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 420: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central CPQ Game-Changer
Buckle up for a wild ride on this Episode of Dynamics Corner with Kirs and Brad as they chat with Miranda Powell, the partnership powerhouse from ExperLogix! This episode combines personal stories, book nerd moments, and hardcore business talk. Miranda drops some profound knowledge about revolutionizing sales with CPQ solutions, weaving AI into the mix, and why Microsoft Dynamics users are begging for better quoting tools. From tackling "Frankensheets" in manufacturing to the art of discovery in sales, they dig into how ExperLogix's bidirectional integration and user-friendly licensing are shaking things up. Plus, there's a hot take on why partnerships are the secret sauce for customer success and how "technology blindness" holds back the sales revolution. With laughs, insights, and a sprinkle of career journey realness, this episode is your ticket to rethinking how complex sales get done!
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics, corner Brad. What is CPQ? What does the Q stand for? I'm your co-host, chris.
Speaker 2:And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on April 18th 2025. Chris, chris, chris, what is a CPQ?
Speaker 1:No clue.
Speaker 2:Do you know how to spell it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, cpq, but I don't know what that means. Let's talk about it, though.
Speaker 2:Well, many may not know what it means, but today we had the opportunity to learn all about CPQ and a great solution to help customers with their configuration, pricing and quoting With us. Today we had the opportunity to speak with Marin Powell from Expert Logics. Good afternoon, how are you doing, Hello?
Speaker 3:Good morning. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:It's morning for you, like I said to you the other day.
Speaker 3:I'm going to throw you through a loop on this one.
Speaker 1:Good evening. No, it's morning.
Speaker 3:But Brad likes to joke around about how I'm always in a different location every time we talk and I'm calling in from southern mexico. You're in mexico that's awesome, see. Wow, so do we want to do this episode in spanish no, no, that would be actually really embarrassing for me every time I well I don't.
Speaker 2:I really don't know where you're from, but that's okay, we don't have to talk about that I.
Speaker 3:I'm from Florida. I'm a true Floridian, like a fourth-generation Floridian, unlike Brad on the call.
Speaker 1:You're the true Floridian person.
Speaker 3:Most of my friends are from the New York or New Jersey area and their family had relocated to Florida. But yeah, been in Tampa pretty much all my life, I think. When I got into being in my early 20s I was offered a job up in Boston. I kind of had the realization I'm like if I don't get out of here now, I could see myself staying in Florida for the rest of my life, and I'm so happy. I took the job in Boston too and like got to experience the seasons. Everybody had told me they're like being a Florida girl, you're going to hate Boston winters, which Boston winter is fine, because in theory that's just three months, it's spring. That really hurts because that's just winter that overstays.
Speaker 2:No, you summed that up perfectly, but at least you have the opportunity to stay in the North End, which is an adventure in its own because of the food and the historic architecture. It was great to see you last week. Was is an adventure in its own because of the food and the historic architecture. It was great to see you last week. Was it last week?
Speaker 1:You know it's funny, I never put the name to the face because we played pong, table pong or beer pong the whole rest of the evening and I'm like I actually did not put the name to the face either.
Speaker 3:That is crazy, brad. We had a very intense game of beer pong during the the party. It was really water prong.
Speaker 2:Nobody was drinking the beer cups or anything like that.
Speaker 3:But uh, rob from your team was playing too. It got very intense. We started wagering leads um. We started throwing flags on the play with little white, two games.
Speaker 1:I think you played two games. You were so good and I just I remember just sitting with gwen and um and I was like we'll just um ref it, that's it. That's what I'm gonna do. So you guys had all this fun we did.
Speaker 2:It was so funny I was in bed every night by 930. It was sad. Even the last night I was in bed by. I think I stayed up a little bit late. I think I stayed up until 10.
Speaker 3:Which, yeah, I mean I slept for like 16 hours the day after I got back because I was exhausted. I feel like, with all of us working from home now being on your feet for eight hours and then taking people out to dinner, it's especially draining Because I'm used to my normal migration path being from my chair to the kitchen.
Speaker 1:You use your leg muscles for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 2:If I have to, go somewhere by 2 o'clock. Chris, I'm not using military time, I'm practicing 2 pm. Yes, 1, it. I'll just go back to it. I'll. If I'm not, if I go somewhere by 1400, I'm ready for bed. I'm like how can people sit in an office all day and work all day? Because you you summed it up perfectly. I think everyone has come to a certain pattern of activity and a certain pattern of normality, I guess you could say, or a habit. And what are you reading now?
Speaker 3:I'm actually still reading why we Sleep as my nonfiction book, and then I'm reading Deep in the Garden of Deep Time, which is kind of like a modern rendition of the secret garden interesting um, so I think we were talking about this in vegas too.
Speaker 3:I like to do like an audio book for non-fiction at the same time that I'm reading like a fiction book. Um, and usually I'll do like the audio book for, you know, car rides, walks, even sometimes when I'm like working out, and then you know, when I'm at home and trying to unplug and not, you know know, have any, you know, audio or visual interference, I'm just usually reading a book to go to bed.
Speaker 2:I think I told you read Slow Predictivity afterwards. That's a great book as well by Cal Newport. He's the one that wrote Deep Work. I'm reading Range now. I don't have the ability, like you and many others, to read two books simultaneously, so I can only read one book at a time.
Speaker 1:So I can only read one book at a time, so I alternate between fiction and nonfiction.
Speaker 2:I read Quit recently and I had to quit it. The book told me to quit reading it because so you quit, I did quit.
Speaker 2:It proved its point, it really did. And I wonder if the author did that purposefully to see if people will really quit. Because everything in the book talks about quitting and when you should quit and why you should quit. And as I was reading the book, I'm like this book is repetitious. It's at the point where it's wasting my time. I need to quit and I did quit. And now I'm reading Range. Range is another one of those books.
Speaker 3:I'm on chapter seven and I understand repetition with books for, uh, reinforcing a point or reinforcing, but there's a point where it gets that's why I don't mind doing it on audio for the non-fiction books, because they tend to be so repetitive that it's like if I'm doing something else and I miss them saying at one time, I know I'm they're going to regurgitate that same point at the end of the chapter a little bit later on, whereas, like reading the book, I feel like it can get a little bit redundant because you're so locked in.
