July 9, 2025 • 51 mins
In a recent episode of Dynamics Corner, hosts Kris and Brad explore the world of InsightWorks, a leading ISV for Business Central. Joined by Mark Hamblin, President of DMS Companies, they discuss the company's transformation from a VAR to a powerhouse offering over 30 specialized products. The discussion covers the challenges and triumphs of developing solutions that fill critical gaps in Business Central, the importance of partner collaboration, and the innovative use of AI in their offerings. With a focus on transparency and customer satisfaction, InsightWorks continues to set the standard in the industry. Please tune in to discover how they're shaping the future of business solutions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
What ISVs out there that offersfree stuff and just be
transparent?
I'm your co-host, chris.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And this is Brad.
This episode is recorded onJune 4th 2025.
Chris, chris, chris.
We'll learn about that in thisepisode, and many more things,
because I brought some friendswith me.
I brought the fulfillmentfroggy.
I brought the friends with me,I brought the fulfillment froggy
, I brought the barcode bear, Ibrought the logistics llama, as
(00:35):
well as the production puffin.
We'll learn about all of theseas well, too, with us.
Today, we had the opportunityto speak with Mark Hamlin from
InsideWorks.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's going well.
How about?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Good, good, good.
You know, it's that time ofyear, it's, rainy season finally
hit and I think I need to builda boat.
This time last year when rainyseason hit it's a little fun
fact I had fish swimming in myyard.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
And I'm nowhere near.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You're nowhere near like a lake or anything like
that.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
No, they have the canals for all the rain and for
drainage because of rainy season.
I never understood why you hadsuch big canals or ditches on
the sides of the roads or evenin the neighborhoods until you
have rainy season, because theyfill up.
But I learned that all thewater backs up, so all the
(01:56):
drainage, because we had so muchrain last year.
The fish swim up the canalsinto the drainage like tubes
into the yard.
I even walked in theneighborhood and I saw many more
, that's that's a, that's a meal, man, that's I'm not going to,
I'm not going to go fishing forthose.
I'll have to send you a pictureof it, so so that's.
(02:17):
That's the start of my summeris uh, it's been raining for
days.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Where is that?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
where are you located ?
I'm in florida right now, okay,so it's uh this time of year in
flor in South Florida, the rainjust whips.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, you're pretty flat out, though.
You're kind of like sea levelright, so you know there's not
much.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Kind of sea level when I track my runs.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
You're below sea level.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I do my garment and then the run will track the
elevation.
You know the elevation gainedand lost.
I I sometimes have negativeelevation.
So, um, there's parts of my runin my neighborhood we're below
sea level.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I'll tell you, man, I think florida's going to wash
away one day that's crazinessyou are all up in the northwest
right, so you don't have to dealwith all that yeah, well, I'm
up in canada, so we're, we'renorth, north, but uh, we're kind
of middle north, I guess, iswhere we are, you're the true
(03:14):
north yeah, well, I mean, thenext town over is 300 and some
miles north of us.
Wow, that's the north that's.
I used to live up there in FortMcMurray Through oil sands and
stuff.
But now we're kind of like inthe middle, which is about what
(03:35):
is it?
600 miles north of North Dakota, anyway, somewhere.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That must be nice being way up there.
It must be nice and quiet.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It is.
Yeah, we don't get any of thegoofy stuff.
I mean, we had a tornado herelike decades and decades ago.
We got no stupid weather, wegot no earthquakes.
We got none of that junk.
It's.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Snow.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, we get lots of snow.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Lots of outdoor activities too right.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, last, lots of outdoor activities too, right,
yeah, yeah.
Last year we went down.
Uh, well, out in the country,like we have forces, it was down
to minus 50 and the city wasonly minus 45 ish.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So, yeah, it gets cold once in a while fun fact, I
lived in alaska for a shortperiod of well, for four years
and one thing, I realized aboutthe cold everyone it.
It would get negative 10,negative 20 Fahrenheit and when
everyone's like well, it getscold.
And I told everybody well, youget used to it and the cold is
the cold, don't get me wrong.
(04:36):
And you're up north, so youunderstand.
Once you get negative 10, thedifference between negative 10
and negative 20 really isn'tmuch.
I don't think I.
The difference between negative10 and negative 20 really isn't
much.
I don't think I think cold iscold.
But it's not like the rest ofthe US or the southern portions
of it, where it will be 20 oneday, it will be 60 the next day,
(04:56):
then it goes back to 30.
So you don't have theopportunity Up north.
It gets cold, it just gets cold, and it stays cold and dark for
months.
So you don't have the teaser.
They call it exactly.
Well, we enough about theweather.
I just the values of rain today.
Just, uh, it's been pouring,and when I say pouring, like you
think someone's pouring bucketsall day.
(05:17):
So I just thought it would bean interesting thing to share.
Uh, been looking forward tospeaking with you, have a lot of
things I'd like to talk aboutand your wonderful, great suite
suite of products that you have.
But if you could, before we getinto that conversation, might
you tell us a little bit aboutyourself?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely Well , where do I start?
I mean, geez Well, I've beenwith InsightWorks since the
beginning.
I call myself a solutionadvisor.
That's really.
What I'm there for is to sortof look at what customers have,
what they need, what we have.
(05:51):
Is there a fit, Are there gaps?
How can we help that customerbe successful either with or
without our products?
So that's kind of what I dohere, and InsightWorks has been
around for about 10 years nowunder that sort of name, though
some of the products predate theinitial start of InsightWorks
has been around for about 10years now under that sort of
name, though some of theproducts predate the initial
start of.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
InsightWorks.
So with InsightWorks,InsightWorks has a suite of
products for Business Central, avariant suite of products.
I think you have over 30, Ithink A lot of times.
I think of the InsightWorkswarehousing, but what are some
of the other products that youhave?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, so we focus really on manufacturing,
distribution and now we'regetting more and more into
retail.
And so just a quick overviewand then I'll mention some of
the specific ones.
But really what we did was wecame into Business Central and
we used to actually be Avara andwe used to implement NAB and
things like.
We used to implement Nav andthings like that.
And you know my past historyhas been more product
(06:48):
development focused.
So we started building productsvery quickly and you know we
looked at the gaps in Nav andBusiness Central and what
manufacturers needed and whatdistributors needed and kind of
tried to fill in those gaps.
So even when we talk about theretail, we have something called
counter sales which you knowthere's a lot of retailers using
.
Now it was not really meant somuch for retailers, more for,
(07:12):
yeah, I'm a distributor and I'vegot an outlet store, I'm a
manufacturer and I've got aparts counter that people can
come up to.
That's kind of what we built itfor.
So a lot of the products sortof follow that.
We've lived that world.
You know that.
You know, in the real lifewe've been in these situations.
You know I used to be anoperations manager, I used to be
an auto mechanic many, manyyears ago things like that so
(07:33):
you know, we've got a lot ofpeople that have come up through
industry and can spot thosegaps and build something that
the people actually need and use.
So you know, warehousemanagement is one of the big
ones because barcoding hasbecome so accessible in the last
decade or two.
But you know, we've got shopfloor data collection, we've got
(07:54):
, as I mentioned, the countersales for point of sale type
stuff, we've got qualityinspections, we've got shipping,
we've got fulfillment tools.
We've got shipping, we've gotfulfillment tools, we've got a
ton of maintenance managementnow, tons of stuff just to sort
of build that end-to-endsolution for manufacturing
distribution.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's great.
You have a great suite ofproducts.
As far as to talk about theorigin of InsightWorks a little
bit and it seems you hadmentioned before you were a VAR
and then realized the gaps andthen created these apps or app
source.
Now that you have.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
How long ago did InsightWorks start as an ISV?
As an ISV, you know, I thinkour first sale was in, I think
2013, of something outside ofour, of our business right.
So we, you know, we'd have ourcustomers that we'd implement to
NAV for and we kind of buildthese products that might
include that with ourdeployments, and then we started
selling.
I think 2013 was the first timewe sold something outside of
(08:58):
outside of our own customer base.
And then 2015 is really when westarted inside works.
That was sort of the, you know,that was sort of the inaugural
website in 2015.
So InsightWorks and that'sreally where we started focusing
on being an ISV, not a VAR,with some products that we can
include.
And since then we've moved awayfrom that entire VAR business.
(09:19):
We don't run that at allanymore.
We don't have it.
We focus really on the ISV side.
So yeah, about 10 years, Iwould say, for InsightWorks.
But again, some of thoseproducts predate that time frame
.
Just because we did that onewhere it's still a VAR, that's
great.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No, it is.
It is and just to talk aboutsome of it.
I do want to get into some moredetails, because Business
Central itself is a fullyfunctional ERP application and
it's nice that VARs, isvs andsome VARs, if customers, if
there are some gaps, as you hadmentioned that, there are
options available.
So I'd like to talk about someof those gaps that may be filled
(09:55):
by some of your.
You know the more popularproducts within the warehouse
management and the distributionarea, because that's maybe some
of the more popular ones.
Which versions of BusinessCentral do you support?
Do you support Business Centralonline on-premise?
And if you do supporton-premise, how far back?
Which versions?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, so we still support NAV 2013 all the way up
to the current Business CentralSaaS versions.
Oh, wow.
We have a couple of customersstill running our stuff a
central SaaS version, oh wow,and we go back right over to
this.
So we have a couple ofcustomers still running our
stuff on, like NAV 2009 Classicand things like that.
But you know, all the newdevelopment is going into, sort
(10:35):
of you know, the newest businesscentral and we like to focus on
the SaaS.
You know, five years ago Iwould have said it's you know,
depending on who you are, as towhether you should go to the
cloud or not.
Today it's an over-the-top.
To me the cloud makes the mostsense.
I don't like it when we geton-prem installs anymore because
(10:55):
they're so much more painfulthan the cloud.
Most of the development thoseolder versions have supported
versions that run.
But you know, obviously, allthe new features that you find
in Business Central that we canleverage, all the new stuff is
going into the latest.
And then on the cloud side, youknow we give away a lot of free
(11:16):
products.
We get a ton of free stuff wegive away and we try and keep
that sort of cloud only to youknow, sweeten the deal, I guess
for people moving to the cloud.
When you go to the cloud, youget a bunch of free stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That's great.
Well, maybe we can talk aboutsome of the free stuff.
Speaking of free stuff, I dohave to say this one thing
Whomever came up with this?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Ah, yes, I got so many of those.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
We'll talk about this , but I have the of all of these
.
I go to many conferences Chrisand I both do and we see
everybody at these conferencesand this is always one of the
most memorable things is theInsightWorks stuffed animals,
and this InsightWorks logisticsllama happens to be my favorite.
So who came up with this?
(12:03):
I know we want to talk aboutthe product, but who came up
with this?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I know we want to talk about the product, but who
came up with these?
And I love this.
Yeah, as an aside, you know allof these guys, like you know
the the obviously this guy is isalso one of the popular Lama
and the platypus.
But if you go to the websites,like you can go to logistics,
lamacom or packagingplatypuscom,and it's got a little bio on
the guy and you know what theydo in their spare time and all
(12:29):
sorts of fun stuff.
