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 411: 🛍️ 💳 Work, Life, E-Commerce Evolution and Business Central 💳 🛍️
In this episode of Dynamics Corner, hosts Kris and Brad chat with Chris De Visser about the rise of e-commerce innovation. They explore how maintaining work-life balance, structure, and human connection is key in a virtual world, especially for junior employees who benefit from face-to-face learning. Chris introduces Commerce Build, an ERP-first e-commerce platform that integrates with Business Central, offering flexible solutions for B2B and B2C markets. He highlights the importance of understanding client needs, seamless implementation, and adapting to payment and PIM integrations.
🛒 Commerce Build is an ERP-first platform tailored for diverse e-commerce needs.
🛒 Client-focused flexibility and innovative implementation drive e-commerce success.
🛒 Technology shapes user expectations, influencing online transactions and convenience.
🛒 Conferences remain vital for networking, with content and logistics at their core.
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. Do you need e-commerce in your business? I'm your co-host, Chris.
Speaker 2:And this is Brad. This episode is recorded on February 24th 2025. Chris, chris, chris, with an extra Chris. E-commerce In 2025, many businesses, if not all businesses, can benefit from e-commerce 2025, many businesses, if not all businesses, can benefit from e-commerce With us. Today, we had the opportunity to speak with Chris DeVisser about Commerce Build and its e-commerce solution.
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Speaker 1:Good morning.
Speaker 2:Good morning, hey guys. How are you doing? How are you Very well, very well, hey guys, how are you doing, how are you Very well, very well. That office looks familiar.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's what can I say? It's probably it's a WeWork, right. So there's like a couple hundred of these. Oh, very cool.
Speaker 2:How long have you been at a we work?
Speaker 3:um, I mean on and off, I would say almost 10 years oh so do you have I'm one of the few people that, because of the pandemic, went into the office. Uh, it's because, um, my wife started working home, we had our daughter born and we just had to uh somebody, somebody had to leave the house.
Speaker 2:And that's why you're still married, because you chose to leave the house.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's um, it's uh. I'm sure anybody with young kids recognizes it. Of course I love my kids, but we have three of these youngsters right now and when people say happy Friday, I have like a reverse reaction from what it was a couple of years ago and I'm like, oh God, it's the weekend. It means hard work, it means like not being able to think for myself and just live by the grace of these minions. And then on Mondayay I'm like, hey, I can think again. I have like my brain for myself.
Speaker 2:yeah, I get it having the separation between work and home is important and you, you said so much and I have so many things to say and my psychologist tendencies are not really one, I just pretend to be one on tv and you are absolutely correct, small children or children in general are a lot of work I think, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you go in in parent mode, which automatically means, uh, like I mean, and maybe it's um, it's self-centric or something, but it automatically means I can't really think anymore.
Speaker 2:No, no, and it's also when you want to spend time with your kids and do kids. They require attention. It's to make sure that they're safe and they're doing things and they're not growing up on television and such.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sometimes what you do at work is like kind of blends in how you handle your kids and vice versa. Yeah, so that's funny.
Speaker 2:No, the separation is good. So have you had the same office at the WeWork for that same period of time?
Speaker 3:No, I've been at the same building, but I've been changing units either by choice or by force. I the first time I got here was with Sana Commerce, my first employer here in the States, and we grew the team quite big, so we had we needed bigger units each time, which is the big convenience from, like a shared office. Set up a little bit, um, and then I left them, and then, I think, a little while after they, they left the building altogether. I think they now left New York, um, but, um, uh, then I like what was it then? The pandemic was 2020, right, uh, early 2020. Um, I had a killer lease, of course, like I could negotiate like crazy. They almost gave me money to, to, to show up.
Speaker 2:I was going to say it was a 10. They probably gave you 10 a month and a free coffee every day or something.
Speaker 3:Well, the coffee is always free, uh, and in the old days they had unlimited beers. It was crazy like, oh, wow, and it's. It's a building with 17 floors, um, and each floor had its own um, draft, um, and they would, they would list, uh, like the special, like the beer, the type of beer for each floor. And then, uh, we tried once around the holidays to start at the top and drink a beer on every floor. Got kind of messy like around, like floor, floor nine or something.
Speaker 2:I mean 17? Yeah, I think yeah, by eight. Well, it depends how long you're doing it, but if you're doing it after work, for the quick rundown, 17 beers can get a little messy I, so the cost covers that Not anymore.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know how many people saw the WeWork kind of collapse. Right, they were going to go to the stock market. They were worth $60 billion because they were this SaaS startup scale-up solution. And then the bubble popped Like they turned out to be a real estate company that had to sign 20-year leases with the building owners. Well, their tenants had month to month, so COVID happened at the same time and everybody peaced out and they were stuck with a 20-year lease and everybody else could get out of WeWork, so they had no more money coming in.
Speaker 3:And I think just because, talking about amateur psychology, I remember like the sunken cost trap from from college as one of those traps soft bank, I think at that point poured in like billions and billions and billions that they had to double down on it because they could not walk away from it anymore. And they bought off the guy for like $9 billion to go away. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:I gotta check out that documentary. I know there's a documentary about it and I never quite understood that we work. I mean because you know, at least for me, I've been working at home, so I never had the opportunity. But there are times when I'm working at home and I want to work somewhere. I just wanted to be somewhere else from my home office to to get away. Because if you work at home five days a week and then your family's home, then you're home for the weekend. This is, yeah, you know, work at home five days a week and then your family's home, then you're home for the weekend this is yeah, you know you're here seven days a week.
Speaker 1:It's third credit. It doesn't disconnect, so going to like even a coffee shop was like a big treat for me, right? So an office space would be awesome there's more to it.
Speaker 2:It's the separation of from work and home going someplace. Working from home is great. There's a lot of flexibility. There's a lot of advantages. Some of the disadvantages are the inability to sometimes focus, I think, because you have a tendency to oh, I can just go throw in a load of laundry, which is it's a blessing and a curse in a sense, but also to have the distractions home, whereas if you go to office, you go to the office, you get to prepare for your day on your commute in, you work all day, you unwind on your way home, you go home and you just do home life, whereas if you're working from home.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, if you don't have a defined workspace that you only use for work, you have that difficulty with the transition. But, chris, also they have different plans you can do. Yeah, you can rent an office that's yours all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I have, so I leave my stuff here. I got the screen. I got everything here.
Speaker 1:I got a bookshelf. You can lock your office and everything, yeah.
Speaker 3:And there's even like a spare desk here, like occasionally my wife works from here or something, if she can get to the office, or one of us needs to stay home to pick up the kids or anything like that. So, or my daughter sits here and just kind of like callers a little bit. So, no, yeah, I can close it. But you have like what is nice too, and that is the big benefit of WeWork over some of the other providers they have a global network. So I had meetings in Vancouver. I can just like in an app, book a room and like a second later my key pass works and I can just bust myself in and walk in. And it's kind of like what hotels try to do too right, where you get a level of familiarity. So you get like the same coffee. You get like the design is like the same coffee. You get like the the, the design is is all the same, so it feels familiar even though you're in a complete different location.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, we had a meeting in vancouver for a couple of hours and I just booked it on the spot.