Speaker 1:It's the one thing you're doing. I'm the opposite for that because, like I, when I'm reading a nonfiction book I like to reference. So I usually, you know, you know, highlight a few things to reference later. The high, you know. Uh, you know, highlight a few things to reference later. But fictional books I would rather do audible, because then I can just sit there and listen and imagine, you know what they're saying, and such.
Speaker 3:So I'm the opposite of that but what if they like say a name wrong or something like I did one time. I jumped into an audiobook at like the second or third book in a series and when I was hearing them say like the character's name or even the accent, that somebody was like talking, I was like it's not how I imagined the book to be and that's not how I was pronouncing the name and it was kind of tearing it all down for me. But I think if you start a fiction book from scratch, then yeah, I like the kindle for the highlighting.
Speaker 3:And my next what's on deck for me is red rising, so that's your recommendation, so I will let you know how that next, I think you and my boyfriend have similar tastes in books based on like the three to body problem and silo and kind of the dystopian, you know sci-fi type of genre, and he really he chewed through those books pretty quickly he's on the Mistborn series right now.
Speaker 2:I have to put all these on the list of my fiction books and see yeah. I have a few other, like I had mentioned to you, I, if it's a series like Silo, I read the three books, then I went back to non-fiction. When I get to Red Rising, if the first book is really good, I'll finish those books and then I'll go back to, uh, non-fiction. So we'll see where we are I'm boring, I'm reading.
Speaker 1:I'm reading psych right now from paul bloom. It's like basic psychology um it's a great book so far.
Speaker 1:I guess is one of the famous uh psychiatrists harvard or something like that you're going to stop playing psych mind games no, I think it helps me kind of take a pause for a second because you know everybody has a different way, everybody has the ways, different ways of approaching things and in their response can also be driven by emotions and such. So I try to take it personally for those that are maybe upset. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's a good reminder, great advice. Perspective is everything, and where something comes from is important, but we did not come today to meet today or talk today, I don't know. See, chris, fridays. We have to stop the Fridays. I keep saying that.
Speaker 1:Hey, nobody knows it's Friday, it's not Friday, it's Saturday.
Speaker 2:But my body knows it's Friday, so I always get into this tongue tied bad joke day. Before we jump into talking a little bit about what we want to speak about, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so, miranda Powell. I work for a company called Expert Logics and I'm currently the director of strategic partnerships. I've actually been at the company for about three years, while I'm new in the role and kind of new to the channel. I've been running our marketing program and before that I was actually working for Expert Logics as an agency partner, so they were using my marketing agency and it was at that point they flew me down to their sales kickoff meeting in 2021. I presented to the whole team and it went really good in terms of what channels were not executing on the message for the market, the best fit, kind of like audiences, so on and so forth. And I was approached by the CEO afterwards and he's like, hey, that was really great. Is there a chance that you would come and do that, like you know, at ExpertLogix, or like work at, you know, within the inside of the company? And at the time I wasn't really in a position where I was wanting to leave the agency, but we kind of kept the door open and talked for, you know, about 11 months or so, and then at the end of that year I ended up switching over and kind of coming on to Expert Logics full-time, because that was really my first, you know, internal only marketing role. I'd always sold marketing software and marketing services, so I'd always had, you know, customer interactions, partner interactions, so on and so forth. So while I loved the work that I did in marketing at Expert Logics, I did miss connecting with people. I love presenting, if you guys can tell, I love talking. So that part was hard. And so I went to our VP of sales, who's always kind of been in my ear, saying like Miranda, you're a salesperson, like what are you doing in marketing? But our solution set is somewhat complex and I was like, look, I'm not trying to have a seven or eight month ramp up to be productive at a company that I've been at you know, for three plus years at this point. And so we started talking about the opportunity to partnerships and I was a little intimidated because I don't come from you know the channel and I thought that was kind of going to be my, you know, biggest weakness.
Speaker 3:Now that I've been in the role for about four and a half months or so, I actually feel like it's one of my better strengths, like I don't know how things have been done historically. I feel like I'm looking at stuff with a fresh set of eyes and one of the biggest things that's been, you know, like an eye-opener to me is like why are we not doing more for our partners? Right, like I think that sales has historically owned our partner relationships and they come in very one-track minded. Right, it's like what do you, what do you guys have for me? Not like how, how can we generate leads together? How can we go after you know a certain segment or you know, on the other end, expert logics is unique in the ISV space and the fact that we've been, you know, in the channel for over 20 years.
Speaker 3:So we have a lot of customers that are on nav or AX or great planes. Eventually they're going to need to migrate and that's probably the you know leads or opportunities that our partners are most interested in. So how do we do a better job of kind of recycling our on-prem customers, our leads that come into us, without a partner from a direct perspective? Like historically in marketing, we were disqualifying you know a lead that would recognize they need CPQ but they don't yet have an ERP or CRM and I was like, okay, bye, instead of you know, hey, here's VC partner, it's a great ERP for you guys to get started on as a manufacturer that's trying to grow your tech stack. So I'm trying to bridge the gap a little bit more between our partner channel, our direct channel, and then some of our existing you know, legacy customers, so that it's more of a symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 2:You hit on a key point there and I like that You're talking about the relationship because the I'll use it for the reference to the conversation the old way of doing things seems to not be working and I was thankful and I picked up on it a lot last week when we were at the conference. A lot of people are realizing that businesses need the partnerships and have that relationship to work with each other to bring each other along through the journey. As you had mentioned, you may have a product with ExpertLogic, which I'd love to hear more about and then, if you're working with a partner for Business Central, you may have you know, like customers, that you can work together to help the customer become successful, because at the end, that's what's the most important is for this customer to be successful with whatever they use and whether it be Business Central, whether it be Expert Logics or any other product. And if the customer is successful, then everyone's successful and other customers will be happy to use the product as well. So I like that approach.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and I feel, like a lot of these conversations too, like I am really trying to make it more about the partner and understanding their niche and where they add the most value, because then you know, at the end of the day, this is all about getting the customer in contact with somebody who has the most experience in their industry and their challenges. You know, manufacturing is broad, but I've been talking to some partners who are like you know, if it's a metals manufacturer that's looking to go on BC, like that is our space, or like furniture manufacturing, and so trying to define or carve out these little niche segments for each partner. So you know there's no overlap, essentially, and then again, it's in the customer's best interest, because I'm like, hey, I'm gonna introduce you to this partner. They're highly experienced in metals manufacturing and helped a lot of customers like you take the first step in their digital transformation journey. I like that.
