Episode 405: ⚒️ Balancing Functional and Technical Skills in Business Central ⚒️

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner, from client to partnerand now an MVP.
I'm your co-host.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Chris, and this is Brad.
This episode is recorded onJanuary 31st 2025.
Chris, chris, chris, what ajourney that sounds like To go
from a user of Business Centralor NAV over to the partner.
What it is like to go throughthat journey, some of the

(00:30):
perspectives and challenges andviews of that journey, as well
as some low-code, no-codeconversation, and we even
touched upon the Reskill programto help bring additional
talented individuals within theBusiness Central community With
us.
Today, we had the opportunityto speak with Microsoft MVP Andy
Wingate.
Good afternoon, good afternoon,sir, howdy.

(01:07):
Good afternoon, sir.
How are you doing?
Well, hello, hello.
How are you guys doing?
Excellent, excellent, not toobad.
I would love to say jolly goodday over the pond.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
He could have butchered that, I butchered it.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
I don't know so it's all gone.
A bit slow, is that?
Oh, now it's snapped in thereyou go.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Oh, yeah, yeah okay, it says uploading what are we
uploading?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
any descent oh the.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
The uploading is it's using your local recording,
your local audio and videorecording.
It uses that to upload for thepost-production edit.
It gives us that crisp qualityvideo and audio sound so you can
look your best.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Not that you don't ever look your best.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
I can get.
No, no, sir, not that you don'tever look your best and you
look great now, but that givesChris the opportunity, when he
does the wonderfulpost-production job, that he can
really have that high def, highquality audio sound of you.
So we can get the true.
Okay, you know, andy AndyWingate persona on there.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Oh Jesus, that's what I've been trying to hide all
these years, right well, we letthe cat out of the bag with this
one now.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
So now the the spotlight's on you, sir.
So, um, that's good.
How are you doing?
How is the week going?
How are things over in london?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
yeah, um, yeah, good, I think it's a bit, you know,
gray and rainy.
Uh, three o'clock on a fr, Ithink it's a bit, you know, grey
and rainy.
Three o'clock on a Fridayafternoon.
It's the end of the month,right, january the 31st, so
which brings me to the end ofdry January that I've been
suffering through.
So my wife said to me who'salso like convinced me to do
this stupid dry January thing.
She's like oh, you know, andyou're looking so much healthier

(03:01):
.
She's really trying to likeconvince me not to go boozing
anymore.
The reason I look so healthy isbecause I'm looking forward to
that beer on saturday.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'm looking forward to it so much.
It's made me healthy.
You'd fit out.
Here in the pacific northwestit's always gray and rainy it'd
fit right in.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Oh yeah, it's right now it's gray and rainy but he
wanted a dry january.
Well, it's sunny and warm here,but go back to that dry January
in the non-drinking.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, that's right.
Dry January like no booze.
The whole of January Not asniff.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I understand, but your wife does have a point
because if you do consumealcohol it does take several
days for you to see the effectsof it not being in your system,
even when you drink alcohol.
Alcohol it takes several hoursto process that alcohol, to have
it remove some your system,never mind the side effects of
alcohol in your body.
I understand what you're sayingbecause I enjoy a good whiskey

(03:53):
and a good smoked whiskey and Iwas saying the other day I have
the smoker, uh, the littletaigan or whatever it is smoker
that you put on it and I smokeit smoke some meat, it's so nice
I'll have to.
I'll send you a link to itafterwards, but I think they
need non-alcoholic whiskey.
Right, we have mocktails.
I enjoy mocktails now, um, whenwe go to conferences or we go

(04:16):
other places, because I can walkaround feeling like I'm having
a drink yeah, looking like I'mhaving a drink experience.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
The cocktail experience is a huge amount of
it.
Is they there like, just likeyou know the anticipation and
the the arts, the like, thedrama of the preparation and
like do you go somewhere superfancy and they're carving the
ice cubes?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
and all this kind of jazz.
Well, that's it with the roundice cubes the square ice cubes
fancy cocktails.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yes, yes, Like a?

Speaker 3 (04:43):
what is it Like?
A rusty nail or something likethat with a big square,
old-fashioned, old-fashioned isa good one.
I love an old-fashioned.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
If you're ever, Brad, I mean have you been to
Scotland?
That is on Scotland and Irelandis on my bucket list.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
You've got to go.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
I need to get to Europe, just even from a
heritage point of view.
I traced a lot of my family toScotland and Ireland.
So I think I'd like to get overthere.
Just to you know, everybody inAmerica not everybody, but a lot
of people in America come fromthat portion of the country,
considering that's where theoriginal settlers came from.
Well, it depends on how youlook at history before anybody
starts getting on to me andsaying, well, who came here

(05:22):
first?

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Who discovered it first?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
And all this other stuff.
You know it's 2025.
You have to be careful here.
But I'm looking at a certainportion of history books and it
says that a lot of the settlerscame from England.
I mean, I guess there was aRevolutionary War and other
things over here.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Just a very little quick thing before we go Like I
want them to put any blur on, isthat there's the background.
There's nothing horrendous inmy background is there.
Normally I always put like thelittle blur on so it's not like
people can't see what I've gotback there.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
But um, it's always fun, though, when you have
guests where like yeah, you know, that's the first thing you
look, it's like what do you havein the back, you find out I'm a
huge nerd because I've got likeall the game stuff up yeah,
yeah, which games doing?
Doing in there in games kingdomlike, oh I can't see because
okay yeah, what's too small forme?

Speaker 2 (06:09):
because after we spoke with a previous guest he
was told us about that.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Elagato prompter which I I I was at the airport
where I was like that washilarious, listening to you guys
talking to mark.
That was, yeah, like you wereguys.
You guys were like your techdoes what it's like and he's got
all the gadgets, and it was.
It was, I mean, mark smith isan incredible guy, you know,
he's very interesting to listento, uh, but like that, that

(06:36):
episode was especially funnybecause you were like.
You guys were like kids in thesweet shop yeah, we were like
and like the whole.
Oh yeah, we, we watched thatright about the like.
You know, like you can just addanother phone for another angle
.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Oh my god yes, it was , it changed.
So I, after that episode, whenwe recorded obviously it was
released I think this week, butwe recorded it several weeks ago
I binged silo after that.
I ended up getting really sickand that's the show that I put
on.
I think I was texting you aboutthat and I bought this elegato
prompter.
I'm like I have to stop talkingabout I've talked with him

(07:07):
quite a bit over the past coupleof.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
So what is the elegato?
Is it another screen?
What is it exactly?

Speaker 2 (07:12):
it's a teleprompter.
It's a teleprompter, but youcan also put your screen on
there.
So I put this screen on thereand it has a camera behind the
teleprompter, so if I wanted toscroll text, I could scroll text
.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Or, in this case, I have the application up where I
can see both you and chris, butI'm staring at the monitor and
the camera is in the center butbehind, so it looks like I'm
looking at the camera, right, Imean I've got, I don't have any
fancy setup whatsoever, I'vejust got the laptop camera and I
always put the team's window,in this case riverside, in a

(07:44):
browser on the same screen, likebecause my other screens, like
if I ever like have like teamsover there, I'm like looking
here.
It's like oh, you're like that.
You're over there now yeah, thatannoys people.
It's better to have the peopleon the screen where you're
looking.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yes, even if you're looking a little, slightly off,
but my hope is that it gives uswhen I'm talking with someone
the recording will appear thatI'm looking at whomever's
watching it, but also when we'respeaking, to have a better
viewpoint, instead of me lookingdown at the bottom and the
cameras at the top or something.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
So so far, no one would notice it before, because
you know why we edit that out.
So you know, even if you lookdown all the time, no one would
know.
Oh really, I won't say anything.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Thank you.
Thank you, uh, but uh, as weget into it.
Thank you for taking the timeto speak with us.
We really do appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I've been looking forward to speaking with you
like the dislike with thelegends here, like that first,
that first intro call, likewhere you're like just to check
the tech and all the rest of it,I was like, wow, it's like,
it's like, it's like Brad andChris, it's like, wow, I'm
really here with these guys,these amazing guys.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
That's not us, that's you.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
We're honored with our guests coming on.
It's always fascinating to hearfrom their perspective.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, yes, we appreciate the time that
everyone speaks with us orspends with us, because it's
fulfilling.
I learned so much from theguests that we speak with and we
have such a wonderful communityof people, and I'm so happy
that technology affords us theopportunity to all connect from
afar.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know like it's amazing you guys have the time
to do it.
I think it's like the timecommitment is big.
But the I learned so much fromyou know like I listen to
various different podcasts whenI can, like you know there's
some great ones out there andit's like you learn so much from
the, the kind of the.
You know that's a little bittopical.
Maybe it's nice this releasewave.
Maybe it's an old problem thatyou know, maybe it's a new thing