Speaker 3:Um, if I go to amsterdam, I can, I can walk into an office there and, um, have a meeting there, or book a book, a workspace for the day, um, and I think they are now experimenting that you can also like book, um, like a screen right, so you're not just on your laptop, you actually have like a second screen and you can really sit down behind the desk. Um, but I think they're still recovering a little bit on the money front. So in a city like New York City it works right, Because I agree with the commute element. I mean, I worked from home, home for four years or something and you need to be really disciplined and body check yourself to get the stuff done. You need to have a very measurable job to also show to your colleagues that you are working. And for some reason still, I think instinctively people trust people who go to an office more than people working from home, although I think all stats show that people can be very effective working from home.
Speaker 2:so that's anybody would experience.
Speaker 3:I'm not too shy, but what I'm, what I'm sad for is juniors, right, like, where do you learn? Uh? We were talking about this the other day. I try to think about the context, but, like you're not learning by osmosis anymore, no, um, uh like you're. But just by sitting next to someone and hear them talk without, uh like listening in on their conversation, you just learn stuff, right, um, and and you see how people uh handle bad, uh news conversations. Like just seeing someone else work makes you better, whether it's good or bad what you see, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you feel better too with that. Well, I want to go back to the other. Chris, they have the ones that you get to your office, but you can also go and just use the space, so you should get one in your area. And then during the summer, take your bike over there or something. It would be good for you to have something like that, because you could get out, take your bike, go do some work.
Speaker 3:Some locations have recording studios, like, depending on the building, they have like podcasting studios and stuff like that as well. That's pretty cool, see.
Speaker 1:I think that, like you said, said, it's a balance of what fits your personal lifestyle, or even professional lifestyle, because I, you know, I'm far from the city and it makes sense, for you know, major cities, you're, maybe you, you're within five, ten minutes away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can take public transportation oh yeah, five minute walk, but like if I have to and that's the thing too like if I had to deal with like a hour drive. Now, if they have one nearby, I would totally look into it they have different types of ones and they are in different locations.
Speaker 2:They're not all in metropolitan areas.
Speaker 1:There are some right, I gotta find something close there.
Speaker 2:There are some that are outside of the areas, but even just to get that, chris say, chris and ch Chris had some good points with even the discipline and the trust of somebody at work. I agree with you. Somebody sitting at work for 16 hours isn't more productive than someone sitting at work for eight hours, nor are they more productive than someone working at home for four hours. It's a matter of the individual and what they produce. But there is also a point to being in that office setting because humans are communal.
Speaker 2:So if you have the ability to talk to somebody and your point about the juniors is so true because in a remote work environment I find that someone that's starting out or maybe new is less likely to ask questions or ask for assistance than if they were in the office with somebody, where somebody could either check in on them and they say, oh yeah, by the way, I have a question, or it becomes more of an effort to talk to other co-workers or to get to know them. So there are some challenges there. So if somebody is working remotely or there is a work, a remote work organization which is not what we wanted to talk about anyway today, but we just kind of went there that you need to do something to encourage communication, encourage the knowledge sharing, encourage the asking for help. I've had some individuals that I said let's just get on a Teams call and I'll work and you work and we'll just act like we're in the office it works.
Speaker 2:It works. You can sit and work and talk and say oh, by the way, you just get some of that small chat. Hey, I'm working on this and my head's stuck. You know what do you think?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've seen too, like with cameras on, with remote teams. So even you may have like 20 people in one location, there's another team somewhere else. Just put a camera on and you see people wandering. Like you're wondering, like, oh, is so-and-so in today, and you can just glance over on the big screen and you see somebody moving around. You're like, oh, yeah, I guess he's he has. I can interrupt him now when if you see somebody super concentrated, you're not going to bother them, right? I mean that that is the other downside I find of remote work. You miss kind of the non-verbal cues of if somebody is like super deep into like complex stuff or it's kind of like checking his instagram. Um, uh, right, uh, you don't know, when you disturb somebody, um, and yeah, it's water coolers fun too.
Speaker 1:I mean it's been a while since been in office space, but you know that that's always fun, where you just coming in and you're getting, you know, putting your stuff away, getting some coffee or whatever that may be, and then you're like stop, say what you do this weekend. You know it's like a really quick, you know have a conversation like that.
Speaker 3:It's nice maybe, maybe, maybe that's the pivot to to talking about uh uh, work, work, um like I I joined commerce build in august and and it's hard to meet, if even virtually all all my colleagues, because they're all over the world, everybody's remote.
Speaker 3:Uh like, we have one office and that's in new zealand where the developers are. Everybody else is remote. Um and um like there's not a real occasion to talk to everybody on a regular basis. So, um, uh like it and and I talk to some people several times a day and to some people I never talk, right, um, I don't have a direct reason to talk to the developers, which is a shame, because if we're all in the office, I would bump into these, these guys and girls at the coffee machine, at the water cooler exactly, and chat. So we got to come come up with like a format for that, and I think there's like tools like through Slack and Teams, where you kind of get randomly assigned to somebody for a week and you kind of get forced to take a virtual coffee break or something. That's what they had.
Speaker 2:Chris, I had talked about this before. I remember the conversation. You have meeting rooms where you have some companies try to schedule company meetings or company events virtually, which are beneficial, but sometimes, if you do it in a wide scale, you have one or two people that may spend most of the time talking so you can force random breakout rooms that you would have people talk, but I like your idea of having everybody connect virtually.
Speaker 2:Again, time zone related, it's a little more challenging in a situation where you have AI can figure that out for us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we've done, you've done.
Speaker 1:You could do, for example, like a lunch teams right when you just show up in that lunch. You can turn on the meeting of that team's channel and just sit there and have a lunch or whatever. Have it, take a break, I think you need to do more.
Speaker 2:I think you just eat that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you want a ceo in vancouver to be connected to a developer in in new zealand, and if it's a one-on-one, there's always a window that you can meet for 15 minutes.
Speaker 3:I toyed with this idea and I spoke to somebody who says, oh, it already exists, so I dropped it. But this kind of randomizer that throw all people in and every week you get connected to another colleague at random. Or you can even say do not connect to these people because I talk to them on a daily basis anyway and the system will find a slot in both your calendars that you can talk to each other and you're forced to like chat with somebody. I like that, that you have no work relation with per se or work reason to talk to, but, but you get forced to just chat and you talk about, like maybe you, you spend a little more time on monday morning or friday afternoon about the weekend, um, and like what, uh, what are you gonna do or what did you do? And like you, it becomes a little bit more personal because, as efficient as as remote work, work and online meetings are, it does take away a little bit of the human-to-human contact.
Speaker 2:People want to feel included and I think if you had those meeting rooms where a few people maybe two or three because that way you can have the icebreakers and you still can go for that random rotation but people will feel included within an organization, they'll get to know, feel included within an organization, they'll get to know other people within the organization and I think they would become more productive as well. Because now I know people. I know there are real people there, I know other people that have their interests. It goes with the whole like we'll move on to the topic in a moment but it goes with the whole situation of working with somebody back when we used to consult and travel before video camera or even video camera.