Speaker 1:There was a session last year and they did the same thing this year as well. About what can ISVs do for VARs and VARs price versus last year was in the panel.
Speaker 1:And that was a perfect conversation where we have to help each other right, like if they're making it so easy for clients of Business Central to look up a product and app source and just sign up and may not involve their partner, and so it can create a I don't know like a distrust in some way where now you're implementing something that a partner's not aware. So I love your approach where, hey, let's connect you to it with a partner to make sure that this is a right fit for your industry, and that's perfect, and I think we all need to support each other in that sense. So I appreciate you calling that out, because that is the relationship right.
Speaker 2:We need that built right at the get-go In 2025, that's the one thing that you cannot forget. So you've been with Expert Logics. Can you tell us a little? What is Expert Logic?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so again, we've been in this space for over 20 years and our backbone and our roots are really in CPQ. So the joke at the company is, you know we've been doing CPQ since before it was a three letter acronym. The company was established back in 1995. I think our first integration went live with CRM 4.0 back in 2004. With CRM 4.0 back in 2004. And so helping people, you know, configure highly complex products right, like in the 21st century, that's been an increasing need from you know, especially manufacturers is being able to offer custom built solutions for their clients. But the downside of that has always been, you know the work that's involved or the risk that it takes, like how do you know if you make this customization or you swap out you know a transmission that it's going to work with the engine that you have for a certain truck that you're building, so expert logics really safeguards and foolproofs. You know the configuration and the sales process so that sales isn't selling something that manufacturing, at the end of the day, can't produce. And while you know I think we got our you know start in manufacturing, we have so many other use cases too. So we work with a lot of professional services companies, field services companies anybody really where the product or service catalog is pretty complex. You know we can add a lot more structure to that. It helps, you know, new sales reps get ramped up or become proficient at selling just as much as their most seasoned or tenured sales reps. There's even stuff where I'm going to go back to the example of the truck If you add on a sleeper cabin, it's going to have a pop-up within the configurator. Say, hey, they bought the sleeper cabin. Why don't you ask them if they're interested in a mini fridge and a mattress to go along with it? So there's upsell prompts. There's rules that will fire, you know, if there's certain components of the configuration that don't work together. There's automated like discount and engineering requests that you're able to put in through the solution.
Speaker 3:And then you know that's kind of talking more about the quote generation. We also push the quote to order. It generates the bill of materials. It generates all the routings. You we also push the quote to order. It generates the bill of materials. It generates all the routings. You could even go and do the customer is very cost sensitive, like how do we get them in there? Because I know that they need this and our sales rep had asked the partner it's like, hey, how much money are they losing due to manufacturing errors at the end of their process based on something that was sold that couldn't really be configured? And the partner wasn't sure. He's like, let me go and, you know, ask the customer that Came back and he said they're losing $500,000 a year. And so it's just like an immediate business case in some of those instances, on top of, you know, accelerating sales processes, increasing the average order value of those deals and, again, reducing and eliminating any of the errors that might come with building a highly complex or configurable product.
Speaker 3:So that's our backbone and until 2019, we were really exclusively CPQ.
Speaker 3:Then we started growing through a series of acquisitions, first one being document automation, which in some cases is kind of the Q in CPQ, so it can take that quote or the different line items, cpq, so it can take that quote or the different line items, and it uses, you know, dynamic imagery and dynamic text based on what the customer has purchased to pull in the terms and conditions.
Speaker 3:Or if they bought that sleeper cabin, it'll show a picture of the sleeper cabin and kind of give it a little bit of description in terms of you know the layout, what's included, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:But document automation also has a lot of use cases where it can stand on its own. So think of anything that's highly regulated or very document heavy, like we're working with the whole US court system. We signed Wells Fargo towards the end of last year as well, so banking, insurance, government are all good document automation fits that don't necessarily need a configurator. And then the last acquisition that we made was a company based over in Ireland that was in the e-commerce space. So now we have the ability to have B2B e-commerce dealer portals, customer portals. And what's going to be really exciting and is on the roadmap either at the end of this year or early next year, is when CPQ and digital commerce are actually integrated and you're able to give the customer the ability to build a highly configurable product from scratch without any risk of you know it, it not being something that could be manufactured right, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:So cpq, let's go back to it's a lot.
Speaker 3:So tie a nice tie a nice bow around that too. Expert logics makes it easier for your customers to buy from you. So, whether that that's CPQ, document automation or digital commerce, streamlining the sales and quoting process and enable self-service purchasing channels.
Speaker 2:I love that. Finish, chris, did you hear that Makes customers easier to buy from you, and that's the ultimate Make it easy. So that CPQ what does CPQ stand for? Configure price quote.
Speaker 3:So there's the product configuration, component pricing, so highly complex or dynamic pricing, or even if dealers have special discount pricing, that can all be warehoused within CPQ and then quote, which is the ability to produce a very impressive again pulling in dynamic imagery, having these longer forms of text where it's really describing what the customer is purchasing, these like longer forms of text where it's really describing what the customer is purchasing.
Speaker 3:And I love to talk about, you know, the queue within CPQ and like how that differentiates in a sales process too, because we all know that the person that's going through the sales process isn't always your decision maker, right? They're a champion and now they have to go and sell internally. So if they have two proposals or two quotes that are essentially just you know, tables that have been exported from Business Central, and then they have another quote on the table that has, you know, all this information, description, pictures, da da da. Who's going to be, you know, in the best case, to win that deal, who's enabling their champion the best in order to win Right. So it's all about enabling your champion, giving them that information and and we're yeah, I won't go too far into the nitty gritty.
Speaker 2:No, I can tell I'm excited about it as well. So, with ExpertLogix and CPQ just to take back all the great information that you had mentioned it allows you to quote and sell to a customer safely. So if you have lots of products or you have a large product catalog, it makes it easier for whomever is going to be putting together or working with a customer to ensure that what they have together works well together and you can put it together safely but also may introduce other benefits that they can get from other products based upon what they're buying, and then it can come up with the pricing for that as well I like the example.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like it definitely increases the of CRM and ERP. All of that information will write back over to either CE, business Central or F&O so that they have better forecasting from a sales perspective. You can pull Power BI reports that aren't just specific to the opportunity, but it's like hey, what was the product that's most often quoted within this time period? So it allows you to get a little bit more granular in terms of the specific components that are sold more frequently, allows for better inventory planning, allows for better sales forecasting. So, yeah, it benefits the other technologies that it integrates with, and we're never a standalone solution either. So all three of our products require a CRM or ERP, which is again why the partner channel is so important for us. We're not making any sales without you know that technology in place.
