November 18, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of Dynamics Corner, Kris and Brad are joined by Robert Brand and Dave Malda from iPaaS.com. They discuss the world of data integration for Business Central. Discover how their platform serves as a central hub, seamlessly connecting various systems like Business Central, e-commerce platforms, and more. Learn about the challenges of integrating data across different software ecosystems and how iPaaS.com simplifies the process with transparency and flexibility. Improve and manage your data flow between Business Central and external systems. Tune in to this conversation for valuable insights on making integrations with Business Central more efficient and effective.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
This is gonna be a fun,integrated conversation.
I'm your co-host, Chris.
SPEAKER_03 (00:09):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onNovember 7th, 2025.
Chris, Chris, Chris.
Integrations.
Who doesn't need an integration?
With all of the systems that areon the market today, and
everybody has a little piece ofinformation, you need to have
your information integrated.
With us today, we had theopportunity to speak with Dave
and Robert from iPass.com.
SPEAKER_02 (00:54):
Doing really well.
You guys?
SPEAKER_03 (00:56):
Uh, you know, it's Friday.
It's going well.
And I've always vowed to notrecord on a Friday, so I don't
know what will happen becausetypically the Fridays turn into
some sort of fiasco for me.
So we'll do our best today.
Hopefully, we can here we are.
We can make it through this one,okay.
But uh maybe we should justswitch to doing all recordings
(01:18):
on Fridays.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Fridays are good for recordings, it's just the day
you don't want to push code.
SPEAKER_03 (01:25):
Um when you do it, do it on Friday.
Uh Friday night is usually thebest time.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Friday's rough for us because it's like a lot of
people want to rush out, youknow what I mean?
I'm like disconnected already,you know.
I'm not even in my normal studioright now.
SPEAKER_03 (01:50):
So yeah, Friday's not a good day to push code.
Although I know a lot of peoplewho like to do it on Friday, and
I have always been one not to doanything on Friday.
The rationale, I I I try tothink of the rationale.
I understand it's like, well,you know, there's risk, less
risk because you have more timeto fix it, but I also go with,
well, there's more risk becausetypically there's less people
(02:12):
available.
That's right.
Uh they don't like weekends.
You can schedule to have peopleavailable, but uh sometimes if
you push code out there, youdon't know if it works, it
doesn't work.
So do you have people waitingall the time?
Uh no, because everybody testseverything so thoroughly.
Oh, no.
So there are never any problems.
SPEAKER_00 (02:28):
Those are the people that don't like weekends.
It's the problem.
They don't like the weekends.
SPEAKER_03 (02:36):
So we'll see.
Uh but thank you both for takingthe opportunity to speak with us
afternoon.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation.
Uh, before we jump into theconversation, would you mind
telling us a little bit aboutyourself, Dave?
SPEAKER_02 (02:46):
Sure.
Yeah, so uh Dave Malda, I'm hereat iPass.com.
Um, we're in the integrationspace, and so I've been, you
know, in the let's call it EDI,e-commerce, ERP uh integration
space for around 17, 18 years.
So fairly well versed in all thedifferent endpoints, but that
(03:06):
doesn't mean there's a day thatdoesn't go without you know
learning something new, right?
That's what I do love aboutthis.
Um but yeah, I'm joined herewith uh my colleague Robert, and
uh so we you know really play inthe um a bunch of different
ecosystems, including uh theMicrosoft ERP ecosystem.
So lots of tenure with the olderdynamics nav, AX, SL, um, you
(03:33):
know, those EP is was anotherpopular one, and then of course
now it's Dynamics 365 and allthe different versions, right?
So uh it's great to be here andthanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03 (03:45):
Great.
Robert.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
Oh well, uh so I'm Robert.
I head up partnerships andalliances at iPass.com and uh I
cut my teeth in in the industryin the e-commerce space, and so
helped uh lead a digital agencyfor about a decade, brought
brands like SwissGear andInvictaWatches into e-commerce,
a lot of cool different B2B andB2C projects, um Google Premier
(04:11):
Partner, Inc.