(09:37):
you never heard about.
You always learn something.
It's like, oh my god, yes, likethat will help me, you in the
future, to do like greatdelivery for whoever right.
Absolutely, it's definitelytime well spent.
Yeah, so thanks for providingan amazing service.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
No, thank you and thanks for participating.
And before we get into talkingabout some great things, would
you mind telling us a little bitabout you?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Of course.
Yeah, so my name is AndyWingate.
I'm a recent Microsoft MVP forBusiness Central, which was
everyone says it's a hugesurprise.
It's like, well, you do have toapply, so how much of a
surprise, but it really was abig surprise.
So I'm really really, you know,honored, humbled and honored,
as they say, but I genuinely amto join that.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Congratulations on that.
By the way, I meant to put that.
I did have the on that.
By the way, I meant to put thatI did have the note that you
were recent and sometimes Iforget when someone received the
mvp.
You, you, just you know thatthey you know they have a green
horn.
Whatever they call it likefresh off the boat yes, a green
horn, that's an old uh I.

(10:42):
I grew up hearing that saying inmy area, by the way, it's a
term for yeah.
We'll get backlash on that onetoo, but that's okay, so yeah so
that's I.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
currently I work for a Microsoft partner in the UK
called Venture.
I'm heading up the businesscentral practice there.
About three years before then,I've been working for a couple
of different Microsoft partnersincremental group, telephonic
tech and before that I was onthe customer side.
So I started, I was like a headof IT, head of business systems

(11:14):
, type role and I startedworking with Nav back in 2015 on
the customer side, you know, todeliver the solution for the
business I worked for at thetime and we worked together with
a partner in the UK, obviously,and I learned a huge amount.
But I had also, like I was incharge of all the stuff for that
IT stuff for that company.
So I was dealing with all sortsof different systems and just,

(11:38):
you know, keeping the lights ontype IT business systems.
It was an SMB company right,we're using that, Of course.
We're an SMB company and Ididn't really have the time to
kind of drill into oneparticular vendor when I
eventually made the choice to togo on to the partner side.
So you know, that's my journeyend user to partner side and I
ended up working for a Microsoftpartner because I've had so

(12:00):
much fun on these projects and Igot friendly with some of the.
I was actually, you know, maryhunter from columbus she was the
uk md for columbus back in theday, I suppose and she said,
andy, you know you should really, you know you'd love it, they'd
love you.
Why don't you go and do it?
I was like, oh, I'm not sure ifI can, blah, blah, blah.
You know all those like worriesthat you have, anyway it's.
And then I went across and youknow they immediately threw me

(12:21):
into like tricky, tricky,difficult problems.
But I've come from a real bootson the ground operational
business and I was like thefirst thing you do when you get
in the room is like, ok, guys,like don't worry, you know,
whatever problems you get, we'llsolve them.
Ok, I'll be here to solve theproblems.
And you just bring the peopleon the journey of belief first.
Then you worry about how you'regoing to solve the problems.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
And of course, you stole the problem.
They threw you into the fire.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
That is, they threw you into the fire right away.
That is great.
You go along the journey ofbelief and the rest will follow
so it's like, don't worry you do.
You do have to have that beliefand uh, that's an interesting
story.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
As well as having fun on like tricky, tricky projects
which I which I love doing, um,you know, and um, but I also
was like, oh, michael, so like,right, I might as well.
You know user groups.
Oh, there's one in Cambridge.
I'm just live just outsideCambridge.
There's a user group inCambridge.
I'll pop along.
And I popped along to the usergroup and I happened to see, I
happened to see on that day,like laura, laura, graham brown

(13:24):
was there, she's a pow bi mvp, Ithink, and galiki was there,
she's now an mvp.
Um, there was, and there was anumber of other like like great,
like a whole bunch of a wholecrew of people, really, really
keen people and they, you know,they did, you know, you did the
talks on this, that on the other, it was it was all like d365
stuff, not power, not, you know,there's no business central
user groups, right.
Um, so it was all like D365stuff, not, you know, there's no

(13:45):
business central user groups,right?
So it was all like D365 powerplatform.
But they were so keen and theywere like, oh, and you know, are
you coming to South Go Summit,which is a big like free
conference that operates in thesouth of the country and you
should come along.
You know, like it's free, blah,blah, blah.
So they kind of reallyencouraged me to engage.
I was like, wow, this is,they're so welcoming.
And then I went to these biggerones and and it's like I

(14:07):
couldn't believe it, it wasunbelievable.
The um, they're all fromcompetitive organizations.
You know big organizations thatare like competitors, right,
but they're all sharing, likeokay, everyone in the room,
here's this problem that youwill have on your projects,
here's how I solve it.
Like this is a pretty sweet wayto do it.
I was like, wow, they'resharing the secret sauce of how,

(14:29):
like, to make everyone's liveseasier.
And I just, you know, suddenlyI discovered for the first time,
like it had always been there,but I discovered this whole
Microsoft community thing forthe first time and I it like
yeah, blew my socks off right,like I couldn't believe how
welcoming the people were howwilling they are to share all
the stuff.
and you know, getting chattingwith these like big names, I was
like, wow, you know.
Like you know, sort of likewell, I'm allowed to speak to

(14:50):
you, and they're like, of courseyou are.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
But that is one of the great things about the
community that we have is it'sso large but it feels so small.
And everyone, I think, now has,for the most part, exactly what
you had mentioned they want toshare, they want the product to
be successful, they wanteveryone to be successful
because it enriches theapplication and enriches the
community, and all thosesuccessful implementations helps

(15:16):
anybody that works with it,either from the customer side or
the partner side.
But speaking of that, so youmade the journey from the
customer side over to thepartner side, so you worked with
managing an internal system,and then you made the transition
over to a partner.
What were some of theconsiderations you had for
moving from?
As I'll say, as you wereresponsible for IT, which I know

(15:36):
how sometimes, depending uponthe size of the organization,
you may have more than one hat.
You could be a developer, youcould be a functional consultant
, project manager, or all ofthose together combined.
So what were the considerationsyou had when you were moving

(15:59):
from a customer to a partner?

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah sure, a customer to a partner, yeah sure.
So I had, um, I mean to becompletely honest with you, I
kind of I'd reached the top asfar as I could go in the
organization in that particularcompany.
It was a.
It's a large agriculturalcooperative in the uk and, um,
you know, smb company um, and Ikind of had pitched to the.
I had kind of pitched like tothe board, like you board, for

(16:24):
IT director role, and they'relike no, that's not going to
work here, sort of thing.
And they made the rightdecision.
They were bringing in a financedirector.
They didn't have a financedirector, so they brought in a
finance director role to helpimprove the business efficiency
and performance, all the rest ofit.
So they definitely made theright call.
So I was kind of like, ok, cool, I've had an amazing time here,
you know, 12 years almost.

(16:45):
It's time to move on.
And I kind of had two thoughtsin my mind.
One was, you know, find an ITdirector or CTO role in another
end user side or move to theMicrosoft side.
And it was, yeah, there wasother people from the partner
side that kind of reallyconvinced me to go down the
partner route, one of which wasMary Hunter.

(17:07):
Another one was Nikki Stewart,who is a.
She was my account manager atColumbus and there was various
other interactions with theconsultants.
You know the project team I hadat Cambridge Online that then
became Columbus, and you knowlike there's not like on the
delivery side.
There's plenty of hard work andstress to deal with, right.

(17:28):
But those guys, they also had abit of fun and I, you know I
was on one call with ChrisNichols and he we were like
problem with Jet on-prem, youknow, and we pulled in some
other consultants like oh, trythis, try that.
And I was like wow, these guys,like they're working together
to help each other out, like youcan probably overcome any
problem with this.
So yeah, I was kind ofconvinced to make the jump.