Speaker 2:So with the CPQ form for ExpertLogic CPQ, with Business Central, you can work with a customer, create an order for a customer, create an order for a customer, create a quote for a customer based upon the configuration that they want for a particular product, and it will send the production order and the order back over to business central so that you have that same information that you then can process and create the order and send back out to the customer through Business Central. Okay, excellent, with Business Central, with Expert Logics, which versions of Business Central, ce and F&O do you work with? Do you go back to Dynamics Nav? Do you work with Business Central Online, business Central On-Premises?
Speaker 3:So today we're just doing the on-cloud solution. So today it's just Business Central Online, f&o Online, ce Online. But again, we do have a lot of legacy customers today that are still on-premise CRM or on-app or on AX or on Great Plains. So it's integrations that we have supported in the past, but in order for them to really take advantage of XperLogic's newest features and rollout so on and so forth, they need to be on a cloud ERP or CRM.
Speaker 3:Which is why those on-premise customers could be interesting, not only for us getting a stronger relationship with partners, but we're in the midst of rolling out our AI-enabled CPQ solution and none of our on-premise customers are going to be able to take advantage of that or really, you know, benefit kind of from the, the stickiness of it. So, working with partners to migrate them over, not not so just their, you know, tech stack is a little bit more future-proofed, but also so that they can take advantage of, you know, the newest rollouts so you know so, even though, even though they're in bc on-prem, they won't be able to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1:They have to be bc online so you're rolling out a new.
Speaker 2:I heard the ai feature. I understand that and I'm going to assume then that expert logics is also a cloud-based application. Okay you're going to roll out, or you're rolling out, an ai feature with cpq. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:yeah. So right now, a little bit more of the the cumbersome part of cpq is going to be the modeling and setting up of the rules or the product, so on and so forth. So the first integration is going to include GPTs within the actual modeler admin system where it's like, hey, could you write me a rule, you know, that would prevent somebody from selling X with Y, and they will generate that for you. And that's usually done in Excel syntax. It's not coded or anything. We are a low-code, no-code solution, so that's a differentiator for us versus a lot of the other CPQ solutions that are in the space. And it was funny because when we were out at directions, you know, first day keynote, microsoft is up there talking and they're like let us roll out, we're going to show you guys our sales order agent that we've created. And so it was funny because I had two partners sitting on either side of me during this presentation. They both nudged me and they're like Miranda, is this going to get rid of CPQ? And the answer is no, or at least, like you know, not today or not in the way that people would be thinking.
Speaker 3:The sales order agent, the demo that they did, is for pre-configured products, right.
Speaker 3:So if you sell like software, you sell something off the shelf. Sure, you could have a GPT or Copilot create a quote for you, you know, on some of those line items. But if you think about, like building a truck or building an assembly line or a commercial stove from scratch for like a certain you know restaurant or, yeah, like larger kitchen environment, the amount that you would have to type to Copilot to get every single product, the specifications, the measurements, so on and so forth into the configurator, into a quote, you're going to be better off still with just a few clicks within CPQ to get the same output. Now, that being said, the week before directions we actually had a call with Microsoft about integrating our CPQ into the sales order agent so that they can leverage the rules, the logic, so on and so forth for those highly configurable products. So that's another thing that we have underway right now is we're really trying to lead the motion from a configurator perspective with Microsoft and embedding our CPQ into the sales order agent.
Speaker 2:I could see where AI would help with on either side. If you're doing a self-service order creation from a customer via a portal to have an agent help guide you through building your order or configuring your order for pricing and quoting. Or even if you have a salesperson or a representative from your organization that's working with somebody who may not be fully versed in all of your product line, if it's that vast to be able to have something to put up guardrails to make sure that what you're going to put together for a customer works together. I could see that with a lot of industries with medical kits, as you had mentioned. If you're building custom configurations for products for specific industries restaurants, trucks, vehicles campers.
Speaker 3:I could name a lot of industries that I could see where this becomes helpful. Yeah, and like field service is a big one. I'm actually going out to a conference next week in Palm Springs and it's not a use case. People think of as much as manufacturing, but their quotes are highly complex as well because of the difference in margin from, like, the hardware or products that they're going to be selling and then the labor and then, like you know, any additional like maintenance costs and being able to do that in one, you know fell swoop from a quoting perspective and then at the bottom two, you're able to kind of track, like as a salesperson, what are your commissions, what is the margin, Making sure you're not discounting anything a little bit too heavily, Swapping out any of the resources that might be too expensive and driving the cost up past the customer's budget. So, yeah, a lot of manufacturing is a big one, but there is a lot of other use cases and again it's more about the complexity of the sale.
Speaker 3:I always like the examples where it is. You know, we have a security company, for example. They need to provide hardware, camera equipment based on the size of the building. So that's kind of done within CPQ. But then they also sell software subscription to do kind of the virtual monitoring and then they sell maintenance on those services and so they're able again to kind of build a quota or an opportunity with different types of solutions or services that they're offering and really be able to calculate the margin on the overall deal and make sure that they're staying within kind of the business targets from that regard, Super flexible sounds like.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:I like that.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking about that. I was thinking about the security system, because what they do when they put that together, like you talked? About the cameras, the pieces of hardware, and then the software, and then the monitoring service that goes with it.
Speaker 3:See, I'm learning a lot from this and the cpq and we actually we have quite a few partners that use cpq too, because I'm sure y'all's quoting process for like an erp implementation is is fairly complex. You know, I I feel like as salesperson that's always the thing that I dread the most having to do. I'm so comfortable talking to everybody when it comes time to like put numbers to paper.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like I'm calling a few different people making sure that everything looks right, so on and so forth. And again, even from the discounting perspective, like if I were a salesperson and I put in a 20% discount and let's say like I'm able to discount only up to 10%, that would immediately flag that over to my VP of sales, say, hey, there's a discount request on this quote before it can be finalized and sent to the customer and those can push like to teams is actually the way that we have it set up internally. So my VP of sales gets a team message instantaneously saying hey, Miranda's looking for a 20% discount on this quote. Here's her reason that she wants this discount approved.
