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 436: Seamless Connections: The Future of Data Integration for Business Central
In this episode of Dynamics Corner, Kris and Brad are joined by Robert Brand and Dave Malda from iPaaS.com. They discuss the world of data integration for Business Central. Discover how their platform serves as a central hub, seamlessly connecting various systems like Business Central, e-commerce platforms, and more. Learn about the challenges of integrating data across different software ecosystems and how iPaaS.com simplifies the process with transparency and flexibility. Improve and manage your data flow between Business Central and external systems. Tune in to this conversation for valuable insights on making integrations with Business Central more efficient and effective.
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. This is gonna be a fun, integrated conversation. I'm your co-host, Chris.
SPEAKER_03:And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on November 7th, 2025. Chris, Chris, Chris. Integrations. Who doesn't need an integration? With all of the systems that are on the market today, and everybody has a little piece of information, you need to have your information integrated. With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with Dave and Robert from iPass.com.
SPEAKER_02:Doing really well. You guys?
SPEAKER_03:Uh, you know, it's Friday. It's going well. And I've always vowed to not record on a Friday, so I don't know what will happen because typically the Fridays turn into some sort of fiasco for me. So we'll do our best today. Hopefully, we can here we are. We can make it through this one, okay. But uh maybe we should just switch to doing all recordings on Fridays.
SPEAKER_01:Fridays are good for recordings, it's just the day you don't want to push code.
SPEAKER_03:Um when you do it, do it on Friday. Uh Friday night is usually the best time.
SPEAKER_00:Friday's rough for us because it's like a lot of people want to rush out, you know what I mean? I'm like disconnected already, you know. I'm not even in my normal studio right now.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, Friday's not a good day to push code. Although I know a lot of people who like to do it on Friday, and I have always been one not to do anything on Friday. The rationale, I I I try to think of the rationale. I understand it's like, well, you know, there's risk, less risk because you have more time to fix it, but I also go with, well, there's more risk because typically there's less people available. That's right. Uh they don't like weekends. You can schedule to have people available, but uh sometimes if you push code out there, you don't know if it works, it doesn't work. So do you have people waiting all the time? Uh no, because everybody tests everything so thoroughly. Oh, no. So there are never any problems.
SPEAKER_00:Those are the people that don't like weekends. It's the problem. They don't like the weekends.
SPEAKER_03:So we'll see. Uh but thank you both for taking the opportunity to speak with us afternoon. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Uh, before we jump into the conversation, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, Dave?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Yeah, so uh Dave Malda, I'm here at iPass.com. Um, we're in the integration space, and so I've been, you know, in the let's call it EDI, e-commerce, ERP uh integration space for around 17, 18 years. So fairly well versed in all the different endpoints, but that doesn't mean there's a day that doesn't go without you know learning something new, right? That's what I do love about this. Um but yeah, I'm joined here with uh my colleague Robert, and uh so we you know really play in the um a bunch of different ecosystems, including uh the Microsoft ERP ecosystem. So lots of tenure with the older dynamics nav, AX, SL, um, you know, those EP is was another popular one, and then of course now it's Dynamics 365 and all the different versions, right? So uh it's great to be here and thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03:Great. Robert.
SPEAKER_01:Oh well, uh so I'm Robert. I head up partnerships and alliances at iPass.com and uh I cut my teeth in in the industry in the e-commerce space, and so helped uh lead a digital agency for about a decade, brought brands like SwissGear and InvictaWatches into e-commerce, a lot of cool different B2B and B2C projects, um Google Premier Partner, Inc. 5000 company, uh sold in 2017, um exited, and from there I headed a partnership at a different integration platform. Dave and I went from being uh you know working at companies that were complementary to um to being in a bit of conflict, and then I headed a partnership at a web hosting firm that dealt with a lot of um you know cloud infrastructure and uh mission critical hosting. And uh I joined the team here at iPass.com about uh two and a half years ago now. And uh very excited to be joining you today and get to talk a little bit about, as Dave said, you know, where that all comes together with uh the Microsoft community.
SPEAKER_03:No, that's that's what I'm looking to hear a little bit more about. Uh it seems that you have uh a great background on integrations and uh a breadth of exposure to the dynamic space. So if we could talk a little bit about that. When you talk about integrations, exactly what do you mean by integration?
SPEAKER_01:So for us, it's really about flowing data with your other best-in-class systems, or hopefully best in class, right? We all hope that everyone's using the best software for them. But and that's actually one of the challenges is that getting your systems to talk together so that your finance operations, sales, marketing, uh, shipping and warehousing and fulfillment, so that the different departments in an organization, every org's a little different, you know, depending on whether they're more services oriented or or more um retail or wholesale or distribution or manufacturing, whatever you know, sphere they may work in, you know, certainly construction, healthcare, etc., um, they've got data. They've got customer data, perhaps product and data, order or transaction data of some sort, invoices, things that are happening um that are important to other stakeholders in an organization and should be in other systems. And so at the heart of it, it's really about just getting the data flowing, getting it transformed and translated and orchestrated to all the systems it should be in and flowing naturally, so that nobody's waiting on on some other team to try to get them what they need that they've got access to the key information, and more than just people having access today in the world where you probably don't have a podcast episode that doesn't somehow touch on AI.
