Episode 510: Time Is Money — But Whose? Rethinking How Partners Bill in the Age of AI

In this episode of Dynamics Corner, Kris and Brad are joined by Cristian Nicola and Alfredo Iorio for a spirited debate that every Business Central partner and customer needs to hear. With AI reshaping how quickly consultants can deliver, is the traditional billable-hour model still the right model—or is it time for something new? Cristian makes a passionate case for subscription-based services, arguing that predictable pricing and compounding relationships are what SMB customers actually want. Alfredo brings a different angle, drawing on experience with organizations ranging from small teams to Accenture-scale engagements to show where fixed-price, time-and-materials, and hybrid models each shine. Along the way, you'll hear why a delivery driver's license once changed the entire tone of a warehouse meeting, what a $50 million failed SAP implementation teaches us about risk, and why the consultant who finishes fastest might be punishing themselves the most. Whether you're a solo partner figuring out your pricing or a customer trying to understand what you're really paying for, this one's for you.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. I've been thinking about it lately. Brad, what does the partner ecosystem is going to look like in the very near future? I'm your co-host, Chris.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

And this is Brad. This episode is recorded on February 25th, 2026. Chris, Chris, Chris. What will the ecosystem look like in the future? I don't know. I really don't know. I've had many conversations, heard a lot of opinions, a lot of different insights. One thing a lot of people talk about is is the billable hour dead? Should we have a subscription model, the value of the billable hour? With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with two individuals to discuss just that. We had the opportunity to speak with uh Christina Cola and Alfredo.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Good afternoon. Should I say good morning?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yes, yes, and where you are. We're uh we're running all over the world. It's interesting um with time zones. I really wish we just had one time zone, to be honest with you. I think that it would be so neat to have just one time. Like if um if it's 0600, it's 0600. If you're in England, 0600 may be your bedtime, and if you're on the west coast of the United States, it may be your waking time, right? It just doesn't matter, but it makes it easier for us to communicate if we say we want to have a meeting at a specific hour.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, that's true. I I guess everybody should change.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Everybody should change for us, you know, to make it easy for you, Brad. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

There was a time when when one nation dictated a time zone for everybody, and so that was before 1776. And so some people objected that that wasn't really the right correct thing to do, and then we we are that's right.

Alfredo’s Path From Warehouse

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Well, uh I I I object to having multiple time zones, and I wish we just had one time. So if I said we're meeting at uh a specific time, everybody knows what that time is, and you just your schedule where you're located would dictate, you know, sundown you go to bed, sunrise you wake up, you get hungry, you eat, right? It doesn't have to be that's how it used to be. Well, in the days of technology and and uh how fast we can do things and and the advances of technology, I almost want to go back to doing that, but um that's not what we're here to talk about. We're actually here to talk about something different. But before we jump into that conversation, uh, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, Alfredo?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yes, absolutely. Happy to tell you more about myself. So my name is Alfredo, as you can clearly see here, um, and I am the founder and principal trainer at uh D365 Training, which is a Microsoft Training Services partner that I started um a couple of years ago after spending a few um years in consulting. And so um I take care of the uh training programs for consultants of users. Uh we primarily work on essentially two channels. Uh one is the training for certifications, and the other is bespoke training and advisory. And I've been working in Dynamics for about 12, 13 years. But before that, I used to be a supply chain um consultant, and before that logistics and I started my career uh as a delivery driver. Um and that's how essentially I paid for my uh for my service. And I used to have a problem with that, you know, my my first few years in consulting, right? Putting on a suit and starting, you know, talking uh getting to a you know meeting room with uh CFOs and directors and other consultants hired, you know, more senior than me. And and I used to say, oh no, I should never really, you know, let people know that that I used to be a delivery driver uh and then a warehouse worker. But then um eventually, as I started working in operation and supply chain management, I realized that actually that gave me a unique insight. And so uh a few years ago I decided to play that card when I was having a meeting with a warehouse manager and said, You guys wearing these fancy shoes talking about technology, you got no idea what we do here day in and day out. I said, hold on, give them a mate and I put on my my class C driving license. Can you see that? You know, 12 years ago, before you you even started, you know, working in in the in these in these, you know, in this warehouse, I used to drive one of those. So in exact I know exactly what you're talking about. That, as you can imagine, has changed the the the tone of the conversation. And and since then, and said, you know what? Um I'm gonna keep my driver license. I don't drive in the lorries anymore. Um, but I still have my driver license. Not for fun. And so, yeah.

Christi’s Background And Communication Style

SPEAKER_01 5:21

I drive as little as possible, period. So I can relate to that. But it is that's an interesting story, and it is uh I think it is good when you have those conversations where you can relate to someone to it, gives you some common ground and a sense of understanding, so that it's easier to communicate if somebody uh I have found it. In my opinion, that it's easy to communicate with someone if you have a similarity or a similar background, uh, because it you can get that you you understand and um it they don't feel like you don't understand, I guess you could say you have that uh commonality. Uh interesting story. Uh suits. Speaking of suits, I haven't worn a suit. I think I wear a suit rarely at this point. When I first started consulting, I used to wear suits all the time, but now times have changed over here at least.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Even ties. You gotta wear ties, you know. They used to wear a tie every day.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Uh now I only do it at special occasions, you know, that um yeah, where it's customary. It's interesting how uh dress has changed. I know some areas of business still wear suits and ties, but it's no longer you know predominant. Um, Mr. Christie, sir. Uh, you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 6:28

First of all, this is probably in the last year, this is probably the third or fourth time I'm wearing a shirt. That's just for you, you know. I don't I don't usually wear those things, but I figured, hey, why not? So anyway, uh my name is Christi Nicola, and I mean I I've been doing business central since 1999, well, when it was covered in. Um, I mean, I guess as of right now, basically the way we the way we hear is um me keep keep keep talking about the subscription concept, fixed price, though mainly subscription on both in Power BI and Business Central, right? Um I don't think I have a I don't think I have a good story, um the opposite of Alfredo from that perspective. Um you know, I feel uh you see some origin from Romania, right? I mean I worked in UK for two years and then I worked in the US here. And I've always been, you know, it's always been a little bit of a difference, right? Because it's kind of I don't really belong in Europe anymore, but I'm also not 100% American, right? You know, so it's always been for me between that and being a computer programmer at origin, right? It's always been my mindset is just sort of straight to the point and you know, just sort of break things down and whatever, but obviously sometimes not sometimes, a lot of times the ability to relate obviously helps. So that's always been an interesting tension, right? Um, and actually lately with the it's funny because I mean I guess I am probably closer to American right now, given I've been here for a long time, but you know, I've I've had some interactions with companies up in Europe, and it's you know, I cannot believe, you know, I cannot believe the differences, right? Because I've I guess I've changed that much. There's a lot more a lot more, I don't know if it's rigid or structure, depending on how you want to look at it, right? But it's kind of a weird thing to find myself somewhere in the middle, right? Because I'm also not a hundred percent American. So but yeah, that's always been an interesting sort of you know part of how do you convey your message, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