Speaker 1:So there's an approval workflow that occurs with the whole process, but it doesn't have to be complicated, right? It doesn't have to.
Speaker 3:It doesn't have to, but that's kind of more of our of our wheelhouse, honestly, is is the more complex product configurations Because, again, like you know, something that's a little bit more simple or pre-configured you can probably use an AI agent, you can probably use a little bit. You know, going to be a good fit for CPQ, complicated industries semiconductors being a big one like that, that one's really really nuanced and complicated, but that's been an area that we're able to shine and partners will even come to us and say, like you know, gonna warn you, this is really complex and they're doing this through spreadsheets today and so on and so forth. But, yeah, that that ends up being more of our bread and butter for the most part so.
Speaker 1:So your product then provides some analytics as well. Um, when you are kind of going through that, like if you lost an opportunity or lost a sale because of this, is that something that's built in or something that you can attach, like Power BI, into?
Speaker 3:So it'll always the quote will be associated with the opportunity and typically people are putting the lost reason on the opportunity itself and kind of logging that more manually. I think we would get to a point with co-pilots and whatnot where, you know, based on an email exchange, they're able to pick up what the lost reason is and populate that into the opportunity itself. But again we exist more on like the quote and order level versus, like you know, the reason that we lost the deal or the opportunity level, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. That would be the host system. I'll call it, for lack of better terms, or the primary system being your CRM or your ERP software, which we hope is business central, and it's nice. The product configurator can work with complex models, but it doesn't have to be complicated to use.
Speaker 3:See, that's the key, is I like the ease of use to allow you to guide through it so yeah, we'll have to get you guys into a demo sometime soon so that you can kind of see, because we have like what's called a guided selling module and, like you'll see, it'll take you kind of like step by step because there's like a set of like key discovery questions. Right, that would kind of help you narrow down what you would be selling to a customer. So, going back to a truck example, you could say, hey, I'm based in North America, I need something that has like a high degree of fuel efficiency and it's going to be traveling like long distances. And then it's going to narrow your truck list down from 50 models to just six and then you can compare the. There's additional questions that you can ask to whittle that list down a little bit further. But yeah, it really.
Speaker 1:That's like sustainability component too. I mean, you know there's a new module in Business Central for sustainability, so that would be pretty impressive and we can even have that conversation on this future podcast where you can just showcase how it all works. I mean, I'm down for that. Any opportunity for me to learn yeah, absolutely I like it I.
Speaker 2:I think it's always of some benefit to take a look at the products that are available to assist customers with the implementations of the erp software or their crm ce type software, which as well goes well too and it.
Speaker 3:It's an interesting time right now, especially in the Microsoft channel for CPQ, because every other and I'm trying to educate a lot of partners on this today is every other ERP or CRM has acquired their own CPQ solution. So SAP has a CPQ Infor, epicor, salesforce, oracle, servicenow even just acquired LogicIO, which is another CPQ company. So I think maybe there's some really small niche CRMs that don't have CPQ, but Microsoft is really one of the only ones where they do not have a CPQ module that they're selling. And so I've been talking a lot about with partners and really focusing on discovery and I'm like you know I don't expect any partner to go in with, like you know, 10 questions specific to cpq when they're getting into a sales process, but I created this one pager that's called cues for cpq. It's just things to listen or as you're going through your discovery process, because if you're selling against, you know epicore, you're selling against you know Epicor, you're selling against NetSuite their sales team is going to try to sell their CPQ. You know they're more trained on listening for those pain points and challenges.
Speaker 3:And my experience with a lot of partners is like unless somebody is directly asking for CPQ, it's usually not included as a part of the quote. And then they're getting into this reactive phase, you know, a little bit later on when they find out that NetSuite has, you know, included CPQ, and the prospect is saying, like you know, netsuite said I need this as a manufacturer. Like why, why did you guys not include anything? You know. And so they're having to come back and say like hey, we actually need to find an ISV. You know, here's a little bit of information Like can you guys join the call, like next week? So enabling better discovery. One allows us to really aid you guys in the sales process as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3:But then, two, you know the downside, or what we always hear from partners in the Microsoft channel is you know why do you always have to bring in so many ISVs when you're doing like a Microsoft ERP sale, you know, versus like an SAP or like an Oracle, right, and the quicker that we're brought in, we don't have to be expert logic CPQ. We can be Microsoft CPQ solution. We'll let you guys guide the sales process the entire time. But yeah, it's this interesting kind of competitive landscape right now where every other ERP or CRM that partners are selling against have their own CPQ solution and how do we bridge that gap so that you guys know the things to listen for? That would indicate that they need a cbq, other than them just saying directly like this right.
Speaker 2:Quoting this is a struggle, is that's my mind is just going to listen to you because if it does go, I'll go back to relationships. It also goes back to those working with implementation of applications to be able to understand and it's been my latest I took, took it away mostly from the conference with talking with individuals of being able to apply the solutions. You can understand the functionality, you can understand that something was added, but now it's in the conversation with somebody. How do you know to apply which and when? And the same thing it's more now of it's not just business central that you're offering. You're offering the customer solution to solve a problem. I's more now of it's not just Business Central that you're offering. You're offering the customer solution to solve a problem.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times that gets lost, that it's not that you're buying Business Central. You have to use Business Central and everything has to be in Business Central. As long as the customer can sit down and they can do what they need to do to sell to their customers easily, then I think it works. And I think to your point, it's a matter of how it's presented and which pieces are there and even, like you said, you bring it in as this is the solution that I'm providing to you. These are all the pieces that we're putting together, and this is what it may cost you with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, none of us are here to sell products, right? Like do we say we sell Microsoft products? No, we sell solutions. Us are here to sell products, right? Like do we say we sell microsoft products? No, we sell we sell solutions that are tailored to the customer's needs. We're not order takers. In, like you know, the digital transformation that's what gets locked is.
Speaker 2:You're selling a service and the tool that you use for the service or the solution is cec, uh, fno, fnx, fnax, whatever they can call it this week Business Central.