So they're great for kids, youknow.
Anyway, we came up with that, Ithink in like 20, I don't know,
it was like 2016-ish timeframe.
We're at.
Summit and I was there withanother guy and I had seen these
like 20 foot tall or 10 foottall stuffed bears online
(12:52):
somewhere and I thought, hey, weshould get one of those for the
booth.
And he took it one step furtherand like, yeah, we should get a
mascot costume called barcodingbear and the guy can walk
around.
And we settled on neither ofthose, but we thought a bear
would be a good mascot, right.
So we got these little stuffedanimals, the little bears called
barcoding bear, exactlybarcoding bear.
(13:13):
I have the barcoding bear righthere too and now the original
one actually had a little shirt,uh, instead of embroidered, and
it was kind of fun.
But um, yeah, and it's grownquite a bit.
We've got six now in our littlestable of stuffed animals.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's genius because a lot of people don't realize.
When you're going toconferences, you know you want
something that's memorable, andthen it's like one of a kind,
and then most times you want tobring something back to the
family, right, so this is likeperfect I don't pick.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I don't pick up up swag typically because it's just
a lot, unless it really servesa purpose.
The stuffed animals serve agreat purpose, like you said,
chris, because you can bring itback.
And there's some other things Ipick up, but a lot of the stuff
is just waste.
But now that you said you havesix, I realize I'm missing one.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Well, so it's actually seven.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Oh, I'm missing two.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So we've got Fulfillment Froggy, we've got
Logistics Llama, we've gotProduction Puffin, we've got
Packaging Platypus, barcodingBear, obviously the original.
So those are the main five,then we've got a sixth one
coming in the fall.
So if you're at Directions EMEAyou'll see it there, otherwise
(14:29):
you'll see it at Summit mostlikely, and that's a Quokka.
Quality Quokka, oh, a goodquality inspection solution.
So quality Quokka, and thatone's kind of cool.
And then we have a limitededition, this guy here, he is
TechWorks Tamarin, so he's alittle monkey that we have for
(14:53):
TechWorks Conference and it's amonkey, first of all a tamarin,
which is a type of monkey forthe alliteration right.
You've got to have TechWorksTamarin Plus.
He's a monkey and it was adevelopment conference, so he's
a code monkey for thealliteration right.
You're going to have tech worksTamra Plus.
He's a monkey and it was adevelopment conference, so it's
he's a code monkey for it.
So here's our little mascot forour conference.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's, that's creative.
And now I know just, I'll haveto reserve the ones that are
missing for summit.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I'll have to.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I'll be there early so I'll have to hit up
whomever's at the booth to getsome of those to take them back.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
The quark will be fun .
And you know we also startedshipping these to customers.
So you know, when people youknow buy a license like if they
buy our Dynamic Ship product asan example we'll ship them the
packaging, platypus, right, sowe'll ship out these little
stuffies.
So you go into some of thesefacilities and they've got these
little stuffies sitting at theshipping counter or whatever.
(15:46):
I heard from one person at aconference where you know
they're going live and theshipping guy or one of the
warehouse guys you know they'restruggling with the change and
what he'd do is give the stuffiea big hug every time.
He was stressed he's walkingaround like this thing as an
(16:07):
emotional support animal orsomething.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Oh that's genius, yeah, so it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
We had people on social media.
You know there was, you knowsomeone took it all over the
world like Antarctica and Peruand all sorts of weird places.
There's these photos of thesethings anyway, so it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It is a lot of fun and I I didn't want to jump into
it, but as we were talkingabout this, I you know the
family loves those stuffedanimals and it's always
something nice to bring backwith it as well too.
So you have a full suite ofproducts and you you talked
about dynamic ship, we talkedabout the warehouse insights, uh
, order fulfillment, um, andthen your counter sales, and you
(16:48):
also have, uh, the handheld, Ibelieve, option as well, uh for
uh, business central.
Uh, I do like to talk aboutsome of those features within
there, but did the productsupport any?
Does your offering support anyother products besides business
central, or is it just businesscentral focused?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
No, we're focused on Business Central.
You know, and we had a lot ofpeople actually asking that you
know, especially when you go tothe conferences where there's
mixed products, right, like F&Ois there and GP and things like
that People ask you know, for usit's not really worth it.
You know, business Central isgrowing so fast, there's so much
opportunity and there's so manypeople that need our solutions
(17:29):
within the Business Centralworld.
I think it would just be adistraction to go elsewhere.
So, yeah, we're strictlybusiness central, we're focused.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Excellent.
I like that personally becauseI think if you're focusing on
one product, you can put allyour energy in that one product
and then you can have a betteroffering Yep, instead of trying
to support multiple applicationswhere you have one foot in many
camps and you may not be ableto provide the offering.
So having one solution, from mypersonal opinion I think, is
extremely beneficial for aproduct because you know that's
(17:57):
their energy effort, excuse me,where it's being pushed.
Let's talk about some of theproducts and going through the
cycle of somebody who is usingBusiness Central, and Business
Central has, like we hadmentioned, has a lot of features
, but sometimes we're basingadditional gaps Within your
product offering.
What are some indications thatsomeone may need to use one of
(18:17):
your products, such as DynamicShip, and then to go to, maybe
to your handheld or some of yourwarehouse management apps?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, that's a good question and a good point.
I mean, business Central is avery comprehensive solution,
right Like it's got thewarehousing in it, it's got a
lot of the manufacturingcapabilities in it, at least at
a sort of core level.
But Microsoft can't doeverything right.
They can't build out thesebest-of-breed solutions as
quickly or necessarily as wellsometimes as what the ISVs can,
(18:48):
as well sometimes as what theISVs can.
So, but to answer your specificquestion, really what it comes
down to I use this term a lot,or this phrase you know what you
want to do when you're doing animplementation is look at what
your best practice physicalprocesses should be Like.
How are you going to be themost efficient in your
environment?
Because you know we're notdealing with accounting and
(19:10):
stuff like that.
For the most part, we'redealing with people working in
shops and warehouses and it'svery physical, right.
So you want to, you want to beas efficient as possible in your
physical environment.
Once you've got that laid out,what software do you need to
support those physical processes?
How do you make your virtualworld match your physical world?
All right, so really the thefirst step is if I had a magic
(19:33):
wand, what would make me themost efficient, as you know,
possible in in the shop or thewarehouse okay, in order.
Now, in order to to be thatefficient, I'm going to need
software that supports this,this, this, this and this.
And quite often you, often youknow when you get into that.
You get into, you know,automation and validation and
(19:54):
things like that, which is, youknow, scanning barcodes for your
pickings or your warehousemanagement type of thing.
You know, spending way lesstime generating shipping labels
and doing the shippingverification at the same time.
Those types of things, all ofthose sorts of things you know,
overall reduce the effort andimproves the efficiency.
Like a warehouse facility, samething in shop floor, right,
(20:17):
like in a manufacturingenvironment.
You know you want to have likean efficient production schedule
.
You want to have the people onshop floor be able to report
accurately what they're workingon, right.
Those sorts of things don'treally exist properly in
Business Central today.
So when people run into thosesituations where they're like
you know what, we can't be asefficient as possible if we
(20:39):
don't have something that does X, well, we're that X, right.
In a lot of cases, you knowwe're one ISV and we've got
those 30 products and they cometo one organization and they've
got everything they need reallyto help facilitate those
physical processes in the shop.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
No, it is.
It's a challenge to do it andas far as through the
implementation process of it,like I had mentioned, I do want
to kind of hone in on some ofthese individual, specific ones.
So, now that they've determinedthat they need to work with
InsightWorks, typically, howdoes an implementation go?
Is it more partner-driven?
Does InsightWorks come in andhelp with the implementation?
(21:19):
How does an implementationtypically go of these processes?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, good question, and you know most of them sort
of follow the same process.
There's a few where it's notquite known.
I'll maybe describe what I meanthere.
But yeah, we are verypartner-centric, right.
We want people to work withtheir partners, we want them to
have that strong relationshipbecause the partner is going to
be able to go in there and dothat consulting, whereas we may
not have that capacity.
I mean we do 300 and someprojects a year.
(21:48):
We're not going to necessarilybe able to go in and do those
deep dives and that realconsulting work that the
partners are able to do.
But for our little piece like,let's say, warehousing.
Somebody wants to get warehousemanagement going in Business
Central.
Well, they're going to engagethe partner to sort of get that
core Business Central capabilityset up, like set up the bins
and make sure their inventory isset up properly and you know
(22:12):
all of those sorts of thingsrelated to making sure the core
business central is workingproperly and then we can jump in
and we have a fixed priceproject with a very formal
project plan that you can findon our website that we go
through to actually implementthat additional portion of
capability that we bring to thetable.
Now sometimes a partner doesthat.
(22:33):
We have lots of partners outthere that have been working
with us for a very long time andcan do those implementations
themselves, and other times theyhave us do it.
So we work on behalf of thepartner, we work directly with
the customer and we'll do thatimplementation and typically
they're fixed price and they'rehonestly not a lot of money for
(22:54):
getting up and running with awarehouse management solution I
mentioned earlier.
I'm sidetracking a little bithere, but I mentioned earlier.
You know barcoding has become alot more accessible in the last
couple of decades and what Imeant by that is really from a
cost perspective and justubiquity of what's available to
do this automated datacollection with barcoding.
(23:15):
You know, back in the day andeven today you buy an external
like a standalone WMS that youintegrate with Business Central.
I mean you're looking at$100,000, $200,000 and up to do
the implementation and get theintegration working and
everything else.
I mean we're a small fractionof that to implement it because
we're built into business andthe hardware cost has come down
(23:38):
and everything else just to makeit.
You know to speak to that sortof accessibility of being able
to do barcoding nowadays.
But so anyway, that was my sidetrack, but you know back to the
question on projects.
so so, I would say it's 50-50.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Half the time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
We go in there and we'll do the implementation.
We're working with the partnerand making sure that they know
what's going on and understandhow they want things configured
to sort of match those physicalprocesses we talked about.
We'll go in there and we'll dothe implementation.
We'll do the UAT support, we'lldo the post-go-live support.
We'll kind of handle all ofthat ourselves.
And you know some customerswill go to the partner for their
(24:14):
Tier 1 support, others comedirectly to us.
You know we're very flexible.
We want to do whatever thecustomer is comfortable with and
whatever is going to make themsuccessful.
That's what it was.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I do like that approach and it's refreshing to
hear because I know the partnershave a varying size and
partners have varying levels ofexperience and with all the
features that are added toBusiness Central sometimes it's
not possible to know in for aspecific task or function to set
up some of these products orthese apps and these processes
(24:56):
with a customer that they'll besuccessful.
So a partner's not strugglingto try to figure out and learn
and maybe misrepresent theproduct as well too, so having
an offering of both is good.
Do you offer training for theseproducts?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
We do, yeah, so I mean we do offer training for
these products.
We do, yeah, so I mean we dopartner training for the
partners that do want toimplement them themselves.