It is interesting. Geographical differences are everywhere, and it's even within the United States, if you're in one portion of the country, sometimes you can say or do something that someone may think is improper, where in another region it is. But you you you mentioned that you're you're sort of in the middle, which makes me think of the question: when someone asks a person where they're from, what is the answer? Right. And where I'm going with this is you could be born in one place, but then live in another place for 20 years. And where do you say you're from? Right? Is it from the 20, the place that you live for 20 years, or is it from where you're born, or is it from where you feel is home? Like I I know myself, I I grew up in the Northeast, and I spent most of my life in one state, and then I before I moved down here, I transitioned to another state, but I call that state home, even though I spent most of my life in a different place.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

You you let the whole timeline, you talk about the whole timeline, because like in in in in the US, right, you have states, and some sometimes someone asks where you're from, you have to say what state you're from, and then you eventually like oh, I move here, here, here, and then end up here. This is my home now. But you you could sort of have to tell that. Because I think everybody has come from somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

But everyone does, but what do you call home? Right? Do you call home is it where you live most of your life, or is it where you feel it's when you have your driver's license at the state, and then you and then you say that's where my home is.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Look, it's I don't know what you're saying. I don't know what you're saying, but here's the one answer that you can never say that it's your home, okay? Lori died, you can never be with the straight face say that is your home, okay?

SPEAKER_03 9:48

That is true.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I will never I won't dispute you on that one. We may disagree on some things over the years that we've known each other, but that one I I uh I finally agree with you on that one.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

What they're what they're saying is that Florida, there's no nobody native there, is what they're saying. Yeah, everyone everyone got imported into Florida.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, most people transplants. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

I've I have tried to, I mean, I I normally and my answer is I mean, when I came to US, it was you know New York, and then I mean I did travel actually around the country, Houston, Montana, and then back into upstate New York and now back in New York City. So I do say New York, right? When people ask me where I'm from, but then they they usually always go, oh yeah, that's an amazing New York accent, you know. So it's like I mean then I have to cut that I have to clarify. I mean, I'm pissed off because I was two years in UK and I wish I actually got the British accent, you know, but what are you gonna do? But I mean, yeah, normally New York for me feels a lot more home than anything else, you know.

Subscription Support For Business Central

SPEAKER_01 10:51

So that's yeah, that's that's where I was wondering it says home. Yeah, Alfredo has the great accent. It's uh soothing. I listened to his uh his videos that he he shares and the snippets and stuff, and it's it's uh soothing, it's educational as well as soothing. Uh it's it's it's good for uh for learning. Um but uh the uh to get into the conversation, Chris, you spoke with us a few episodes ago. I'm not certain exact the time, but uh and it's a conversation that I've seen a lot of and heard a lot of and participated in with um where we are in the world, and it's you know time and material, you know, the billow all hour versus the subscription type model or the paying for the service type model. So if you could, could you just bring us back to your take on uh implementations in the model for billing?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Okay, so I mean basically the model for us would be subscription model, is probably the main one. Um and essentially the idea is, I mean, I guess, you know, I figured originally, though, that probably shouldn't, you know, it's not the only thing about it. Uh it's sort of unlimited development. I mean, essentially, um limited development both for business central and for Power BI. But obviously, ultimately, not anything can be unlimited totally. So the rule that we have is basically one project at a time. So, you know, you can put as many as you want in the queue, but we only work on one at a time, you know. Um, I mean, other people that offering subscription model, not necessarily I mean, I don't know anybody else offering Ren RPC, but I've modeled myself when I've asked questions when I thought about this from CRM, from Powered Platform. Each of them has a little bit of a different way of just kind of how they sort of put a limitation to it, right? So for us, it's kind of a model of you for hiring, and you know, if you had a team for yourself, you would kind of be working on one thing, and if something becomes a priority, then essentially you sort of you know, you switch them to that, then you put the other thing on pause, and then you go back to it and every you know, things like that. And then let's say if there's multiple projects, theoretically you can add multiple. Well, one subscription we think of it as a pipeline. So, I mean, you can add multiple pipelines if you truly had that much development, right? I mean, I got on I don't know that unless you're a partner, which is obviously the subscription model could work for a partner as well as for a customer. You know, if you're a partner, you probably could need more than one. Um, and then also, I mean, I try to, but it's a mouthful to try to put this in marketing, but it's not about hey, you get a fractional developer, right? I mean, if if you want to use the word fractional, you get a fraction of a team, right? You know, essentially you get, you know, PM, consultant, system architect, developer, everything that we everything that we have in our company, right? Um, essentially would be sort of applicable. I mean, I'm going with the idea of at some point, even like it's an artificial division between the development and power BI, and maybe to certain extent consulting as well, right? Arguably you could offer one that is just whatever you need for your business central system right now, right? Um, I think usually the challenge there would be that you you know, we you could easily get stuck on doing Power BI for a long time. So I think the whole one task at a time could become limiting in terms of what you can do. So that's pretty much what we do. I mean, there is also the fixed price um, you know, option, but it's all that's a little bit more obvious, you know, from other people. Um, but I mean I think ultimately the idea is here is people would go for this whether you know for two things, whether because they have a lot of stuff and they just need predictability uh in terms of you know ease of budgeting, you know how much it's gonna cost. Um, and I mean over time the benefits of being building a relationship with someone like us is just it compounds, right? I mean, you know, you we get to learn about your system, and I mean our you know incentive is to sort of keep delivering value. And actually, equally important, I when I was talking to you know the person that I probably impressed me the most that he was doing on the CRM, it's almost easier job to obviously self-interest to find more stuff for them to give it to them, right? But that means you know, essentially, if you're not worried about billing, you can go and once you learn a company, you can make suggestions and say, have you ever considered this? Have you considered this? Or by the way, you could improve this process if you wanted, and here's how it would look. Imagine, you know, normally if you try to do this for anybody, you know, normally you'd have to ask them to bill for it, but you know, you can it sort of provides you a big, you know, a more collaborative way with them.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Interesting. Uh Alfredo, you have a a take on that as well, if you mind uh sharing that with it.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So um my take is um mainly um coming from um what I'm doing now, uh uh as I moved away from solution architecture and consulting, and I started doing more training and eventually advisory. I see that both models can work really well, but they typically work well and they address two different um, let's say, um scenarios, particularly they aligned to a different strategy. And so uh let me tell you what happens um with with us with D3S5 training. We have fixed price for training for certifications, um, and that goes without um it's quite obvious, right? Because it's pretty much a package service, and we need to comply with the Microsoft um curriculum because we help um consultants and users learn to pass the exam, essentially. Uh we also have a fixed prize or um what we call corporate training, right? You need to train 50 users and shop law team manufacturing and handhelds, right? And it's pretty much like outcome-based. And if it's outcome-based, it means at the end of our training sessions, uh your users' proficiency and ability to use the applications will go from 20% to 20%, and we measure the before and after. And that is absolutely a perfect surprise because time and material doesn't really work, right? But it's outcome-based more than related to the um the product itself. So I may have a gigantic markup on that, right? But that doesn't matter. So it's outcome-based. Once that and the outcome-based and the fixed price, it's a very good way to eliminate or remove resistance when you talk into a new counselor, a new prospect. Because as Kristen correctly said, it's uh well, that's aligned to my budget, right? I am shopping for um this product or service. My manager gave me a budget to spend, and of course, my manager expects a sort of an improvement. In our case, is again a proficiency or ability to pass the exam and obtain the certification measurable and specific. And that is a good way to get through um your clients um and acquire new clients. What happens afterwards if we provide when we provide more value in terms of value perceived by the client, and we do that because we always we we never go through the official uh Microsoft training um platform, we always enhance it. So all my collaborators are Microsoft certified trainers and consultants with at least 10 years of experience. Um the the trainer who takes care of finance and operations and manufacturing, she's uh she works um with dynamics and also SAP. So she knows manufacturing inside out. And so once we get that additional value, so you know what? You went the extra mile. You overpromised and over-delivered, right? Just to use, you know, just to change a phrase, which is a very common one in business, and then you start with advisory. And advisory, in my opinion, is now we move away from outcome-based and fixed price. And it can be a retainer, but it's definitely time and material. And the benefit of working on time and material is that the clients ask me for time and material. And I'll give you an example. If I want to go through a personal training um program, let's say, right? I can buy an app and I can subscribe to an app, and the apple will tell me, well, tomorrow is chess day, and next day is leg days, and this is how much how many records you need to do, right? Fixed price, fixed outcome, I know what to expect. But the perception about the value that I get from that app will never be the same as me working with a personal trainer. And I know that a personal trainer is not going to be about um outcome pays. I cannot really tell a personal trainer, I will I will pay you five thousand pounds and I want you to increase my strength, my bench press by 20%. Right? I know it doesn't work like that. I don't really want that. I want a personal trainer to have a personal relationship with me because eventually, throughout the weeks and the months, my needs will change, my habits will change, something might happen to me that means that I can't not do the squats anymore. And we still need to find a way to train my legs without doing squats. And I move back to a business example because businesses change and they won't have passed. And so when I speak to um a CFO who is about to embark into a series of acquisitions, emergers and acquisitions, and they have finance and operations, but he knows that how using business central for the subsidiaries will save him licenses using this hub as a poker model. Then we know that we have the setup and configuration and integration on the fixer price and the strategy on how to drive change management for the uh individual subsidiaries is going to be time and materials because I cannot package that as a server. And so having the two models going working together to address different needs and and it's different strategies to serve our clients, in my opinion, is uh the best uh is the best approach. And I don't believe that we have a uh any you know conflict or disagreement, Kristen, because it it's really about not one model is the one way forward and the other mother is model is obsolete and we need to get rid of it, right? Is what whichever works um for the organization and that's my take and that's my experience.