Speaker 1:I think that's our biggest weakness right now, because if you look at NetSuite and how they sell products, they don't ever call out a specific add-on or anything. They sell it as a full solution. So they have a really wonderful sales team when they do a presentation and at the end of it then they'll break it down. But that's something that partners struggle all the time. They try to do a discovery and then maybe pull in different meetings of different ISVs, add-ons, and I think we do need to switch it up a little bit where before you do a demo and present, you have to do a full discovery and then bring on those ISV but don't like you have to sell it as a full picture, right, right Cause NetSuite does a wonderful job on that and and I think we're getting better Um, at least part, certain partners are getting better, but that's always been a struggle.
Speaker 1:I mean being part of a sales engineer. You know, having that conversation, doing a demo, it's like, oh well, we'll have to show that to you later, because I'm still trying to figure out which add-ons or ISV that I'm going to bring into the next conversation and maybe we need to stop doing that. We just have to get everything prepared and then do a full demo and then do a whole you know kind of a gamut of you know know the picture of the entire implementation would look like and then worry about the uh hey, these were the isvs that that could accomplish that for you.
Speaker 2:You hit the nail on the head. That is right there, chris, is is what needs to be done. It's it's look at how you work with your day. You mentioned net suite. It's even home products. Somebody wants to offer me an alarm system. They want to offer me a sprinkler system. I don't care where they're getting the pieces from. I just want to make sure that I can do what I need to do to solve my problem. Speaking of that, when it comes to the implementation of expert logics, what is the implementation process like and, specifically, is it partner led? Do you lead it? Do you share it with the partner? What's your involvement? What's the partner's involvement?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so historically we have done majority of the implementations ourselves. Again, the product is fairly complex. But at the same time as I've come into this role I know that the software revenue isn't super interesting for our partners, right, like they want to be able to do the services revenue because sometimes in an expert logics implementation, like the software costs and the services costs, it's like a one-to-one, sometimes even a two-to-one in favor of like the services, you know, revenue or expenses that they're going to be putting into building expert logics Usually been done through our team, but I've recently rolled out as three different levels of service for our partners and like different trainings, because we do have a centralized training department. You know we're usually training our customers on how to be able to model their own after we do the initial implementation for them. So the first tier will be a sales plus partner. So just getting you guys to a point where you're comfortable, you know positioning expert logics, you know qualifying a customer and we, you know the training for that is really just about two hours and at the end of it we would install expert logics within your demo environment so that when you are, you know, going into those conversations about business central. You know it's completely like white labeled, they don't have to see it's expert logics, it's already in there. The next would be a project plus partner and that typically would require, you know, a signed customer that you guys would kind of ride alongside their training and we would be able to give over some of the project management hours to you guys.
Speaker 3:We start doing a couple of more in-depth training so our CPQ fundamentals, which is about 20 hours or about one week of four hour classes, can be broken up farther, you know, to make whatever easier for our partners as well.
Speaker 3:And then there's a practice plus partner, which is usually going to require having a dedicated CPQ, you know, team or assets who would be responsible for any of the modeling and whatnot and could do full service implementation. So we are trying to create those pathways because, you know, historically we've done these implementations ourselves. But we know that in order to really go to the next level with a lot of our partners and make things more interesting for them from a sales perspective, you know they're wanting to do the implementations ourselves. So we are working with a handful of partners on kind of getting them to that practice plus tier Right now, I think the farthest that any partner has made it to today is around that project plus, where we're sharing hours or they're managing the product or they're, you know, doing some of the initial or some of the following modeling after we've done the initial implementation.
Speaker 2:It's a good approach because you know the product well, the partner knows their product well. There's a lot of products out there, a lot of solutions. It is very difficult to know it all From the customer perspective. Geez, to know it all From the customer perspective, what is the typical journey for a customer? I know you can say how long is a typical implementation, but that's like saying how long is a piece of string, because every customer vary in size and complexity. But what's the typical implementation process? Like that a customer would go through to get set up with CPQ and Expert Logics.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we would initially do like a discovery or a solutioning phase which is going to run the course of about like one to two months. Then we'll start building out some of the initial product sets for them. That will usually take about another, you know, two to four months to continue with the implementation, or, after we've kind of built out like a base set of products, if they feel like they have enough, to kind of run with and build out additional products. And then, after the products are built, it's more of a conversation of like you know the rules and what works with, you know which components work with each building in some of that like cross-sell logic, so on and so forth. So typically, from an implementation perspective, anywhere from four months to 10 months, and a lot of the time we are working alongside a partner who's implementing ERP. So there's also dependencies from how quick the ERP implementation is moving in order to get CPQ up and running as well.
Speaker 1:This is a parallel implementation, along with the VC implementation.
Speaker 3:And a lot of times people will try to push us to more of a phase two, but it's really like our best implementations are when we're working alongside the partner as they're doing the ERP implementation or able to stand both of these up at the same time, versus getting ERP live and then 10 months later they're finally able to start quoting with the solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes more sense that you're offering the customers.
Speaker 2:It's not. You don't want to be half running when you first thought you want to be able to work with your customers and then change the process again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, on the second phase, where you can just do it and of course there's a lot of setup on the items too, right, and yeah, no, that it's a brand new erp, so process is brand new. And then they get used to it and all of a sudden there's phase two and say, oh, just forget what you just learned. Now you're going to do everything in, yeah, logics and it's again.
Speaker 3:It's. It's beneficial from partner too, because my whole presentation that I gave out at directions um, yeah, I focused on the manufacturing space and I was kind of like, look, we've had what now? Five industrial revolutions in manufacturing. If you look at manufacturing process 50, 75 years ago, it looks wildly different than it does today, especially with IoT and AI starting to be a little bit more a part of the product configuration process. But if you look at the sales process within manufacturing companies dating back like 50 years, it doesn't look that different. People are still calling in and placing orders.
Speaker 3:Most of the manufacturers and we've worked with a good amount of the Fortune 1000, they'll come to us with this monster spreadsheet where they have all of their pricing, all of their products, so on and so forth. Yeah, and like one person maintains it, we actually talked to somebody yesterday and they have a four like 400 cell by 400 cell spreadsheet. Um, so it's like 160 000 cells and if one thing breaks, there's only one person who has to go back in and update all the forms. So you know it's bad from. You know one, people aren't actually using the CRM for their sales process.
Speaker 3:You know the CRM or ERP, it just becomes like an interface at that point. But most of the calculations, most of the product configuration is being done elsewhere. So how do we bring that in, you know, to their core technology so that they're actually doing the sale, they're actually doing the quote, they're on the phone with the customer asking these questions, filling it out in the configurator and having it all right back to CRM and ERP. You know, my whole thing was like how do we start the sales revolution?