SPEAKER_03:Um I I don't know what that word is.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, this uh this artificial intelligence stuff, it's more important than ever to make sure that you've got not just data, but clean data, having accountability for that data, because with AI, just like with anything else, trash in, trash out, um, you've got to have the data flowing where it needs to go so that you can benefit from these new systems. And just in general, tech stacks are growing. And so you need to be able to pull together you know all these systems so that you've got this unified approach to operations.
SPEAKER_03:Excellent. Excellent. So IPass, you can integrate external systems to business central. We'll call them external systems because I'm a little selfish and I like to call Business Central as you know, the central, the main system, but business central could also be uh ancillary to some other systems, as you had mentioned. Many organizations have uh many different products that they use. Uh, as you had mentioned, you want to use the best product for the job that you need to do, and sometimes that's not always within Business Central, believe it or not. Uh I've learned that over my years with it. It's a great product, feature rich, does wonders for art, but sometimes you'd have to integrations with other systems.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I mean, and if you were to think about, for instance, e-commerce, if you're thinking about where the biggest brands are growing, it's with platforms like Shopify and Big Commerce and Magento and Adobe Commerce and Shopware and and so forth. And you know, it gives you just an idea of oh, yeah, you know, there are these other software ecosystems out there that businesses are are reliant on, but that need to be interoperable. So I'm with you, you know, but the ERP really is the anchor. No doubt about that. Business Central is is at the heart. But we would it at iPass.com, iPass stands for integration platform as a service. And what's funny is that if you were to look at how our system operates, we become the hub. We're the glue between everything, we're kind of the pipes. So, you know, in a diagram, you'd see when we're involved, you'd see us in the middle, um, with one integration into somebody's business central instance, um, being able to transform and translate data with myriad other systems all at once. And it's kind of a one-to-many.
SPEAKER_03:So, with with that integrations, um, you mentioned that it integrates with Business Central. I'll take it back from the ERP because I have questions on the other side, but the ERP software with Business Central. Does it work with Business Central online or Business Central on premises or both?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So, really, what we're dealing with is API connectivity. Um, and so if we can reach the APIs um of Business Central, the application uh programming interface to basically get data in and out, um, then we're golden. Um and that's really what it's about for us. So we, for instance, we actually work with uh with nav with you know what was Navision back in the day, same premise that um, you know, if it's an on-prem, sometimes there's uh a few steps to go through to uh you know whitelist some IPs and um and and get proper access. But at the end of the day, as long as uh as idass.com as a platform can communicate with the APIs, we're in great shape.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. And do you have a standard list of APIs as part of Business Central that you add as part of this uh experience with the integrations? Yes. Um when someone goes to the implementation.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and so the way that our platform is built, every integration that we have that's already built is in our marketplace and actually lists out all the supported data flows that are already available. Um we have an SDK for people that need to expand and um deal with uh with things that are more custom. In some cases for users, we'll just go and you know add support for an additional API endpoint here or there um and expand upon the integration that that's already available. But uh absolutely that uh, you know, and with a system like Business Central, you'll typically see a mix of, and obviously there are layers uh to these kinds of data as you deal with the relationships between um you know companies and customers and uh you know products and as it relates to inventory and prices, and um, you know, if we're thinking about you know orders as it relates to invoices and shipments and so on and so forth, that we'll have all those sorts of data flows ready to rock and roll.
SPEAKER_00:So you have you have templates ready for you for them then. So for people that want to integrate something really quickly, you they have a good standard um to stand on and then be able to easily add more data points.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. So we'll for instance you'll have when you spin up those templates. So there's kind of the integration itself, which is handling the API communications and being that that translator on on that side to okay, what's the API and business central and where is that going in iPass.com. And then we've got mapping templates, and mapping we think of as okay, you know, this field needs to go to that field, and what might need to happen in between, what kind of translation or transformations? We're a a no-code to low code system, so sometimes it's just first name over here has to go to given name over there. Um, sometimes you need to do more things to split data apart, append data together, or do other things to work with the data and get it ready for whatever system it's trying to go into so that it's properly uh formatted and uh and it's going to be successful. But in that process, we've got for each integration templates of the common fields that we uh anticipate running into most often. And so if I'm thinking about product data, you can imagine fields like the product name, description, skew, price, inventory, sorts of things. But then somebody that's selling, let's say, you know, cell phones, they might have fields of data about how many gigabytes is the phone, and um what carriers does it work with, and um you know what screen size, and so on and so on. They might have a hundred fields like that. We provide a uh node, a low-code way of mapping those fields and getting that that those additional pieces of data flowing. And so you're kind of getting something where we hope in most cases you're about 70% of the way there when you turn it on. Sometimes you're 100% of the way there. Um, but you know, you can build upon it. There's a inherent flexibility built in. So it's meant to be a springboard, but not to be a black box.
SPEAKER_03:No, I understand. So it's so you connect to the business central APIs, you have the ability to enhance those APIs. If you have a business central, a lot of implementations have extensions that add additional fields or even additional tables that they may need to use. So you have a mapping tool that allows you to integrate to the APIs that are visible within Business Central, so that kind of covers that. And then you talked about you have the mapping tool in data transformation. Where does that take place? Does that take place on Business Central side? Does that take place in the iPass.com platform?