(17:51):
So you know, like a little bitof a sideways step.
Oh, and also I had the mostamazing help from a.
I tried to apply variousdifferent places.
I didn't really get too far,but when I got in touch with a
really good recruiter, um called, uh, philippa, so she was, so
she helped me, you know, shehelped me.
She helped me find the partnerwho valued the like end, no

(18:13):
consultancy experience, right onthe face of it.
But I had a lot of end userexperience and I've used now
I've done a couple ofdeployments, done a whole load
of crazy development stuff,right, um, so she was able to
kind of, you know, find thepartner that was hiring for that
kind of person at the time.
So that was a real.
You know, I wouldn't be heretoday if it wasn't for those
people.
So I'm really grateful.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
And that was the process.
Curious about your perceptionis did your perception change,
coming from, you know, from anend user as an end user?
I came from an end user as anend user.
I came from an end user as well.
So I had a, a perception,perspective, perception of what
consultants do.
And then when you come in todoing consulting, was there like
it?
I was like, oh, that makessense, why they're like that, or

(18:57):
that makes sense, they do thiskind of process that's a really
great question.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Actually, I've never thought about that.
So what?
What changed?
Um?
I think you know I needed tolearn the.
I needed to backfill missingbits so I'd use nav in a
particular way for a particularorganization.
They'll hold chunks of the ofthe of the app that I've never
used, right, so needed to learnthose.
Uh, I was really good oncertain bits and other bits were

(19:24):
missing, but also, so, yeah, sothe.
I mean, I was a little bitworried about that and I guess
something that changed myperception was that actually you
don't need to know all of itbecause you've got to have, you
need to have a rich team, youshould.
You don't need to be an expertin warehouse and marketing or
whatever.
Like, pretty good, prettyuseful to know finance in and

(19:44):
out, right, but you don't needto be an expert in all the other
stuff.
Okay, um, so that that's.
I guess that changed a littlebit.
Um, the um, yeah, I mean Ican't think of anything else
that really jumped out like asore thumb.
I'm.
I had some really great people,colleagues, um at incremental
with um.
You know, when I first joinedthere and I saw how they they
operated and I just learned somuch from these people.

(20:07):
You know the way.
A little bit more care on.
You know, when you're writing arequirements document about you
know what's in scope, what'sout of scope, being super clear
and also the.
I guess I'm not afraid to havedifficult conversation and like
immediately learning, like it'sfar better if you're with a
client to say right now, rightguys, this has happened, let's

(20:30):
have.
Let you have the difficultconversation straight away.
You know they're not going towant to hear it.
It's a little bit nervewracking all the rest of it, but
you have the difficult concept.
Don't let it like grumble onuntil the money's all run out
out and then it's like massivechange request everyone's
surprised and like everyone'shair is on fire.
Like don't do that.
Even though you know you, youavoid the conflict.
You've got to.
You've got to face in, you'vegot to be honest.

(20:51):
People appreciate honesty.
No, no, no project has noproblems.
Right, like, and if you figurethat out, please tell me.
But there's always some kind ofa problem.
It's not about the problem,it's about being honest, you
know, and figuring out the waywe get past the bump in the road
, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
That right there is critical, I think, in a project
is, as you had mentioned, thehonesty, the trust and what you
have moving forward.
And, like you had mentioned,it's oftentimes better I can't
even say often.
I would say it's always betterto have those difficult
conversations early versus late.
So if you can foresee there'sgoing to be a challenge having

(21:36):
that conversation, as difficultas it may be on either side,
because also, if someone comesto me and tells me that it's
from the side of going throughthe implementation that you've
uncovered a problem, or eitherdirection, it's the one who's
talking about the problem, theone who has the problem.
I guess you can say I wouldrather know early on so that we
could work together to solve itand not have it be so

(21:59):
significant in the future.
And then you find out, like yousaid, if the money has all run
out, the budget's blown.
Now we have a lot of changerequests.
Now everyone's like well, whydidn't you tell me so long ago?
It's just having that open andhonest communication, which I
think is important.
But to go back to the customerand the partner first, something
that you had mentioned, likeeveryone's having a good time

(22:20):
and fun.
We all do that, because thathides the tears right.
So you have to laugh and have agood time, because that pain and
suffering that you may be goingthrough nobody can see.
Right, it's a little bit cheekyfrom saying you should be
honest on everything, but no,there is a lot of work that goes
into ERP implementations andproduct implementations and

(22:42):
dealing with multiple projectsand the approach is just you can
either complain and cry aboutit or you can laugh and have a
good time and move through itwith a smile on your face is the
way I look at it, totallySimilar to what Chris had
mentioned.
How do you think moving from acustomer or do you think moving

(23:02):
from a customer to a partner hashelped you with business
central implementations?
So the experience that you hadgained from a customer.
Do you think it wasadvantageous for you to have
that experience as a partner and, if so, how?

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, I mean, for definitely, I say yes to that.
I think that the often I yeah,yeah, I think one of the
elements that you get whenyou're on, when you worked in
one company for a long time, youknow, and you like part of the
furniture there or whatever, andyou, as you're involved in
projects over the years and itkind of like it wires your brain

(23:39):
differently.
Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, I don't know, but like I'm
putting a project in, I'mworking with these people in my
mind forever, okay, so like itreally needs to, I don't, I
can't just get to theimplementation finish line and
then like we're done, thanksvery much.
No, I'm going to work withthese people for, like you know,
going forward.
So you've got to get to thefinish line and it has to like

(24:00):
genuinely deliver beneficialchange to everybody.
You know, otherwise they comeand they come and knock on your
door and it's like, no, thething's still not working on me.
It's like, no, my day's worsenow.
Why did we, why did you do thatchange?
So you have that mindset fromthe very word.
Go that the project, the successcriteria for the project, is
not just the finish line of theproject, it's the you know

(24:22):
genuinely making a differenceand you know different projects
of different sizes.
What does that actually looklike?
Of course, that's a map, that's.
That's a big variable in there,but it's that I think having
that mindset I think you tend tohave more of a mindset like
that um, then, uh, I think ithelps foster that mindset.
I think that's a really healthymindset, to have that kind of

(24:42):
um looking ahead, you know,long-term benefit, um, the what
else is there.
I think also, and and becauseof that, you have to like really
engage and build the relationswith all the people who this
change is going to affect.
So, change management.
I think you know, um, whenyou've got a whole team of shop

(25:07):
floor people, like operations,people, boots, on the ground,
people, they don't care aboutthe buzzwords they don't care
about, they just care about,like I want to get my job done
on time, like correctly.
You know, like what?
What do you mean?
We're not, we're not signing asheet and it's now on a, on a
handheld, like am I?
Is it going to help me do itfaster?
Is it going to help me be moreaccurate, like what's in it for
me?
You know, like, you've alwaysgot to consider the what's in it

(25:28):
for me, for everybody, becausesometimes on a holistic view,
sometimes like what's?
A lot of small companies oftenend up perhaps this is true or
not but really driven by theoperations, because that's what
earns the money.
So sometimes the wholeprocesses are like totally
focused on the operations andthen, like the back office,
admin and accounting and allthat kind of stuff, they're
picking up the pieces left,right and center and sometimes

(25:50):
you know, when you put in aproper system and you kind of
look at the whole holistic thingand you make the whole thing
efficient from end to end,sometimes the operations guys
need to do like a little bitmore steps and clicks and things
like that, and so there's areal um, you've really gotta
sell that one, the widerbenefits and how you and how to
figure out, um, how to figureout how to do that.
So I think, um, yeah, I mean,does that answer the question?

(26:12):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
like.
So empathy, you have someempathy because you you know how
it feels on one side, becauseyou're right, like as a client,
you kind of handle just yourday-to-day and then you have a a
single entity or a company thatyou are handling.
When you go to the consultingside, you understand that they
have to do day-to-day by, youknow, day-to-day job and then at

(26:33):
the same time you're alsoimplementing in a brand new erp.
That's a huge change.
So it's a good, uh, a goodreminder.
When you're a consultant, likeI understand, when you do, you
have that perspective of what'simportant for a user, as Andy
had mentioned.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
It's what is the change?
What are some of theconversations they have?
Because the conversations fromthe consulting point of view
again, a partner is going topartner with you through the
journey, but everybody hasdifferent concerns.
I may have different understand, different focal points, as
andy had mentioned.
It's what is in it for me tomake my life easier.
I guess you could say everybodyhas that selfish, but also that

(27:10):
may be important to a business,that, from a different lens, as
a partner or someone workingwith an implementation, you may
not understand.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
So so it's I remember the um.
So when I was on the end userside, the transport manager had
a great relationship with thetransport manager there and we
did a lot of development aroundthe transport.
We like we was working in alogistics company, effectively,
and in the peak of harvest itwas an agricultural business,
the peak of harvest, like 600lorry movements in the day
anyway.
So we we talked about the clickeconomy, like on the new system

(27:40):
, how many clicks do I have todo to go from end to end?
And we kind of you know I haveto promise him a click economy
budget, a decreasing budget onclicks, and it's like, well,
there's a few more clicks here,but then you know, to go end to
end, actually the clicks do comedown.
So it's like, oh okay, andy,like well, we'll do it then.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Oh man, I've been to that before.
It is because it is.
You brought up an interestingpoint there as well, because
when you go through an ERPimplementation, it's important
to take a look at the entireprocess, because you may save a
step early on in the streamwhich creates more work
downstream.
Or, as you had mentioned, youmay create one additional click
for a person to functionsomewhere early in the process,
but you're saving hours forsomebody on the back end.