Speaker 1:That needs to occur, Because it's not the white knuckle of that whole thing.
Speaker 2:Those spreadsheets are so dangerous because as you had mentioned, the risks that an organization has. The spreadsheet can go away with knowledge of a person that may move to a different location Nobody understands it Very difficult to scale, because now you have one person that has a spreadsheet that's working with something and you don't have the visibility as to what's going on. As you'd mentioned, the ERP software then becomes almost like a notebook or a tool to record things after the fact.
Speaker 2:Exactly so you really are always looking behind versus the current, into the future to be able to plan and go through, and a lot of times those spreadsheets get used. You have some resistance to change that because you always say, well, you can't do that, we have something so complicated. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that it's so complicated.
Speaker 3:There's no system, it's unique. Everybody's a special little snowflake when they're in a sales process.
Speaker 2:I work with an organization and they were manufacturing stuff and they had mentioned the same thing. It's oh, you can't do this, we need a lot of modifications. We can't do this with the, with an ERP software, because we have this special thing. And they got mad at me but I kind of said you're pretty much just making a calculator. You know you're making a calculator, you're making another product. It's the same thing. As you have a finished product, you have a bill of material process. You go through a routing Just because you have different types of material that may be more valuable or something and you need to track it.
Speaker 1:You still can track it within a system, but they sometimes they just hold on to this, thinking that nobody can do something that they don't have and that it is a world that needs to change that that's something they should consider, then, like preparation wise, before going into an erp implementation or even expert logic implementation, just look around you and see who's using excel to go. Do you know day-to-day work? Yeah, and you may want to start documenting that, because you don't want to figure that out right in the middle of everything with those spreadsheets.
Speaker 3:We actually we have like a term and we even have like a little jiffy that we have built out internally at expert logic. So we call them franken sheets, because they will usually have so many tabs and so many cells that they start to take on a life of their own.
Speaker 3:That's what we will call a frankensheet. People will sometimes be embarrassed before sending it over to us. They're like, oh, it's really in-depth, it's really bad. It's like we have seen every type of crazy spreadsheet at this point to warehouse product and pricing information to where that doesn't intimidate us, and we actually specifically built our modeler on Excel syntax to make it that much easier for people who are moving from a spreadsheet and those types of rules and formulas over into CPQ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just want to make sure we're not bashing anyone using Excel. No, no, no, Great product right, yeah, useful, but don't use it as your ERP. Excel is a great tool. It's not bashing.
Speaker 2:In a sense it's just with the understanding that you may have used Excel for a reason, due to a limitation in your existing system. Just because you're using Excel doesn't mean that no other system can do it, because technology has advanced. Individuals have worked through these processes and realized you can do it systemically versus in Excel. It's a matter of taking a step back and saying, okay, I have trust in another system, just like I had to have trust in my Excel sheet when it first started. You're reading the psych book, but the psychology behind it is when they first started using that Excel spreadsheet it was still new and foreign and they had to build trust with it that it was calculating properly. And then they've learned to trust it and they're holding on to it now when they jump into a newer erp system with a new product configurator or cpq uh, configuring, pricing, quoting see, I got that. I learned something new yeah um you did that.
Speaker 3:See, I like the term that I've started using in some conversations I don't know if it's landing as well as I want to, because I do feel like it's more of a of a new age concept is this idea of technology blindness. So people will talk about oh, like we all had eyebrow blindness, you know, from like the 90s into the early 2000s. Like my eyebrows still haven't fully recovered from when they were so paper thin, because that was the thing, right, that's what we did, that was the trend, you know.
Speaker 3:But we couldn't see how ugly it was because, like everybody, everybody was doing it it was the status quo, you know like exactly now, the thick eyebrows are back in like whatever, yeah, or even like to give it more of a, you know, male frame of reference. You know there's like there's hair blindness and people who are trying to like hold on, to like the one patch of hair that's there instead of just shaving it off, and I don't know what brad has under his hat, so I'm not calling him out in any regard, but my whole family, all the men in my family are bald. My head has been shaved since I was.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I have been shaving my head since I was probably 19, 18 and it's. It is funny because I had always shaved it. I had a high and tight and then I started getting a little thin and then I was like I'll just shave it, just shave it to the point where I really didn't even know how much hair I had. And then there was a point a few years ago I'm like you know what? I'll grow it out just to see what it looks like.
Speaker 2:So now I just keep it a little bit shorter just because it's easier, but I still like to be bald. I'm not holding on to any piece. I don't have the comb over. I don't have.
Speaker 3:No, my dad's been bald since he was 23. Like, baldness is like a thing in my family. But it's funny because my dad compared to like some of his friends who are still holding on to I feel like he looks so much younger, you know, like yeah see, chris, that's why I look so young. But it's like you know.
Speaker 2:Don't be.
Speaker 1:Homer Simpson, there's a trend.
Speaker 3:No-transcript. They might not be in style anymore, but it's what I know and what I'm used to, so I feel like I need to. I need to fine tune the technology blindness thing, but that was a-.
Speaker 2:Change is scary. I love the eyebrow reference. I really had a conversation with someone the other day about that and they were talking about the eyebrows because when they were younger it was the same things that you would pull it all out and I guess it doesn't. Yeah, I was don't go back, go back.
Speaker 3:I thought they did it kind of like. I have very like. I have pretty like naturally thick eyebrows, but I'm a little bit spotty compared to like because of how intensely I would pluck them during like the next time I see you, you know I'm going to be staring at your eyebrows and take a magnifying glass and I'll be like well, don't do that, cause I actually just have one eyebrow, I just wax it really well, so that it's at least you didn't tattoo it, cause you know my grandmother tattooed hers and I think my mom has her tattoo.
Speaker 1:I don't I don't really pay attention, but it was a thing back then, right like just tattoo it, yeah, or shave it completely off.
Speaker 3:My grandma still pencils, just draws on her eyebrows every day. And what she told me? She was going because she leads the um, the women's church group at one of the local prisons. And she showed up one day. She'd use her lip liner and got ready in the dark instead of her eyebrow pen. So she showed up one day. She'd used her lip liner and got ready in the dark instead of her eyebrow pen. So she showed up with red, little thin eyebrows and everybody was like that is funny.