SPEAKER_01:That takes place in the iPass.com platform. So you're able to log in, um, you're able to see all of this in in you know nice, neat uh user interfaces, and um, you're able to adjust. And so it makes it easier uh in that sense to think about what each system that you're integrating uh needs and and what data you're flowing to and from each system. And so if you can imagine flowing with business central, with e-commerce, point of sale, CRM, product information management systems, shipping and fulfillment systems like warehouse management, order management, 3PL, um, you know, dealing with all sorts of myriad types of software, HR systems like UKG or sales tax exemption certificate management with Avalera, or you know, that we we get into a lot of different types of integrations, but um in that way, by having that one one you know Grand Central Station where it's being managed, uh you're not dealing with all sorts of one-off connectors that you're trying to maintain independently and monitor independently and uh and you know really debug independently because I from my experience the hardest part of dealing with data integration over time isn't when things work properly, it's when data doesn't get where it's supposed to go, and that's where you know for us we're a cube-based system, data comes in, uh it processes. If there's any any issue with the data, we automatically retry on a schedule, it doesn't get lost, we notify you so that you've you know what's going on and give you a bit of a root cause analysis, and the same process is happening on the way out to each receiving system. And so, for instance, we might get an order coming down from an e-commerce website that needs to go to Business Central for accounting, to some kind of warehouse management system for fulfillment, uh, to a CRM so the sales team has visibility, etc. And maybe it's gonna go to two out of three systems successfully, but one of them, like there was that AWS outage a couple of weeks ago, and so maybe it's unavailable for a while, we'll keep automatically retrying until it's successful, or maybe there's an issue where one of the fields, there's just too many characters to go into whatever the receiving system is, um, and so two of them work fine, but one of them didn't. Now you know what's going on and you can see it, and it's not just a matter of, oh, that order didn't get fulfilled and waiting for a shopper to call saying, Where's my stuff? Um, the um, you know, the our system is purpose-built to really bring a lot more countability, um, visibility, and control to the whole process, and to minimize the the long-term uh you know expense of trying to maintain all of these. Our integrations to all these systems are maintained in our marketplace. So, you know, if let's say Shopify Big Commerce is changing uh their APIs, which we see from time to time, our users don't have to go and rewrite these connectors that we're doing it and there's version control, they can just switch to something new and go to version 1.8 of that integration, uh, and not have to take on that burden of things breaking or um or or having to spend all that money in what I'd consider RD reinventing the wheel.
SPEAKER_03:So this is more of a central hub for managing the data integrations. And you'd mentioned that you can work with multiple sources simultaneously in a bi-directional manner. Yes. And you also pointed out that you track the data flow to because again, if you have uh product data going from one system to uh many disparate systems, and if you have an error with one, uh you'll retry and do that. With the data, is is it a pass-through for the data through this service that you have, or is there any data residing in the iPass.com uh platform?
SPEAKER_01:So we are an actual data hub. And in that way, you as for instance, there are gonna be communications happening in an order fulfillment situation. It's a great example where an order is gonna maybe come into business central from a sales channel to be fulfilled. Um, but then as items are fulfilled, maybe there's a split shipment, right? There's gonna be a partial shipment happening. We need to keep updating, and so it keeps keeps that together as sort of um an amalgamated source of truth, and so you can keep dealing with the updates that way. Um, and it's really what powers a lot of the the one to many and gives a lot more intelligence to the whole process. So as opposed to just point-to-point connectors and getting data from A to B, we are really thinking about um the life cycle of the data. And so uh and there are times when data is kind of you know splicing together from multiple systems, and so for instance, we might have an organization that has a big product catalog that sells in multiple regions and different languages, perhaps, or under different brands, and they are going to use a product information management system like PIMCOR or a Kenio to manage their product data as it relates to how to categorize the data and all the attributes and tags and additional information, you know, images in a digital asset management system. And so the source of truth of the inventory and pricing might always be business central. That that's not necessarily gonna happen in in a PIM like a Kenio or PIMCore, uh but in iPass.com there's one record for that product, and we're st you're getting all of the information about that product coming together in one system. Um so at that point it's stitched together and ready uh to go wherever it needs to go, as opposed to thinking about having to get you know different fields coming together separately, and then for instance, you know, how do you even build a product into some systems if it doesn't have pricing or inventory, or if it doesn't have some of these other fields, we give that natural place to bring it all together.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's excellent. I I do have a question, uh kind of uh not so much of a left field, but from the world of consulting and implementing Business Central, uh with your tool being an integration tool, have have others used it, not just moving, you know, integrating data, you know, having data uh applications talk to but uh talk to each other, but more of so like moving or migrating data. Um so for example, if someone's coming from a nav system that wants to upgrade a business central, could have you had people use it to do a data migration uh uh on top of the other things that they're gonna integrate anyway.