What Hourly Rates Incentivize

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Okay. Um I mean, one thing I want to say about the outcome, I mean, theoretically the subscription model is kind of on the way to outcome based. I mean, essentially that's really what you know it. It's ideal to reach. The problem is, I mean, maybe in training and maybe in narrow things, you can decl you. The problem is defining the outcome and attributing contribution, right? You know, arguably the best way you could sell something to someone, and I mean that works like let's say when you bring a machine into a manufacturing shop, right? If we bring this thing, it's gonna speed up production, and therefore this is the obvious ROI, right? It's easy, this is what I put in, this is what improved, right? When it comes to software, when it comes to at least our ERP world, it's all be fuzzy, right? So I mean if there was a way to actually be able to measure that and attribute it, then act honestly, that's really how you how one would want to actually price it, because then it's easy, you know. Um if you can do something that at the end of the day, you know, saves you a million dollars, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask$400,000 for that, right? You know, but I mean that's kind of the challenge there, right? Um, so I mean I think from that perspective, yeah. I mean, I I don't necessarily think we're different, it's just like it's just subscription is the best you could do as of right now, right? And I mean, yeah, I'm not I'm not necessarily against our I mean, no, actually, I am against hourly rate, but I mean like obviously if someone wants to do it, I found myself there are specific scenarios in which that works. I mean, interesting enough, last year when I was doing the marketing for my hourly rate is the.com, you know, I actually found myself arguing with website designers to actually work by the hour. But the reason I did that is because um, because I think that is the difference, usually you know, package stuff or other subscriptions, something like that, they try to narrow lock down a lot more what you get for it. So, like every website designer and every sort of person that I talked to, they were like, Well, don't worry about it, this is the fixed price, you get the website, four pages, this many edits, or whatever. And I'm like, Look, first of all, you know, I know what you gotta ask me. You gotta ask me in the beginning, because that's kind of the other problem, right? You know, they were like, You you gotta give me everything or that's gonna be on those pages, and you sort of tell me which layout, or I'm gonna share some, and you pick one, and then that's it. And I'm like, Well, I don't really have the time to put all four, and actually I work a lot better if I see it. So, how about we we get a schema and then you know I'll tell you what to fill in each of them? And I mean, I ended up basically sort of you know burning through about five or six of them. I ended up in paid disputes on upward.com with a whole bunch of them. My own principle, everything was like$300. So I mean it just it was the principle of the matter rather than anything else. But I mean, I think that's kind of the I think that's the other, you know, that's yes, if you want something completely specific where I was like, you just sit here and you listen to me, and there's no way we can ever limit it. But even in that case, you know, exactly. I mean, if someone was saying, okay, you're gonna get this much from me every month, that would be okay. Um, I mean, I think my problem with the way I got to hourly rate is dead, and the reason I do actually hate hourly is because I mean the way I got here is let's let's start with the simplest thing. Who decides what the hourly rate is? Right? Like, there's an hourly rate, fine. And there's a number, right? I mean, like um I forget to my surprise that I heard some people having some interesting rates in Denmark, so I don't really know Euro, but US, it can be anywhere between apparently right now, between 100 and 300, right? So who decides what the rowly rate is, right? Like how do you pick an hourly rate, for instance?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