Speaker 2:I do. I see some. I don't want to talk about that. I don't want anyone to be insulted by our talking about them painting their eyebrows on, but you know it's more about, more about.
Speaker 3:You know, it's a trend. We all get like caught up in it and then it's hard to like it's comfort.
Speaker 2:You don't let go of your comfort level, which is good yeah, you don't let go of your spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one thing from a technical point of view how is the information? What I was thinking about as we were talking the information exchanged between business central and the expert logic? Cpq is business central. How does the? What I was thinking about as we were talking the information exchange between Business Central and the ExpertLogic? Cpq Is Business Central. How does the information communicate back and forth? How much of the information lives in Business Central versus how much lives in ExpertLogic? So if you set up your products, for example, you set up your products in Business Central and then they move over to ExpertLogic. So do you set the products up in Expert logics and then they you manage them over there and they move back into business central, for example?
Speaker 3:yeah. So usually you're setting up the products with you can. It's a bi-directional sync, so we have an integration framework. That's, honestly our differentiator.
Speaker 3:And this used to bother me when I was in marketing, because other cpqs, you know, they have rule-based functionality, they have 3d product, and so I remember going back to our head of product, I'm like what's our differentiator in the CPQ space? And he's like it's Cloud Connect, which is our bi-directional integration framework. And I'm in marketing, I'm like so our differentiator's integration, like that's not super sexy to like bring to market, but like now that I'm more in the sales realm, like I'm seeing us win these deals against our competitors, really because of the way that we can work with Dynamics. So we can either pull the product information from Business Central or we can start it in CPQ and if they you know, for example, we're migrating from NAV to BC and all the product information lives in, you know, cpq Once they implement Business Central, we can push that all back in, or vice versa.
Speaker 3:So it's bidirectional sync. It's totally like low-code, no-code type of integration framework too. We can connect down to the meta level of any object and we do also integrate with Salesforce. Salesforce has their own CPQ product. We can connect to more custom entities and endpoints in Salesforce than Salesforce CPQ can. So that's the flexibility of our integration framework and again, it's truly our differentiator. It's bidirectional, it's low code. And then I feel like I was going to say one other thing on that end too.
Speaker 2:The bidirectional. As you're thinking about that, the bidirectional I do see it as a selling point and advantage, because now a user does not need to work in two systems if they have that. I understand some individuals may have to work on CPQ only, some individuals may have to work in Business Central only, but then you'll have those individuals that may manage products that may have to spend any time either learning two systems or jumping back and forth between them and potentially missing something inadvertently because they have to manage two different systems. So I could see how that'd be a big selling point for an implementation and it could also reduce the license cost. I don't want to talk about pricing because I know it's different, but when it comes to licensing of ExpertLogix, how is it licensed? Is it licensed by?
Speaker 3:user. Licensed by app. Licensed by licensing of expert logics. How is it licensed? Licensed by user? Licensed by app? Okay, licensed by user and just by either, like admin user, sales user, so it doesn't need to be every user that's on business central or on so it's simple just anyone interacting with it.
Speaker 2:Everything has to be easy it's simple.
Speaker 3:It depends on the integration platform too. So the pricing for fno is a little bit different than it is at business central. Business Central has less user requirements than Finance and Operations does so on and so forth. But yeah, business. Central particularly, is pretty cost productive.
Speaker 2:No. I like it, simple, simple, and it's important for it. Well, ms Miranda, thank you again for taking the time to speak with us and tell us a little bit about X.
Speaker 1:I want a rematch Because I lost twice. I know, I know.
Speaker 3:Twice, maybe even three times and I gave up.
Speaker 2:Good thing, Rob's not on this call because I would be definitely talking some smack to him after the win Are you going to be in Orlando? Okay, so do the rematch in Orlando. We can schedule it now and play now.
Speaker 3:Gotta do a rematch, we'll bring, we'll bring our own setup. That'll be at our kiosk, you know, just in case.
Speaker 1:I'm just letting. Rob is not going to be in my team. I still tell you that, because he did not.
Speaker 2:I will be on your team, but you have to. But we have to do it before my bedtime, that's all I'm going to say. So if you want to play, it has to be. You can stay up all night and we'll do it before my bedtime. That's all I'm going to say. So if you want to play, it has to be. You can stay up all night and we'll do it early in the morning when I get up. That's fine, I get up early. It will be on the East Coast so I can have my normal sleep schedule. But if you want to play, I will be on your team, no problem, and I do quite well.
Speaker 2:But it has to be before my bedtime and after my waking time so you guys can start early in the morning at 3 o'clock to stay up until I wake up. But it's done. Rematch, settled Rematch or set October. We'll pick one of the days as it gets closer, but October in Orlando and we should record it. But no, thank you. We do appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. You offered a wide range of valuable information and hopefully everyone understands a little bit more about expert logics and CPQ. I know I learned quite a bit. If anyone would like to learn more about expert logics and CPQ, what's the best way to contact you to find more information? See the great things that the product does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will. My email address is mpowell at expertlogicscom. But if you come through as a partner to our website, those automatically get routed over to me. So, um, yeah great.
Speaker 2:Again, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Talk about these books as well as now. The challenge is on. You have. What are we in April?
Speaker 3:You have about five and a half months.
Speaker 2:Well, it's at the end of the month, so you have about six months now to prepare for this. Chris, we better start practicing.
Speaker 3:I'm going to practice and create a montage. Christopher knows I don't need that much practice, she's good.
Speaker 1:I need to practice create a montage post it and I'm ready.
Speaker 2:A lot can happen. If she doesn't play in six months she can lose that skill. It's not like riding a bike Sure Good.
Speaker 1:But you know what? She's tall, she has advantage. I'm this short guy, I have to lob it a little higher.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, forget it. I forgot, because she can just drop it drop it.
Speaker 3:You have to. Yeah, yes, miranda, can I be on your team? So okay, well, that's why we had to get christopher involved last time as the ref because there was a little bit of reaching. Uh, that was happening, so he was taking the white napkins and throwing them down on the table and calling fouls on, like me or rob listen, if you're doing a normal reach and you're not leaning, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2:Just that, if your arm is long enough and it goes halfway, over the table. It counts, You're on my team because I'm not losing.
Speaker 3:Again, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:And I look forward to speaking with you again soon. All right, thank you.
Speaker 3:Ciao, ciao, Thanks guys.
Speaker 2:Appreciate the opportunity. Bye. 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.