5000 company, uh sold in 2017,um exited, and from there I
headed a partnership at adifferent integration platform.
Dave and I went from being uhyou know working at companies
that were complementary to um tobeing in a bit of conflict, and
then I headed a partnership at aweb hosting firm that dealt with
(04:33):
a lot of um you know cloudinfrastructure and uh mission
critical hosting.
And uh I joined the team here atiPass.com about uh two and a
half years ago now.
And uh very excited to bejoining you today and get to
talk a little bit about, as Davesaid, you know, where that all
comes together with uh theMicrosoft community.
SPEAKER_03 (04:55):
No, that's that's what I'm looking to hear a
little bit more about.
Uh it seems that you have uh agreat background on integrations
and uh a breadth of exposure tothe dynamic space.
So if we could talk a little bitabout that.
When you talk aboutintegrations, exactly what do
you mean by integration?
SPEAKER_01 (05:13):
So for us, it's really about flowing data with
your other best-in-classsystems, or hopefully best in
class, right?
We all hope that everyone'susing the best software for
them.
But and that's actually one ofthe challenges is that getting
your systems to talk together sothat your finance operations,
sales, marketing, uh, shippingand warehousing and fulfillment,
(05:37):
so that the differentdepartments in an organization,
every org's a little different,you know, depending on whether
they're more services orientedor or more um retail or
wholesale or distribution ormanufacturing, whatever you
know, sphere they may work in,you know, certainly
construction, healthcare, etc.,um, they've got data.
They've got customer data,perhaps product and data, order
(06:00):
or transaction data of somesort, invoices, things that are
happening um that are importantto other stakeholders in an
organization and should be inother systems.
And so at the heart of it, it'sreally about just getting the
data flowing, getting ittransformed and translated and
orchestrated to all the systemsit should be in and flowing
(06:23):
naturally, so that nobody'swaiting on on some other team to
try to get them what they needthat they've got access to the
key information, and more thanjust people having access today
in the world where you probablydon't have a podcast episode
that doesn't somehow touch onAI.
SPEAKER_03 (06:41):
Um I I don't know what that word is.
SPEAKER_01 (06:46):
Okay, this uh this artificial intelligence stuff,
it's more important than ever tomake sure that you've got not
just data, but clean data,having accountability for that
data, because with AI, just likewith anything else, trash in,
trash out, um, you've got tohave the data flowing where it
needs to go so that you canbenefit from these new systems.
(07:08):
And just in general, tech stacksare growing.
And so you need to be able topull together you know all these
systems so that you've got thisunified approach to operations.
SPEAKER_03 (07:19):
Excellent.
Excellent.
So IPass, you can integrateexternal systems to business
central.
We'll call them external systemsbecause I'm a little selfish and
I like to call Business Centralas you know, the central, the
main system, but businesscentral could also be uh
ancillary to some other systems,as you had mentioned.
Many organizations have uh manydifferent products that they
(07:41):
use.
Uh, as you had mentioned, youwant to use the best product for
the job that you need to do, andsometimes that's not always
within Business Central, believeit or not.
Uh I've learned that over myyears with it.
It's a great product, featurerich, does wonders for art, but
sometimes you'd have tointegrations with other systems.
SPEAKER_01 (07:57):
Absolutely.
I mean, and if you were to thinkabout, for instance, e-commerce,
if you're thinking about wherethe biggest brands are growing,
it's with platforms like Shopifyand Big Commerce and Magento and
Adobe Commerce and Shopware andand so forth.
And you know, it gives you justan idea of oh, yeah, you know,
there are these other softwareecosystems out there that
(08:18):
businesses are are reliant on,but that need to be
interoperable.
So I'm with you, you know, butthe ERP really is the anchor.
No doubt about that.
Business Central is is at theheart.
But we would it at iPass.com,iPass stands for integration
platform as a service.
(08:40):
And what's funny is that if youwere to look at how our system
operates, we become the hub.
We're the glue betweeneverything, we're kind of the
pipes.