SPEAKER_01:So yes and no. Um we have features as a data hub to uh manually sync pieces of data, to reactivate data, do more of a bigger catch-up on getting data into a system, um, to look for unmatched data between systems. You can use us to see data into a system what it's going to come down to is uh you know, if if I'm thinking about going from let's say NAV to business central, are are we set up to move ever all of the types of data that are needed for that user um wholesale and move them kind of you know bi-directionally? Uh or would you need to set up certain things because we'll normally think of uh of the ERP as the source of truth of certain data, and so maybe the you know the source of it, but not the destination, for instance. Um and so there are cases where some data, like moving customer records from one to the other, yeah, pretty straightforward. Um, you know, trying to move certain data, like maybe, you know, certain ty I don't know, I'll make it up here, you know, certain types of purchase orders or something, you know, we might be set up for more of a one-directional and there would be effort to be able to bridge that gap. I'd also say that, you know, while our goal is to be, you know, a quick implementation, our bigger focus is the total cost of ownership, is the ability to turn on new spokes to the hub, to minimize the maintenance, to minimize the fires that need to put out with old, you know, reactive kind of situations with connectors that were strung together. And so there's still implementation work. And if you're not going to continue to use the product, if you were just using it as a migration product, you might be better off just you know formatting the data more manually, moving it more manually. So we do like consult on opportunities like that and look at are we the best solution to help with that portion of a project? And with a migration, could be yes, could be no.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I it I I thought about that because um you know, certainly in in many cases, someone that moves to business central, there's more likely a high chance that they're going to be integrating to other uh solutions. So if if someone was to invest in moving from nav to business central, and at the same time they have e-commerce that they want to integrate, it would make sense. You know, they can still I mean they could utilize the the product itself to get some of the some of the heavy lifting. Because that's always the challenge for implementation is like how do you move the data from one ERP system to another, and at the same time having that consistency of uh uh perhaps they want to get e-commerce, CRM, and all the other uh integrations they want to do, um, they can still certainly benefit from utilizing iPass in that in that sense.
SPEAKER_01:So and I'll take it a step further. So if you're thinking about turning on a new e-commerce website with you know as an organization using let's say business central or moving to business central, you know, often you've got to think about well, how is your product data gonna get into the e-commerce site? Um, because the source of truth, and typically that's going to be us. And that's important to us because back to stitching things together, that brings more accountability so that we know when an order is coming back from the e-commerce site, it's gonna match perfectly with whatever SKU is in Business Central. That we're not worried about you know, somebody manually is adding these items into the e-commerce website, and now there are gonna be mismatches, and orders are gonna be failing to flow successfully to the ERP for fulfillment and accounting. And so we do see situations where just naturally, um even if it wasn't part of somebody's initial project plan, as they start to scope out how the integrations are gonna happen, they're gonna realize that some of that data is gonna come through us as a best practice, yeah, and they shouldn't do it manually or through some external process.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I just think it about from uh uh investment perspective, or if you're moving it to you're moving your data to business central and you have a PIM solution that you have to populate that, you're you're you're doing it in kind of one process rather than doing business central, and then you gotta figure out from business central to your PIM solution. In this case, you can do it to, hey, I'm gonna populate these things anyway, coming from a source, might as well do it uh in in one process.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's what we like to see is people thinking more about their entire data ecosystem and thinking about the long term, and not so much just trying to think about you know, reactively how to put a band-aid on it, how to how do they minimally get these things talking? Um, and that's where we see different outcomes that just become possible that uh by unifying these sorts of systems that, for instance, you know, for retailers dealing with point of sale, um, that they'll often today they'll have e-commerce and their e-commerce will be hooked up to their marketing stack, and their marketing stack will know all all of the shoppers' online history, but it won't know what they bought in store when. And so you'll see brands that are emailing people or sending text messages, hey, you haven't, you know, come to this, you know, to the store in a while, we haven't, you know, seen you in a while. Here's a coupon. It's like I they were at a brick and mortar store yesterday making a purchase. And you just see these silos that um you know that don't have to be broken down on day one, but being able to turn on another spoke to the hub and just get that data flowing now to the marketing stack, you know, that becomes powerful. Or I mentioned Avalera earlier, not I wouldn't say it's one of our most common integrations, but if you can imagine um the people that are often talking to customers about um there's you know their orders and sales tax exemption certificates if you're dealing with you know wholesale or non-profit or government or what have you, you know, that they're not usually the people that are in the Avalera account and that can see, or that are necessarily in the R ERP and can see if there's an exemption certificate on file when it might be expiring. We can expose that data to the CRM where the sales and account management teams have access, where the people that are sitting in the call center can say, oh yeah, you know, that's expired. Oh, yeah, nope, we have that on file already. And so it's just some of those things that cut down on a lot of that internal, you know, transferring and back and forth and delay.
SPEAKER_03:That's I just want to rewind a few to something that you had started talking about. Is so it's a central hub for data, and you can connect disparate systems so you can have pieces of information from many sources. So if you have item information, business central has certain item fields, uh, excuse me, characteristics of fields, whatever you like to call them, on an item that may or may not be uh relevant for an e-commerce site, or they may not have a place for an e-commerce site, an e-commerce site may have some information, a PIM may have additional information. So you can bring all of that together and then distribute the relevant information to the systems with the information that they need only, correct? Now another thing thinking about this, with it being a data hub, uh and I've had my fair share of integrations, I can assure you, uh, probably more than you know you can't remember at some points. And it's almost because here in 2025, uh everybody wants systems that talk with each other, and it's becoming easier and easier as technology advances and has been over the past several years. Can you also filter the data that goes to each system? For example, I could have a Shopify store one that has is just specifically for my wholesalers, a Shopify store two that's just for uh retailers. My product may be different uh because of the nature of the business or the nature of who I'm selling it to. And there may be different pricing or there may be different uh pieces of information that have to go to the different sources. So can you route it based upon some sort of filtering mechanism or security mechanism to uh keep the data from flowing into systems that shouldn't?