I can give you an answer, and then that's a very good uh way to look at the hourly rate. First of all, um howly rates are common in um if you work with large partners, and that's it's essentially a cost management tool. Uh an organization that employs uh 50 uh consultants must work on a howly rate because they need to look at the chargeability so how many hours this consultant can work on something I can charge too much to my client as opposed to the total total number of hours that he or she uh works for my organization. And therefore it's essentially payroll as a cost of service, a cost of sales, uh as opposed to uh what I bill. And uh that there comes the time sheets and everything. It's an essential measurement uh for for the partners to see if uh the delivery uh is profitable in in a way, it's like managing your coastal sales when you sell merchandise. That comes, that's why we have the timesheets, right? And that's why it it's also an industrial standard. Um that though creates a limitation because what does the howli rates how it rates insertivi incentivize uh overpailing and inefficiency? And this is what clients are are getting and they're getting used to. They they get invoices and say, Well, why did a consultant say you charge me with four four hours of a consultant to change to review a bat statement? Well, I can ask Chat GPT to review my bank statement, and I can actually get someone like a junior in my team to get it in half an hour. Clients have already started challenging these habits, and it's a good thing. So but that doesn't mean that we need to completely abandon the time and material because then it could put for example I I don't charge my clients by the hour because uh when when I go um when I work on a project base, I have a certain number of days. So my day is that that that at that rate. But it you as a client are not going to question whether to spend three hours or an entire day. Right? But you know that in that day I'm going to solve that amount of problems for you. And if you work on outcome base, the number of days that I promise you I will complete that kind of job, right, is this. And so hourly rates are absolutely an issue, but it's also essential for an organization to track whether your consultants are actually, you know, working on it. For a small company, it's easier. Right? If you are a team of four or five like freelancers who work together, then it's okay. You spend five hours with something, and um next five hours you do something else. Maybe you work on the website, right? But if I have a team of 200 people, if I am Accenture, if I have your McKinsey, our rates are essential because before I know, right, uh the cost of delivery is out of hand, and for a small company, a team of 20 or 30 consultants, that measurement is essential. So that means that your entire operating model as a consulting firm must change before you can move away from our rates. Otherwise, you might run in blind and saying, I are we're really making money here or not.

Hybrid Models From Big Partners

SPEAKER_03 28:59

Yeah, that's uh that is an interesting. I I think I think a lot of this is forced uh is is is forced by AI services or AI tools. And I see a lot of the you know, small partners, medium, large partners that will have to eventually uh not necessarily change the entire operating to just be time and material, but they have to kind of ref have a uh uh reflect upon themselves like, okay, what are the areas that we do can be product to size or subscription or you know, fixed price. Because for, for example, if you're a small partner, for you to grow, and if you do it in a time and material, you grow by adding more people. Well, as we all know, hiring is tough. Uh and then they have to then be billable, like you had mentioned, Alfredo. It's it's it's um it's utilization of the hours that they spent. And and as we all know, a lot of the new clients moving into Business Central or in the Dynamics 365 ERP system, they are a bit smarter uh than ever before because of AI. So they're coming in prepared, and they're coming prepared in a sense where this is the outcome that I want. And so you're forced to like, okay, I can't really uh time and material some of those. I've seen those, right? You've been doing this for a long time. Yes, I've done that five times. I know what it takes. And so it becomes that, hey, I'm gonna find some average here of the typical time it takes, and I'm gonna go ahead and this is the price for that rather than nitpick of the hours. And and and I and I wrote this about a week ago, and I think Christian, you you had uh commented on it, is that if you have a time of material work of 10 hours, and because you're so efficient, you're so good, and you've done it before, and you did it in two hours, you're kind of shooting yourself on the foot of, you know, um sort of a pay cut of that time of material when you say, hey, it's gonna uh X amount of dollars. Whether you do it one hour or six hours, it doesn't really matter because the outcome uh you have the expected outcome. So it's a balance, but not every single one. So you may have to do like a hybrid as as you try to, as a partner, you gotta survive. How do you survive? Well, you might have to do a hybrid approach, whether you do a subscription or fixed price in some areas and so forth. But let me back.