So, you know, in a diagram,you'd see when we're involved,
you'd see us in the middle, um,with one integration into
somebody's business centralinstance, um, being able to
(09:02):
transform and translate datawith myriad other systems all at
once.
And it's kind of a one-to-many.
SPEAKER_03 (09:09):
So, with with that integrations, um, you mentioned
that it integrates with BusinessCentral.
I'll take it back from the ERPbecause I have questions on the
other side, but the ERP softwarewith Business Central.
Does it work with BusinessCentral online or Business
Central on premises or both?
SPEAKER_01 (09:23):
Yes.
So, really, what we're dealingwith is API connectivity.
Um, and so if we can reach theAPIs um of Business Central, the
application uh programminginterface to basically get data
in and out, um, then we'regolden.
Um and that's really what it'sabout for us.
So we, for instance, we actuallywork with uh with nav with you
(09:46):
know what was Navision back inthe day, same premise that um,
you know, if it's an on-prem,sometimes there's uh a few steps
to go through to uh you knowwhitelist some IPs and um and
and get proper access.
But at the end of the day, aslong as uh as idass.com as a
platform can communicate withthe APIs, we're in great shape.
SPEAKER_03 (10:09):
Okay.
And do you have a standard listof APIs as part of Business
Central that you add as part ofthis uh experience with the
integrations?
Yes.
Um when someone goes to theimplementation.
SPEAKER_01 (10:20):
Yes, and so the way that our platform is built,
every integration that we havethat's already built is in our
marketplace and actually listsout all the supported data flows
that are already available.
Um we have an SDK for peoplethat need to expand and um deal
with uh with things that aremore custom.
(10:40):
In some cases for users, we'lljust go and you know add support
for an additional API endpointhere or there um and expand upon
the integration that that'salready available.
But uh absolutely that uh, youknow, and with a system like
Business Central, you'lltypically see a mix of, and
obviously there are layers uh tothese kinds of data as you deal
(11:02):
with the relationships betweenum you know companies and
customers and uh you knowproducts and as it relates to
inventory and prices, and um,you know, if we're thinking
about you know orders as itrelates to invoices and
shipments and so on and soforth, that we'll have all those
sorts of data flows ready torock and roll.
SPEAKER_00 (11:24):
So you have you have templates ready for you for them
then.
So for people that want tointegrate something really
quickly, you they have a goodstandard um to stand on and then
be able to easily add more datapoints.
SPEAKER_01 (11:38):
Exactly.
So we'll for instance you'llhave when you spin up those
templates.
So there's kind of theintegration itself, which is
handling the API communicationsand being that that translator
on on that side to okay, what'sthe API and business central and
where is that going iniPass.com.
And then we've got mappingtemplates, and mapping we think
(12:02):
of as okay, you know, this fieldneeds to go to that field, and
what might need to happen inbetween, what kind of
translation or transformations?
We're a a no-code to low codesystem, so sometimes it's just
first name over here has to goto given name over there.
Um, sometimes you need to domore things to split data apart,
(12:22):
append data together, or doother things to work with the
data and get it ready forwhatever system it's trying to
go into so that it's properly uhformatted and uh and it's going
to be successful.
But in that process, we've gotfor each integration templates
of the common fields that we uhanticipate running into most
(12:43):
often.
And so if I'm thinking aboutproduct data, you can imagine
fields like the product name,description, skew, price,
inventory, sorts of things.
But then somebody that'sselling, let's say, you know,
cell phones, they might havefields of data about how many
gigabytes is the phone, and umwhat carriers does it work with,
and um you know what screensize, and so on and so on.
(13:06):
They might have a hundred fieldslike that.
We provide a uh node, a low-codeway of mapping those fields and
getting that that thoseadditional pieces of data
flowing.
And so you're kind of gettingsomething where we hope in most
cases you're about 70% of theway there when you turn it on.
Sometimes you're 100% of the waythere.
(13:26):
Um, but you know, you can buildupon it.
There's a inherent flexibilitybuilt in.
So it's meant to be aspringboard, but not to be a
black box.
SPEAKER_03 (13:37):
No, I understand.
