for approval, this many. Have you guys seen that like the process map thing in Power Platform.
Speaker 2:I have not seen it. I thought you were asking about something different. But so you're looking for more statistical analysis of the processes within the application versus the process that they follow.
Speaker 3:It gives you like the full kind of map view of like and like yeah, statistics like this, you know, and you can have like time spent. How much time does it take to complete a document? Right, this team. They did 100,000 documents and the average time was 20 minutes or five days. Going to have like time spent. How much time does it take to complete a document? Right, this team. They did 100 000 documents and the average time was 20 minutes or five days. This team did, you know, a million documents and their average time was less. They figured out a way to do it more efficiently. Um, you know, and it's, it's a tool inside, um, you could I mean you could take.
Speaker 1:You could take your performance profiler and just kind of go through that and then take the results and and maybe have co-pilot summarize that uh that, but you would have to do a lot of logging, with the performance profiler, with the ability to schedule it.
Speaker 2:Now you could schedule it for users, but I think that would add an additional burden.
Speaker 1:I mean even if you, if you're just capturing it for, just for the process component of what it typically goes through, I mean maybe just run it one time and at least give you an idea. I mean not run it every time, but that's a good challenge to have. I think it's a good challenge.
Speaker 2:I'd like to see it.
Speaker 1:On top of the telemetry right. I would love to see someone do that he will have all these challenges.
Speaker 2:He'll have them all done. We definitely will have to have you back in a few weeks to see the results of your challenges.
Speaker 3:Another point Process mining. Process mining is the term, the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:And that's that. I think that I would love to get more Power Automate stuff connected up with BC to leverage all of those tools there. And I'd love to see like there's a couple of things I'd love to see like BC kind of feeding into process mining, bc feeding into Fabric One Lake, you know, without having to do a kind of community supported tool. There's a few things out there that would be good to see in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to take a look at some of the telemetry in more detail to see what I transform out typically versus what's there. I know we can do the long running processes and such to see what's running. I don't know if it tracks what actually is running for each case to be able to put that together. I know you have the time for it and then even when it logs the long performance, it does it when it gets over the threshold threshold which can be arbitrary as well too. One other thing that you had mentioned before that I wanted to ask you about because I know you're involved in. You talked about the ability for talent in the community. There's a need for functional consultants, developers, depending on where you are here over in the United States. I think we often say and we talk and we find we prefer to buy before we build, in a sense, whereas on the other side of the pond before we build in a sense, whereas on the other side of the pond, it's oftentimes we prefer to build before we buy.
Speaker 2:But there is a lack of or a shortage I don't want to say a lack, but there is a shortage of talented individuals. With the business central application taking off, in my opinion I mean the number of people using the application, the number of organizations using the application it does require more individuals who have an understanding of the application, in my opinion, both from the customer point of view, to be able to use it and manage it internally, as well as from the partner point of view. I know. One other thing that you and I had spoken before you were involved in is the Reskill program.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, I mean I guess I'm not really involved as such, but I'm really interested in it as it's. That's my journey. But, yeah, microsoft, yeah, run this reskill program in the UK and various other countries, I think, like in America and, you know, across Europe as well. And, yeah, I think that's like it's great to see the investment from the mothership right, microsoft is kind of, you know, putting all this investment into the platform. It really kind of shows that they really are. They're betting the future and the future is BC Colored right. They've created this program. I think it's a fabulous program.
Speaker 3:Look, you know, we're hoping to get engaged where I work to help build the team here to get those end users skill them up, you know, on a formal training thing. Get them up to the standard for Business Central across the piece and get them onto projects. Get them, you know, get them billable, get them delivering great, get them doing great delivery. You know, I think it's a great way to. If you're a little bit nervous, if you're on the end user side, you know it is a bit of a. Changing jobs is always right, you know, can be stressful, I think. And going into something unknown, into a different market, doing a different delivery. You know everyone has those fears like you know, like the what is it like? The imposter syndrome and what if I don't enjoy it, kind of stuff. And I think, um, having that kind of formal program there, supported by microsoft, with you know real good people in the background involved with it as well for the training and all the rest of it, I think that really makes it more attractive to more people. So we we're casting a wider net on on getting you know potential great talent into into into the channel.
Speaker 3:And for me, I mean you sort of take it all the way back to the start, like why, why did I get involved in it? And I guess I've got like an inherent need to like I love solving problems. For people like when I was gonna, I just back in the day it support days and it's like, well, how do we do this? So you click there, oh, thanks, andy, you know, oh, you know they, they enjoyed that. And you just, I think everyone I the day IT support days and it's like, well, how do we do this? So you click there, oh, thanks, andy, they enjoyed that. I think everyone, I mean, is it the case everyone in IT loves solving?
Speaker 1:problems. Yeah, if you try to turn it off and turn it back on, you know that feels good Like oh, it's working Wow.
Speaker 3:There is that one, of course it's. When that doesn't work, then you've got to put the real thing on. Yes, oh come on again. Didn't fix it. Guys, we've got a live one here, Get the backbone.
Speaker 1:That's usually a buffer when you say can you try turning it on, can you shut it down and restart? Just because I don't have time right now, just do that first.
Speaker 3:Or you don't know, don't give me some time, yeah, or you don't know, and you're just like, ah, restart it and just see, there's that one, there's the. What version are you on? Oh, that's not the latest version.
Speaker 2:Well, you need to update first, then we'll come back. Are you using any extensions? No, I just go. But to circle back to the Rescale program, I do think the Rescale program is a fabulous program. It gives the opportunity for talented individuals that may have not worked with ERP implementations to go through a formalized training program. I think it's co-sponsored by Microsoft I know that maybe one of the stakeholders of it and some other training organizations to allow for the opportunities for individuals that may not have the you know, they may have some business knowledge but they may not have knowledge of ERP software or Business Central in this case case to be able to go through a program that's sponsored by by someone and they can spend most of the time while they're working and have a community of people to work with, to learn and go through the journey of learning business center themselves, which I find is interesting because they also have what I call a functional track and also a development track.