Pricing From The Customer’s View

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Hybrid models are becoming more and more prevalent, particularly with large partners. And I get this data from Gartner, but also from uh a guy who's doing um who does independent ERP advisory, Eric Kimberlyn, I believe. He's and he leads a company called the Third Stage Consulting. And they are a technology, vendor agnostic ERP advisors. And they often work with large partners, they don't work with small companies, they don't do dynamics, app, um, oracle, and they often work with Accenture, the kind of you know, large companies. And I happened to work with one of these large companies for a couple of years uh before because they tried um they started a business center practice, and I helped them on in the early days, and then they decided that that model wasn't working for them. And I got the unique insight about how company large companies like um Accenture, for example, already uh works on um hybrid models. They have this models, so part of the implementation is time and materials, and typically is the the strategy, the pre-sales, right? Uh success by design, Microsoft successful design called it the strategy part, right? When we strategize and because there is so many, uh there are so many things that are unknown is the time of materials, then it comes the the part when we define the statement of work and that is of heaven fixed price, or I mean quoted based on the number of hours, right? But still the number of hours still matters. Now, in some cases, companies like uh Avanart, and I'm not saying anything you know confidential because it's part of their methodology that comes from uh, you know, Avonart was a larger part, right? Part Accenture, part Microsoft owned by them, right? They have two separate methodologies. So two different strategies to address two different types of challenges. One is called product base, and the other is um client-based. So a product base is for companies that have an outcome-based need, which is urgent, and they have a fixed budget. And so, for example, um, we're going through an acquisition. Uh, we need to comply with US GAAP uh because a US company is buying our assets and we work in a highly regulated environment with asset management, financials, legals. What's the urgency? If we don't get a new system, we'll break compliance. If we break compliance, our stock shares and stakeholders, and then we are in trouble. That means and we have a limited budget. Companies are like that and say, you know what, I'll give you a fixed price for the entire implementation, but you need to follow everything we tell you, and these are the features that you will get, and if your team uses different processes, you will be responsible for the change of management and adapted changes of our software because our software complies with your standards. So legally, you'll be fine. These are the fast track, fixed price, fixed budget implementation, and it works all the time. The second is customer century, uh company first, it's a completely uh basic poke advisory. It's more agile than waterfall. It's always a time and materials because the pro the and the end result is unpredictable by definition. Right? And and so they might have some fixed prices for their licenses. For example, if you have an IP in on intellectual property, Power BI, right? So we understand that you have business central and general manager in scope, and you have 20 legal entities, and you want a consolidated trial balance in Power BI. We got that. It's our IP, right? It's 10,000 pounds and 500 a month to maintain it. Right? But the rest is pretty much time and materials, right? So big companies like that already do that and they see that as as a as a benefit. Like business central partners that are operating globally, and we know where there are few of them, probably you know, five or ten, no many. They started to adopt this hybrid model very successfully. But you know the problem is that we live in a small medium enterprise world and where things change all the time, right? And sometimes we we speak with a founder of a small company, and you know what? I know exactly what I mean. We but we all know the challenges of dealing with a business transformation you know effort with the founder of the company because the budget is the money that he or she set aside, you know, after spending 20 years of working with the organization. Um that's that's the embedded the element of you know working you know with the small and medium enterprises. Uh but um sorry for this you know long um you know uh say uh uh spending too much time here. I want just wanted to confirm that the hybrid model is absolutely the future and it's been already uh used by large partners very successfully. We just need to adapt it and bring it to the small and medium enterprise world.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Where do I start? Well, see, I think the difference is that all the examples you said, Alfredo, they're not really, in my opinion, they're not still not the spirit of what I'm talking about with the fixed price and you know subscription. So first of all, even fixed price, like if we do fixed price implementations and I'm about to start one next week, and I've already done one like this, you know, we go to the client and say, This is the budget, and we think we can do it this many months. In this case, there's a budget, there's five months that we committed that we're gonna go them live in that. If we take if we go live in three months, basically they still pass for the other two months. If we go live after the five months, then we keep working for free until then. And mainly because I hate time sheets, maybe that's just me, right? But essentially, we did a discovery for a week. We because I know the industry to a certain extent, uh, essentially we did the discovery on the you know, well, for a week talking to the team. But I mean everything was just him going like, oh yeah, we have a warehouse down in Washington, and basically we need to support that. Oh yeah, we have this. Granted, I know a lot of the stuff that they do in the industry, right? That's the spec, okay? And I didn't spend money, I didn't spend any money on that, I didn't do any of that kind of stuff. There's a difference between, of course, yeah, sure, you know, like I mean, essentially you can sort of you know do all the little, you know, what is the uh the small print in terms of doing, right? But I mean, I think what it's an interesting thing in everything the the substrate here, it's interesting how everything is from the per from the perspective of the partner, but it's not from the perspective of the customer. Because I mean there was a reason I asked about who decides the early rate, right? I mean, here's the thing it's an SMB company. Most of the time, a team of one, two or three people will be able to do an implementation. So, you know, a partner that charges$300 uh dollars an hour or someone that charges$100 an hour, a lot of times could be delivering the same value, right? Yes, you're right about the fact that the partner has a reason to charge the 300 because they have a lot more overhead, right? And then also, frankly, they charge that because they invest a lot more on the marketing. I mean, it's there's a difference between uh what is the store brand, I think whatever, you know what is it? Uh generic versus yeah, Ibuprofile versus Advil and all that kind of stuff, right? So, I mean, we know the we know the economics of how you sort of maybe go to that, uh, but then essentially at the end of the day, that doesn't take into consideration what is good for the customer, in my opinion, right? Like for the customer, that that shouldn't really matter. And I mean, to a certain extent it does, right? I don't think anybody's ever gone and said, hey man, I gotta charge you, you know, a thousand dollars an hour because I gotta pay my people, right? I mean, if you know, as ultimately there is a message. Um, the stuff that I've been taught, and I mean, part of the reason why I am I feel like in I need to be strident about the whole thing with uh, you know, and Stephen the name of the website is that when I've gone to marketing people, and you know, part of this thing is you get a guarantee in terms of like kind of how much you're gonna get billed, what you get in terms of services depending if you go with a fixed price. A lot of marketing people, like companies over 10 million dollars, don't make a decision based on basic cost-benefit analysis and everything else, they make a decision based on uh essentially you know what is the lowest risk. If they if it goes wrong, the project. Well, no, but the lower risk C, when you say that people think okay, that means low risk means whoever can do the best work. No, I mean a lot of times is lowest risk means if it goes wrong, can I explain to my bosses without losing my job? And I mean, the problem is the perception seems to be, I mean, I don't I don't like the answer because basically that just means there's no space for people like us here, right? You know, if I don't want to be a company of whatever how many, you know, Western, Velacio, ArcherPoint have, right? Then that means theoretically there's no space for me. I know there is a space for me because I've been around for 20 years. But I mean, like that's kind of the idea, right? Um, at the end of the day, if you make a decision based on that, then you know what, maybe I don't want you as a customer because I, you know, then you're paying for that's the other thing. You're not paying for an insurance, because that would be the other thing. Like if you pay for an insurance, hey, if he goes over whatever something, that's another thing. But you're just paying for the perception of being able to make that decision, either that or just simply whatever, you know, you buy the salesperson and anything else. So to me, it's more of change. I am looking at I am starting and I am looking very hard from what is really good for the customer, right? You know, what are I mean, if you look on LinkedIn, what are the most what are the most common complaints the customers have? You know, project didn't succeed or it wasn't what they expected, they got overbuilt for it, you know, things like that, or you know, basically they didn't get what they expected. I mean, those are I mean, this is not me saying this, this is exactly what you know, and every thought leader on LinkedIn tells you how you can avoid those things, right? And I mean, fair enough. You can argue about how you get to them, but that's kind of the idea, you know. The point of how you you um how I got to this is both the fact that I find that I know I'm you know I'm just as good and sometimes better than a lot of the people that are out there from the bigger partners. So therefore, sure, yeah, if you're a big company that needs a hundred people, there's a value in that, and not everybody can deploy that. And in that case, you can argue for you need to support the cost of you know my staff. But I mean, like for the SB world, it's just what can you deliver, right? Um, and in that case, hourly rate is not a good measure by any stretch of the imagination because it doesn't say anything, it's an arbitrary number based on how much you can build, right? Um, I mean, you know, Christopher, you know, going back to the AI, I think that kind of puts it in more focus now because that is that point too. Yes. I mean, like, you know, we all probably silently or not so silently working on you know the whole agents for the development and everything, then all of a sudden, you know, the mods are two hours instead of 20 hours, right? You know, something like that, right? So, yeah, it is a question. I mean, I'm not really sure what the right answer on that one is, but you know, the reality is that ultimately someone that's hungry will build two hours for that 20 hours, right? So therefore, you know, my opinion is you might as well, or otherwise you change the pre, you know, you change the sort of concept the other way around. You know, you basically what am I delivering the way I'm delivering it? And I mean, you know, you stop talking about the cost of it, right? Essentially, because I don't know, you know, there's a lot of other variables around that stuff. So, I mean, I think I think that's kind of why the subscription here it's more of just generally what will the customer sort of you know buy, you know, pay for. And here's the thing the AI also will be they can do a lot of the stuff themselves, right? I mean, if If anything, I mean I've been reading debates on the legal, you know, industry where basically you have like this big company called Harvey AI that is kind of like apparently kind of taking over the low-level work, right? You know, the you may I mean to the you know, I'll further to your point of like uh um what's the word hybrid stuff, right? I mean, I think it's gonna become to either you self-service to AI or someone that can kind of surface the AI for you, but I still believe it would be subscription. And then what will be left is you know, think about it, if you're a litigation lawyer that has to go to court, that's probably not possible to do that, which is maybe Alfredo, you're talking about the strategy part at the beginning. I I actually see those lawyers that maybe charge now five to a thousand dollars an hour, they probably will end up charging five thousand dollars an hour, mainly because they you will only need them a fifth of the time they used to, right? You know, so like I think that's kind of the idea. The hourly rate is gonna become maybe the outlier, you know, in a lot of things, and then everything else is gonna have to be how fast can you deliver it there, you know? And I mean, I think you know, on the eye side, but that's another conversation. Who can find the cheapest token cost to get there, also, you know, because that seems to be a thing, you know, sort of ignored in those conversations.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