SPEAKER_01:Not only can you uh can you set rules to decide which systems are going to receive that data, you can also use Use uh our rules engine to decide which data is going to go through which transformations and translations. And so let's say in your the situation that you lined out in your example where different storefronts, um, it might be that um when you're dealing with different sales channels, some might be B2B and some might be B2C, and that data may need to be treated a little bit differently. So not only about where to publish it or where to send it, but how does it need to transform and translate in route?
SPEAKER_03:That's great. And as far as the the storage is concerned, it when I hear of data hubs, I'm used to business central, everyone talks about business central and the and the data storage and the data space. Um how is the space allotted for this platform for a customer?
SPEAKER_01:So we're providing um as a SaaS platform uh individual accounts for users that and our pricing's up on our website. We're you know proud to have transparency around it. Uh where we're charging based upon the number of pieces of software. Yeah, it's it's rare in the integration space. A lot of places, you know, you you've got to have uh three PhDs and consult your you know your crystal ball to figure it out.
SPEAKER_03:Um I won't even go down that road of fine your life. Like you said, it's uh I swear. Yeah, I swear, as much as I love Business Central and the whole Microsoft platform and all that, I swear you could have two full-time people that understand that work just strictly with Microsoft licensing and they wouldn't understand it if that even was their job 24 hours a day. So I do as Chris had stated, I do like the transfer.
SPEAKER_02:And easy to understand.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, yeah. So it ours is based upon the number of pieces of software that you're integrating. And so basically we're counting those, if you want to think about it, like API connections. So if you have one instance of Business Central, that's one integration. If you've got one instance of Magento or Adobe Commerce or Big Commerce or Shopware, whatever e-comm, that's that's another. But to us, now those e-commerce platforms, you might have six storefronts running out of it, right? You know, that we're not counting how many brands you're operating or such. We're just thinking about how many instances of the software. Um, and so our our initial plan starts at a flat$500 a month, and that includes unlimited data throughput. So we're not nickel and diming for the API calls, the bandwidth, the storage, the number of admin users that you want, you know, to have access to the iPass.com account, to the number of data flows between the systems that you know you want to start flowing a variety of different data, no problem. Um, we're simply looking at the the number of integrations, and then there are a few add-ons that you can tack on if you want a sandbox account um because you want to hook that up to a dev or staging environment, you can get that, you know, at a a rate and such, and all that information, like I say, is published and and readily available. Um so we find that that's really advantageous. Now, I mean, for somebody that's you know, if we're talking to a Fortune 500, we're gonna be dealing with uh a single tenant implementation that we're gonna quote out more uniquely. But we've had I mean, you know, huge organizations using our our multi-tenant SaaS um groups like Nintendo, the Cleveland Cavs, the Minnesota Wild, the Air Force. Um, so you know, we're we're we're really consistent in um in the the absolute the 99% of our users being able to utilize uh that multi-tenant SaaS pricing.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so it's it's it is a it you had get gotten into some other points because I was also going to start talking about the throughput and the performance, but you had mentioned and it sounds in the conversation that you had just had, you can have multi-tenancy or single tenancy if your implementation requires it because of the volume of transactions that you have, or maybe the number of connections, so you have some flexibility on the right.
SPEAKER_01:We've got our SOP2, etc., etc. But if somebody's infosecting, you know, that they are going to require something a little different, we can we can deal with that as a one-off, of course.
SPEAKER_03:Uh no, I like these integrations with the mappings because as I had mentioned, there's so many integrations that are occurring today, and everybody seems to want to uh create them from sc uh from I use the word from scratch. You know, it's my northeastern vocabulary here. So as far as as going through the implementation and setting this up. Uh in you mentioned you have some templates. Uh what do you in the templates again? Just I I I understand the concept, and I'm sure I've a lot that work with business well. They're intended to get you started. Right. You may, as you had mentioned, you may get everything that you need, but you may have some uniqueness to your business that you may need to make some adjustments for this. And that adjustment process, how is that typically handled? Do you do that adjustment process? Is does the customer do that adjustment process? Does the partner do that adjustment process? How does somebody go about having some of those uniquenesses of their business put into this platform for them to distribute the information or receive the information?