Speaker 2:Now, having met somebody, if you only worked with them remotely before, without video camera, ever meeting them only electronically or on the telephone after you met them, the relationship was so much different Because now you have that personal connection, that personal interaction and I like the cameras because you get that personal interaction, as Chris had mentioned, that you can see someone's face if they're busy, if they're in thought or they are not doing well, if they understand in a conversation. So I do think in the remote workforce more should be done for companies and I think that it would be beneficial to have a way for the employees to meet with each other in a sense, but it's not a forced way. It has to be in a setting where they're naturally going to feel like they want to talk, because everybody has different personalities.
Speaker 3:I believe in like the clubhouse for an office, right Without making it overly casual. It should feel nice to get there and to hang out and stay a little longer and spend time. And then it's less about like being in the office or remote, and if people like to go there, they'll be there more often. And sure there's a component of cost, especially if you factor in like domestic or even international travel. And working remote is not always cheaper, of course, because people need like another set of hardware and the logistics around that too, security of that. People just kind of like hacking on their own systems and having stuff flying around.
Speaker 3:But yeah, if you can get to a format where people enjoy coming in and hanging with their colleagues, I mean that's the secret formula, I think. And again, it's a little bit easier in urban areas where there's public transport or walking or um, but um at the same time. Uh, if I see here in new york city there's a lot of people that are forced to come to the office every day and they walk in to close the door and they're basically remote, they, they just work from a central location.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, probably. So, with that, let's tell everybody a little bit about yourself, and then we'll get into the topic that we intended to talk about. Yeah, not that we ever intend to talk about anything. I was going to say like we're going to talk about anything.
Speaker 3:We just I was gonna say like we're gonna like free roll anyway, um, but um, yeah, um, I'm chris. Um, I am originally from the netherlands but been in the states now for almost 12 years, based out of new york city. I got here for a dutch isv initially that I worked for already out of the n to develop the market here. So it was kind of like the first hire and built the team, built the market, done that for five years, felt like ready for a new mission, building something new. Through some consulting I did. I got in touch with Continia and basically the same thing.
Speaker 3:I built it out in a five-year time span to a local team with local partners and doing business here and again kind of reached like a limit of like okay, I think I've brought it to where I can bring it right. I mean, the company can grow much further. But I was not getting the energy out anymore that I was putting in and I was already on the board of Commerce Build and they were looking to hire a next generation of management, given where the current management is in their life plan sort of life plan sort of. And we started talking kind of casually about it and and it is an industry that I was familiar with because of my previous employments and, of course, in an ecosystem, a channel that I love and where I have a lot of friends. It became very interesting to make the jump and for the first time, I'm not working for Europeans anymore, but I'm working for North Americans. They're still Canadians, so semi-European.
Speaker 2:You had to go there. You couldn't just leave that out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just leaving it as like culturally right. I'm not. I'm not making it, tying it to any political events oh no, I am, that's okay, not okay, yeah, yeah and um, um, yeah, no, and and so since august, basically, and um, super interesting, um, uh like. Less about like starting from scratch, because there is an existing market, there is existing customers in north america. The effective far majority is here. Um and um yeah, all new challenges and opportunities and uh, um, yeah you've been doing some great things.
Speaker 2:I've seen your journey through there and you know I'll ask you some questions when we talk about some events that are coming up soon. But what is Commerce Build? Tell us a little bit about Commerce Build, what it is, what they do, what types of problems they solve and I can just not have to talk for a few minutes, to just throw all that on you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it, it, I, I not have to talk for a few minutes to just throw all that on you.
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah well it, it um, uh, I I there's a um, a group of people that pitches like it's the uber off or it's the right um, trying to like, make similarities to like a widely successful platform, um, so, uh, so think of a Shopify for ERP, despite the fact that Shopify claims that they can integrate with ERP. So it is a web platform either just a simple customer portal where somebody can look up historical orders, pay an open invoice, to like a really big, enterprise grade web store where companies can sell products, spare parts, what have you? But all relying on the ERP. So how I'd like to phrase it is like we are an ERP-first e-commerce platform. So from the very first line of code we've been built to integrate within the ERP. We know what data is in the ERP, what is crucial to do business online inventory, customer-specific pricing in general, any customer-specific logic.
Speaker 3:Because we're ERP first build, we can easily replicate that online where, if you are e-commerce first build, your database structure is kind of set right, like you expect X amount of products, x amount of customers, but they all have more or less the same price and they all get delivered from the same warehouse and kind of like the cool things you can do in an ERP are not automatically assumed in an e-commerce first platform are not automatically assumed in an e-commerce first platform, so you end up having to really modify the database structure from an e-commerce platform. There's connectors out there, but who's going to manage it? Right? In the old days, I think even we had hoped that the ERP partner could own e-commerce as well. But I think, talking to a lot of ERP partners over the years, it is a different beast and they'd rather not be the primary responsible for a website where millions of revenue goes through it's a different technology stack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's important.
Speaker 3:It's adjacent, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's that way. Everyone thinks like oh, I work in IT. Yeah, I hear that I tell everyone. If I ever hear them say I work in IT, I just stop talking to them because that just tells me something Because it's so broad. So even having ERP and being an ERP expert doesn't mean you can be an e-commerce expert, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:And requiring someone to pick up a new skill is also a barrier for you, because now, like you had mentioned, it's do I really need to pick up e-commerce or do I want to pick up e-commerce? I'm already?
Speaker 3:struggling and you deal with like google stuff right, like how am I ranking? And and if people search for my product, where does it show up? And and it's so far away from the day-to-day, complex enough erp business. Um, so we want to kind of fill that void in the small to mid market, like both our pricing and just our platform as is has been designed for the small to mid market. There are some gigantic enterprise solutions out there that serve their purpose. So, like I often get asked also like how do you compare to that player? How do you compare to that player? And I think the market is so huge and each client has their own unique needs that there is enough space for all these different players, as long as they transparently and honestly communicate what they can and cannot do. Um, I think everybody would be helped by by that um there's just a lot of noise in the market.
Speaker 3:Uh, because of everybody, everybody wants shopify, right, but that works great for for a lot scenarios, but it also does not work at all for other scenarios. You almost need independent advisors to kind of steer you away from some of that stuff, because obviously when I say it I'm biased because I have skin in the game. But there is a lot of noise around e-commerce, generic players, very small kind of like connectors, where, again, how I'd like to position us almost as an insurance to both the VAR and the customer, like, oh, you hear e-commerce, just just call us, email us. Like we, we know erp and we know e-commerce, and and and we can, we can fill the needs there um is there a?
Speaker 1:specific erp that you guys are focused on is it?
Speaker 3:yeah, so we originate from the Sage space. Three different variants there, but since a year, like, we really productized our BC connector as well. So we have a good amount of BC customers. Now all BC cloud. But we've been eyeing like the on-prem stuff as well, although that gets less and less attention, obviously by also the way Microsoft likes to see things go. So in our world it's all BC Cloud.
Speaker 2:That's what I was going to ask. So you hit some key points there. There's many products on the market, if anything, and it comes down to choosing the right tool to satisfy your needs, and that's, I think, what many forget. They may hear the Shopify's, which you summed it up well. Shopify does great for certain scenarios, and there's other certain scenarios where Shopify needs to even itself have customizations or use some of the other extensions. I've gone through some implementations where Shopify didn't do what somebody needed, but they wanted to use Shopify, so they had to spend additional costs to get it to work with the way that they wanted to do business.