I think that's very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Sorry, go ahead. You want to interrupt yeah, you you know, you made it, you you called out something that's very um uh, I think it's very important um as a partner, as I think all of us are in the the partner side of things, right? Is that when you are building your hybrid model, right? Whether fixed price or subscription, you also have to consider who fits in that. And and Christian, you had said, maybe you're not my customer, and that's okay, right? That is okay. If they're not a fit for you because you can't, you don't have the capacity, or you it's just not um maybe it's a higher risk client, you don't take that on. You take on the ones that are maybe that fits your model. In this case, many SMBs do, because a lot of times they come in, I have a budget. Here's what I can spend. And so it's much easier. Now, if you do a time of material, it it it kind of um scares a lot of them off because it's like, okay, it's gonna be up and down, is it gonna be more? Is it gonna be less? I mean, that's a risk that they have to take. But if they have a budget, like uh I I think another common thing that um that you guys may get asked, I I certainly get asked from time to time, is that what happens after go live, right? Someone's gonna help me maintain. So you may have some sort of subscription in that case to like, hey, I can help you maintain, you get whatever, um, uh moving forward. Because that's also a common thing, right? Once they go live, a big partner may have taken them live, and it's like, I haven't heard from them. Uh, because yeah, you're not a project base anymore, you're not time and material, you know. Uh uh, you're just reaching out from time to time. So things to consider, and I think you made a a big call out there, Christian, is that it's okay if they're not the right the right client for you.

AI Efficiency And The Value Question

SPEAKER_00 47:03

But it's a positioning, right? It's a strategy. So um we uh I I think we we correctly identify a key driver of the right um or what drives the right billing cycle, which is essentially a strategic decision to acquire new customers, right? Um is the client a ri a good fit for me? Um clients that expect a packaged service, right, and they um and they are risk adverse and therefore they want that uh particular uh you know job to be completed in a certain time and under certain budget might actually not be the right uh you know clients for you uh depending on how you deliver. And a small and medium enterprise that goes through frequent changes might actually be a pain right to service on a fixed price because you start with something and then scope creep happens all the time. Someone you know the the CFO changes, and then we have a new warehouse manager who wants to um change the way the warehouse works, but they expect everything to be done in a certain way. Your cost to deliver um will eventually have an impact. If you deliver it, if you are a freelancer or a small team, you know, and and are being there. What's the common tendency? Well, I'll do it for you. And my project managers, well, fellow, we don't really have the budget for that. Okay, I'll spend an extra two hours and I will not put you know uh a timesheet through because I just want to please my customer. And and that happens in our world all the time. And if you measure over a year, you will find out most small partners with less than 20 or 30 consultants end up uh working more but they don't actually you know charge the clients because, well, actually, we don't have a budget for that. Can you please do it this time? And I was going through an analysis when I started when I worked for the last partner before I ended up working full-time for the 365 training. And I made an estimate that the team of 35 consultants averaged a 20% um essentially burnout, so overwork. So 20% constantly every 10 hours, two hours with free of charge. And that's because project manager, we don't want a budget and because we want to please the customer, right? And so fixed price can work for the customers, and then what drives the hourly rate if you really want on want to work an hour late, right? Your ability to deliver value for money, which is absolutely we will get uh to a point where a consultant can charge two thousand dollars per hour because we can deliver what uh ten years would take, three years ago would take a week in half an hour. And so, like lawyers divorced lawyers of celebrities, right? Or Hollywood personal trainers and why do they uh why are they so expensive? Because they brand their position, their expertise, their social proof, right, hotel they can deliver, right? If that personal training can get that actor to be fit for the next um you know superhero movie, right, chances are if I work with him, I will always you know also get in shape. Of course, we don't know that it's not true, but it's a perception. So how do you rate is cost of sales, cost of deliver, but also your branding. And so it's about your marketing, your sales, and as Kristen said, your ability to convey that message at lower risk. If something goes wrong, we have enough you know to support you, which will not bankrupt us. Right? And so think about that legal um uh SAP failed implementation. Was it last year, a couple of years ago? Um, if you search about legal failed SAP implementation, a little I I I believe it was the US branch that went through a SAP implementation and they end up spending I don't know fifty million dollars on development before the CEO said we're going nowhere to stop working, right? And so what happens on that stage? Would you just fire us? Right? We don't work anymore. So hold on a moment, if you just make me spend fifty million on something that we're going nowhere, I'll take you to court. And so risk risk is uh is an element. So as a CEO who needs to spend a hundred million uh dollars on a SAP or Oracle dynamics implementation, maybe dynamics is not gonna get there eventually. But again, let's say SAP implementation. I want a partner who's got experience, improving experience uh in in uh multimillion dollar implementation. So a likelihood to succeed, but also want a partner who if they fail, I can go to my board of directors and say, Well, there was a chance that we failed, they failed. What's the contingency? We're taking them to court. How much money we could we we can make by um if we win this lawsuit enough to recall that it's a big company and they have cash in the bank. And that also what drives the order how they rate, because that reduces the risk of failure, right? And so, but that is brand and his position is not about our ability to deliver because what's the difference between a saber consultant who works for, I don't know, McKinsey and a manufacturing manager who works for Business Central with 20 years of experience in the shop floor and technical skills. I mean manufacturing is manufacturing, right? The the the the rate the day the rate cannot be that different, right? Manufacturing consultant making 80k a year and then a manufacturing consultant for McKinsey cannot make 800k a year, right? Isn't thinking so it's our ability eventually, a skills plateau right, gets to a point where everything around us, our company, our the brand, the marketing, right, the history, the brand, right? The logo, some company spent you know hundreds of thousands of pounds for a logo, and whether we like it or not, and I'm a supply chain guy, I don't understand marketing. I don't understand how a company can spend half a million dollars on a logo and all of a sudden their shares go up. To me, it's it's a sign that the world is going mad. But apparently that works, and so we need to accept that that's how it works. It's a luxury, people willing to pay luxury exactly for that.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