(28:27):
So it's important to reallyexplain or walk through the
overall process and the benefitsof the process and also the
downstream effects of anyprocess changes you make,
because that is where, in myexperience, Chris kind of
chuckles.
I find a lot of challenges thatimplementations have.
It's oh, I can make it so mucheasier for the sales order entry

(28:52):
process, for example, but bymaking it so much easier now I
just totally shifted the way wehave to pick and lay out the
warehouse, so now it's saved oneperson five minutes, for
example.
This is figuratively.
Now I added hours in therequirement for more manpower
because I made it so much easierfor one person, but not

(29:13):
everybody else.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
So I had to laugh on that click your click budget
because when the moment youmentioned that, it just
triggered this old memory ofmine where, like one of my first
, you know nav implementation,where I was working with
somebody in the customer serviceside and they were upset that
they had to press an extrabutton, an extra button, even

(29:37):
though it was going to save themmanual process on the backend.
But I remember having to speakto them a couple of days.
We were killing days justbecause to convince this person.
It's like it's one click, Iunderstand, but here's the
result.
These are the things that you'dbe saving time.
It was fun.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, managing expectations.
A recent project we had aclient there and it's kind of
like I expect the system to dothis, I expect the system to do
that.
Managing expectations is reallyimportant.
Yeah, people, I think, brad,you mentioned earlier
understanding that end-userclient people, especially

(30:20):
finance teams, month-end everysingle month, you know, like
getting their time.
So, as a consultant, I'm always, I always.
You know the first thing I sayafter any workshop on the email,
like where you go back with allthe actions, and now the AI
generated meeting notes, whichsaved me a whole pile of time
Exactly.
Thank you so much for your timebecause you know you have to be.
Thank you so much for your timebecause you know you have to be

(30:40):
.
Their time is precious.
They've got their.
It's just on the half a dayworkshop that helps me do my job
, to deliver the stuff orwhatever.
Yeah, and then I went half aday behind on their whatever
they were supposed to be doingon a normal day.
You know, without this extraproject stuff that they've got
to do.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
That's a key point, because that is when structuring
we can go down so many tangents.
We also, chris, need to have anepisode of implementation
horror stories We'll have to geteverybody, or?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
maybe one of these conferences.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
I know One of these conferences we'll have to just
corner everybody, because youboth made me think of some crazy
situations that I've been inover the course of my career.
But you had hit on a key pointthere that when you're going
through an implementation as faras scheduling, training or
setting expectations andthankfully I'm a big fan of,
like the incline, you know, pagescripting to help with testing

(31:27):
and user acceptance a separatestory but to have understanding
that individuals also have tocomplete their job as well as go
through the training, and thisis not just from the partner
side, it's also from anorganization point of view.
If you're going to go throughthe undertaking of implementing
an ERP system, whether it's amigration to a new system,
migration to a new version ofthe existing system, an upgrade,

(31:48):
depending upon the terminologyit does take time and the time
is important so that it can helpmake for the efficiency of the
business.
Because if you don't take thetime to do it and have an
understanding of people need towork and either shift some of
that if possible or afford themthe opportunity to properly test
, it could be far more damagingin the back end Because no one

(32:12):
really may know how to do whatthey need to do or they may not
test it properly or review itproperly to make sure it does
exactly what they need properly,to make sure it does exactly
what they need.
And those few minutes that youthink you're saving because
you're trying to get some thingsdone or for whatever reason, it
can be costly in the sense oftime or even fulfillment of
product, I guess you could saydownstream.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
I remember when I was back on the customer side and
we had implemented a change andthe invoices processing had gone
wrong and there was this bigbacklog of invoices and I was
kind of like fighting with, like, the senior team.
It's like, well, I need thisperson, this person, this, but I
need them for three days to dothis the thing.
And it's like, well, if you dothat, are the backlog of
invoices going to get bigger?
It's like that place is on fireand we need to turn the gas off

(32:59):
, otherwise the fire is nevergoing to go out, and it's kind
of like that.
You know, I guess that's acommon thing, right?
Sometimes the problem is goingto get worse.
And again, communicating right,the problem is going to get
worse, we can solve the problem,we've got the solution.
Hooray, everyone's right, theproblem is going to get worse
before it gets better.
Oh, okay, right, get on with it, sort of.

(33:21):
You know, like you've got tocommunicate that stuff, right?

Speaker 2 (33:41):
no-transcript and on the flip side, they may hear it
but not hear it the way that yousaid it.
So it's oftentimes beneficial,I found, to make sure you have
that back and forth to ensurethat they can explain back to
you what you said, basically nottruly technical or not, but an
understanding of it.
So, with your Business Centralexperience, are you more on the

(34:06):
functional side or on thetechnical side?
Do you do any development oryou work primarily on the
implementations?

Speaker 3 (34:14):
So yeah, I mean, my background is kind of IT, so I
used to work in Azure, you know,on kind of the Active Directory
or Entra as it now is, m365admin.
I wouldn't say I'm asuper-duper Azure techie guy,
like with you know, likecomplicated resources.
You know that I can spin up aVM and stuff like that.
That was from my like what theytalk about like accidental DBA,

(34:36):
you know, like you're theaccidental database
administrator because the onlyone that knew anything about it.
So that was part of my rolethat I used to have.
I'm definitely more functionalthan technical.
I love doing the AL development.
I love, you know, I love theability.
So I've got this.
There's low code, right, andthere's pro code.
The proper developers havemassive respect for all the

(34:58):
developers I've worked with andI've worked with some real
legends and it's kind of likeyou just it just amazes me
sometimes how they can createlike functionality and all that.
You know they just it, justit's just truly incredible.
But, um, I think there is anarea in the middle it's a real
big thing of mine where, likesimple dev, okay, I think that
every functional consultantshould know how to create an AR

(35:19):
project, you know, and like movea cube tile on the role center.
You know like that's.
Oh, we want the Continua.
You know document stuff, wewant it on this role center that
you made for us.
You know, don't have to wheelout a developer for that, that
is so easy to like.
Go and look and see what thecode is on the Continua role
center.
Drop it onto the other onesmall extension.

(35:39):
There's the whole rules of theroad thing that you know when
you're dabbling as a functionalconsultant with a little bit of
development, it's so importantto agree the rules of the road
with your development team.
What?
Where are the repos?
I'm sure it was you guys weretalking, or it was maybe steve
endo talking about likenightmares of like open source,
the source code and all thatkind of stuff oh, you gotta have
the have the rules of the road.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yes, yes, that's a whole.
We could you could spy on methere but I just like to take
back to a few key points thatyou're saying.
So it's good to have anunderstanding of the application
and development, and youmentioned low code, no code.
I'd like to circle back to that, which was kind of a lead in
with where I was going with theconversation.