But as part of theimplementation, we'll do the
training and we have a lot of um, you know, content on our
knowledge base and on youtubeand things like that for
partners and customers to sortof dig in and learn some of
those things on their own.
But you know, we're always anemail or a phone call away if
(25:32):
people have questions and wantto learn more and get some
additional training.
So, yeah, you know, I thinkmaybe we've caused some people
to change their behaviors, theirbusiness behaviors, like our
mostly other ISVs.
You know, we started when westarted with InsightWorks.
We, you know, opened up theroad, as the saying kind of goes
(25:56):
.
We put everything online.
Like you want to see how theproduct works, here it is.
You want to see a full demo?
You don't need to put in youremail address, here it is, it's
on YouTube.
You go watch this hour-longdemo that shows you everything
about how our product works.
People don't like doing that.
They still don't right A lot oftimes.
Even just to get a data sheetyou have to fill in your
information to download a PDFright.
(26:17):
So nobody was doing that at thetime and a few people have
started now doing it.
But our thought was yeah well,if our competitors want to copy
us and see how we do things,great, then we'll just have to
be better and that's how we doit.
So we are very open with allthat information.
We have sample coderepositories.
If people want to do their owndevelopment, we try and help
(26:42):
them along on how to do thatthemselves.
Yeah, so there's lots oftraining material out there and
again, we'll do the sort ofinteractive training whenever
somebody wants.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, actually that's very, very important nowadays,
right?
Because of the fact that a lotof people can research.
I mean newer generations comingup in the industry, so they
tend to do a lot more researchbefore jumping in Back in the
day, when everything was nav.
You know you kind of rely onyour partner at that time.
Whatever they recommended, youtook it.
(27:10):
Now, with the AppSourcemarketplace as a partner, it's
much more difficult to knowevery single available
applications out there, and sofor you to be able to offer that
and, at the same time, offerthe support and then putting
everything out there for them toaccess, to learn on their own
including for clients as wellit's nice to have an ISV that
(27:33):
can do that.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And your point there on customers finding the product
now and then deciding it beforetalking to their partner.
We talk to partners and theyhate that.
I understand both sides of it.
If I'm a customer, hey, this iswhat I want, like, make it
happen, mr partner.
And then the partner is like,well, I have no idea who this is
(27:56):
or what this is or how tosupport it or how to, even you
know, pay for it, like what I'm.
And now the partner is gotthese dozens of you know, isv
relationships because thecustomers keep choosing weird
things that the partners neverheard it.
So it can be be challengingfrom a partner perspective.
And again, that I think is oneof our strengths, right, because
(28:17):
we have such a wide range ofsolutions that fill all those
gaps, you don't need to havethose dozens of relationships
you have one relationship withus and we kind, of you know,
help you along with most of whatyou need need, at least in the,
in the areas we play in no, no,I, I like I.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I laugh a little bit, like chris, because I hear that
with a lot of partners, becausewith app source having over 5
000 apps I think I'm close to 6000 apps now I can't keep up
with it it is the case where alot of times, customers will
find and download and installthings and then call the partner
and say, oh, by the by the way,my system's not working.
I installed this app.
It is a little challenge, but Ido appreciate the transparency.
(28:55):
As Chris had mentioned, I thinkthe generations that are
looking now business generations, I could call it they're doing
a lot more research ahead oftime and they get more comfort
versus reaching out and saying,okay, here's all my information,
I just want to know something,we can go through it.
So I appreciate the fulltransparency with products
myself because even if I'm doingresearch for something, I
(29:16):
always try to look at it thatway as well.
I want to have enough.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
It drives me nuts.
If I have to, I just want adata sheet on something and I've
got to fill in my contact info,like, come on, it drives me
insane, and if I hate it, whywould I enforce that or force
that sort of requirement onanybody else?
So anyway, most of uh, probablymost of the way we work is
(29:40):
because I'm uh, I'm just gettinggrumpy in my old age or
something, grumpy and lazy, andso you know, if I don't like it,
then probably nobody else likesit and that's so, we're not
going to do it, and that's kindof how it goes.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
That's actually a good approach.
I think If I don't like it,nobody else will like it to go
through it as well, which isgood.
So I just want to do a quickrun through some of these
products that you have, just togo through it, and I'd like to
dive into some more of them.
So you have the advancedinventory count.
You have the barcode generator,you have the counter sales
(30:16):
which we spoke about, which isfor retail.
I've been hearing a lot aboutPOS these days recently.
I know Chris and I have hadseveral conversations about some
of the options are out thereand it seems it's nice to know
that.
You have the counter salesoption.
You have the dock extender, thedynamic ship products, and then
you have the enhancedforecasting, enhanced planning,
enhanced planning worksheet, thegraphic scheduler, which gives
you, I believe, a Gantt chartfor scheduling jobs as well.
(30:37):
You have your planning review,license plating, which is also
another great option.
Maintenance manager,multi-level BOM viewer, the MX
app maps, your order fulfillmentworksheet, your order ship
express.
You have a lot Print nodeconnector I have so many stories
about printing with BusinessCentral Online.
We'll talk about print node too.
Product configurator, productorder analysis, quality
(31:01):
inspector, routing analysis,safety logbook, shop floor
insights, warehouse insights andthe WMS express.
How do you have time to do allof those?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, we have good people.
So you know we've got a verystrong team.
A lot of them I've known forliterally decades.
You know, when I came over withInsightWorks, you know a lot of
them came with me from previousjobs.
So anyway, we have excellentpeople and we work hard.
I mean, we've got a qa team.
(31:32):
You know, you know, I thinkwhat is it?
Six people on qa and deploymentnow that do nothing but make
sure that you know the qualityis built into the products,
large development team workingtheir butts off every day.
So, yeah, we've got very goodpeople right.
And again, we've got that sortof industry experience from
product management perspectivewhere we know what to build.
(31:54):
We're not doing a lot of trialand error.
We say this is what we need andwe build it and it's a lot more
streamlined.
Yeah, it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I can imagine, I can imagine, I think I'm done for a
while.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I'm not sure we're going to have any new products
for a while.
There's just lots of newfeatures I want, but I'm not
sure about new products.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I'm sure it must be difficult to manage and keep up
with them all and understandthem all, even understand them
all.
Talk about versioning.
We talked about BusinessCentral Online, business Central
On-Premises.
You support some older versionsas well.
Are there any regions that youdo not support or all regions
support?
It's primarily North America,world One or some of the other
(32:34):
countries.
The Business Central now isoperating.
I think what is it?
170 countries now, chris, or150?
I forget the number it'sgrowing.
Are your products available inall those countries?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
It is.
Yeah, so we support pretty muchevery country where Business
Central works, like some likecounter sales.
We have a North Americanversion and a worldwide version
just for the tax localizationsand things like that.
But yeah, we pretty muchsupport every region.
Languages are a challenge,right?
So doing appropriatetranslations is always a
(33:11):
challenge, so that's one of thethings that is constantly
something that we're looking toimprove.
But, yeah, we do support all ofthose regions and we are
growing in Europe.
I mean, we've got maybe 75 or100 partners roughly in Europe
now that are actively, you know,selling, promoting the
solutions.
So you know we're predominantly, so we're predominantly North
(33:33):
American based.
Most of our business is NorthAmerican.
Europe is definitely a growingregion in Australia, Europe and.
Australia are both growingpretty rapidly at this point.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I want to point out that I love the way your
website's designed, because Ithink very few, if not probably
the only one, that I've comeacross where you can go to your
website, look at the apps andthen filter on the categories.
I think right now you havebusiness operations.
You can filter by free andsubscription, and then
(34:08):
compatibility and licensingoptions, which are the typical
questions that people want tolook at anyway, and so for you
to be able to go to your website, filter quickly and say, okay,
this is exactly what I need andit's free, um, and I want to
enable it, this is, uh, very,very intuitive, even from a,
even from a consultantperspective, or even a partner
(34:31):
that maybe have not partneredwith you yet and they want to
see okay, how can I work withInsightWorks?
This is nice.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, that's kind of the goal.
And then when you findsomething, hey, this might fit,
you can jump in and watch a45-minute or an hour-long demo
to see is it actually going towork.
Or get know, get, get that baseinformation on it, or jump into
the knowledge base and learnall about all the technical
details of it and everythingelse.
Right, I mean, we're almostputting a roadmap for our
competitors out on our websiteand you know, honestly, great
(35:03):
steal our ideas, make thembetter, and then we'll learn
from you and you will never bethe only one, I tell everybody,
because if you have somethinggreat, somebody else would try
to create it.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
So your point of, well, we just have to be better
is, uh, profound.
I I appreciate that as well,because you'll never be the only
one.
The world is a big place.
There's a lot of talentedpeople.
So it's you just have to bebetter.
And also, when it comes tobusiness, just keep your
customers happy as well.
I mean, if the customers arehappy and they're getting what
(35:34):
they need, then they'llappreciate it as well.
So, with all the products thatyou have, the print node I
talked about because I've usedthe print node, set that up
print node because with businesscentral cloud, the cloud
printing was a little bitchallenging and print node is a
great application to facilitatethe printing and being able to
automatically print on there aswell, which is a good solution.
(35:56):
What would you say are the morepopular products that the
customers are using?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Targeting question.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
But you're going to put up with a story before I
answer.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
I'm always willing to hear a story.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
So PrintNode Connector, which is free, and
DocExtender, which is also free,for drag-and-drop document
management.
We put those up fairly early.
So we were actually we had the11th app on AppSource for
Business Central.
That's including all theMicrosoft apps that were
published at the time.
It's actually a Canadianpayroll app, which we don't have
(36:37):
anymore, but Microsoft inCanada approached us to build
something because they felt atthe time, payroll was a big gap
in their offering for what wasat that time called what the
heck was it?
Dynamics 365 for finance, notfinance and operations.
(36:57):
This is the original version ofBusiness Central Online, but it
didn't really do much otherthan basic finance stuff.
Anyway, we were the 11th appand at the time, shortly after,
we put our Warehouse Insightproduct up on AppSource and that
, by the way, is currentlyprobably the most popular
product.
To answer your first question,and when we put that up, we
(37:19):
realized a few things.
Number one cloud printing is notavailable for Business Central
yet, because we were early.
Like I mean, this is 2017, 2018timeframe.
So there's no cloud printing,there's no barcode fonts,
there's no way to easily attachdocuments with drag and drop
those sorts of things.
So well, we better build it,because we need to support our
(37:41):
solution.
So we built Print NoteConnector.
I'm thinking, ah, it'll lastsix months and Microsoft will
have this solved.
They'll have universal printavailable and Microsoft will
have this solved.
Right, they'll have universalprint available and nobody will
need our thing.
So we'll just build it andwe'll use it and that'll be that
.
Well, that's eight years ago.
Print node connector, out of thefree products, is probably the
(38:01):
most popular Like we've got10,000 installs of that because
it is free.
You pay print node a few bucksa month to use their service,
but our connector is is free.