So luxury, yeah. And then just to go back to the SB discussion, um, you know, versus the enterprise, you know, I I had to look it look this up. Just you know, just on the US alone, it it says that 99.9% of businesses are all SBs where they have employees that is less than 500. So talking about where does your fixed price subscription uh model fits, Christian. I mean, that's practically everybody, right? So um you think about that. It's like it's it's really rare that you can have someone that's a thousand people using, and that's maybe that's when you have larger projects where you maybe consider the uh time and material because there's a lot of variables at that point.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

But I think I mean one thing that I want to say, I mean, I think you guys misunderstood when I said that's not a customer that fits me. I don't, well, I mean, I tried. I don't I cannot compete with someone that wants to buy IBM, you know, like there was Latin America at the beginning when they're trying to, I met some people that are trying to sell business central was saying the hardest big problem was nobody knew who business central was at the beginning, right? And they're like we have this philosophy of nobody got fired for half you know for hiring IBM, right? You know, and IBM was making ERP at the time in Latin America for it. So to me, I think the idea is I'm not gonna, I'm not willing, I don't have the money, nor the interest of spending the money that everybody else spends on marketing. I mean, like, think about it Burke bag, a regular bag they buy from Target, they both carry the same thing, right? You can have the Lamborghini, whatever, it's the same thing, right? It might be less practical if you want to go to the market. So to me, that's kind of the idea. You know, I want to find the customers that want to get stuff done. And I think that's gonna become a bigger and bigger, you know, sort of pro, you know, sort of uh uh part of the market, right? You know, reality is if we were contractors, we you know, we all of us would actually be millionaires if we could do the same budgets. Why? Because if it's your own house, you care about you know who who comes and does the work and it is your own money. I think the reality is the incentive that you know in a lot of companies are more political, it's not your own money, and you worry about more what happens for your position than whether this is the right person and the right service and everything else. But I mean, I think I think one of the you know, I and I put this in some comments on LinkedIn, you know, some of the things that we posted. I think one of the frustrating things to me to see, at least maybe maybe maybe you guys are just not as vocal as I am in my head, but considering the size of SMB companies of 10 up to 50 million, and we see a couple of people, why isn't everybody looking at AI and saying, you know, instead of wondering because I can do something in 20 hours in two hours, and everything, you know, all these other things that can be done, quote unquote AI, which I'm still not 100% convinced of it. Why isn't everybody thinking that okay, now I can compete with Archer Point and Velassi and everybody else, right? I mean, yes, you know, Vela, then at that point, if they can field enough teams of the same quality as you by yourself, or you and a couple of other people that you know, sure they can do more projects, but then it's a very linear situation, right? Right now, customers are starting projects by going to Microsoft and being funneled to whoever buys the most licenses, right? But I mean, I think take it as much as this is my opinion, as much as I feel trying to change the playing field, right? At the end of the day, if customers were looking at getting stuff done rather than hey, Microsoft recommended, hey, I saw them everywhere, so they must be good. Hey, I saw them on the Golf channel, they must be good. Salesforce, right? You know, at the end of the day, I mean, like basically then that's a different story. If they were going for actual results, call it whatever you want, doesn't have to be subscription, that's a fixed price with the outcome base, whatever you want to call it. You know, I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, I mean, I I I see this in on the Silicon Valley stuff, like you know, on the West Coast, you follow the blogs, and there's companies that have you know 10-20 million ARR, right? And essentially they are like three, four people, right? You know, so the question is, you know, why not look at this and say, hey, you know, we can do the same thing. I mean, we don't need you don't necessarily need the same level of marketing, the same level of everything else. You don't need all that support to deliver this stuff, right? The problem, the biggest problem to me right now is the inertia legacy or old-fashionedness of our world in terms of hey, you know, wherever we know and whatever we we heard most, it's the it's the lesser risk, right? But I mean, I feel even for those companies, ultimately, this is what they're talking about. Like, if you're adapting, and it doesn't have to be AI, to me, if you adapt to anything that uh, you know, companies not an ERP definitely wouldn't compete with a company with ERP today, right? So, you know, even the customers need to feel the pressure of you need to be as efficient as you can be, right?

SPEAKER_03 58:41

So to me, that's the idea, you know. Yes, incentivize efficiency because you right now, if because of AI, you're you're you're penalizing everyone else, or even yourself, because you're so efficient with your job. So why are you being penalized? Oh, you gotta sell the hours, you know. That that's that's the uh uh the old school mentality, right? And the consulting space is that uh that time. That how much time you spend is what you're being graded upon. It should be efficiency.

SPEAKER_01 59:10

There's a lot more to that whole discussion. I kind of just uh wanted to hear everybody's thoughts on the the the the what you call subscription fixed price versus hourly. I I do think there's a mix, but the efficiency point of view, I I think it all comes back down to the value. There's value to somebody for something. And uh I I go back and forth on my thoughts on this. Alfredo, it's what you're talking about. And Christy, you had mentioned that you can charge$5,000 per hour for an a lawyer because of the credibility, or for the trainer because of the branding. That's great. But I mean, that that is great, and that's it may be possible in some cases, right? I'm not going to discount that. But everything has a value. And what is the value of something to whomever's consuming it? Right? I and it's it's not even and value sometimes is individualistic. It is worth this to me for this, whatever that may be. So there is there is a space for the time and and materials type thing, because there are some things that you really can't quantify because they're uh again, personal training, for example, my take on this. You can't say that it's only going to take an hour for me to get you to look like a star for the show. Therefore, it may have additional time. But there's other things where uh I want a deck built for my house. Christy, we spoke about this last time. That deck's worth$2,000 to me. I don't want it to be$17,000 because then I wouldn't have it because it's not worth it to me. Now, Chris, you're talking about the efficiency. Uh when they first invented the computer, the personal computer, they were really expensive. Right? And I even remember RAM. I bought a four meg of RAM chip for$200 or some nonsense early on. Now you can buy$256 gig for$4, right? Not necessarily today. So just because you charge something for a certain point, because we became more efficient in delivering it, doesn't mean it has and holds the same value, right? So it's if you want to say that AI is going to quantify and the cost should still stay the same, goes with what Alfredo is saying. Like there's so many mixes to what everybody's saying. It's you have the cost of delivery, your cost of delivery goes down, right? Theoretically. Now you have individuals that you have to pay and stuff, but if you have that efficiency, your cost of delivery goes down. So what do you do with that efficiency? Do you charge as if the cost of delivery was still high? Or do you do you adjust it for that delivery? Or do you just go back with here's the value to a person for this? If we get it done in one day, we get it done in one day. If we get it done in five days, we get it in five days. It's not the time that's the important thing, it's the deliverable that's the important thing. So I think there's a lot of things that need to be looked at. And I think everyone has different viewpoints and opinions on this, but I think we're in that transition period because everyone's talking about this from the TNM and consulting point of view, because AI has really increased the efficiency, not just in development, in documentation, in research, in um creating guides, creating SOWs. I can name the number of different things where I've seen AI far outside of development, right? Even personal training. I've seen people come up with personal training plans using AI. And I'm not saying they're all perfect, but again, I can go to personal trainer A and personal trainer B, and they won't give me the same training plan. And one of them may be better than the other. So it's not a matter of AI is going to always be perfect. You know, a lot of people try to say, oh, A is wrong. But every single one of us here has done something incorrectly as well. So uh I just yeah. Sorry, but no, no, I'm done.