(36:20):
But I also think, from thedevelopment point of view,
developers need to understandthe functionality of the
application because it helpsthem create solutions.
But also to your point whereyou're talking about moving
things around, it's important toknow is the modification
required?
Is it a personalization?
Is it a customization, or is itsomething that we may have to

(36:42):
use another tool such aslow-code, no-code?
So there's a balance of I cando anything, I can create
anything with development versusarchitecting a solution for an
implementation to meet therequirements.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
And we had a good balance.
We kind of did this simple devpolicy.
And because we had a goodbalance, you know, like we kind
of did this simple dev policyand because we had all the
source code in Azure DevOps wehappened to use right, haven't
quite got across to GitHub andyou know.
And then so you've got the pullrequest, so you can review the
pull request and, like you know,a low-risk pull request is one
that doesn't change the ultimatedatabase schema.
You know, kind of it's asurface change, something like

(37:17):
that, is change, something likethat, and you have the ability
to talk to developers briefly asopposed to like pulling one off
and having them do all the likecrunching on the keyboard for
simple dev stuff.
Right, there's so many greattools out there, like the Waldo
templates and the AZAL wizardsfor API pages, for example.
Oh my God, but the standard APIpages vendor are 144 fields on

(37:40):
the table, 40 on the API page.
It's like oh, it turns out Idid want like reason code or
purchase a code.
That's a pretty handy field,but it's not in the standard.
How easy is it if you know howto wizard API page Bosh?
You know, obviously there'sconsiderations if it's a
critical workflow, or if it'sjust for a report you need or

(38:01):
for a simple.
You know you want to dosomething in Power Automate but
the field's missing.
So like that's another exampleof maybe a simple dev thing, but
you've got to be in the team,you've got to have your
developer buddies close by toyou know, check on you from time
to time so that you don't dothe madness.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
And you know I tend to agree with you and that's
where I'm going.
You do need to have, as yousaid, the rules of the road to
make sure that you have propermanagement of whatever you're
going to do, whether it's asource code modification or even
if you're going to movesomething over, as you had
mentioned, power Automate, or ifyou wanted to have an
additional API page to work withPower Automate just to make

(38:40):
sure that you have all thatthere and everyone's aware of
what's being done.
If you need to address an issueor reconstruct or do something
With having an understanding, abasic understanding of
development, what goes intodevelopment?
This is another big one.
I have these questions and Ithink about where Business
Central now you can makemodifications with extensions or

(39:01):
you extend it.
You're not modifying the baseapplication, you're extending it
.
Where there may be somefunctionality that isn't in
there, that's unique to aparticular business, they have
an edge case use.
Thankfully, the application hasa lot of feature and
functionality, but now we canalso connect with other systems.
So there's Power Automate foryou to be able to do tasks with

(39:22):
workflows.
There's Power Platform, whereyou could do other pages or
cards to interface with BusinessCentral.
Where do you see ERP softwarein development and
implementation going in thefuture, with all of this stuff

(39:43):
available to bolt together.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Great question.
A lot of the community stuffthat I go and visit it's not
BC-focused, it's all PowerPlatform and D365 apps.
You know that's the major focusof the community things and
ever since the first one I wentalong there I'm like oh, how can
I get this stuff to like helpme with Business Central and
figure out those like and I'mkind of also thinking with the

(40:09):
like boots on the ground, but itneeds to actually make my life
better today.
You know, in this moment, onthis task I'm doing sort of
thing.
So it's kind of like I thinkthere's a huge opportunity to
leverage these tools.
There was, for example, arecent Phil Kermeen.
I've been chatting with Phil.

(40:30):
He's a developer, he does likeconnectors, he does custom
connectors is one of his thingsthat he does and you know, like
with Business Central, then acustom connector into Power
Platform to achieve some end,some goal, right, but it's
reusable.
And you know, like for me I waslike, oh, that's really handy
Because if you just go, you knowthe BC world is there's a lot

(40:51):
of developed like.
Bc is.
Like there's lots of developersfor BC and you know the real
kind of heroes of BC.
They're all developers.
You know all the great guys andgirls, and so if you give a
problem to someone who's justalways solved stuff with
development, then of course theybotch.
They botch it out straight withdevelopment.
But you know this kind of themodular approach that you know

(41:12):
getting that, getting a littlebit more time with Power
Automate so that you can expandand like I and like I don't know
if it's the same in the US, butin the UK we've got like a
resource shortage.
So developers are like there'smore functional people.
I think you can get intofunctional consulting more easy
than you can get intodevelopment, because like
development is for like the truegeniuses, right, whereas with
functional you kind of like youknow, you can go from an end

(41:33):
user, you know, to a consultantto become, and that journey, I
think, is less pain thanbecoming a full-blown developer.
It's a different kettle of fish, okay.
So can we solve the resourceproblem by doing less stuff
through just pure development?
Some stuff, yeah for sure.
You need all the ISV apps.
They're all through development, right, that's not power

(41:54):
automate stuff.
But there is this gray area andI always try to go along to to
all the like some of these, thed365 meetings, and tell people
about business central.
Oh, you do business central.
I think you know like wow, likenever heard.
You know what does everyonecare about business central?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
like yeah, yeah and I kind of like I'd engage.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
And actually, you know, microsoft have been
pushing business central superduper hard and so they're like
oh, oh, like Business Central,okay, right.
And so I've been starting to domore stuff together with the
community and it's like how canwe do Power Pages and Business
Central?
How can we use Power Automateto like hook into the admin API
and do something handy for acustomer, like there was a

(42:34):
recent one which was do a fresh?
It was like on nav, it wason-prem nav.
They're like oh well, we've gota script that makes a fresh
copy of the database every night, so we've got a test
environment.
It's like what if we could dothat in Power Automate?
And, yeah, by getting a littlehelp from one of my Power
Automate buddies, power Platformthey helped me with the API
side of it and then, yeah, wecan set up a fresh copy sandbox

(42:57):
overnight, automatic, don't haveto do anything.
So every time I talk to thatside of the community, I'm
always trying to like tease outbecause also, it's there's a lot
to learn and low code is not nocode and honestly, like you
need to get the syntax on thebit where it is code.
It's like you're straight infull monty code on the syntax.
So, oh, data um filters.

(43:17):
You know, like who knew?
You know I didn't know how towrite, write those or how you're
supposed to interpret it.
There's like the low-code bitis.
There's like these bear trapsof like full-on tiny box coding,
I think they call it.
Like you need to know how to dothe tiny box coding, at least
in AL dev the whole thing's incode and you can like see
examples and you can follow itthrough, whereas with low code

(43:38):
you're dragging and droppingthings maybe, and then bosh,
right, got a bit of code here.
Better be spot on or no dice.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
It does go back to the importance of a team and I
forget who said it and I knowsomeone said it it's low code.
Low code, no code is not nocode, it's somebody else's code.
So it doesn't matter what you'redoing.
It's low-code, but you'restressing, I think to me and

(44:06):
what I'm hearing is the emphasisof having what you said early
on as a quality team, becausethe expansion of the application
in the ecosystem it's difficultto be an expert in everything,
so it's important to know whoyou can rely on and have
awareness of what's available to, where you can go, ask the
questions to have a propersolution.
To me, it's very difficult tokeep up with the application

(44:28):
power platform.
You know everything that youhave that you could use to
satisfy a requirement for animplementation.
So it is important.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
It's much more important now to collaborate
than ever before because, like,like you guys said, there's a
lot more tools to consider andmaybe, as you know I think andy
had mentioned it's like you know, the, the old school developers
.
It's like, oh, we just developright now you're gonna have to
kind of slow down a little bitto see, okay, uh, your developer

(44:58):
should be aware of the other,uh, you know software tools out
there that will consume yourcode.
So, if you're structuring yourcode you got to make now, you
got to think beyond than justproviding a result.
You got to think about how canother tools consume my, my, my
solution?
Like, like you said, you knowyou can create a solution and

(45:20):
code it, but you also have toconsider, okay, if a client
decides to use Power Automate orthey use Power Apps, I want
those tools to be able to see mysolution.
And it requires your you know,a good functional consultant to
work with a developer and viceversa, to consider the business
aspects of that, not just thesolution that you're just

(45:43):
building.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
So, yeah, I think outside the box now and a bigger
picture.
I just thought of somethingfrom a little bit earlier which
is around the like oh, are you afunctional or are you a
technical person?
And one of the things that I-.
That's a loaded question by theway, I just want to let you
know.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
I know we don't talk about this stuff, but some of
these questions really areunintentionally loaded.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
I mean, if I ever I'm trying to like find the time to
kind of go through the learnstuff, maybe I'll pass the MBA
20 one day.
But like there's a lot for meto learn, like a huge amount
Like, and it's a lot, it's a lot.
It's a lot simpler for me to tolike have a team.
You know, go to the experts.
You know a lot of the, a lot ofthe recent content that I did.
I was kind of like trying totake it to the next level and

(46:35):
the only speak to someone.
So you know, like I spoke toone of my colleagues, lee, who
helped me with some developmental development stuff that was
just beyond my capability, youknow like I've got an example of
it now.
Great, I spoke to aj, whohelped me with some power
platform stuff.
Like he showed me some stuff.
I'm like, oh, my god, yeah,like I never, I never would have
.
It would take me forever tosort of figure that out and that
and you like, you leapfrog,you're, you're learning when you

(46:57):
talk to other people.
But but it all comes back to,you know, for a functional
consultant, I think, because Ihad the old in the old days, sql
, and we used, like SSRS, weused to write a lot of TSQL for
you know, getting data.
So, understanding databaseswhich you kind of you know, if
you were just never used anysystem before on this, like

(47:18):
here's Business Central, wouldyou even know what a database is
, Because you don't even see the?
I guess you've got the tablesin there.
It's just, if you've never usedSQL before, perhaps you would
perceive the whole of theBusiness Central backend
architecture differently.
Anywho, like when end users areasking for you know interesting
requirements and kind of likewell, we need to do this, it

(47:38):
needs to do that, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, it's useful to
understand.
Well, you know, can we extendthat table?
Do we need a new table?
It's useful to have a kind ofan understanding because often
there's a number of ways to getto the outcome and some of those
ways are tons of extra tablesand pages and some of them are
less tables and pages.