Speaker 3:And which can be worth it, right. But you need to all know it up front, and that's tough.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just to know exactly, like you had mentioned, which tool is the best for your scenario. It doesn't mean that one is better than the other. It may be better for a particular implementation because of the scenario, and that's what I think gets lost with a lot of products you had mentioned. Commerce build works. Primarily, that's what I was going to have. One of the questions that I like to have is which versions of Business Central does it work with? So right now, you're focused on Business Central Cloud as a product. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And to use Commerce Build, what does the customer need? Is Commerce Build? Does the web store sit within the customer's environment? Is it something that you manage and host? Or, if somebody goes to start using Commerce Build, what do they need on their end?
Speaker 3:Well, again, it depends a little bit on their needs. It's all hosted, we provide it as a service and it has all the security. We have all kinds of tools that can also avoid DDoS attacks and what you can expect from. We've been around since almost 20 years, so we've been in this business for a while, but basically we offer two flavors of our product.
Speaker 3:We have our, our own interface where people put stuff in their shopping cart, very easy to manage, to use, but maybe not all the bells and whistles that you, that you see in the major platforms out there. And we've seen a development in the market where clients do ask sometimes for the more cool things, the shiny things. Some are very transactional and want a simple environment, no distractions, directly integrated, and others are looking at Magento, shopify, bigcommerce, like all the generic big players out there, and are like, oh, in this platform I can do so and so Can I do that in yours, and we don't have the development dollars that these parties have, right? So we've been trying to find a solution for that. So we've been starting to offer a WooCommerce front end in parallel to what we do with our own platform.
Speaker 1:Similar to WooCommerce.
Speaker 2:It is WooCommerce, oh it is.
Speaker 3:WooCommerce, yeah, yeah. So we integrate that to PC. We have the technology to still be as integrated as possible without like really losing some of that real-timeness that a lot of the B2B clients require. Multiple warehouses, like all the things that ERP-first companies need, are often not possible in the WooCommerce's of this world because they're not designed for that right. So we found a happy medium where we think that our integration offsets some of those downsides and for clients that want to go that path, we have a solution and we have clients that run in parallel. They have their B2B on their own application and they have their B2C on Woo.
Speaker 3:And I think I saw a stat somewhere like over 40% of the websites in the world runs on WordPress and WooCommerce is the e-commerce engine from WordPress. So we, I would say, at least once a month, get somebody like. I would say, at least once a month, get somebody like oh, I have Woo already, but I'm struggling with getting pricing and inventory to Woo and orders back into my ERP Right, and again, there are connectors out there, but who's going to pick up the phone? Who's going to like, apart from making it work once like, what's the ongoing service model? What, if you want to do something different. You want some additional changes. Microsoft Business Central is not going to answer the phone. Woocommerce or Shopify or Magento is not going to answer the phone. Your ERP partner, as we concluded earlier, is probably want to stay out of that, so that's how we really want to position ourselves.
Speaker 2:You had mentioned both B2B and B2C. Is this targeting someone who has both B2B? Excuse me, is it targeting someone who is a B2B, a B2C, or do you support both?
Speaker 3:We support both and again, it depends a little bit on the needs. If somebody is super easy B2C, they don't need that hardcore ERP integration. Right, Then a connector is typically just fine Because, again, the complexity of the ERP is not making the front-end changes necessary. If you're b2b, having more than one warehouse is super challenging for some of these more generic platforms. What inventory numbers should they look at in the ERP? They don't't know because their integration only connects to one field. Right, and as basic as that becomes really complex to build and maintain in a system that's not designed for that.
Speaker 1:So then that's when you bring in WooCommerce to do that, to handle all the crazy complex because I've been in an e-commerce project and sometimes the things they ask is like it's wild. So that's the solution that you're providing to your clients. They say, hey, we can't handle that. We maintain the connector so that you don't have to worry about the data coming out of ERP or, in this case, business Central Online, so that you can have this complex requirements on WooCommerce. Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's those clients that have the need for heavy marketing, b2c-like experiences.
Speaker 3:Woo is a perfect option and we have a technical solution to integrate that with the ERP so that the downside of these traditional B2C platforms don't come into the ERP with all kinds of like missing of data.
Speaker 3:And if that's what they need and this is back to your original question, brad if that's what they need, it does put a little bit more onus on the customer. To have a team that runs the web store on a day-to-day basis right, but then it's part of their business model. Then they probably make enough revenue that they have at least one, but typically a few people in-house working with it. Or and it's the beauty of a platform like WooCommerce there's tons of e-commerce specialists out there that know Woo but then don't know how to integrate that with the ERP. Right, so a customer could get WooCommerce integrated with Business Central from us and the crucial support that they need to keep that alive and running and developing over time. But they can also hire somebody around the corner that does everything else WooCommerce for them, so it gives them a certain freedom there as well.
Speaker 2:So with the. It's a great product, it sounds, because you have a lot of flexibility for your implementation, where you can do B2B, b2c or, if you have an existing B2C, that's something that's in place. You can also augment it with additional staff of your own as part of the implementation process. Is it something that you, as Commerce Build, sets up and works with them for, or would it be the partner?
Speaker 3:No, we own it and the partner can be as involved as they or the customer wants. But we do the kickoff, we run the entire project until you're live and then you roll over to our account management team and then any ongoing needs you have, apart from support, of course. I mean if there's a situation where I don't know you're down because of some kind of DDoS attack or whatever, then we jump on that through the support team. But as you use it, you want changes, right, like a house you buy, like as you live there, you start to see things that you would like to modify and then you just bring us in and we do it for you. Or if it's really just strictly related to the woo element of it, you can go anywhere with that because we already have the house built so you can go to any other contractor to make the changes.
Speaker 2:What do you think would be the typical implementation? It's a blanket question because it's how big, how long is a piece of string is what I like to say. What would somebody expect to be an average implementation time from the time that they choose to go through and set this up Again? Complexity, I understand, and anyone listening, complexity and scenarios are going to dictate if it's something can be shorter or longer. But for the ease of implementation, is it something that they, if they have like basic products, basic pricing?
Speaker 3:I get the question a lot and I understand, of course, why I would ask the same question. I think there's a couple key things that determine the timeline. One is is it a net new ERP customer right? Are they on Business Central Online? Do they have their pricing, their products and everything set up there? It is much easier because we're not building the train as it's leaving the station. If it's net new, it always takes a little bit of time before the ERP is ready with the data that we need to populate the website. So that's an important one that can cause delays. And then the other one is how much experience does the customer have and how much do they want to do themselves to build the website out? Of course you have item descriptions and things like that, but sometimes in the ERP those are still very internal, written right, just like black box, 20 pieces, 10 pounds. Yeah, that's not a description you can put on the website. Somebody needs to write that up and there's all these cool AI tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to say we had to throw it in there. Yeah, that's the whole reason for the marketing copilot, the marketing description feature within business central.