You pay Printnode a few bucks amonth to use their service, but
our connector is completelyfree, which annoys me because,
again, I thought it would lastlike six months and you can
actually resell.
So, for partners out therelistening, you can actually
resell the Printnode service.
You can buy it for $2, sell itfor $9, and make $7 a month per
(38:25):
customer.
Well, I got 10,000 of thoseguys out there that that could
be 70 000 a month.
I could be charmed, could bemaking off reselling that
service and we're making nothing, we're giving it away.
So, anyway, partners can makesome money on that.
I feel like, yeah.
So the same thing with docextender.
You know, eight years later, andit's still a great tool for
putting documents on sharepointor right in Business Central.
(38:46):
Microsoft hasn't quite closedthat gap yet.
Even barcode generator again,we needed to have something to
be able to print barcodes.
We have a barcoding solution.
What do you mean?
You can't print barcodes.
So we built that for BusinessCentral, made it free and again,
we've got 7,000 or 8,000 atleast customers out there using
it.
Microsoft finally did add thebarcode fonts, but they didn't
(39:11):
add all of the ones that peopleneed.
So yeah, barcode Generator isstill very viable.
You know, seven or eight yearsafter the fact even though we
thought those three productswould last maybe six months
before, you know, microsoftwould fill that gap.
But yeah, they're still goingstrong.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
No, I always appreciate the stories.
I always like to hear theevolution of some of these
things or the background behindit as well, too, to see where
they come from, because, as youhad mentioned, a lot of these
things just they evolve throughimplementations and listening to
customers, which is good tocustomers, which is good.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I was going to ask you, with all the products that
you have in apps, I'm going toask you a question that's like
well, who's your favorite kid?
What's?
Speaker 3 (40:00):
your favorite app?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, Warehouse Insight ispretty cool, Like okay, it's
barcode scanning.
And we have the free version,the WMS Express, which we have
probably scanning, and we havethe free version, the wms
express, which we have probablymore installs of the free
version than the paid version.
We actually have some peoplethat have canceled the paid
version to go to the freeversion, versus the other way
around.
We almost never have peoplegoing from free to paid, but the
(40:22):
other way it happens.
Um, but yeah, where elseinsight?
I mean, people don't realizereally the technology and the
capability within that thing.
So, yeah, it's an app that runson the device, that's a scan
barcode.
It's a big deal, but it's got afull application designer in
there, right?
So it's got this Blockly editor.
So kids that are going intograde six are using the same
(40:45):
tool to sort of learn coding.
Well, we've got that.
So consultants can actually goin there.
Like you don't need to be adeveloper to build your own
handheld application, sort ofextend the existing applications
.
We've even got a wizard and anai driven wizard where you can
just describe the applicationyou want and it'll build you a
mobile app.
Like that's part of oursolution.
(41:08):
We've got our own littlemarketplace called the add-on
catalog.
Like you know, you want toextend the capabilities.
There's you know 30 some orwhatever apps that are on there.
You click a button and bang,you've got it on the handheld or
within business central.
So even things like proof ofdelivery and fixed asset
counting and all these differentsolutions you can plug in no
(41:29):
cost.
All the code is there.
You can do whatever the heckyou want with it.
You don't even have to tell usyou're using it and off you go,
right.
So it's more than just this appthat scans barcodes.
It's really a full developmentplatform, very, very powerful
too.
Pardon me, we've actuallystarted building some of our
other products on that sameplatform.
So our shop floor insight.
(41:50):
You can now get a version ofthat that runs within the
warehouse insight platform andour counter sales, which is
retail.
Um, that can also run on thatwarehouse inside platform.
So if you want a fancytouchscreen user interface, what
runs within warehouse, soanyway it's.
That's my favorite I shouldn'tsay favorite, but that that's.
(42:10):
That's a pretty cool one.
The other one that I reallylike is order fulfillment
worksheet, because it's such asimple concept, so powerful, and
everybody doing any amount ofvolume in a warehouse needs that
sucker, and it's not a lot ofmoney either.
So, uh, yeah, those probablygoes to, I guess the two
favorite children.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
No, it doesn't mean you don't like any of the other
children.
No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
It's not awesome.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
It doesn't mean you don't like them All product
managers and developers andinside works that are going to
listen to this are all going tobe mad at me now, Like what do
you mean?
I like mine better.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
You don't love me anymore.
Tell them they need to dobetter, and then they could be
the favorite child again.
That's all you need to do.
It doesn't listen you.
Just because you have afavorite doesn't mean you don't
appreciate the others.
I have a.
I have favorite things that Ilike to eat.
It doesn't mean that I dislikeall the other food, it's just.
It's just one that I like themost.
Uh, you know, I hate to talkabout this because this is all I
(43:08):
ever hear about, but it's been.
Chris knows where I'm goingwith this, but I almost feel
like I have to because I'mobligated to some for some
reason.
I know where you're going.
You know where I'm going,probably.
What do you guess?
Yes, you know.
See, that was the leading.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
So you kind of mentioned that on your app,
though on your uh handhelddevice.
I'm curious about aboutanything else with that, yeah,
yeah, so we've actually got aagain.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
We put everything we do online almost, so there's a
video there that talks a littlebit about our AI journey, if you
will, and you know I thinkanyway it's I don't know, it's
interesting for me to watch.
But, you know, we talked alittle bit about how we use it
internally and things like that.
But more for the products,we've got a bunch of stuff that
(43:58):
we're putting out into theproducts that are AI related,
some that have been, you know,published in the products
already.
Like a quality inspector makesa great deal of use of ai, uh,
for managing, you know, uh,inspection records and creating
inspections, all sorts of funstuff.
And then, um, I mentioned theai app builder, our configurator
(44:19):
products, or, you know,configure price quote has a as a
described to configure featurewhere you can, you know, just
either talk or type in adescription of the product
you're looking for and it'llbuild it for you.
Right, build a bomb and therouting and everything else.
So those are those types oftools that we're building out
and looking at.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, AI seems to be everywhere.
In Copilot it's jumping intoall areas of Business Central.
It'll be interesting to seewhere it goes and how we all
work a few years from now.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
I'm curious how Microsoft's going to.
You know they've been talkingabout and we were on a private
preview for a while on how theywant to bill for that stuff.
But you know that's the onestumbling block that we find so
far.
You know we have, for example,an invoice reconciliation tool
for dynamic ship, like inreconciling your carrier
(45:09):
invoices, and you know we don'tcharge for that module.
But you know the customer hasto have some ai subscriptions
and they're like well, what doyou think?
It's going to cost us to run.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
They're like I have no idea that is the the, the big
gorilla, because it's theprices sound reasonable, but you
really don't know how to gaugehow much you're going to consume
to be you know, is it reallyreasonable or what am I going to
(45:38):
be charged?
Speaker 1 (45:39):
because I can't tell you what it is yeah, I think I
struggle with that too, becauseI know like even for some side
projects where you're usingAzure AI, it really depends on
whatever the content that youwant the AI to read in terms of
the documents, and sometimesthey're like less of token use
and then sometimes they're likemassive.
(46:00):
You just there's just no way togauge it, and so it gets pretty
dangerous, I guess, becausethen you can spend a boatload of
money for something that youjust wanted to test.
So that is a struggle.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
I think if Microsoft put that licensing within
Business Central so you didn'thave to go out and deal with
getting a separate zero AIsubscription and buying tokens
or pay-as-you-go or all thatstuff, if they just made it easy
within sort of the BusinessCentral admin center to set up a
plan and maybe set a pricelimit not necessarily a token
(46:33):
limit or anything.
Say, you know, warn me when Ihit $100 or $200 or whatever, if
they could do that in BusinessCentral, that would solve a lot
of issues.
So we'll see.
I mean, I know they're workingon it, they know all the pain
points, probably better than us,but hopefully, so hopefully,
they'll deal with that, yes,it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
It's still all in its infancy.
So, as far as the products areconcerned, I'm not looking for
prices specifically, but how arethey typically licensed outside
of free?
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah, free is the best.
It varies.
So we actually publish theprices on the website too, which
is a little unusual.
So if you go to the bottom ofeach of those application pages,
it'll give you sort ofrepresentative pricing, right?
So we give annual discounts andthree-year discounts over the
monthly subscription.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
But they're either licensed.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
So the Warehouse Insight is licensed per physical
device.
So you're going to have 20people using one device when you
need one license for thatdevice.
So yeah, warehouse Insight isper device, shop Floor Insight
is per employee.
So the employees that are outthere scanning, you know, have
to have a license for Shop Floor.
They don't need a BusinessCentral license, they just need
(47:46):
one of our licenses.
Everything else, for the mostpart, is licensed by a company,
which means well, I lie.
Things like Dynamic Ship andEncounter Sales are by location,
but generally unlimited users.
So per location or per company,unlimited users is the most
common way of licensing oursolutions Confirm.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
It does show pricing at the bottom of each of the
products.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
That's awesome.
So, yeah, anyway, we're tryingto be as transparent as possible
and allow people to sort ofmake those comparisons.
I mean, people don't like doingthat because it's a competitive
disadvantage, maybe becauseyour competitors oh, they charge
that.
Well, we'll charge 20% less.
We'll say we're the cheapestout there anyway, but it is what
(48:34):
it is we're no, no, it is whatit is.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
And again, you just have to be better.
I'm gonna, I'm just going.
That's my new slogan.
Usually it's just be.
Uh, you know, I I follow oshoand saying just be, but now I
think, oh, it's, I'll expand itto be just be be better.
It solves a lot of problems andI can tell you even those that
want to say that the cheapestproduct around or the cheapest
price around doesn't necessarilymean it's going to be the best
(48:57):
quality or it's cheaper in thelong run.
I've learned that quite welland I've seen it many times that
you know two people at $5 isn'tcheaper than one person at 15,
as I say going on.
So that's good to have.
Good to know.
Well, mr Mark, thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with us this afternoon totalk with us about InsightWorks
(49:18):
and the product suite that youhave.
If anybody would like moreinformation, what's the best way
to get in contact with you tolearn about the products?
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Probably the website right.
There's a chat box, a contactform, all that sort of thing,
and then somebody will jump onand help right away.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So it's dmsiworkscom and we'll also have the link in
the show notes as well, thosethat want to use it.
You have many great products.
Anybody who hasn't looked atthem or isn't using them?
I highly recommend it.
I've worked with Dynamic ShipGraphic Scheduler Print Note.
I can't even remember thewarehouse, the handheld, so it
(49:55):
is a great product suite that'sout there and offering for to
just where Business Central, aswe had mentioned, may not have
all of the gaps that you have.
You know it's a fullycomprehensive product, as you
had mentioned, but if you haveany unique requirements that
aren't within the coreapplication product, as you had
mentioned, but if you have anyunique uh requirements that
aren't within the coreapplication, I definitely
recommend taking a look at theseuh.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Thank you very much again and I look forward to
talking to you soon andappreciate it and we'll see you,
I'm sure, at uh theseconferences coming up and uh
we'll hold on to some stuff I'llactually be first in line.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
I'll be first in line sounds.