SPEAKER_01:So our platform, um, you know, it there's obviously, you know, there's training modules and there's information on how to uh administrate and and implement uh and such, and that's all pretty fast, rapid kind of training and information. Um, but we know that the average organization, they don't have the bandwidth to take that on, um, even if it's a smaller project. That the idea of building the project plan, asking the right stakeholders, making sure it's understood what are the business processes that that are underlying these integrations, what does success look like at the end, building out that project plan, thinking about you know what do the baseline integrations in the marketplace do and what needs to be uh supplemented there, what additional fields of data need to be mapped, and then most importantly, testing. Um, you know, so to us, uh every project, even something that's gonna use really more off the shelf, what's in the templates should go through some some UAT, some user acceptance testing, thinking about not only the most common, but also some edge cases. Um, and that's where you know you'll find that organizations forget things that have been customized in some of their software, um, or you know, that there's some field of data that's that was missed, or that there was a typo somewhere. We that all that should ideally be caught in that process. And so working with a services provider, uh, or you know, might be uh and you know, depending on uh their their area of expertise, we've got over 80 of these um agencies, SIs, VARs, uh consultancies, and and other service providers in our partner network, and that number just keeps growing, um, they can come in and they can provide the resources that are going to be great at overseeing the project and and making sure everything is successful and that it gets done within a reasonable timeline, where often people that are trying to self-implement, um everybody's got finite resources, and most people in an organization already have full plates. And so trying to get you know people to to do this internally, could they? Yes. Um, you know, if they have the time, absolutely, but uh we always prefer starting from the concept of you know, can you pull in experts that can guide you through it and make sure it's it's a a really, really successful experience, and from there figure out you know what could be done internally to cut down on on any services cost, um, and how do you marry together, having you know these folks consult and having your internal team do certain things. Um, but nonetheless, you can kind of go in either direction. But we find that our our team is going to be responsible for the uptime, the security of the platform, um, the the general features and evolution of our platform um as a system, but we leave it to the partner network to be able to provide that that services layer and deal with the unique needs of people's individual businesses and and the unique issues of their data and data hygiene and what have you.
SPEAKER_03:I understand that it it that all makes sense to me. I mean, working with implementations, it is great to have somebody who understands your business working with it. And I'm happy that you hit upon uh some key points. Uh you know, I could you know I tell everybody I could go and redo some landscaping in my yard. I would love to do it, but I would do it at night because I still have to work during the day. It would take much longer to get done. So sometimes that self-implementation, if you have the availability, is great to do, but sometimes you can get also done a lot quicker if you have somebody who understands what needs to do. And you know, to be quite blunt, it's their job, right? It's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to show up, get it done, and then uh support and maintain and work with you through the rest of the journey, but it gets you off the ground faster to maybe transition some of that over to you so that you can manage it if you have the time.
SPEAKER_01:And you might want to call them in every now and then that maybe some data fails to flow and there's uh an API error that we're reporting from a system that you know some systems provide really detailed information when data failures happen about, you know, why it is okay, the character length was too long, or the um, you know, there there was uh basically there's a question mark and a number field, or you know, or or there's some or you know, maybe uh an API key expired with some system. Sometimes it's just you know it's a pretty bland failure and you don't know why. And somebody needs to dig in a little bit. Our system will, you don't have to recreate the error, you don't have to look for a needle in a haystack, not only does it let you know, but it will show you all the payloads between the APIs. It'll show you all the communications, you can trace where the the issue arose, but not every user wants to do that on their own. Um and so this is where you know day-to-day operations, mapping a new field, maybe they do, you know, the the end user does that for themselves. Um something that gets a little bit more complex in debugging, maybe they want to call in the cavalry.
SPEAKER_03:That's good, dude. I understand that. No, I like the flexibility of that as well. And uh as far as the template is kind of uh how many do you have now within your template portfolio as sort of the the get started kit? So you had mentioned business central, I'm hearing a number of names. Shopify, business central, Avalara.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Dave, do you have a good number off the top of your head?
SPEAKER_02:Or I mean dozens and dozens, but it's definitely growing uh daily um and weekly.
SPEAKER_01:Uh to pin a it's probably around 60, if I had to guess, off the top of my head. Yeah because we've been adding uh a lot, and at any given time we're working on several new ones.
SPEAKER_02:I I think too uh Brad, what's really interesting is over the last couple of months there's been a real appetite for partners, we call them MISPs in our network, um, that are looking to write integrations to our platform, right? So uh these may be uh sometimes there are maybe one-off uh uh endpoints or systems that are needed in in in you know a specific project, but sometimes they're very common ones that uh partners would like to write integrations for. We would certify that in our marketplace, and then it becomes available to everybody, right? So that's one of the real advantages of kind of our our platform and let's call it the flywheel, where as we build and as our partners build, it just sort of starts to pick up velocity and become more and more valuable uh sort of week over week, right?
SPEAKER_03:So no, I understand that. So partners can also create connectors for their customers to use to make it easier to integrate their system with an ERP system. I'm a little selfish. I always talk about ERP.