So it's so you connect to thebusiness central APIs, you have
the ability to enhance thoseAPIs.
If you have a business central,a lot of implementations have
extensions that add additionalfields or even additional tables
that they may need to use.
So you have a mapping tool thatallows you to integrate to the
APIs that are visible withinBusiness Central, so that kind
(13:59):
of covers that.
And then you talked about youhave the mapping tool in data
transformation.
Where does that take place?
Does that take place on BusinessCentral side?
Does that take place in theiPass.com platform?
SPEAKER_01 (14:12):
That takes place in the iPass.com platform.
So you're able to log in, um,you're able to see all of this
in in you know nice, neat uhuser interfaces, and um, you're
able to adjust.
And so it makes it easier uh inthat sense to think about what
each system that you'reintegrating uh needs and and
(14:34):
what data you're flowing to andfrom each system.
And so if you can imagineflowing with business central,
with e-commerce, point of sale,CRM, product information
management systems, shipping andfulfillment systems like
warehouse management, ordermanagement, 3PL, um, you know,
dealing with all sorts of myriadtypes of software, HR systems
(14:58):
like UKG or sales tax exemptioncertificate management with
Avalera, or you know, that we weget into a lot of different
types of integrations, but um inthat way, by having that one one
you know Grand Central Stationwhere it's being managed, uh
you're not dealing with allsorts of one-off connectors that
(15:20):
you're trying to maintainindependently and monitor
independently and uh and youknow really debug independently
because I from my experience thehardest part of dealing with
data integration over time isn'twhen things work properly, it's
when data doesn't get where it'ssupposed to go, and that's where
(15:41):
you know for us we're acube-based system, data comes
in, uh it processes.
If there's any any issue withthe data, we automatically retry
on a schedule, it doesn't getlost, we notify you so that
you've you know what's going onand give you a bit of a root
cause analysis, and the sameprocess is happening on the way
out to each receiving system.
And so, for instance, we mightget an order coming down from an
(16:04):
e-commerce website that needs togo to Business Central for
accounting, to some kind ofwarehouse management system for
fulfillment, uh, to a CRM so thesales team has visibility, etc.
And maybe it's gonna go to twoout of three systems
successfully, but one of them,like there was that AWS outage a
couple of weeks ago, and somaybe it's unavailable for a
(16:27):
while, we'll keep automaticallyretrying until it's successful,
or maybe there's an issue whereone of the fields, there's just
too many characters to go intowhatever the receiving system
is, um, and so two of them workfine, but one of them didn't.
Now you know what's going on andyou can see it, and it's not
just a matter of, oh, that orderdidn't get fulfilled and waiting
(16:49):
for a shopper to call saying,Where's my stuff?
Um, the um, you know, the oursystem is purpose-built to
really bring a lot morecountability, um, visibility,
and control to the wholeprocess, and to minimize the the
long-term uh you know expense oftrying to maintain all of these.
Our integrations to all thesesystems are maintained in our
(17:11):
marketplace.
So, you know, if let's sayShopify Big Commerce is changing
uh their APIs, which we see fromtime to time, our users don't
have to go and rewrite theseconnectors that we're doing it
and there's version control,they can just switch to
something new and go to version1.8 of that integration, uh, and
(17:31):
not have to take on that burdenof things breaking or um or or
having to spend all that moneyin what I'd consider RD
reinventing the wheel.
SPEAKER_03 (17:43):
So this is more of a central hub for managing the
data integrations.
And you'd mentioned that you canwork with multiple sources
simultaneously in abi-directional manner.
Yes.
And you also pointed out thatyou track the data flow to
because again, if you have uhproduct data going from one
(18:03):
system to uh many disparatesystems, and if you have an
error with one, uh you'll retryand do that.
With the data, is is it apass-through for the data
through this service that youhave, or is there any data
residing in the iPass.com uhplatform?
SPEAKER_01 (18:21):
So we are an actual data hub.
And in that way, you as forinstance, there are gonna be
communications happening in anorder fulfillment situation.
It's a great example where anorder is gonna maybe come into
business central from a saleschannel to be fulfilled.