Sounds like a deal thank you,you very much Talk to you soon,
ciao, ciao, bye.
Thank you, chris, for your timefor another episode of In the
Dynamics Corner Chair, and thankyou to our guests for
participating.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
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
(51:02):
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.
(51:23):
Thank you and take care.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
What ISVs out there that offersfree stuff and just be
transparent?
I'm your co-host, chris.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And this is Brad.
This episode is recorded onJune 4th 2025.
Chris, chris, chris.
We'll learn about that in thisepisode, and many more things,
because I brought some friendswith me.
I brought the fulfillmentfroggy.
I brought the friends with me,I brought the fulfillment froggy
, I brought the barcode bear, Ibrought the logistics llama, as
(00:35):
well as the production puffin.
We'll learn about all of theseas well, too, with us.
Today, we had the opportunityto speak with Mark Hamlin from
InsideWorks.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's going well.
How about?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Good, good, good.
You know, it's that time ofyear, it's, rainy season finally
hit and I think I need to builda boat.
This time last year when rainyseason hit it's a little fun
fact I had fish swimming in myyard.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
And I'm nowhere near.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You're nowhere near like a lake or anything like
that.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
No, they have the canals for all the rain and for
drainage because of rainy season.
I never understood why you hadsuch big canals or ditches on
the sides of the roads or evenin the neighborhoods until you
have rainy season, because theyfill up.
But I learned that all thewater backs up, so all the
(01:56):
drainage, because we had so muchrain last year.
The fish swim up the canalsinto the drainage like tubes
into the yard.
I even walked in theneighborhood and I saw many more
, that's that's a, that's a meal, man, that's I'm not going to,
I'm not going to go fishing forthose.
I'll have to send you a pictureof it, so so that's.
(02:17):
That's the start of my summeris uh, it's been raining for
days.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Where is that?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
where are you located ?
I'm in florida right now, okay,so it's uh this time of year in
flor in South Florida, the rainjust whips.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, you're pretty flat out, though.
You're kind of like sea levelright, so you know there's not
much.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Kind of sea level when I track my runs.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
You're below sea level.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I do my garment and then the run will track the
elevation.
You know the elevation gainedand lost.
I I sometimes have negativeelevation.
So, um, there's parts of my runin my neighborhood we're below
sea level.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I'll tell you, man, I think florida's going to wash
away one day that's crazinessyou are all up in the northwest
right, so you don't have to dealwith all that yeah, well, I'm
up in canada, so we're, we'renorth, north, but uh, we're kind
of middle north, I guess, iswhere we are, you're the true
(03:14):
north yeah, well, I mean, thenext town over is 300 and some
miles north of us.
Wow, that's the north that's.
I used to live up there in FortMcMurray Through oil sands and
stuff.
But now we're kind of like inthe middle, which is about what
(03:35):
is it?
600 miles north of North Dakota, anyway, somewhere.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
That must be nice being way up there.
It must be nice and quiet.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It is.
Yeah, we don't get any of thegoofy stuff.
I mean, we had a tornado herelike decades and decades ago.
We got no stupid weather, wegot no earthquakes.
We got none of that junk.
It's.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Snow.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, we get lots of snow.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Lots of outdoor activities too right.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, last, lots of outdoor activities too, right,
yeah, yeah.
Last year we went down.
Uh, well, out in the country,like we have forces, it was down
to minus 50 and the city wasonly minus 45 ish.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So, yeah, it gets cold once in a while fun fact, I
lived in alaska for a shortperiod of well, for four years
and one thing, I realized aboutthe cold everyone it.
It would get negative 10,negative 20 Fahrenheit and when
everyone's like well, it getscold.
And I told everybody well, youget used to it and the cold is
the cold, don't get me wrong.
(04:36):
And you're up north, so youunderstand.
Once you get negative 10, thedifference between negative 10
and negative 20 really isn'tmuch.
I don't think I.
The difference between negative10 and negative 20 really isn't
much.
I don't think I think cold iscold.
But it's not like the rest ofthe US or the southern portions
of it, where it will be 20 oneday, it will be 60 the next day,
(04:56):
then it goes back to 30.
So you don't have theopportunity Up north.
It gets cold, it just gets cold, and it stays cold and dark for
months.
So you don't have the teaser.
They call it exactly.
Well, we enough about theweather.
I just the values of rain today.
Just, uh, it's been pouring,and when I say pouring, like you
think someone's pouring bucketsall day.
(05:17):
So I just thought it would bean interesting thing to share.
Uh, been looking forward tospeaking with you, have a lot of
things I'd like to talk aboutand your wonderful, great suite
suite of products that you have.
But if you could, before we getinto that conversation, might
you tell us a little bit aboutyourself?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely Well , where do I start?
I mean, geez Well, I've beenwith InsightWorks since the
beginning.
I call myself a solutionadvisor.
That's really.
What I'm there for is to sortof look at what customers have,
what they need, what we have.
(05:51):
Is there a fit, Are there gaps?
How can we help that customerbe successful either with or
without our products?
So that's kind of what I dohere, and InsightWorks has been
around for about 10 years nowunder that sort of name, though
some of the products predate theinitial start of InsightWorks
has been around for about 10years now under that sort of
name, though some of theproducts predate the initial
start of.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
InsightWorks.
So with InsightWorks,InsightWorks has a suite of
products for Business Central, avariant suite of products.
I think you have over 30, Ithink A lot of times.
I think of the InsightWorkswarehousing, but what are some
of the other products that youhave?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, so we focus really on manufacturing,
distribution and now we'regetting more and more into
retail.
And so just a quick overviewand then I'll mention some of
the specific ones.
But really what we did was wecame into Business Central and
we used to actually be Avara andwe used to implement NAB and
things like.
We used to implement Nav andthings like that.
And you know my past historyhas been more product
(06:48):
development focused.
So we started building productsvery quickly and you know we
looked at the gaps in Nav andBusiness Central and what
manufacturers needed and whatdistributors needed and kind of
tried to fill in those gaps.
So even when we talk about theretail, we have something called
counter sales which you knowthere's a lot of retailers using
.
Now it was not really meant somuch for retailers, more for,
(07:12):
yeah, I'm a distributor and I'vegot an outlet store, I'm a
manufacturer and I've got aparts counter that people can
come up to.
That's kind of what we built itfor.
So a lot of the products sortof follow that.
We've lived that world.
You know that.
You know, in the real lifewe've been in these situations.
You know I used to be anoperations manager, I used to be
an auto mechanic many, manyyears ago things like that so
(07:33):
you know, we've got a lot ofpeople that have come up through
industry and can spot thosegaps and build something that
the people actually need and use.
So you know, warehousemanagement is one of the big
ones because barcoding hasbecome so accessible in the last
decade or two.
But you know, we've got shopfloor data collection, we've got
(07:54):
, as I mentioned, the countersales for point of sale type
stuff, we've got qualityinspections, we've got shipping,
we've got fulfillment tools.
We've got shipping, we've gotfulfillment tools, we've got a
ton of maintenance managementnow, tons of stuff just to sort
of build that end-to-endsolution for manufacturing
distribution.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's great.
You have a great suite ofproducts.
As far as to talk about theorigin of InsightWorks a little
bit and it seems you hadmentioned before you were a VAR
and then realized the gaps andthen created these apps or app
source.
Now that you have.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
How long ago did InsightWorks start as an ISV?
As an ISV, you know, I thinkour first sale was in, I think
2013, of something outside ofour, of our business right.
So we, you know, we'd have ourcustomers that we'd implement to
NAV for and we kind of buildthese products that might
include that with ourdeployments, and then we started
selling.
I think 2013 was the first timewe sold something outside of
(08:58):
outside of our own customer base.
And then 2015 is really when westarted inside works.
That was sort of the, you know,that was sort of the inaugural
website in 2015.
So InsightWorks and that'sreally where we started focusing
on being an ISV, not a VAR,with some products that we can
include.
And since then we've moved awayfrom that entire VAR business.
(09:19):
We don't run that at allanymore.
We don't have it.
We focus really on the ISV side.
So yeah, about 10 years, Iwould say, for InsightWorks.
But again, some of thoseproducts predate that time frame
.
Just because we did that onewhere it's still a VAR, that's
great.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No, it is.
It is and just to talk aboutsome of it.
I do want to get into some moredetails, because Business
Central itself is a fullyfunctional ERP application and
it's nice that VARs, isvs andsome VARs, if customers, if
there are some gaps, as you hadmentioned that, there are
options available.
So I'd like to talk about someof those gaps that may be filled
(09:55):
by some of your.
You know the more popularproducts within the warehouse
management and the distributionarea, because that's maybe some
of the more popular ones.
Which versions of BusinessCentral do you support?
Do you support Business Centralonline on-premise?
And if you do supporton-premise, how far back?
Which versions?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, so we still support NAV 2013 all the way up
to the current Business CentralSaaS versions.
Oh, wow.
We have a couple of customersstill running our stuff a
central SaaS version, oh wow,and we go back right over to
this.
So we have a couple ofcustomers still running our
stuff on, like NAV 2009 Classicand things like that.
But you know, all the newdevelopment is going into, sort
(10:35):
of you know, the newest businesscentral and we like to focus on
the SaaS.
You know, five years ago Iwould have said it's you know,
depending on who you are, as towhether you should go to the
cloud or not.
Today it's an over-the-top.
To me the cloud makes the mostsense.
I don't like it when we geton-prem installs anymore because
(10:55):
they're so much more painfulthan the cloud.
Most of the development thoseolder versions have supported
versions that run.
But you know, obviously, allthe new features that you find
in Business Central that we canleverage, all the new stuff is
going into the latest.
And then on the cloud side, youknow we give away a lot of free
(11:16):
products.
We get a ton of free stuff wegive away and we try and keep
that sort of cloud only to youknow, sweeten the deal, I guess
for people moving to the cloud.
When you go to the cloud, youget a bunch of free stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That's great.
Well, maybe we can talk aboutsome of the free stuff.
Speaking of free stuff, I dohave to say this one thing
Whomever came up with this?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Ah, yes, I got so many of those.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
We'll talk about this , but I have the of all of these
.
I go to many conferences Chrisand I both do and we see
everybody at these conferencesand this is always one of the
most memorable things is theInsightWorks stuffed animals,
and this InsightWorks logisticsllama happens to be my favorite.
So who came up with this?
(12:03):
I know we want to talk aboutthe product, but who came up
with this?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I know we want to talk about the product, but who
came up with these?
And I love this.
Yeah, as an aside, you know allof these guys, like you know
the the obviously this guy is isalso one of the popular Lama
and the platypus.
But if you go to the websites,like you can go to logistics,
lamacom or packagingplatypuscom,and it's got a little bio on
the guy and you know what theydo in their spare time and all
(12:29):
sorts of fun stuff.
So they're great for kids, youknow.
Anyway, we came up with that, Ithink in like 20, I don't know,
it was like 2016-ish timeframe.
We're at.