Speaker 3:Exactly and by saying this, this podcast will rank higher now, of course, because we did some product placement. Of course, because we did some product placement, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think now we're starting to see where there's a trend to not talk about AI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, somebody told me that they counted the amount of times AI or co-pilot was mentioned in a keynote at Summit. I think it was over 100 times. It's kind of funny. I try to do my sessions. I try to do my sessions.
Speaker 2:I even said it at a session I did recently. I went almost the whole entire session without mentioning ai, because I mentioned it, because I wanted to make a point that I didn't mention it, because we hear it all the time and it's nice to go an hour without hearing it. Yeah, yeah, but I ruined it anyway, uh, sidetrack.
Speaker 3:But if they have a lot of experience and and assets, they understand, because there's always homework involved in getting a website live, like there is homework involved in getting an ERP live. Yes, we've done it hundreds of times. You guys bought on the ERP side, I did on the e-commerce side, but yet it's their business. They need to tell us how they want to run their business, either in the ERP or in the web store. So we're going to need their input and the better they are at articulating it, the better they are at having the assets ready, the quicker the project goes. There's also clients that refuse to go live before they're 100% satisfied and there's clients that say let's just do this strictly necessary, let's go live, let's get some learnings in, let's get the feedback from our customers. Same, absolutely, because it's focused on the result, it's focused on progress. And what do they say? Never let perfection be in the way of good, or something like that. Right, I read a study where procrastinators and perfectionists are very often the same type of people.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because they wait and wait and wait.
Speaker 3:Because it's not perfect. They don't even start because they don't have a path to success and like to throw in another one-liner that I actually often use internally. It's like how do you eat an elephant One bite at the time? It's just, you got to start somewhere.
Speaker 2:It's so true. It's so true, it's so true. Well, we talked about it recently on an episode that hasn't been released yet. It should be released soon. It's progress over perfection is what we spoke about.
Speaker 2:And it's so true because if you want something to be 100% perfect, I don't think it's ever achievable, because every time you look at it you'll see something different that you want to change, and sometimes those changes you make aren't going to make an impact, whereas what you had mentioned get it to a point where it's secure, you can process the orders in a manner maybe not a hundred percent the way you're thinking, but at least you can get out and get the customer feedback to see how they're using it, to see how it's used, to see how it flows.
Speaker 2:Then you can build upon that instead of waiting and waiting, and waiting, and waiting and waiting, and those end up, from my experience, costing a lot more. It costs a lot more because you're always trying to make changes, you have scope creep, you have a lot of things that are moving and sometimes you're undoing some things you've done, but also it takes you longer to get to market. So if your business does, in this case, rely on the e-commerce sales. You run the risk of not maybe getting as many sales because you're waiting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and I think you look for like a partnership with the people, right? Like both on the client side, on the ERP side, and and for us as an ISV, without making it super soft. But I think if you dare align and have super transparent communication, you can overcome hurdles and you can call each other out on nonsense. I mean I sometimes have to body check myself a little bit. If we talk to a customer, it says, well, I want it in so-and-so way, and then I'm like asking them could you explain a little further? Like what's the benefit for you there? And then I get a vague answer or like and it probably comes down to because that's their comfort zone, that's what they've always done. And they probably done it that way because the previous time they implemented the system it couldn't do half of what the systems can do today. This is the time to reinvent your processes, not to make your software do the same thing it did 10 years ago.
Speaker 3:Thank you, and it's so much cheaper to change a process than your software.
Speaker 2:I'm holding back on that, I'm being more reserved, but that's one of the things I see all of the time. If you're going to move to a new platform or move to a new system, it could be upgrading, migrating, however you want to phrase it moving a pile of, I have to be nice. So, chris, we don't have to market moving a pile of poop from one system to the other system. Still a pile of poop, and you you mentioned the most.
Speaker 2:A lot of times, I find requirements are based on a limitation that don't exist, because they existed 20 years ago, the old. Well, we've always done it that way, or we. This becomes the requirement because our process has always been this way, because we had to done it that way. Or this becomes the requirement because our process has always been this way, because we had to do it that way, versus oh, now we can do this in the newer system because that feature may already be in there, we may have slight changes and we can gain some efficiencies. It drives me crazy every time when people think that, okay, I'm just going to move to a new system, I click a button and it's done, and they want to do things the same exact way and I always have to ask them then why are you upgrading?
Speaker 3:why are you?
Speaker 1:migrating why are you moving like if you want the same thing?
Speaker 2:why are you moving? Just ask yourself that, why are you really moving? Yeah, yeah, and then work around that. I'm sorry I keep interrupting no, no, it's's good.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's a dialogue, right? Or what do you call dialogue between three people? Is that still a dialogue?
Speaker 2:Trilogue.
Speaker 3:Trilogue. Yeah, this reminds me of a case that I had. I'll try to frame it to reveal not too much about the organization or the people that were involved. But we had an old license model that was like your on-prem situation kind of, where you pay annual enhancement, and we changed that to a more usage-based pricing. But we understood customers don't always like change of pricing, so we need to be super transparent about this and we need to give them an option for at least a few years to stay on the old pricing. So we had like a way to calculate, to display like this is what you're paying now in annual enhancement. This, which your current usage, is what you would pay in the new model. You choose right, choose right and, interestingly enough, for the far majority the new model was cheaper because it would be a more fair system, because if they didn't use it that much they wouldn't pay that much, right. So I call a client and I say listen, exactly that. This is where you are now. This is where you would be in the new model. You choose, like I'm. I I'm really independent in this. You, you choose, but obviously you would pick the lower one, even with a doubling of usage.
Speaker 3:In his case he would still be off cheaper on a month-to-month basis than than with the old model. And he got mad at me because he he thought I trying to finagle him into a scam or something. I'm like dude, I really don't care. You tell me. And if you want to tell me next week, that's fine as well. This is the data I have for you. You tell me, you choose, you let me know, I'll tell finance and that's how the billing will work for the next few years, and if you don't like it, you can also just pull the kill switch. In fact, with the month to month, you can do it anytime by stop using it, um, where now, with your annual enhancement, you can only do that once a year. So so you buy yourself more freedom. But he was so suspicious of me offering him something at a lower price that there had to be something to it.
Speaker 1:You're asking for logic. It's hard to grasp.
Speaker 3:And he was furious and to the point that I was like, okay, he started kind of swearing and like this is how all those software guys work. And like I was some cheap car sales guy or something. So I was like it's okay, all those software guys work. And like like I was some like cheap car sales guy or something. So I was like it's okay, like uh, let's hang up. And I I called the bar that was on the call. I was like I don't know, like you ask him what he wants, because I don't even want to talk to this guy anymore. He was so uh, rude, um, and I'm not a very sensitive person, but it just hit me in my core also because I like to think I'm very ethical in the way I do business. But yeah, it's like what is the most logical thing is not always perceived as such and yeah, it's interesting Old habits die hard.