Um, but then as items arefulfilled, maybe there's a split
(18:42):
shipment, right?
There's gonna be a partialshipment happening.
We need to keep updating, and soit keeps keeps that together as
sort of um an amalgamated sourceof truth, and so you can keep
dealing with the updates thatway.
Um, and it's really what powersa lot of the the one to many and
gives a lot more intelligence tothe whole process.
(19:03):
So as opposed to justpoint-to-point connectors and
getting data from A to B, we arereally thinking about um the
life cycle of the data.
And so uh and there are timeswhen data is kind of you know
splicing together from multiplesystems, and so for instance, we
might have an organization thathas a big product catalog that
(19:25):
sells in multiple regions anddifferent languages, perhaps, or
under different brands, and theyare going to use a product
information management systemlike PIMCOR or a Kenio to manage
their product data as it relatesto how to categorize the data
and all the attributes and tagsand additional information, you
know, images in a digital assetmanagement system.
(19:50):
And so the source of truth ofthe inventory and pricing might
always be business central.
That that's not necessarilygonna happen in in a PIM like a
Kenio or PIMCore, uh but iniPass.com there's one record for
that product, and we're styou're getting all of the
information about that productcoming together in one system.
(20:12):
Um so at that point it'sstitched together and ready uh
to go wherever it needs to go,as opposed to thinking about
having to get you know differentfields coming together
separately, and then forinstance, you know, how do you
even build a product into somesystems if it doesn't have
pricing or inventory, or if itdoesn't have some of these other
fields, we give that naturalplace to bring it all together.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
That's that's excellent.
I I do have a question, uh kindof uh not so much of a left
field, but from the world ofconsulting and implementing
Business Central, uh with yourtool being an integration tool,
have have others used it, notjust moving, you know,
integrating data, you know,having data uh applications talk
(20:57):
to but uh talk to each other,but more of so like moving or
migrating data.
Um so for example, if someone'scoming from a nav system that
wants to upgrade a businesscentral, could have you had
people use it to do a datamigration uh uh on top of the
other things that they're gonnaintegrate anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (21:17):
So yes and no.
Um we have features as a datahub to uh manually sync pieces
of data, to reactivate data, domore of a bigger catch-up on
getting data into a system, um,to look for unmatched data
between systems.
You can use us to see data intoa system what it's going to come
(21:41):
down to is uh you know, if ifI'm thinking about going from
let's say NAV to businesscentral, are are we set up to
move ever all of the types ofdata that are needed for that
user um wholesale and move themkind of you know
bi-directionally?
(22:01):
Uh or would you need to set upcertain things because we'll
normally think of uh of the ERPas the source of truth of
certain data, and so maybe theyou know the source of it, but
not the destination, forinstance.
Um and so there are cases wheresome data, like moving customer
records from one to the other,yeah, pretty straightforward.
(22:22):
Um, you know, trying to movecertain data, like maybe, you
know, certain ty I don't know,I'll make it up here, you know,
certain types of purchase ordersor something, you know, we might
be set up for more of aone-directional and there would
be effort to be able to bridgethat gap.
I'd also say that, you know,while our goal is to be, you
know, a quick implementation,our bigger focus is the total
(22:42):
cost of ownership, is theability to turn on new spokes to
the hub, to minimize themaintenance, to minimize the
fires that need to put out withold, you know, reactive kind of
situations with connectors thatwere strung together.
And so there's stillimplementation work.
And if you're not going tocontinue to use the product, if
(23:05):
you were just using it as amigration product, you might be
better off just you knowformatting the data more
manually, moving it moremanually.
So we do like consult onopportunities like that and look
at are we the best solution tohelp with that portion of a
project?
And with a migration, could beyes, could be no.
SPEAKER_00 (23:25):
Yeah, no, I it I I thought about that because um
you know, certainly in in manycases, someone that moves to
business central, there's morelikely a high chance that
they're going to be integratingto other uh solutions.
So if if someone was to investin moving from nav to business
central, and at the same timethey have e-commerce that they
want to integrate, it would makesense.