Summit and I was there withanother guy and I had seen these
like 20 foot tall or 10 foottall stuffed bears online
(12:52):
somewhere and I thought, hey, weshould get one of those for the
booth.
And he took it one step furtherand like, yeah, we should get a
mascot costume called barcodingbear and the guy can walk
around.
And we settled on neither ofthose, but we thought a bear
would be a good mascot, right.
So we got these little stuffedanimals, the little bears called
barcoding bear, exactlybarcoding bear.
(13:13):
I have the barcoding bear righthere too and now the original
one actually had a little shirt,uh, instead of embroidered, and
it was kind of fun.
But um, yeah, and it's grownquite a bit.
We've got six now in our littlestable of stuffed animals.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's genius because a lot of people don't realize.
When you're going toconferences, you know you want
something that's memorable, andthen it's like one of a kind,
and then most times you want tobring something back to the
family, right, so this is likeperfect I don't pick.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I don't pick up up swag typically because it's just
a lot, unless it really servesa purpose.
The stuffed animals serve agreat purpose, like you said,
chris, because you can bring itback.
And there's some other things Ipick up, but a lot of the stuff
is just waste.
But now that you said you havesix, I realize I'm missing one.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Well, so it's actually seven.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Oh, I'm missing two.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So we've got Fulfillment Froggy, we've got
Logistics Llama, we've gotProduction Puffin, we've got
Packaging Platypus, barcodingBear, obviously the original.
So those are the main five,then we've got a sixth one
coming in the fall.
So if you're at Directions EMEAyou'll see it there, otherwise
(14:29):
you'll see it at Summit mostlikely, and that's a Quokka.
Quality Quokka, oh, a goodquality inspection solution.
So quality Quokka, and thatone's kind of cool.
And then we have a limitededition, this guy here, he is
TechWorks Tamarin, so he's alittle monkey that we have for
(14:53):
TechWorks Conference and it's amonkey, first of all a tamarin,
which is a type of monkey forthe alliteration right.
You've got to have TechWorksTamarin Plus.
He's a monkey and it was adevelopment conference, so he's
a code monkey for thealliteration right.
You're going to have tech worksTamra Plus.
He's a monkey and it was adevelopment conference, so it's
he's a code monkey for it.
So here's our little mascot forour conference.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's, that's creative.
And now I know just, I'll haveto reserve the ones that are
missing for summit.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I'll have to.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I'll be there early so I'll have to hit up
whomever's at the booth to getsome of those to take them back.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
The quark will be fun .
And you know we also startedshipping these to customers.
So you know, when people youknow buy a license like if they
buy our Dynamic Ship product asan example we'll ship them the
packaging, platypus, right, sowe'll ship out these little
stuffies.
So you go into some of thesefacilities and they've got these
little stuffies sitting at theshipping counter or whatever.
(15:46):
I heard from one person at aconference where you know
they're going live and theshipping guy or one of the
warehouse guys you know they'restruggling with the change and
what he'd do is give the stuffiea big hug every time.
He was stressed he's walkingaround like this thing as an
(16:07):
emotional support animal orsomething.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Oh that's genius, yeah, so it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
We had people on social media.
You know there was, you knowsomeone took it all over the
world like Antarctica and Peruand all sorts of weird places.
There's these photos of thesethings anyway, so it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It is a lot of fun and I I didn't want to jump into
it, but as we were talkingabout this, I you know the
family loves those stuffedanimals and it's always
something nice to bring backwith it as well too.
So you have a full suite ofproducts and you you talked
about dynamic ship, we talkedabout the warehouse insights, uh
, order fulfillment, um, andthen your counter sales, and you
(16:48):
also have, uh, the handheld, Ibelieve, option as well, uh for
uh, business central.
Uh, I do like to talk aboutsome of those features within
there, but did the productsupport any?
Does your offering support anyother products besides business
central, or is it just businesscentral focused?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
No, we're focused on Business Central.
You know, and we had a lot ofpeople actually asking that you
know, especially when you go tothe conferences where there's
mixed products, right, like F&Ois there and GP and things like
that People ask you know, for usit's not really worth it.
You know, business Central isgrowing so fast, there's so much
opportunity and there's so manypeople that need our solutions
(17:29):
within the Business Centralworld.
I think it would just be adistraction to go elsewhere.
So, yeah, we're strictlybusiness central, we're focused.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Excellent.
I like that personally becauseI think if you're focusing on
one product, you can put allyour energy in that one product
and then you can have a betteroffering Yep, instead of trying
to support multiple applicationswhere you have one foot in many
camps and you may not be ableto provide the offering.
So having one solution, from mypersonal opinion I think, is
extremely beneficial for aproduct because you know that's
(17:57):
their energy effort, excuse me,where it's being pushed.
Let's talk about some of theproducts and going through the
cycle of somebody who is usingBusiness Central, and Business
Central has, like we hadmentioned, has a lot of features
, but sometimes we're basingadditional gaps Within your
product offering.
What are some indications thatsomeone may need to use one of
(18:17):
your products, such as DynamicShip, and then to go to, maybe
to your handheld or some of yourwarehouse management apps?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, that's a good question and a good point.
I mean, business Central is avery comprehensive solution,
right Like it's got thewarehousing in it, it's got a
lot of the manufacturingcapabilities in it, at least at
a sort of core level.
But Microsoft can't doeverything right.
They can't build out thesebest-of-breed solutions as
quickly or necessarily as wellsometimes as what the ISVs can,
(18:48):
as well sometimes as what theISVs can.
So, but to answer your specificquestion, really what it comes
down to I use this term a lot,or this phrase you know what you
want to do when you're doing animplementation is look at what
your best practice physicalprocesses should be Like.
How are you going to be themost efficient in your
environment?
Because you know we're notdealing with accounting and
(19:10):
stuff like that.
For the most part, we'redealing with people working in
shops and warehouses and it'svery physical, right.
So you want to, you want to beas efficient as possible in your
physical environment.
Once you've got that laid out,what software do you need to
support those physical processes?
How do you make your virtualworld match your physical world?
All right, so really the thefirst step is if I had a magic
(19:33):
wand, what would make me themost efficient, as you know,
possible in in the shop or thewarehouse okay, in order.
Now, in order to to be thatefficient, I'm going to need
software that supports this,this, this, this and this.
And quite often you, often youknow when you get into that.
You get into, you know,automation and validation and
(19:54):
things like that, which is, youknow, scanning barcodes for your
pickings or your warehousemanagement type of thing.
You know, spending way lesstime generating shipping labels
and doing the shippingverification at the same time.
Those types of things, all ofthose sorts of things you know,
overall reduce the effort andimproves the efficiency.
Like a warehouse facility, samething in shop floor, right,
(20:17):
like in a manufacturingenvironment.
You know you want to have likean efficient production schedule
.
You want to have the people onshop floor be able to report
accurately what they're workingon, right.
Those sorts of things don'treally exist properly in
Business Central today.
So when people run into thosesituations where they're like
you know what, we can't be asefficient as possible if we
(20:39):
don't have something that does X, well, we're that X, right.
In a lot of cases, you knowwe're one ISV and we've got
those 30 products and they cometo one organization and they've
got everything they need reallyto help facilitate those
physical processes in the shop.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
No, it is.
It's a challenge to do it andas far as through the
implementation process of it,like I had mentioned, I do want
to kind of hone in on some ofthese individual, specific ones.
So, now that they've determinedthat they need to work with
InsightWorks, typically, howdoes an implementation go?
Is it more partner-driven?
Does InsightWorks come in andhelp with the implementation?
(21:19):
How does an implementationtypically go of these processes?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, good question, and you know most of them sort
of follow the same process.
There's a few where it's notquite known.
I'll maybe describe what I meanthere.
But yeah, we are verypartner-centric, right.
We want people to work withtheir partners, we want them to
have that strong relationshipbecause the partner is going to
be able to go in there and dothat consulting, whereas we may
not have that capacity.
I mean we do 300 and someprojects a year.
(21:48):
We're not going to necessarilybe able to go in and do those
deep dives and that realconsulting work that the
partners are able to do.
But for our little piece like,let's say, warehousing.
Somebody wants to get warehousemanagement going in Business
Central.
Well, they're going to engagethe partner to sort of get that
core Business Central capabilityset up, like set up the bins
and make sure their inventory isset up properly and you know
(22:12):
all of those sorts of thingsrelated to making sure the core
business central is workingproperly and then we can jump in
and we have a fixed priceproject with a very formal
project plan that you can findon our website that we go
through to actually implementthat additional portion of
capability that we bring to thetable.
Now sometimes a partner doesthat.
(22:33):
We have lots of partners outthere that have been working
with us for a very long time andcan do those implementations
themselves, and other times theyhave us do it.
So we work on behalf of thepartner, we work directly with
the customer and we'll do thatimplementation and typically
they're fixed price and they'rehonestly not a lot of money for
(22:54):
getting up and running with awarehouse management solution I
mentioned earlier.
I'm sidetracking a little bithere, but I mentioned earlier.
You know barcoding has become alot more accessible in the last
couple of decades and what Imeant by that is really from a
cost perspective and justubiquity of what's available to
do this automated datacollection with barcoding.
(23:15):
You know, back in the day andeven today you buy an external
like a standalone WMS that youintegrate with Business Central.
I mean you're looking at$100,000, $200,000 and up to do
the implementation and get theintegration working and
everything else.
I mean we're a small fractionof that to implement it because
we're built into business andthe hardware cost has come down
(23:38):
and everything else just to makeit.
You know to speak to that sortof accessibility of being able
to do barcoding nowadays.
But so anyway, that was my sidetrack, but you know back to the
question on projects.
so so, I would say it's 50-50.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Half the time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
We go in there and we'll do the implementation.
We're working with the partnerand making sure that they know
what's going on and understandhow they want things configured
to sort of match those physicalprocesses we talked about.
We'll go in there and we'll dothe implementation.
We'll do the UAT support, we'lldo the post-go-live support.
We'll kind of handle all ofthat ourselves.
And you know some customerswill go to the partner for their
(24:14):
Tier 1 support, others comedirectly to us.
You know we're very flexible.
We want to do whatever thecustomer is comfortable with and
whatever is going to make themsuccessful.
That's what it was.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I do like that approach and it's refreshing to
hear because I know the partnershave a varying size and
partners have varying levels ofexperience and with all the
features that are added toBusiness Central sometimes it's
not possible to know in for aspecific task or function to set
up some of these products orthese apps and these processes
(24:56):
with a customer that they'll besuccessful.
So a partner's not strugglingto try to figure out and learn
and maybe misrepresent theproduct as well too, so having
an offering of both is good.
Do you offer training for theseproducts?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
We do, yeah, so I mean we do offer training for
these products.
We do, yeah, so I mean we dopartner training for the
partners that do want toimplement them themselves.
But as part of theimplementation, we'll do the
training and we have a lot of um, you know, content on our
knowledge base and on youtubeand things like that for
partners and customers to sortof dig in and learn some of
those things on their own.
But you know, we're always anemail or a phone call away if
(25:32):
people have questions and wantto learn more and get some
additional training.