A Marketplace For Bidding ERP Work

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

You I just like an epiphany on what you said. See, I the lot of you know, a lot of you I just realized something. So you say that you know that this the AI and the efficiency and everything else is a value to everything. See, here's an interesting thing. I feel that in our world, there really isn't a bidding process. The problem is the customer doesn't know what are the possible ways that a cost of something would be. Because normally, if you do an implementation, you sign up with someone and you just go with them and you figure out from there, right? A lot of customers don't buy, don't do the bidding process mainly because either the license play or they they're not educated enough to really get three, four quotes from someone, right? I think the world would be different if you, you know, you know what it's worth, but then do you know how much it's gonna cost? Even when people go and hire from recruiters from recruiters, I thought that's kind of a weakness in the way they do it. Do you go and find a person? Sure, you look at the qualifications, maybe you make a good judgment, maybe you don't, you know, you find out the early rate, but at the end of the day, you don't really know how much it's gonna, you know, if that's the best way to achieve that, if that's the only way to achieve that, you know. I mean, here's the question. You know, imagine if in our world we had a way where basically someone customer could put a you know a project out there, whether that's an implementation, whether that's something afterwards, and then they get bids on it. Would you participate in something like that?

The Data Migration Value Story

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

That's that's an interesting one. Uh I'm going to close with this, uh, with this example. Uh but with a quote, and it was really a quote, or something that I learned through sales, and then it was this example. Uh organizations and ultimately buyers buy services with certain expectations. Um, how much uh value will I bring to my organization, right? The likelihood of that person delivering the service according to what I need and how much is going to cost me, not just in terms of budget, how much will have to participate in it. And that all mm umpects the value equation. And if I'm above the value threshold, uh I made a sales, I made a buy. So um three years ago I started working with this organization in Dublin, a wonderful um company with branches across Europe and they work with hospitals and clinics and they provide medical equipment um including surgical tools. So imagine inventory management kind of quality issue, you know, management in that you need to you know to follow uh if you deliver things that are going to Neopolitan theatre. We started talking about intermigration, and the IT manager said we don't have the bandwidth and we don't have the capacity, and we have a legacy system now. That it's now off support, and we don't know how many people put their hands in that system. So we we it was I know the AT manager said that it's going to be so that you will find anything in there, and we don't want our team to touch it because they will make mistakes and they will try to bring bad data into the new system. I want you guys to manage that for me. And says, Well, we don't really we don't typically do it, it's your data it doesn't matter how much it costs, you quote me for that. And what I want, I want a clean system with no data errors. So as you and as you can imagine, that ended up being an astronomical figure that I put together, that I helped the uh the data team at the time I was working for a large partner. And we put together that how we we didn't have the strategy for that, so I put together developer now, the SQL, data extraction, data model, data cleansing, fine duplicates. I mean, as you can imagine. I'm not going to technically it was a night. We ended up with an estimate and said, but this is the first time we do that. We ended up with, I don't know, 50 days. And so we said, okay, double that up and go back to the client and say, so this is the figure because there was so much uncertainty. We ended up doubling that figure, going to the client, and the client says, It took that IT manager 50 seconds to say, okay, because he knew that the cost of getting his team to work with that kind of data was so high, and the risks of making mistakes were just unbearable. The price was no longer a problem. They they went live last year, they and ended up um even though I stopped working with our partner years, and soon after the discovery, uh, when I started working, I started D3 D3 surviving training. The same IT manager called me afraid of I want you to come back and work with us. And they went live, and it was very fine, very complex go live for an organization with 12 legal entities in different regions, enormous uh amount of work. Data migration, a few hiccups, smooth. The IT manager said, you know what, the best part of this project, we don't we didn't have to touch the data from our legacy system. And so that is something that we don't always uh you know consider. How much will it cost the client to do what we don't do, what he what we can deliver? And that might be something that we don't sell, but if they perceive the value in us, then our then it's no longer about the daily rate and all the rate can go up. The fact that I helped three life science um companies go live in the last six years, all deriving to the NHS, the local, the national health system in England, made me the perfect fit for an organization that needs to deliver the same service to a hospital because I knew about you know their processes. And then the risk of getting it wrong is low. The likelihood of getting it right, right, and that's what drives the delay. So who decides the daily rate? Thank God for free market. Right?

Final Takeaways And Contact Info

SPEAKER_01 1:09:29

No, I think there's a lot there. I I do want to throw back just um you you hit on some key points with the value. There's the value to the customer, and there's many things that go into considering the value. Also, uh, we talk about Chris to go back to the points with the AI efficiency, just to double back on that. It's just because we can do it faster doesn't necessarily mean it's cheaper. And and I didn't want to come across that way if I said that, because sometimes it's the experience, as you had mentioned, Alfredo, just now, and I wanted to get into the experience of the person orchestrating a project has a lot of value to it. So it's just because AI can do something in three minutes doesn't mean the person that is orchestrating the AI has the same ability to get something, the same quality of stuff generated in three minutes. I want to put that out there. I think that's important um as well. Well, Christy Alfredo, I could talk about this topic for days. I do believe we're all in a transition period here. I do think that the subscription model, as you call it, or the I don't want to say fixed bid, but having the model where somebody can um know exactly what they're getting and they have a cost, has a space, and I also just do see a space still where we have to say there's some time and materials because there really isn't a way to quantify um the output. I think, in my opinion, that's a mix. I know everybody has different opinions with those. But um I appreciate taking the time to speak with us today. Um, like I said, we could talk about this for days. If anyone wanted to get in contact with you, talk a little bit more about your services, um, the model that you have, and uh anything else um that you can share on implementations. Christy, what's the best way to get in contact with you? Just through the website, awollyraiser.com. Okay, great, thank you. Alfredo?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:13

And for me, it's either LinkedIn or my website, d365training.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

Uh great, thank you very much. It was a pleasure speaking to both. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Uh, thank you for your time, really appreciate it. Chao, ciao.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

Take care, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

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_03 1:11:35

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 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.