Speaker 3:so anybody who goes through it?
Speaker 2:yeah, it can get. They strive to say that anybody who goes through it can pass the MBA 100 after they go through the program and then work on projects as they finish it and even with the development, the MBA 20, which is the development certification test. So I think it's a great program to bring exposure to Business Central and also a good way to bring additional talent into the community that we have, because there are more and more implementations and, to be candid as well, there's a lot of the old timers that are falling off because they're getting to the point where they say I just want to retire, so my aspiration is to go work at Costco over here in the US and stock shelves.
Speaker 3:Sometimes that does seem attractive. I saw a great talk once where Chris Huntingford talked about the talent problem. This was a while ago and he said, like a lot of partners in I'm sure it's the same in the US like you move partner to get a raise right, so you move partner, you move partner and you're not bringing anything new. Like what about all the opportunity from Power Platform? What about all the opportunity from Copilot or different ways of thinking? You know you talk about like digital natives. We've got like people will be coming out of university soon who are going to be like Copilot natives, like they always had Copilot or some AI tool. Like their brain's going to be wired a little bit different, they're going to think about problems a little bit different. And if you can't get that fresh blood, you need to get that fresh blood for the fresh ideas. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You summarize that perfectly where individuals going from partner to partner, for example and if you're not doing anything new, you could be working and I say this candidly just because you've been working with Business Central for 20 years doesn't mean you know something more than someone that's been working for two, Because if you've just done the same thing for 20 years, you have 20 years worth of one years of experience, Whereas someone who has exposure and who's learning new, you can bring more value to the organizations and to me. Sometimes I think that's overlooked. Some people just assume that, oh, you've worked within Business Central for 20 years, you're an expert, when in reality is you may have only created sales orders for those 20 years Doesn't mean you're not good at creating sales orders.
Speaker 3:It doesn't mean Absolutely nailing.
Speaker 2:the sales orders Say it again, please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they might be absolutely nailing the sales orders.
Speaker 2:Yes, but to be able to say now you can go and do an implementation, and here's all the new features. They sometimes struggle. So to me I think it's important and I'm happy for the rescale program because it does give people the opportunity to learn the application, have additional experience. But it's also important for those when they're looking that sometimes it's not how long someone's been doing something yes, it matters in some cases. I'm not saying it doesn't, it's what their exposure was in that time and what they did in that time, versus they just have been doing it for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Because you know, as I tell chris, I know some individuals been working with business central for three or four years and they can do al development and functional consulting far better than some individuals been doing for 15 or 20 and vice versa. Just because someone's been doing for 20 years, to your point, doesn't mean they haven't been keeping up as well. I mean I fortunately don't have a life and I have to spend a lot of time trying to read all this stuff and it ends up becoming a blur where I read it and which version.
Speaker 3:It's tricky. I mean, that's one of the go-to interview questions always like how do you keep up with? How do you keep up with what's happening in business with all the new features?
Speaker 2:True story that is a real question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, Like I want to you know, and I'm asking them because I genuinely want to know the answer, Like maybe they've got a way of doing it that's better than the way I do it. Now you can ask.
Speaker 1:Copilot too at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Copilot. Yeah, Well, I was going to ask.
Speaker 3:So I'm aware in the UK we've got the BC Reskill for like end user into BC, but in the US or is it also available like they're reskilling like GP to BC? Is that?
Speaker 2:right. I believe you can have GP. I think you can have anyone go through the program, fair enough. Yeah, from my understanding I did have some conversations with the members of the program they will take anybody, and I don't mean anybody, anybody, you know anybody. They're just taking someone who has it's a reskill program somebody who has some skills and helping them learn additional skills. So if they're coming from gp and it's not like it's not a gp to bc program, it's a reskill program to learn bc. But the knowledge of GP will be helpful. They have been having webinars and some partners have been putting on webinars to help pave the way to BC from GP, explaining some of the differences. But the reskill program, from my knowledge, will take anybody that has some business understanding and help them learn how to do business central.
Speaker 3:I'm looking forward to Shannon's book. You know, like the the GP migration, I've never used GP but you know, like there's, it's obviously the end of support, the whole end of support thing and getting people off of it onto BC, I think that's a, you know that's, that's going to be a fairly important thing going forwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great. Well, mr Andy, sir, we have to thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. I truly value it because, as we all talk about, any time that you spend doing something, you're not doing something else and you don't get a redo, so you have to take the time. So we greatly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us and I did learn a lot and I appreciate it a lot, and I would like to have you on again as a follow-up to speak with you some additional topics, so I'll reach out to you afterwards and we can have a an andy part two.
Speaker 3:I would love to do that. Thank you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed chatting to you guys. Uh, yeah have a great.
Speaker 2:Have a great weekend I could chat with you all day, but in the meantime, if anybody would like to reach out with you to learn more about some of the great content that you put out, such as going to put out that how to load Power BI by multiple companies, as you talked about- you got two challenges man or some of the other challenges, or even assistance with business central implementation.
Speaker 2:So just to share knowledge with or to go have, now that dry January is over, have a beverage with. How should someone get in contact with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, linkedin is probably the easiest one. Or through my blog, you can get to my blog on https andyms oh, that's easy, andyms.
Speaker 2:We will put links to your linkedin and also that andyms on the guest profile page of the website, as well as the episode thank you again, sir, have a great afternoon.
Speaker 1:Thank you and a great weekend. Ciao, ciao, ciao, take care guys. All right, take care 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 1: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-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at matalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is matalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