Speaker 1:It made me realize about talking about some logic that goes through when implementing e-commerce. Chris, like, how do you handle challenges when it comes to when you especially that new, when you know where e-commerce is brand new to the organization, never done it before, you know clearly you can help them with the marketing materials? Like, how do you handle with the rest of the product materials? I think what we call them in the past PIM solutions, where you may have some images and then they may not have some, so they take like random photos or maybe start with one photo, things like that. Like, how do you handle that with Commerce Build?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the nice thing is that we can be a bit agnostic there. Um, in the end it's just a bunch of files or a bunch of text fields and we can run an import right. Um, if there's a professional pimp setup, we can integrate with that. I mean, most pimp systems are built for that purpose right, where they can also have outside access to assets in there.
Speaker 3:We run into like less and less of the net new ones. I mean, my e-commerce experience goes back 15 years or so and those days it was a lot of net new. It was people like oh yeah, I heard about this thing, the internet where I can sell my products, and I guess again because of like developments in the B2C world, like we all buy on Amazon. So we understand the benefits of an online platform where you can buy stuff, the benefits of an online platform where you can buy stuff. What I at this point consider net new in our world is people coming off of the B2B side of Amazon right, where they just upload a bunch of basic stuff and they sell through Amazon and then they slowly but surely figure out their business is growing but they lose a hell of a lot of money on every transaction because somebody else is getting the money first before it comes to their bank account. Um, so I think those are kind of like today's net new e-commerce clients, um, that use an outside platform to to sell and want to own that a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, but yeah, then we integrate with. Like, the question is the one-time import or is it an ongoing kind of um, uh, sync? You need to, uh, need to handle um, but there's, there's plenty of solutions out there to do that. Um, ideally it's again single source of truth, right, um, so, um, we, we assume that the ERP is a single source of truth, but sometimes there is a one point five source of truth and with a with a, with a with a PIM that handles some of those product assets because the ERP can't do it Right, like it's not that long ago that we had to concatenate descriptions to just say anything meaningful about a product, because the ERP couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like brochures, right, like if they want to add a brochure.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, Especially assets and stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So with this solution, another big portion of e-commerce and erp is finance e-commerce. Customers can pay many ways. I've seen you can use credit card, you can use on account payments. If you have terms in such a b2b, how does commerce build work with credit card payments or the payment options?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, and this is going back to like what's the business model of, of the e-commerce platform? Um, and our business model is just month to month, uh, based on the type of package you buy from us, that's your price. But there's e-commerce platforms that have a GMV model where they take a cut of your revenue or a cut of your credit card transactions or they force you to use a certain credit card provider because they have a better deal with them. So it's a tough question to answer because everybody kind of handles it differently. But we want to be agnostic on the payment side, again, because there are some historic relationships in place that cannot be changed.
Speaker 3:For a lot of people. They have their own payment gateway or they have their own way of tracking that in the ERP. Right Again, this is one of those things often overlooked when people pick an e-commerce platform. How does the ERP right Again, this is one of those things often overlooked when people pick an e-commerce platform how does the ERP ultimately know that when they hit ship, the payment needs to be captured on a credit card, because you do an authorization when it gets bought, but there needs to be a trigger when it gets shipped that they actually collect the money.
Speaker 3:How to do refunds, partial refunds, right. You want an as integrated solution as you can, especially with high volume, like if this happens once a month, it's fine to do it manually, but if it happens a hundred times a day, you want to automate it. Because you can do it manually, and so we're agnostic. We integrate with the common players in our channel and even in some cases, with the more generic players out there for payment. We want to stay out of it a little bit too when it comes to like hardcore PCI compliancy. That's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2:So for payment processing, if a customer that wants to switch to use commerce build or start using commerce build, they can keep their existing payment processor if they choose, so they can find a dish one. Do you help them find a new one or is that something that you have partners that you work with to help them determine the best?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we defer to the VAR if they have a go-to party, especially for the in-channel, in-ecosystem kind of players. Yeah, we obviously on the back end know which ones work better in some cases than others, but again, we try to stay agnostic. I mean, if somebody asks a question, we'll give them an honest answer, but in the end it's the VAR that, I think, has to have a say in that as well, because there's a lot more to payment than just collect the credit card information. When somebody places an order, do you want to keep it on file? Is it compliant? Again, what do you do with refunds? That touches more on the ERP than the e-commerce, interestingly enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Apple Pay, Google Pay, you know like they sometimes they want those functionalities available and sometimes, like you know, is there a reason if you're doing B2B versus B2C, Like, why would you want that? Are your other businesses paying in Apple pay?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, like again, you try to. So everybody is kind of speculating how someone else is going to use the platform, right? So, yes, from my point, I'm speculating how our clients are going to use the platform, but they do the same thing. They have hundreds of B2B customers and, depending on the nature of the business and we've seen this completely different amongst our customers and their customers some only get orders at the end of the day because they sell to mom and pops. They're busy during the day with their own stuff, so the day is closed, they close the door and they place the order for the new stuff for next week or something like that. And we have clients who have clients that sell or purchase like the whole day long because they have full time people managing that, right?
Speaker 3:So it is difficult to like look so many layers deep and understand how people use it. I mean, if I think about it myself, there are things that I buy on my computer behind the big screen because I just like I feel like I need to see it on the big screen. I have that with flights, for example. I like as easy as it is to buy it in the app of the airline, I do it on the big screen, but that's my personal preference. And then other stuff I just do on my phone with, like, just my thumb right. I don't use anything else. I double click Apple Pay, boom, everything is pre-populated and it's in front of my door the next day. So it is the type of transaction, the type of consumer, how often it happens, and in the end I think you need to tailor to every buyer you want to reach um and um where you have success is where you're going to put more of your money and and double down on yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:The options are important with that, and I'm thinking of all these e-commerce things. And you mentioned the flights. I'm the same way with flights. To be honest with you, I have no idea why.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't explain it either.
Speaker 2:It's rare, I mean I will do it from time to time if I'm in a pinch. Sometimes I need to do it from my phone, but a lot of times I prefer to go back to my computer Again. Another digression.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So it's a matter of real estate, because I I don't mind, you know, booking a flight through my phone. To me it's convenient, um, but there's some things that I shop for, like I need to see on a browser so that I can maybe read more about it or see more content regarding this, this product.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think I think for the flights it does come to real estate for me. Like I want to. I want to see things side by side. I want to do a quick like validation of, like price or something like that, and just the the multi-browser thing on my phone. Um, I consider myself pretty tech savvy. I mean, I'm the ones getting all the phone calls in the family when something breaks down, um uh, but but still, like, handling multiple tabs on the phone is just not as convenient as it is on the computer no.
Speaker 2:And then some websites. If you switch tabs, you go back.
Speaker 3:It's the page has to refresh and the little pop-up box comes up.
Speaker 2:We have to enter.
Speaker 3:Oh, I can't or the worst is the windows in window right on your phone. Like you, you see some stupid ad on instagram or something. You click on it and then it opens the the in instagram browser and and then the navigation is completely different the checkout process and you you do something wrong or it loads wrong and and, like the whole thing, you're gone and you're like screw that, I'm out right and it's. It's meant to be convenient so that mark zuckerberg collects your dollars and not the web store.
Speaker 2:Um but I do say that sometimes I think things are purposefully inconvenient because they either are meant to frustrate you and you just say, ah, forget it, I'm just going to do it like buying a car from a car salesman, your car salesman reference. But uh, yeah, you know, sometimes it may not always be so purposeful, but maybe it's just that I'm old too now at this point, uh, yeah, we're guilty as charged on on like the things that we blame our clients for.