So, yeah, you know, I thinkmaybe we've caused some people
to change their behaviors, theirbusiness behaviors, like our
mostly other ISVs.
You know, we started when westarted with InsightWorks.
We, you know, opened up theroad, as the saying kind of goes
(25:56):
.
We put everything online.
Like you want to see how theproduct works, here it is.
You want to see a full demo?
You don't need to put in youremail address, here it is, it's
on YouTube.
You go watch this hour-longdemo that shows you everything
about how our product works.
People don't like doing that.
They still don't right A lot oftimes.
Even just to get a data sheetyou have to fill in your
information to download a PDFright.
(26:17):
So nobody was doing that at thetime and a few people have
started now doing it.
But our thought was yeah well,if our competitors want to copy
us and see how we do things,great, then we'll just have to
be better and that's how we doit.
So we are very open with allthat information.
We have sample coderepositories.
If people want to do their owndevelopment, we try and help
(26:42):
them along on how to do thatthemselves.
Yeah, so there's lots oftraining material out there and
again, we'll do the sort ofinteractive training whenever
somebody wants.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, actually that's very, very important nowadays,
right?
Because of the fact that a lotof people can research.
I mean newer generations comingup in the industry, so they
tend to do a lot more researchbefore jumping in Back in the
day, when everything was nav.
You know you kind of rely onyour partner at that time.
Whatever they recommended, youtook it.
(27:10):
Now, with the AppSourcemarketplace as a partner, it's
much more difficult to knowevery single available
applications out there, and sofor you to be able to offer that
and, at the same time, offerthe support and then putting
everything out there for them toaccess, to learn on their own
including for clients as wellit's nice to have an ISV that
(27:33):
can do that.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And your point there on customers finding the product
now and then deciding it beforetalking to their partner.
We talk to partners and theyhate that.
I understand both sides of it.
If I'm a customer, hey, this iswhat I want, like, make it
happen, mr partner.
And then the partner is like,well, I have no idea who this is
(27:56):
or what this is or how tosupport it or how to, even you
know, pay for it, like what I'm.
And now the partner is gotthese dozens of you know, isv
relationships because thecustomers keep choosing weird
things that the partners neverheard it.
So it can be be challengingfrom a partner perspective.
And again, that I think is oneof our strengths, right, because
(28:17):
we have such a wide range ofsolutions that fill all those
gaps, you don't need to havethose dozens of relationships
you have one relationship withus and we kind, of you know,
help you along with most of whatyou need need, at least in the,
in the areas we play in no, no,I, I like I.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I laugh a little bit, like chris, because I hear that
with a lot of partners, becausewith app source having over 5
000 apps I think I'm close to 6000 apps now I can't keep up
with it it is the case where alot of times, customers will
find and download and installthings and then call the partner
and say, oh, by the by the way,my system's not working.
I installed this app.
It is a little challenge, but Ido appreciate the transparency.
(28:55):
As Chris had mentioned, I thinkthe generations that are
looking now business generations, I could call it they're doing
a lot more research ahead oftime and they get more comfort
versus reaching out and saying,okay, here's all my information,
I just want to know something,we can go through it.
So I appreciate the fulltransparency with products
myself because even if I'm doingresearch for something, I
(29:16):
always try to look at it thatway as well.
I want to have enough.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
It drives me nuts.
If I have to, I just want adata sheet on something and I've
got to fill in my contact info,like, come on, it drives me
insane, and if I hate it, whywould I enforce that or force
that sort of requirement onanybody else?
So anyway, most of uh, probablymost of the way we work is
(29:40):
because I'm uh, I'm just gettinggrumpy in my old age or
something, grumpy and lazy, andso you know, if I don't like it,
then probably nobody else likesit and that's so, we're not
going to do it, and that's kindof how it goes.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
That's actually a good approach.
I think If I don't like it,nobody else will like it to go
through it as well, which isgood.
So I just want to do a quickrun through some of these
products that you have, just togo through it, and I'd like to
dive into some more of them.
So you have the advancedinventory count.
You have the barcode generator,you have the counter sales
(30:16):
which we spoke about, which isfor retail.
I've been hearing a lot aboutPOS these days recently.
I know Chris and I have hadseveral conversations about some
of the options are out thereand it seems it's nice to know
that.
You have the counter salesoption.
You have the dock extender, thedynamic ship products, and then
you have the enhancedforecasting, enhanced planning,
enhanced planning worksheet, thegraphic scheduler, which gives
you, I believe, a Gantt chartfor scheduling jobs as well.
(30:37):
You have your planning review,license plating, which is also
another great option.
Maintenance manager,multi-level BOM viewer, the MX
app maps, your order fulfillmentworksheet, your order ship
express.
You have a lot Print nodeconnector I have so many stories
about printing with BusinessCentral Online.
We'll talk about print node too.
Product configurator, productorder analysis, quality
(31:01):
inspector, routing analysis,safety logbook, shop floor
insights, warehouse insights andthe WMS express.
How do you have time to do allof those?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, we have good people.
So you know we've got a verystrong team.
A lot of them I've known forliterally decades.
You know, when I came over withInsightWorks, you know a lot of
them came with me from previousjobs.
So anyway, we have excellentpeople and we work hard.
I mean, we've got a qa team.
(31:32):
You know, you know, I thinkwhat is it?
Six people on qa and deploymentnow that do nothing but make
sure that you know the qualityis built into the products,
large development team workingtheir butts off every day.
So, yeah, we've got very goodpeople right.
And again, we've got that sortof industry experience from
product management perspectivewhere we know what to build.
(31:54):
We're not doing a lot of trialand error.
We say this is what we need andwe build it and it's a lot more
streamlined.
Yeah, it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I can imagine, I can imagine, I think I'm done for a
while.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I'm not sure we're going to have any new products
for a while.
There's just lots of newfeatures I want, but I'm not
sure about new products.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I'm sure it must be difficult to manage and keep up
with them all and understandthem all, even understand them
all.
Talk about versioning.
We talked about BusinessCentral Online, business Central
On-Premises.
You support some older versionsas well.
Are there any regions that youdo not support or all regions
support?
It's primarily North America,world One or some of the other
(32:34):
countries.
The Business Central now isoperating.
I think what is it?
170 countries now, chris, or150?
I forget the number it'sgrowing.
Are your products available inall those countries?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
It is.
Yeah, so we support pretty muchevery country where Business
Central works, like some likecounter sales.
We have a North Americanversion and a worldwide version
just for the tax localizationsand things like that.
But yeah, we pretty muchsupport every region.
Languages are a challenge,right?
So doing appropriatetranslations is always a
(33:11):
challenge, so that's one of thethings that is constantly
something that we're looking toimprove.
But, yeah, we do support all ofthose regions and we are
growing in Europe.
I mean, we've got maybe 75 or100 partners roughly in Europe
now that are actively, you know,selling, promoting the
solutions.
So you know we're predominantly, so we're predominantly North
(33:33):
American based.
Most of our business is NorthAmerican.
Europe is definitely a growingregion in Australia, Europe and.
Australia are both growingpretty rapidly at this point.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I want to point out that I love the way your
website's designed, because Ithink very few, if not probably
the only one, that I've comeacross where you can go to your
website, look at the apps andthen filter on the categories.
I think right now you havebusiness operations.
You can filter by free andsubscription, and then
(34:08):
compatibility and licensingoptions, which are the typical
questions that people want tolook at anyway, and so for you
to be able to go to your website, filter quickly and say, okay,
this is exactly what I need andit's free, um, and I want to
enable it, this is, uh, very,very intuitive, even from a,
even from a consultantperspective, or even a partner
(34:31):
that maybe have not partneredwith you yet and they want to
see okay, how can I work withInsightWorks?
This is nice.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, that's kind of the goal.
And then when you findsomething, hey, this might fit,
you can jump in and watch a45-minute or an hour-long demo
to see is it actually going towork.
Or get know, get, get that baseinformation on it, or jump into
the knowledge base and learnall about all the technical
details of it and everythingelse.
Right, I mean, we're almostputting a roadmap for our
competitors out on our websiteand you know, honestly, great
(35:03):
steal our ideas, make thembetter, and then we'll learn
from you and you will never bethe only one, I tell everybody,
because if you have somethinggreat, somebody else would try
to create it.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
So your point of, well, we just have to be better
is, uh, profound.
I I appreciate that as well,because you'll never be the only
one.
The world is a big place.
There's a lot of talentedpeople.
So it's you just have to bebetter.
And also, when it comes tobusiness, just keep your
customers happy as well.
I mean, if the customers arehappy and they're getting what
(35:34):
they need, then they'llappreciate it as well.
So, with all the products thatyou have, the print node I
talked about because I've usedthe print node, set that up
print node because with businesscentral cloud, the cloud
printing was a little bitchallenging and print node is a
great application to facilitatethe printing and being able to
automatically print on there aswell, which is a good solution.
(35:56):
What would you say are the morepopular products that the
customers are using?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Targeting question.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
But you're going to put up with a story before I
answer.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
I'm always willing to hear a story.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
So PrintNode Connector, which is free, and
DocExtender, which is also free,for drag-and-drop document
management.
We put those up fairly early.
So we were actually we had the11th app on AppSource for
Business Central.
That's including all theMicrosoft apps that were
published at the time.
It's actually a Canadianpayroll app, which we don't have
(36:37):
anymore, but Microsoft inCanada approached us to build
something because they felt atthe time, payroll was a big gap
in their offering for what wasat that time called what the
heck was it?
Dynamics 365 for finance, notfinance and operations.
(36:57):
This is the original version ofBusiness Central Online, but it
didn't really do much otherthan basic finance stuff.
Anyway, we were the 11th appand at the time, shortly after,
we put our Warehouse Insightproduct up on AppSource and that
, by the way, is currentlyprobably the most popular
product.
To answer your first question,and when we put that up, we
(37:19):
realized a few things.
Number one cloud printing is notavailable for Business Central
yet, because we were early.
Like I mean, this is 2017, 2018timeframe.
So there's no cloud printing,there's no barcode fonts,
there's no way to easily attachdocuments with drag and drop
those sorts of things.
So well, we better build it,because we need to support our
(37:41):
solution.
So we built Print NoteConnector.
I'm thinking, ah, it'll lastsix months and Microsoft will
have this solved.
They'll have universal printavailable and Microsoft will
have this solved.
Right, they'll have universalprint available and nobody will
need our thing.
So we'll just build it andwe'll use it and that'll be that
.
Well, that's eight years ago.
Print node connector, out of thefree products, is probably the
(38:01):
most popular Like we've got10,000 installs of that because
it is free.
You pay print node a few bucksa month to use their service,
but our connector is is free.
You pay Printnode a few bucks amonth to use their service, but
our connector is completelyfree, which annoys me because,
again, I thought it would lastlike six months and you can
actually resell.
So, for partners out therelistening, you can actually
resell the Printnode service.
You can buy it for $2, sell itfor $9, and make $7 a month per
(38:25):
customer.