(48:05):
We'll do it this way.
Oh, does this meet yourrequirements?
Well, I guess it does.
Why have you done it that way?
Well, it's because it's a bitsimpler to.
I know that will be like makethe developers lives a bit
easier, um, sort of thing.
So I think that's reallyimportant.
When you are getting to thatlike final two percent of
whatever process and it's like,yeah, business central out the
box does this, but it doesn't dothat, oh, how are we going to
solve that?
And it's kind of sometimes, uh,people are, you know, people
are throwing their hands up andsaying, you know, well, we can't
use, it's unusable and thesesorts of things, and you need to
.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
That goes back to the change management and the user
adoption that it's it's.
It's the path of leastresistance and it's so much
easier to give up sometimesinstead of embrace it, because
you knew, you know what you knew.
You don't know what the futureis, and then you become
comfortable with it.
Then that becomes your, whatyou know.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
So it's a challenge there I'm pretty sure it was on.
It could have been with mark,where you talked about the like,
that there was a special report, the president's report, and
like it had been handed yes, yes, lots of different people Turns
out.
The president just put it inthe bin you know, I mean that's
a great kind of hilariousanecdote, but the reality is
that with Business Centralthere's so many like you know,

(49:13):
like analyze mode, for example,love that feature Just live
lists.
There are certain things where,oh, we had this report, we must
get this.
This is a day zero report lists.
There are certain things where,oh, we had this report, we must
get this.
This is a day zero report,We've got to have this report to
answer that particular question.
Well, actually it turns out inBusiness Central, if you go to
the purchase lines and filter ina certain way and turn on pivot
mode and save that tab, doesthat not give you the outcome?

(49:33):
Oh yeah, kind of it does.
But how do I print that?
What about the answer?
Everyone.
But what about the answerEveryone can get to this.
Oh, yeah, I suppose they can.
Everyone in the wholeorganization can get to this
through Teams.
They don't even need a license.
Oh right, really.
Oh well, you know.
Okay, fine, it's that.
Rethinking the staff.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
It really is, because in an age of you had mentioned
the reports, where now you cansee it online, it gives you what
you need.
Do you really need?

Speaker 3 (50:00):
that Like LiveList.
Do you need that report?
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
So, gosh, I have so many more questions that I have
for you because of where you areand what you do.
So what are you talking about?
Analysis mode or when analysismode?
I believe Jesus, I'm going totry to date myself.
I think it came out 2024, waveone, or 23, wave two, or about
that time.
It's been out for a while and Ihave enjoyed it ever since it

(50:27):
came out and it's a saver, andthis is what I even emphasize to
some individuals onimplementations.
It's a matter of collecting theproper data so that you can
analyze it, instead of having tohave a separate report.
Every little thing that you do,you can create these views and
save them.
What are some otherunderutilized features or

(50:48):
unknown features?
Do you think of Business Central?
And I ask this because everymonth we get new features and
functionality and it's importantto keep up with it.
But from a partner's point ofview, because every month we get
new features and functionalityand it's important to keep up
with it.
But from a partner's point ofview, you have some that are
online, so they're relativelyclose to the latest release,
depending upon their updateschedule.
You have some on-premisesimplementations where they may

(51:12):
not have migrated to the latestimplementation, which is its own
challenge in itself.
May not have migrated to thelatest implementation, which is
its own challenge in itself, butbased on the implementations,
what you see, what are some ofthe underutilized or unknown
features of Business Central?
Or, if you can't think of those, what are some of the most
beneficial features that userscan get from the application the
most from your point of view?

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Great question.
So what?
So you think, I mean, when Idid the jump from kind of
on-prem to then the partner side, where we were just purely, we
were really just delivering sass, you know, I was kind of like,
oh my goodness, like why were westill on-prem?
There were so many, there wereso many great features.
I got like a whole load ofstuff.
I, I think 2022, what versionof VC would that have been?

(51:58):
Well, anyway, whatever, itwasn't like 14.
It was kind of like a littlebit past then and there was a
whole load of stuff.
I mean, the classic crowdpleaser is like change dimension
.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
So like anyone who's going.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
I always bring that up If we're doing a nav to VC
migrate and like da, da-da-da-da.
One of the little things I'llthrow in there is like oh, and,
by the way, everyone in thefinance team, look at this,
change dimension, what you mean.
We don't have to journaleverything out and back in again
if we just want to change thedimension, correct, and it's got
a full audit, blah-blah-blah,it's all fine, the crowd go wild

(52:38):
, sort of thing.
So that one obviously has beenin VCSaaS for quite some time
now.
I always love to show people theaccess with M365 through Teams.
In my kind of demo teamenvironment I have, like, I
always kind of show like oh,let's share this sales order and
have a conversation in Teams.
Isn't that fun.
Oh, that's handy.
But wait, you know, here's ateam and I've pinned customers,
vendors, sales orders.
Wait, you know, here's a teamand I've pinned customers,

(52:59):
vendors, sales orders,everything you know like, by the
way, everyone in the entireorganization can access these.
Read only, they don't need a bclicense, you know.
So that's that's.
I think that's a.
That's a good one to call outto, especially where you've got,
you know, people on the callwho are concerned around return
on investment and all the restof it, like we can get you
access to this information.
It's live.
You're all working from thesame version of the truth.

(53:21):
So there's the Teams thing.
I think that's.
I don't know how.
It's difficult to know how muchit's used in the wider world.
I know Microsoft have got noend of telemetry and they share
from time to time a few littlesnippets.
But it would be amazing,wouldn't it, to see all of the
stuff.
I mean they really collect thetelemetry.
I remember they must do,because kenny at one point said

(53:43):
like there's a certain tool tipthat people look at more.
So they're obviously likeconfused by the back field.
I can't remember which one itwas, but they knew that more
like a lot.
There was a big spike inlooking at the tool tip to try
and understand what that fieldis.
So, um, you know for suremicrosoft collect the.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Uh, how people I would like to see that, just to
see which features andfunctionality are used the most.
And it could not be it's.
It's a double-edged sword withthat, because you could say,
well we'll, we'll put moreinvestment into the features
that are used the most becausethere's the most benefit.
But also, just because the isused a lot doesn't mean that
it's not a benefit.
It could be that someonedoesn't know about it.

(54:20):
So you'd almost have to gothrough the process of let's
look at some of theunderutilized features, see what
an education process could beto see if there is some benefit,
because, again, a lot offeatures and functionality come
out.
And if somebody's not stayingcurrent with the features and
functionality or thinking ofways how they could adopt the,
the new feature, uh it, withintheir business, it would go

(54:40):
unutilized.
So I I would, I would reallyenjoy seeing something like that
.
I wish they could do that.
And to go back to a point youmade, it is true, with the erp
software, everyone spends somuch time relative or how you
get it collecting all of thedata right.
It is so much data is collectedif you understand the
architecture of business centraltime, relative, or how you get
it collecting all of the dataRight.

(55:01):
So much data is collected ifyou understand the architecture
of Business Central, which isamazing.
Now I'm happy to see there's alot of emphasis on getting it
out.
Right now we have all thisability to do the analysis views
.
We can do the Power BI reports.
We can have a number of otherways for us to be able to get
the data out, which is wonderful.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
And another really great area is telemetry.
Another one of my weekendprojects is to get better at KQL
, and it's actually.
I went to a talk in theScottish Summit on KQL from one
of the people and it's prettystraightforward actually it's.
You can learn it.
It's not as far.
It's not.
It's no more difficult than sqlor something like that.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I don't think um I think that's underutilized.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
I always try to like I like, I always try to sort of
sell it to the it teams on forclients and say, like guys, like
, look at this, you've got adashboard of all the errors.
Look at this, you've got adashboard of all the the.
Look at this, you've got adashboard of all the logins and
your daily activity.
And I think you know to reallytake it to the next level,
especially if you've got likebig APIs and integrations and
all that kind of stuff.