SPEAKER_01:And I'll take it a step further. So these integrations in our marketplace, our marketplace acts a bit like an app store. We've written them the vast majority of these integrations, but when partners list them, that's the last piece of the pricing that you'd see on the pricing page. If a a partner can list an integration as being free, they can also add a monthly fee. It's just a line item on the iPass.com uh invoice that our our clients receive, that our subscribers receive. But in that way, for instance, um there's currently two where there's a fee. One is another ERP, I know. Um but the um but Sugar CRM would be another$125 a month if somebody wanted to integrate with it. And that makes our marketplace more scalable because what you'll find is that if you try to box it all in into one platform like us being responsible for writing and maintaining every integration, it slows everything down. And with us, every integration is a universal translator to our hub and is interoperable with all these other integrations that are in our marketplace. So it really does uh you know improve our value proposition very quickly as we're adding and adding these. Um but to the point, sometimes you just need you if you need to integrate five pieces of software for somebody, um, four of them might be in the marketplace, and one of them uh may need to be written with our SDK, and maybe it's a bespoke piece of software or something end-of-life, or something that we would never commercially you know be out there adding, you know, with the ex expectation of selling in droves, right? But um, you can still you know pay uh as someone from our partner network, one of these service providers, to write that integration, and then it's going through all the error handling, it can talk to all these other systems, and all these other integrations are being maintained so that you don't have to. And so there's still all that value proposition of being able to you know map new fields and manage everything from a low-code interface. And you know, it it's a it's a mock system. Um, so it's built you know, this is where we I get even more nerdy, right? But it's built with microservices, API first, it's it's cloud-based and it's headless. And so that is to say we auto-scale in the cloud, we're built on top of Azure. Um, and so you know, there are a lot of different microservices running. If one of them starts to get a little bit high in resource usage, we automatically spin up more copies and balance the load. And so we're prepared to deal with big bursts of data. Our system actually, we've got a lot of features to make sure that we don't overwhelm everyone's third-party software, that we don't overwhelm their e-commerce website or or their CRM or whatever other systems. Um, but you know, uh aside from thinking uh about it um in that way, it's also you were mentioning earlier, you know, dealing with uh organizations that have multiple brands, multiple storefronts, different things. Our interface is really nice. We love demoing it because it, you know, it's uh it's very modern and it's very intuitive. But there are cases where let's say you're dealing with a manufacturer that needs to hook up something with you know a thousand distributors or a franchise with a thousand franchisees, you may not want to manually deal with turning on data flows with a thousand Shopify stores, one or a thousand point-of-sale instances for each franchisee that's got their own data going back to to the franchise to calculate royalties or push product catalog information or whatever it may be, you can script it all with us. Um and basically when you're in our interface, when you click buttons, you're basically calling APIs. You can just write a script to communicate with those same APIs. You don't need to do it a thousand times just to script it and let it run. Um, and so there are a lot of different scenarios that we run into depending on the size of an org and and what they need to achieve, where sometimes there is going to be some coding to be done um in order to really uh achieve what they need, but I haven't seen a better way out there, right? I'm I'm used to seeing people have to really, you know, set something up a thousand times versus how they could do it with us.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, in 2025, I still see that. So it's uh it's good to automate something as well. I'll ask you a uh uh it's kind of it's the loaded question, but it's not a loaded question, but it's it's something that if someone's looking for solutions, they talk about. And I know and just so that everyone also uh is hopefully aware that there isn't a one size fits all. Every organization's different, every integration's different, every piece is different. But what would you say is the average time to implement a connection to a system with Business Central? And again, I understand that's variability based upon which which information you're integrating, uh if there's any customizations, and I you know, just understanding some variables, but just uh if you had to say the typical implementation, right? You know, minor enhancements, minor modifications, how quickly can someone get working with this? Right.
SPEAKER_01:Now, and I'll give you a couple of quick examples. If we were talking about moving some customer data between business central and a marketing system like MailChimp.digital or clavio or a CRM like HubSpot or something that you know that maybe put you know 10 hours in, maybe 20 in a more complex project, and that's including in in my head at least, you know, project planning and testing and so on, soup to nuts. Make you know that, and that's me having enough buffer in there for you know for the unusual. Uh that's an expectation. If I was dealing with a complex B2B uh e-commerce situation where there's a lot of data flows of customer data, product data, order data, quotes, and um uh so on and so forth, you know, gift card data flowing in there somewhere, whatever it may be, um, you know, I I could easily see an average being more like a hundred hours, um, perhaps more, you know, uh depending again on the specs, how many product uh you know fields need to be mapped, how many um, you know, how many storefronts are there, that we do see projects on our platform that certainly take hundreds of hours, but you know, if I'm trying to think about a more average, you know, somebody that's got you know uh a business central and uh I don't know, a big commerce website, and they need to get these things hooked up, you know, I I'd be hoping to see a project like that in dozens of hours. Uh you know, maybe and and again, I you know, my foot fits really uh well in my mouth. I know from life experience, every project is different. I don't know how many more ways I can protect myself, but uh, I think 50 hours, 60 hours is probably a good starting point for a very complete, thorough project that's been um that's been properly tested and such. But again, somebody that's just gonna turn on some basic data flows that we already have and get their their inventory and pricing and what have you syncing and some order data flowing, you know, they could do it in a few hours.
SPEAKER_03:That's good. No, I know it's a it's a very difficult question, I guess. It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I'll get partners and clients, you know, calling me saying, What are you talking about? This project that we just did was more. Uh and and it we see it.
SPEAKER_03:It's the same thing with an ERP implementation. I always have to ask that question because uh I get asked that question quite often. How long will it take? And again, it's like uh how long is a piece of string. But again, you still can say that based upon you know a certain size or a certain integration, you can expect, you know, as you had mentioned, if it's a larger implementation, it could be uh a couple weeks. If it's a very uh standard or simplistic uh implementation, it could be a couple days. Yeah, and look, I mean we it's all a meta for what just go back to.