Well, I got 10,000 of thoseguys out there that that could
be 70 000 a month.
I could be charmed, could bemaking off reselling that
service and we're making nothing, we're giving it away.
So, anyway, partners can makesome money on that.
I feel like, yeah.
So the same thing with docextender.
You know, eight years later, andit's still a great tool for
putting documents on sharepointor right in Business Central.
(38:46):
Microsoft hasn't quite closedthat gap yet.
Even barcode generator again,we needed to have something to
be able to print barcodes.
We have a barcoding solution.
What do you mean?
You can't print barcodes.
So we built that for BusinessCentral, made it free and again,
we've got 7,000 or 8,000 atleast customers out there using
it.
Microsoft finally did add thebarcode fonts, but they didn't
(39:11):
add all of the ones that peopleneed.
So yeah, barcode Generator isstill very viable.
You know, seven or eight yearsafter the fact even though we
thought those three productswould last maybe six months
before, you know, microsoftwould fill that gap.
But yeah, they're still goingstrong.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
No, I always appreciate the stories.
I always like to hear theevolution of some of these
things or the background behindit as well, too, to see where
they come from, because, as youhad mentioned, a lot of these
things just they evolve throughimplementations and listening to
customers, which is good tocustomers, which is good.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I was going to ask you, with all the products that
you have in apps, I'm going toask you a question that's like
well, who's your favorite kid?
What's?
Speaker 3 (40:00):
your favorite app?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, Warehouse Insight ispretty cool, Like okay, it's
barcode scanning.
And we have the free version,the WMS Express, which we have
probably scanning, and we havethe free version, the wms
express, which we have probablymore installs of the free
version than the paid version.
We actually have some peoplethat have canceled the paid
version to go to the freeversion, versus the other way
around.
We almost never have peoplegoing from free to paid, but the
(40:22):
other way it happens.
Um, but yeah, where elseinsight?
I mean, people don't realizereally the technology and the
capability within that thing.
So, yeah, it's an app that runson the device, that's a scan
barcode.
It's a big deal, but it's got afull application designer in
there, right?
So it's got this Blockly editor.
So kids that are going intograde six are using the same
(40:45):
tool to sort of learn coding.
Well, we've got that.
So consultants can actually goin there.
Like you don't need to be adeveloper to build your own
handheld application, sort ofextend the existing applications
.
We've even got a wizard and anai driven wizard where you can
just describe the applicationyou want and it'll build you a
mobile app.
Like that's part of oursolution.
(41:08):
We've got our own littlemarketplace called the add-on
catalog.
Like you know, you want toextend the capabilities.
There's you know 30 some orwhatever apps that are on there.
You click a button and bang,you've got it on the handheld or
within business central.
So even things like proof ofdelivery and fixed asset
counting and all these differentsolutions you can plug in no
(41:29):
cost.
All the code is there.
You can do whatever the heckyou want with it.
You don't even have to tell usyou're using it and off you go,
right.
So it's more than just this appthat scans barcodes.
It's really a full developmentplatform, very, very powerful
too.
Pardon me, we've actuallystarted building some of our
other products on that sameplatform.
So our shop floor insight.
(41:50):
You can now get a version ofthat that runs within the
warehouse insight platform andour counter sales, which is
retail.
Um, that can also run on thatwarehouse inside platform.
So if you want a fancytouchscreen user interface, what
runs within warehouse, soanyway it's.
That's my favorite I shouldn'tsay favorite, but that that's.
(42:10):
That's a pretty cool one.
The other one that I reallylike is order fulfillment
worksheet, because it's such asimple concept, so powerful, and
everybody doing any amount ofvolume in a warehouse needs that
sucker, and it's not a lot ofmoney either.
So, uh, yeah, those probablygoes to, I guess the two
favorite children.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
No, it doesn't mean you don't like any of the other
children.
No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
It's not awesome.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
It doesn't mean you don't like them All product
managers and developers andinside works that are going to
listen to this are all going tobe mad at me now, Like what do
you mean?
I like mine better.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
You don't love me anymore.
Tell them they need to dobetter, and then they could be
the favorite child again.
That's all you need to do.
It doesn't listen you.
Just because you have afavorite doesn't mean you don't
appreciate the others.
I have a.
I have favorite things that Ilike to eat.
It doesn't mean that I dislikeall the other food, it's just.
It's just one that I like themost.
Uh, you know, I hate to talkabout this because this is all I
(43:08):
ever hear about, but it's been.
Chris knows where I'm goingwith this, but I almost feel
like I have to because I'mobligated to some for some
reason.
I know where you're going.
You know where I'm going,probably.
What do you guess?
Yes, you know.
See, that was the leading.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
So you kind of mentioned that on your app,
though on your uh handhelddevice.
I'm curious about aboutanything else with that, yeah,
yeah, so we've actually got aagain.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
We put everything we do online almost, so there's a
video there that talks a littlebit about our AI journey, if you
will, and you know I thinkanyway it's I don't know, it's
interesting for me to watch.
But, you know, we talked alittle bit about how we use it
internally and things like that.
But more for the products,we've got a bunch of stuff that
(43:58):
we're putting out into theproducts that are AI related,
some that have been, you know,published in the products
already.
Like a quality inspector makesa great deal of use of ai, uh,
for managing, you know, uh,inspection records and creating
inspections, all sorts of funstuff.
And then, um, I mentioned theai app builder, our configurator
(44:19):
products, or, you know,configure price quote has a as a
described to configure featurewhere you can, you know, just
either talk or type in adescription of the product
you're looking for and it'llbuild it for you.
Right, build a bomb and therouting and everything else.
So those are those types oftools that we're building out
and looking at.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, AI seems to be everywhere.
In Copilot it's jumping intoall areas of Business Central.
It'll be interesting to seewhere it goes and how we all
work a few years from now.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
I'm curious how Microsoft's going to.
You know they've been talkingabout and we were on a private
preview for a while on how theywant to bill for that stuff.
But you know that's the onestumbling block that we find so
far.
You know we have, for example,an invoice reconciliation tool
for dynamic ship, like inreconciling your carrier
(45:09):
invoices, and you know we don'tcharge for that module.
But you know the customer hasto have some ai subscriptions
and they're like well, what doyou think?
It's going to cost us to run.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
They're like I have no idea that is the the, the big
gorilla, because it's theprices sound reasonable, but you
really don't know how to gaugehow much you're going to consume
to be you know, is it reallyreasonable or what am I going to
(45:38):
be charged?
Speaker 1 (45:39):
because I can't tell you what it is yeah, I think I
struggle with that too, becauseI know like even for some side
projects where you're usingAzure AI, it really depends on
whatever the content that youwant the AI to read in terms of
the documents, and sometimesthey're like less of token use
and then sometimes they're likemassive.
(46:00):
You just there's just no way togauge it, and so it gets pretty
dangerous, I guess, becausethen you can spend a boatload of
money for something that youjust wanted to test.
So that is a struggle.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
I think if Microsoft put that licensing within
Business Central so you didn'thave to go out and deal with
getting a separate zero AIsubscription and buying tokens
or pay-as-you-go or all thatstuff, if they just made it easy
within sort of the BusinessCentral admin center to set up a
plan and maybe set a pricelimit not necessarily a token
(46:33):
limit or anything.
Say, you know, warn me when Ihit $100 or $200 or whatever, if
they could do that in BusinessCentral, that would solve a lot
of issues.
So we'll see.
I mean, I know they're workingon it, they know all the pain
points, probably better than us,but hopefully, so hopefully,
they'll deal with that, yes,it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
It's still all in its infancy.
So, as far as the products areconcerned, I'm not looking for
prices specifically, but how arethey typically licensed outside
of free?
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah, free is the best.
It varies.
So we actually publish theprices on the website too, which
is a little unusual.
So if you go to the bottom ofeach of those application pages,
it'll give you sort ofrepresentative pricing, right?
So we give annual discounts andthree-year discounts over the
monthly subscription.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
But they're either licensed.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
So the Warehouse Insight is licensed per physical
device.
So you're going to have 20people using one device when you
need one license for thatdevice.
So yeah, warehouse Insight isper device, shop Floor Insight
is per employee.
So the employees that are outthere scanning, you know, have
to have a license for Shop Floor.
They don't need a BusinessCentral license, they just need
(47:46):
one of our licenses.
Everything else, for the mostpart, is licensed by a company,
which means well, I lie.
Things like Dynamic Ship andEncounter Sales are by location,
but generally unlimited users.
So per location or per company,unlimited users is the most
common way of licensing oursolutions Confirm.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
It does show pricing at the bottom of each of the
products.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
That's awesome.
So, yeah, anyway, we're tryingto be as transparent as possible
and allow people to sort ofmake those comparisons.
I mean, people don't like doingthat because it's a competitive
disadvantage, maybe becauseyour competitors oh, they charge
that.
Well, we'll charge 20% less.
We'll say we're the cheapestout there anyway, but it is what
(48:34):
it is we're no, no, it is whatit is.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
And again, you just have to be better.
I'm gonna, I'm just going.
That's my new slogan.
Usually it's just be.
Uh, you know, I I follow oshoand saying just be, but now I
think, oh, it's, I'll expand itto be just be be better.
It solves a lot of problems andI can tell you even those that
want to say that the cheapestproduct around or the cheapest
price around doesn't necessarilymean it's going to be the best
(48:57):
quality or it's cheaper in thelong run.
I've learned that quite welland I've seen it many times that
you know two people at $5 isn'tcheaper than one person at 15,
as I say going on.
So that's good to have.
Good to know.
Well, mr Mark, thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with us this afternoon totalk with us about InsightWorks
(49:18):
and the product suite that youhave.
If anybody would like moreinformation, what's the best way
to get in contact with you tolearn about the products?
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Probably the website right.
There's a chat box, a contactform, all that sort of thing,
and then somebody will jump onand help right away.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So it's dmsiworkscom and we'll also have the link in
the show notes as well, thosethat want to use it.
You have many great products.
Anybody who hasn't looked atthem or isn't using them?
I highly recommend it.
I've worked with Dynamic ShipGraphic Scheduler Print Note.
I can't even remember thewarehouse, the handheld, so it
(49:55):
is a great product suite that'sout there and offering for to
just where Business Central, aswe had mentioned, may not have
all of the gaps that you have.
You know it's a fullycomprehensive product, as you
had mentioned, but if you haveany unique requirements that
aren't within the coreapplication product, as you had
mentioned, but if you have anyunique uh requirements that
aren't within the coreapplication, I definitely
recommend taking a look at theseuh.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Thank you very much again and I look forward to
talking to you soon andappreciate it and we'll see you,
I'm sure, at uh theseconferences coming up and uh
we'll hold on to some stuff I'llactually be first in line.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
I'll be first in line sounds.
Sounds like a deal thank you,you very much Talk to you soon,
ciao, ciao, bye.
Thank you, chris, for your timefor another episode of In the
Dynamics Corner Chair, and thankyou to our guests for
participating.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
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
(51:02):
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.
(51:23):
Thank you and take care.
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