(56:05):
I think it's a must for those,because where you can see the
long-running processes and APIcalls that failed and all that
kind of stuff, that's it's kindof critical for that stuff.
But you're like, yeah, you'vegot to spin up of stuff that's
it's kind of critical for thatstuff, but you're like, yeah,
you've got to spin up like aresource in azure and you know,
yeah, you might, it might costyou a few pounds per month or
whatever.
Um, so I think that one's onthat one perhaps is
underutilized.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
I'm sure the people that use it well are really
really glad telemetry, to me, isone of those underutilized and
misunderstood it's.
It's one of those.
There's a lot of informationthere.
It's just a matter of makingsure you know what to pull out
when you need it, because to me,in some cases it could be a
proactive or preemptiveindicator of something where,

(56:45):
simple, there's a number of waysto automate the job queue
notifications.
There's ways to.
Chris published something on itrecently explaining how you
could set up with power automate.
But even with telemetry youcould get the job queue failures
and you can alert and notifysomebody through app insights
that the job queue had failed.
Something so simple as that uh,there are a lot of noisy.
There are a lot of noisy events,though.

(57:06):
I understand the reason forthem, but I always monitor
within the table, just for, yousaid, for the space and size,
because you know one.
One day something shows up andit was like purchase order this
had posted.
Purchase order, this had posted.
I'm like we really don't needto collect all of those and put
it into our storage because ofyou know the amount of space
someone may need it.
Don't get me wrong, but I'mjust saying it's important to

(57:28):
keep up with it and to see allof the events that they add with
each release and then, take alook at the dimensions um that
they offer, with some of those.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Let me ask the both of you and I haven't really, uh,
played much with telemetry.
And I am curious though,because telemetry, once you get
the data, you kind of have totranslate and kind of read
through that.
And, uh, I am curious, have youguys heard from anyone where
you could take telemetry andmaybe have Copilot kind of

(57:59):
summarize?
It's like, hey, this, you knowthey're not using this area too
much or they're using this areathis, and gives you suggestions,
rather than have a human aspectof like having to translate
that and having to, you know, gothrough the whole thing and
just have Copilot do that foryou, so you can have like an
automated report that says, hey,in the past month, here's what

(58:22):
they did, and it's like much,it's like summarizing your
meeting, right, like, have youheard from anyone that have done
?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
that Personally, I haven't seen anybody using
Copilot to do something that youhad mentioned, like that.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Maybe it's a challenge for anybody that's
listening.
That would be really cool,because then you know how much
time that would save you if ittakes all the information I'm uh
, I'm actually my plan for thisweekend is a short uh video on
the power bi multiple companies.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
We think that was just a short easy blog.
That was that came up in a chatgroup and it's like actually
actually it wasn't short.
So I'm taking it easy thisweekend.
But if we're going to dochallenges, I would love to know
the answer to this next one.
Okay, so the challenge that I'dlove to find the answer for is
process mapping.
So inside Power Platform you'vegot the Process Explorer I

(59:15):
can't remember what it's calledexactly and Microsoft bought a
couple of different firms thatdo this like process mapping
thing where it kind of like hasthe process flow of the time
people spend on different pagesand all that kind of stuff.
I would love to figure out a wayto take all the telemetry and
pump it into that part of PowerPlatform to get this whole view

(59:37):
of you know this department inthis office.
Here's all the ways they wentthrough the system.
They spent this much time doinga draft invoice.
They spent this much timeposting it.
Some of the you know this manydocuments got credited.
This many documents went forapproval, this many.
Have you guys seen that likethe process map thing in Power
Platform.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
I have not seen it.
I thought you were asking aboutsomething different.
But so you're looking for morestatistical analysis of the
processes within the applicationversus the process that they
follow.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
It gives you like the full kind of map view of like
and like yeah, statistics likethis, you know, and you can have
like time spent.
How much time does it take tocomplete a document?
Right, this team.
They did 100,000 documents andthe average time was 20 minutes
or five days.
Going to have like time spent.
How much time does it take tocomplete a document?
Right, this team.
They did 100 000 documents andthe average time was 20 minutes
or five days.
This team did, you know, amillion documents and their
average time was less.
They figured out a way to do itmore efficiently.

(01:00:28):
Um, you know, and it's, it's atool inside, um, you could I
mean you could take.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
You could take your performance profiler and just
kind of go through that and thentake the results and and maybe
have co-pilot summarize that uhthat, but you would have to do a
lot of logging, with theperformance profiler, with the
ability to schedule it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Now you could schedule it for users, but I
think that would add anadditional burden.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
I mean even if you, if you're just capturing it for,
just for the process componentof what it typically goes
through, I mean maybe just runit one time and at least give
you an idea.
I mean not run it every time,but that's a good challenge to
have.
I think it's a good challenge.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
I'd like to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
On top of the telemetry right.
I would love to see someone dothat he will have all these
challenges.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
He'll have them all done.
We definitely will have to haveyou back in a few weeks to see
the results of your challenges.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Another point Process mining.
Process mining is the term, theprocess.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
And that's that.
I think that I would love toget more Power Automate stuff
connected up with BC to leverageall of those tools there.
And I'd love to see likethere's a couple of things I'd
love to see like BC kind offeeding into process mining, bc
feeding into Fabric One Lake,you know, without having to do a
kind of community supportedtool.
There's a few things out therethat would be good to see in the

(01:01:52):
future.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Yeah, I have to take a look at some of the telemetry
in more detail to see what Itransform out typically versus
what's there.
I know we can do the longrunning processes and such to
see what's running.
I don't know if it tracks whatactually is running for each
case to be able to put thattogether.
I know you have the time for itand then even when it logs the
long performance, it does itwhen it gets over the threshold
threshold which can be arbitraryas well too.

(01:02:14):
One other thing that you hadmentioned before that I wanted
to ask you about because I knowyou're involved in.
You talked about the abilityfor talent in the community.
There's a need for functionalconsultants, developers,
depending on where you are hereover in the United States.
I think we often say and wetalk and we find we prefer to
buy before we build, in a sense,whereas on the other side of

(01:02:35):
the pond before we build in asense, whereas on the other side
of the pond, it's oftentimes weprefer to build before we buy.
But there is a lack of or ashortage I don't want to say a
lack, but there is a shortage oftalented individuals.
With the business centralapplication taking off, in my
opinion I mean the number ofpeople using the application,
the number of organizationsusing the application it does

(01:02:56):
require more individuals whohave an understanding of the
application, in my opinion, bothfrom the customer point of view
, to be able to use it andmanage it internally, as well as
from the partner point of view.
I know.
One other thing that you and Ihad spoken before you were
involved in is the Reskillprogram.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Sure, yeah, I mean I guess I'm not really involved as
such, but I'm really interestedin it as it's.
That's my journey.
But, yeah, microsoft, yeah, runthis reskill program in the UK
and various other countries, Ithink, like in America and, you
know, across Europe as well.
And, yeah, I think that's likeit's great to see the investment

(01:03:32):
from the mothership right,microsoft is kind of, you know,
putting all this investment intothe platform.
It really kind of shows thatthey really are.
They're betting the future andthe future is BC Colored right.
They've created this program.
I think it's a fabulous program.
Look, you know, we're hoping toget engaged where I work to help

(01:03:52):
build the team here to getthose end users skill them up,
you know, on a formal trainingthing.
Get them up to the standard forBusiness Central across the
piece and get them onto projects.
Get them, you know, get thembillable, get them delivering
great, get them doing greatdelivery.
You know, I think it's a greatway to.
If you're a little bit nervous,if you're on the end user side,

(01:04:14):
you know it is a bit of a.
Changing jobs is always right,you know, can be stressful, I
think.
And going into somethingunknown, into a different market
, doing a different delivery.
You know everyone has thosefears like you know, like the
what is it like?
The imposter syndrome and whatif I don't enjoy it, kind of

(01:04:37):
stuff.
And I think, um, having thatkind of formal program there,
supported by microsoft, with youknow real good people in the
background involved with it aswell for the training and all
the rest of it, I think thatreally makes it more attractive
to more people.
So we we're casting a wider neton on getting you know
potential great talent into intointo the channel.