SPEAKER_01:I know I've seen people, I hate to say it, you know, but I've seen people take a year on an implementation with us, but typically they're launching other software in the midst of that. Not everything was ready for us. You know, it's not like they came in and said, Oh, you know, it's uh let's implement iPass.com, everything is ready, we're just gonna stitch this together. They've got bigger projects happening in the midst of all of it that we're you know, we're the glue in between, but you can't finish implementing and testing your data flows until your other software is ready. So there's kind of a uh there's a safety net there um that I'm throwing myself in terms of uh you know from the time that all of your fields are ready that you you're ready to really implement, yeah, you know, it it can be pretty rapid. Um but uh you know you've got to get your ducks in a row as part of the project as well.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yes, you have to assume that the systems are in place. It's it's pretty difficult to integrate with a system that's not there.
SPEAKER_01:So you'd be surprised that and sometimes it's good that sometimes you've got people starting to put data in, and they're not wrong for wanting to start testing. In fact, you know, we like that. They just don't realize that they're not gonna be able to really go through full user acceptance testing until everything is is really in place. Um, or at least but in many cases, we love to see people testing each flow as that as those fields are ready and that data's ready. Um, so it's kind of a hybrid where ideally you're doing these things in lockstep, but until you get to the end, imagine you know you want to see orders coming over successfully, but the product data is not ready. Well, you know, you're not really testing everything end to end. You've gotten, you know, 90% of the way there, let's say, but there may still be some touch-up at the end when you you get it everything really, really together.
SPEAKER_02:I I know uh Brad, in a previous life, this has caused me to, it's probably a little bit of PTSD, but there was uh I remember a couple of projects that um where the website was being built out, and uh we didn't have a strong like, okay, when when when you're done and things are ready for production, then we'll start. This was kind of like one of these piecemeal implementations, and it was it was pretty painful because weekly there would be things that would be either added on or custom fields added, or and and when you're trying to integrate that, it it's it's like a moving target, right? So yeah, lots of fun.
SPEAKER_03:Oh I've lived through those as implementation. Chris may know a few about that type of stuff. Yes, yes, you go through some implementations, you you have uh uh oh, by the way, and oh we've we we forgot to do this. Oh, we didn't talk about that scenario. So there's always the challenges.
SPEAKER_01:The bigger the project, the more the scope creep at the end, and we find that there's no malice 99.9% of the time, right? There nobody intended for that to happen. But until you start to test things, they don't realize all the things that were never discussed, that were never documented, that nobody ever mentioned were going to be requirements, and well, now there's more work to be done. Um, so we we absolutely see that, and and we believe that that especially, you know, sizable projects, they should have, you know, and that's where I go back to I think the most important part of the whole process is the testing phase, because that's where the rubber meets the road. Um and you know, it's uh we we don't really have a lot of fear about iPass.com as a platform being able to perform. We we know it can perform. It's really a matter of um, you know what's being thrown out of left field and what's left there between the service provider and so on to be able to you know uh address that last mile. And in some cases, you know, we um even the integrations in our marketplace, as I mentioned earlier, that they support a variety of data flows. Uh there might be something that now they want to hook up to a system and they want to get some data flowing with it in a certain direction that we don't yet support. And so now, you know, there are cases where we might be able to, you know, rush that through our uh our dev team and make available. There are other cases where we we might have to point toward our SDK and suggest, well, you know, you should write something supplemental for that. Um, but those are the kinds of things, it's yeah, it's it's the uh that you know 11th hour stuff that gets you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's excellent. Well, Dave, Robert, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us this afternoon and tell us all about iPass.com uh and how it can enhance uh someone's integration to many different systems, not just Business Central, which is uh yeah, it's I like the flexibility and to be able to have the interconnectivity with many systems and to have it uh much easier. I mean, uh with Business Central having the ability to have APIs and and custom APIs, it's nice to have something that can summon it on the other side to help them integrate with other systems instead of having specific solutions for each one of those. And if someone wanted to learn more about transparency. If someone wanted to learn more about iPass, uh what what's the best way that they could learn a little bit more about it?
SPEAKER_01:Dave, I'll throw it to you.
SPEAKER_02:The easiest way, go to iPass.com. Um, lots of information on there, including the pricing, uh, lots of developer tools and other information, including like the marketplace, so what you know integrations are available, which MISP partners are part of our network. Um, but also you could reach out via email. Uh, or Robert and I are both fairly active on LinkedIn as well. So certainly connect and DM us there, or Dave.malda at iPass.com. In Robert's case, Robert.rand at iPass.com. More than happy to help.
SPEAKER_03:And that's iPass with IPAAS.com.
SPEAKER_01:Integration platform as a service, yeah. And uh people can I like it. Yeah, they they can book um a meeting right through our website. So we try to make that really easy because we know seeing is understanding, and we're always happy to walk people through the tech.
SPEAKER_03:Great. It sounds like an amazing product. Uh and thank you again for your time. Uh speak with this afternoon.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks, Brad. Uh, talk to you again soon. Thank you. Take care. Yeah. Bye.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair. And thank you to our guests for participating.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for join joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlife.com. That is D V L P R L I F E dot com. And you can interact with them via Twitter, D V L P R L I F E. You can also find me at mattalino.io, m-a-t-a-l-in-o.io. And my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And see you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you, and take care.