Speaker 3:Right like, uh, we don't want to change just uh I just wanted the same as 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:I just wanted the same as 10 years ago. Well, sometimes it was easier. You don't have to do as much. Technology simplified a lot of things, many things, most things, but in some cases it did not add another level of complexity in other areas, in my opinion. So we've had a lot of benefits, but in other areas it's like, wasn't it just? I used to remember that with video games Like, Pac-Man was the greatest because you had the little stick and the button that was it and then as you grew up, and now you have these controllers with like oh, more than the amount of fingers.
Speaker 2:You, you have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, you have like I stopped playing at fifa 99. So I, I loved fifa, the soccer game being european, um. And then I think it was around the fifa 99 that they changed it and like it became so insane. Well, it was less on the pc and more on the on the consoles, um, but it was like, okay, I'm, I can't do this anymore, I'm not a full-time player, I'm not investing in the learning curve here, um, and and I I need more than two hands like I'm out it's crazy because you have all those buttons and this and you gotta like do these combinations?
Speaker 2:push the stick in, go up on this pad, press the thumb button, like you have like a trigger, a bumper and this. I look at an xbox control and it's. It's like I just want to sit down and blow off some steam like and just play a quick game. I can pick up like Pac-Man and just done with the joystick.
Speaker 3:I freaking love Duck Hunt man.
Speaker 2:That was the game for me, oh that was the best with the little gun that was the best See back. Then it was much simpler. But even the technology behind it.
Speaker 3:Right, like it. Just, I'm mesmerized by some of that, like, mesmerized by some of that like it. Have you? Have you ever read into how it works? No, so, when you, uh, when you pull the trigger, like the human eye cannot see it, but it changes the, the screen completely. The contrast, um, uh, so um uh, like it's in in a flash, uh, the human eye cannot see it.
Speaker 1:uh, but the laser oh, that's from the tube TV. Not by pixel, right, it's by the reflection or whatever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah this is like CRT, kind of like don't hold a magnet too close to your TV, otherwise it will explode, kind of this was the first thing I know when I was a boy, so I don't even think you were alive then.
Speaker 1:Duck.
Speaker 2:Hunt.
Speaker 1:No, I've been playing duck hunt.
Speaker 3:That was a fun game yeah, yeah, I played it at my cousin. He probably, like, was like a couple generations further with his, with his uh consoles, but I, I just loved the old stuff wow, that's.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I have to read how that worked. That's interesting yeah. Are you heading to Directions North America in April? Jesus?
Speaker 3:Next month. Basically Low sugar, chris, low sugar, low sugar.
Speaker 2:Do you have a booth there or are you just…?
Speaker 3:Yes, we do. Actually, it's my first time wearing two hats as a board member of Directions and a sponsor. I've always gone as a sponsor. I've not missed a conference since 2011. And I joined the board last year. So it will be interesting to see how how it is to be there in two roles, but I prep my team that I might not always be in the booth.
Speaker 1:Well, I know understandably if you're on the board.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's. Um, it will be nice. No, it's, and it's promising, uh, to be a really cool conference. Um, the venue is is really amazing. Um, I'm not the biggest Vegasgas fan, but but, um, it's, it's a pretty cool setup it makes sense.
Speaker 2:It makes sense.
Speaker 3:I mean yeah like what I love about directions north america, and I've been to others but, like of conferences in general, I like that kind of resort vibe, right, where you, um, at the end of the day, still get, get to hang with your friends in the channel and your competitors and like your enemies and like everything in the middle.
Speaker 3:But that's what I like, right, you just stroll back to your room or you go to the bar, you go to the restaurant and especially in recent years, it was pretty much a buyout of the venue. Everybody there is is is there for business central, um, as of our, as an isv, it's partners only. So it's a little more casual. Nobody's hunting for like that one deal that's going to make or break their year and, yeah, the size we're getting to is making less and less venues available. Unfortunately, even in the States where everything's bigger, to find a place where you can book up to 1,500 rooms for like a week exclusively, it's tough. Like you got the mega resorts and then there's like 20 other conferences going on, or you have the little ones where you have to make sacrifices in the experience with like different places where breakfast is versus where the expo is, and Vegas is one of those places where we don't have to make too many sacrifices as an organization, on behalf of the sponsors and the visitors of the conference.
Speaker 2:It is a challenge with the number of people, at least in Vegas. I'm not a Vegas person myself. I've been there plenty of times.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:Vegas, to me, is one of those. You show up on Friday afternoon, you leave Sunday morning and you've had your fill, that's with just las vegas. I'm not talking of some of the other surrounding attractions. There's many things to do hoover dam, grand canyon, a lot of other things you can do outside of vegas but at least with vegas you hit the point. With some of these conferences, I think the proximity of where people are staying to the venue is important if you can't stay in the hotel.
Speaker 2:To have like a two-second walk is advantageous. We we did summit in san antonio. At least they were fortunate that they had the convention center and then they had a a few hotels, so if not everybody could stay in the same hotel, but at least a few were across the street from each other, a little bit up the road, so it made it nice.
Speaker 3:So fortunately vegas doesn't have a shortage of hotels yeah, no, exactly, and and um, uh, I mean I remember the last directions in vegas, which is great too. It was off strip right and it and it again kind of red rock. They gave that intimacy. Yeah, the red rock, yeah, the intimacy of, was it like?
Speaker 1:that intimacy at red rock. Yeah, the intimacy of was it like 50 bowling lanes or something in there? That's right, that's right. There was like a 4d theater at red rock, but then you were so off the strip so a lot of people left to to go to the strip, you know and it was kind of a drive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that's the dilemma, right. Like you want people to feel like they're not just there for the conference but at the same time, you want to keep them at the conference, because that's the dilemma, right. Like you want people to feel like they're not just there for the conference but at the same time, you want to keep them at the conference because that's like it's the people that make the magic happen. So it's finding that balance. It's the same always with, like what do we do for the partner celebration? Like there's people that love the amusement parks orlando and there's other people are like really, do I have to sit in the bus for that for an hour or uh so you're going to tell us about the partner celebration?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, I know I can't. I think, um, I would have to look at the website if it's already published there.
Speaker 3:That's that's my single source I'm trying to get something out of you, uh, but, uh, but it will be good. No, it will be a lot of fun, we'll be logistically easy and something for everybody. I think there. I mean, if you look at like the population that we aim to serve, like the, the needs and the wishes are like extreme right. There's people that want to be able to sit down and have a five-course meal and there's people that just want to dance and and have a drink in hand and and don't care about anything else. Um, uh, and then all the shades of gray in the middle there and then there's me, who wants to be in bed by nine yeah, which is six.
Speaker 1:That'll be 6 pm for you yeah, no, no, well, yes yes, 6 pm 1800 will be my bedtime, so we'll see.
Speaker 2:Let's see how I do, I'm afraid everyone's just waking up.
Speaker 3:At that time, man, come on, it's big, that's that's that's why we honor the conference right a couple days early, so you can come in and acclimate and, uh, you'll be good. No, I will, I'll come in. I think I come in and acclimate and you'll be good.