(01:04:59):
And for me, I mean you sort oftake it all the way back to the
start, like why, why did I getinvolved in it?
And I guess I've got like aninherent need to like I love
solving problems.
For people like when I wasgonna, I just back in the day it
support days and it's like,well, how do we do this?
So you click there, oh, thanks,andy, you know, oh, you know
they, they enjoyed that.
And you just, I think everyoneI the day IT support days and
it's like, well, how do we dothis?

(01:05:19):
So you click there, oh, thanks,andy, they enjoyed that.
I think everyone, I mean, is itthe case everyone in IT loves
solving?

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
problems.
Yeah, if you try to turn it offand turn it back on, you know
that feels good Like oh, it'sworking Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
There is that one, of course it's.
When that doesn't work, thenyou've got to put the real thing
on.
Yes, oh come on again.
Didn't fix it.
Guys, we've got a live one here, Get the backbone.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
That's usually a buffer when you say can you try
turning it on, can you shut itdown and restart?
Just because I don't have timeright now, just do that first.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
Or you don't know, don't give me some time, yeah,
or you don't know, and you'rejust like, ah, restart it and
just see, there's that one,there's the.
What version are you on?
Oh, that's not the latestversion.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Well, you need to update first, then we'll come
back.
Are you using any extensions?
No, I just go.
But to circle back to theRescale program, I do think the
Rescale program is a fabulousprogram.
It gives the opportunity fortalented individuals that may
have not worked with ERPimplementations to go through a
formalized training program.
I think it's co-sponsored byMicrosoft I know that maybe one
of the stakeholders of it andsome other training

(01:06:26):
organizations to allow for theopportunities for individuals
that may not have the you know,they may have some business
knowledge but they may not haveknowledge of ERP software or
Business Central in this casecase to be able to go through a
program that's sponsored by bysomeone and they can spend most
of the time while they'reworking and have a community of

(01:06:46):
people to work with, to learnand go through the journey of
learning business centerthemselves, which I find is
interesting because they alsohave what I call a functional
track and also a developmenttrack.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
so anybody who goes through it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
yeah, it can get.
They strive to say that anybodywho goes through it can pass
the MBA 100 after they gothrough the program and then
work on projects as they finishit and even with the development
, the MBA 20, which is thedevelopment certification test.
So I think it's a great programto bring exposure to Business

(01:07:18):
Central and also a good way tobring additional talent into the
community that we have, becausethere are more and more
implementations and, to becandid as well, there's a lot of
the old timers that are fallingoff because they're getting to
the point where they say I justwant to retire, so my aspiration
is to go work at Costco overhere in the US and stock shelves
.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
Sometimes that does seem attractive.
I saw a great talk once whereChris Huntingford talked about
the talent problem.
This was a while ago and hesaid, like a lot of partners in
I'm sure it's the same in the USlike you move partner to get a
raise right, so you move partner, you move partner and you're
not bringing anything new.
Like what about all theopportunity from Power Platform?
What about all the opportunityfrom Copilot or different ways
of thinking?

(01:08:00):
You know you talk about likedigital natives.
We've got like people will becoming out of university soon
who are going to be like Copilotnatives, like they always had
Copilot or some AI tool.
Like their brain's going to bewired a little bit different,
they're going to think aboutproblems a little bit different.
And if you can't get that freshblood, you need to get that
fresh blood for the fresh ideas.
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
You summarize that perfectly where individuals
going from partner to partner,for example and if you're not
doing anything new, you could beworking and I say this candidly
just because you've beenworking with Business Central
for 20 years doesn't mean youknow something more than someone
that's been working for two,Because if you've just done the
same thing for 20 years, youhave 20 years worth of one years
of experience, Whereas someonewho has exposure and who's

(01:08:47):
learning new, you can bring morevalue to the organizations and
to me.
Sometimes I think that'soverlooked.
Some people just assume that,oh, you've worked within
Business Central for 20 years,you're an expert, when in
reality is you may have onlycreated sales orders for those
20 years Doesn't mean you're notgood at creating sales orders.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
It doesn't mean Absolutely nailing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
the sales orders Say it again, please.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Yeah, they might be absolutely nailing the sales
orders.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
Yes, but to be able to say now you can go and do an
implementation, and here's allthe new features.
They sometimes struggle.
So to me I think it's importantand I'm happy for the rescale
program because it does givepeople the opportunity to learn
the application, have additionalexperience.
But it's also important forthose when they're looking that
sometimes it's not how longsomeone's been doing something
yes, it matters in some cases.

(01:09:30):
I'm not saying it doesn't, it'swhat their exposure was in that
time and what they did in thattime, versus they just have been
doing it for 20 years.
Because you know, as I tellchris, I know some individuals
been working with businesscentral for three or four years
and they can do al developmentand functional consulting far
better than some individualsbeen doing for 15 or 20 and vice

(01:09:51):
versa.
Just because someone's beendoing for 20 years, to your
point, doesn't mean they haven'tbeen keeping up as well.
I mean I fortunately don't havea life and I have to spend a
lot of time trying to read allthis stuff and it ends up
becoming a blur where I read itand which version.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
It's tricky.
I mean, that's one of the go-tointerview questions always like
how do you keep up with?
How do you keep up with what'shappening in business with all
the new features?

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
True story that is a real question.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, Like I want to you know,and I'm asking them because I
genuinely want to know theanswer, Like maybe they've got a
way of doing it that's betterthan the way I do it.
Now you can ask.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
Copilot too at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Yeah, Copilot.
Yeah, Well, I was going to ask.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
So I'm aware in the UK we've got the BC Reskill for
like end user into BC, but inthe US or is it also available
like they're reskilling like GPto BC?
Is that?

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
right.
I believe you can have GP.
I think you can have anyone gothrough the program, fair enough
.
Yeah, from my understanding Idid have some conversations with
the members of the program theywill take anybody, and I don't
mean anybody, anybody, you knowanybody.
They're just taking someone whohas it's a reskill program
somebody who has some skills andhelping them learn additional

(01:11:03):
skills.
So if they're coming from gpand it's not like it's not a gp
to bc program, it's a reskillprogram to learn bc.
But the knowledge of GP will behelpful.
They have been having webinarsand some partners have been
putting on webinars to help pavethe way to BC from GP,

(01:11:23):
explaining some of thedifferences.
But the reskill program, frommy knowledge, will take anybody
that has some businessunderstanding and help them
learn how to do business central.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
I'm looking forward to Shannon's book.
You know, like the the GPmigration, I've never used GP
but you know, like there's, it'sobviously the end of support,
the whole end of support thingand getting people off of it
onto BC, I think that's a, youknow that's, that's going to be
a fairly important thing goingforwards.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Yeah, it's great.
Well, mr Andy, sir, we have tothank you for taking the time to
speak with us today.
I truly value it because, as weall talk about, any time that
you spend doing something,you're not doing something else
and you don't get a redo, so youhave to take the time.
So we greatly appreciate youtaking the time to speak with us
and I did learn a lot and Iappreciate it a lot, and I would

(01:12:17):
like to have you on again as afollow-up to speak with you some
additional topics, so I'llreach out to you afterwards and
we can have a an andy part two.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
I would love to do that.
Thank you so much for having meon.
I've really enjoyed chatting toyou guys.
Uh, yeah have a great.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Have a great weekend I could chat with you all day,
but in the meantime, if anybodywould like to reach out with you
to learn more about some of thegreat content that you put out,
such as going to put out thathow to load Power BI by multiple
companies, as you talked about-you got two challenges man or
some of the other challenges, oreven assistance with business
central implementation.
So just to share knowledge withor to go have, now that dry

(01:12:49):
January is over, have a beveragewith.
How should someone get incontact with you?

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Yeah, I mean, linkedin is probably the easiest
one.
Or through my blog, you can getto my blog on https andyms oh,
that's easy, andyms.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
We will put links to your linkedin and also that
andyms on the guest profile pageof the website, as well as the
episode thank you again, sir,have a great afternoon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Thank you and a great weekend.
Ciao, ciao, ciao, take careguys.
All right, take care Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode
of In the Dynamics Corner Chair,and thank you to our guests for
participating.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom, that is
D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, andyou can interact with them via

(01:13:49):
Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E.
You can also find me atmatalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot
I-O, and my Twitter handle ismatalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.

(01:14:10):
Thank you and take care.

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