Speaker 2:No, I will. I'll come in. I think I come in a day or two early and I get in in the morning. This time I never can. Sometimes you can get in at midnight the night before then the conference starts at eight, but with the time difference.
Speaker 3:That is good to know. The schedule is slightly different from previous years, right? So people that have gone to Directions EMEA are maybe more familiar with the flow. But there's a bit of a change for logistical reasons. So the keynote is actually on Monday in the morning and not on Sunday in the afternoon. So there's a slight change in the schedule there. For those people where they just blindly go and book the same thing every year, just different location, they got to keep an eye on the actual schedule.
Speaker 2:And the partner celebration is the last day. Typically the partner celebration is the day before the last day, which the last day is the half a day, so there isn't a half a day at the beginning and a half a day at the end, it's all full days.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So we have more space for more content, which is ultimately what people are there for At least it's what they claim. And so now we and that's again because of the venue we have the space to do more sessions. Right, because even there we hit bottlenecks. As a conference to just find meeting rooms where people can do presentations, a conference to just find meeting rooms where people can do presentations. There's only so many places where you can put I don't know, 10 parallel sessions with at least 30 people in a room. So that's great about this venue there will be a lot of super cool content.
Speaker 3:I think the final decisions are about to be out any moment. I don't know when you guys publish this, but check the website directions and a dot com for all the session information. There's a lot more than ever. And, yeah, we have three full days now. We do a little bit of a welcome reception on Sunday night. People can get their badge. They can slowly kind of hang there. They can already socialize a little bit of a welcome reception on Sunday night. People can get their badge. They can slowly kind of hang there, they can already socialize a little bit.
Speaker 3:And then we start sharp Monday morning. Three full days of conference and then, yeah, the party at the end and then, depending on when people want to fly back again. This is this is also a little bit East Coast, west Coast dependent Vegas being pretty well connected, I think people have options, but of course we hope that everybody kind of stays through the Wednesday night and leaves on Thursday whenever the flight schedules allow or even connect a couple days. I think I'm actually going to stay a couple days longer. Yeah, I was considering the same. I want to check out the Grand Canyon again.
Speaker 2:It's been 20 years I've never been, and that's what I'm still trying to narrow down the logistics. I go to all these places. I tell everybody I've been everywhere but I've been nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's bad, I go to so many places I fly in, do what I need to do and leave, whereas this is one case where I want to leave Vegas. I don't want to stay in Vegas. I may stay a night to do a show because you know I'm expecting with the conference in the evenings. I like to talk with everybody, see everybody, but I'm hoping that Thursday I'll get the opportunity to do a show and then maybe leave early friday morning to head south and go see the grand canyon, hoover dam and those types of things I'm thinking doing the very snobby new yorker thing and just take a helicopter um to the grand canyon yeah still talk to me that's.
Speaker 3:That's possible too, because it's well worth it to see it it's it's a mind-boggling I've done it from from grand canyon with a helicopter and it's the most incredible experience. So if you're gonna go in a helicopter anyway, you may as well just take it straight from vegas, um uh, to say you're yourself logistical on a helicopter to go take you directly to. I have to look into a recent pricing because the last time I checked it out is about 10, 15 years ago. My wallet might not allow me to be so snobby, but hey, maybe if we share a helicopter ride we book it as a group.
Speaker 2:Maybe We'll see. I'll try to narrow down my logistics this weekend so I'll definitely catch up with you what's today monday this week, I'll know. In the next couple days, I'll know what I'm doing, because I still have to book my transportation back and I was holding off determining if I was going to spend a couple extra days there. But if there's a helicopter from vegas and we can get Vegas and we can get a few of us to go, then the economics may be a little bit better for you snobby New Yorkers.
Speaker 3:The sphere seems to be amazing From here people who went there. It's like crazy, like if you catch a good show there, it's incredible. And what I've done when it was at the Red Rock there is a I don't know if it's a reserve or like Red Rock Canyon or something I went on an early morning hike there. It was fantastic and I could just take an Uber from the hotel and it was a little bit like climbing on rocks, so you should be ready for a bit of a workout, but you have an amazing view from the mountains onto Las Vegas.
Speaker 3:It is a really cool kind of like cheap, right, especially if you have a rental car. But even Uber wasn't that crazy expensive and while you're there, it free, um, uh, and it was cool, like, and it's uh, it's uh, um, there's signage on on the hike, um, so, um, I recommend that one for people that like to be outdoors and are early risers. Uh, just beware of the rattlesnakes because they warm up on the rocks that stay warm. So I saw one there when we went well, yeah, I mean April.
Speaker 1:You're still nice and cool, but you're right, as you progress, throughout the day, it gets warmer and they come out, and that's when you see them and the rocks hold the heat longer too.
Speaker 2:A lot to do Well, Mr Chris, thank you for taking the time to speak with us again. It was a pleasure having you back on. I look forward to talking with you more after this to see about the Vegas trips and also I look forward to seeing you in Vegas for that beer that you always provide.
Speaker 1:Lots of office, not just beer.
Speaker 2:He can get you a cocktail. Yeah, I'm on a lot of mocktails these days, so it might be a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:Top shelf right they make, they make top shelf.
Speaker 3:Is that guy in denver ever bother you after that one night anymore, or, uh, or was it was a gal right, was she? Was she unhappy about you?
Speaker 2:which one saying you had to buy me a beer, but uh no, like the the bartender in uh in denver oh, that's right that's right, she got angry that's right.
Speaker 3:I forgot about that.
Speaker 2:I forgot escalated out of nowhere nowhere she, just she gave you a hard time she didn't want to look at you dude like I don't even know what was said. It was like because we were all sitting there and there was just normal conversation and she all of a sudden, I think she ended up, I think actually caught up with her afterwards. I think she was just having a bad day time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think she apologized, didn't she apologize?
Speaker 2:yeah she did. Now that it's coming back to me they were short-staffed and that the it wasn't coming in, the conference wasn't supposed to have so many people. Yeah, so that's right, me just asking her a couple additional questions. I think she finally just said screw it. And just got pissed off, I thought because she's like I thought she was like this guy's from Boston.
Speaker 1:I could tell these guys are rude.
Speaker 2:No, she did.
Speaker 1:I remember when we came back, she was actually very nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think she just caught a bad day. So, yes, I think that was all smoothed over, but that went from for no reason.
Speaker 1:It was zero to 100, man Like what's going on.
Speaker 2:And again I just had, I think, one drink, or I wasn't even drinking because I know I had a lot of you know, mostly mocktails when we were in denver, so it was crazy, but uh, thank you for taking the time to speak with us again. How can someone get in contact with you to learn more great things about commerce, build and the solutions and the problems that can help an organization solve?
Speaker 3:yeah, easiest is an email. Uh, chriscommercebuildercom, linkedin is always easy to connect as well, or in Vegas at Directions, of course.
Speaker 2:Excellent. I definitely see that I look forward to seeing you there.
Speaker 3:Looking forward to talking with you soon. Thanks, guys, and thanks for all the stuff you guys do.
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-Ecom, 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-oi-o, and my Twitter handle is matalino16. And see, you can see those links down below in their show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