(23:48):
You know, they can still I meanthey could utilize the the
product itself to get some ofthe some of the heavy lifting.
Because that's always thechallenge for implementation is
like how do you move the datafrom one ERP system to another,
and at the same time having thatconsistency of uh uh perhaps
they want to get e-commerce,CRM, and all the other uh
(24:09):
integrations they want to do,um, they can still certainly
benefit from utilizing iPass inthat in that sense.
SPEAKER_01 (24:16):
So and I'll take it a step further.
So if you're thinking aboutturning on a new e-commerce
website with you know as anorganization using let's say
business central or moving tobusiness central, you know,
often you've got to think aboutwell, how is your product data
gonna get into the e-commercesite?
Um, because the source of truth,and typically that's going to be
(24:39):
us.
And that's important to usbecause back to stitching things
together, that brings moreaccountability so that we know
when an order is coming backfrom the e-commerce site, it's
gonna match perfectly withwhatever SKU is in Business
Central.
That we're not worried about youknow, somebody manually is
adding these items into thee-commerce website, and now
(25:03):
there are gonna be mismatches,and orders are gonna be failing
to flow successfully to the ERPfor fulfillment and accounting.
And so we do see situationswhere just naturally, um even if
it wasn't part of somebody'sinitial project plan, as they
start to scope out how theintegrations are gonna happen,
they're gonna realize that someof that data is gonna come
(25:24):
through us as a best practice,yeah, and they shouldn't do it
manually or through someexternal process.
SPEAKER_00 (25:33):
Yeah, I just think it about from uh uh investment
perspective, or if you're movingit to you're moving your data to
business central and you have aPIM solution that you have to
populate that, you're you'reyou're doing it in kind of one
process rather than doingbusiness central, and then you
gotta figure out from businesscentral to your PIM solution.
In this case, you can do it to,hey, I'm gonna populate these
(25:55):
things anyway, coming from asource, might as well do it uh
in in one process.
SPEAKER_01 (26:02):
Yeah, and that's what we like to see is people
thinking more about their entiredata ecosystem and thinking
about the long term, and not somuch just trying to think about
you know, reactively how to puta band-aid on it, how to how do
they minimally get these thingstalking?
Um, and that's where we seedifferent outcomes that just
(26:25):
become possible that uh byunifying these sorts of systems
that, for instance, you know,for retailers dealing with point
of sale, um, that they'll oftentoday they'll have e-commerce
and their e-commerce will behooked up to their marketing
stack, and their marketing stackwill know all all of the
shoppers' online history, but itwon't know what they bought in
(26:45):
store when.
And so you'll see brands thatare emailing people or sending
text messages, hey, you haven't,you know, come to this, you
know, to the store in a while,we haven't, you know, seen you
in a while.
Here's a coupon.
It's like I they were at a brickand mortar store yesterday
making a purchase.
And you just see these silosthat um you know that don't have
to be broken down on day one,but being able to turn on
(27:08):
another spoke to the hub andjust get that data flowing now
to the marketing stack, youknow, that becomes powerful.
Or I mentioned Avalera earlier,not I wouldn't say it's one of
our most common integrations,but if you can imagine um the
people that are often talking tocustomers about um there's you
know their orders and sales taxexemption certificates if you're
(27:30):
dealing with you know wholesaleor non-profit or government or
what have you, you know, thatthey're not usually the people
that are in the Avalera accountand that can see, or that are
necessarily in the R ERP and cansee if there's an exemption
certificate on file when itmight be expiring.
We can expose that data to theCRM where the sales and account
(27:52):
management teams have access,where the people that are
sitting in the call center cansay, oh yeah, you know, that's
expired.
Oh, yeah, nope, we have that onfile already.
And so it's just some of thosethings that cut down on a lot of
that internal, you know,transferring and back and forth
and delay.
SPEAKER_03 (28:13):
That's I just want to rewind a few to something
that you had started talkingabout.
Is so it's a central hub fordata, and you can connect
disparate systems so you canhave pieces of information from
many sources.
So if you have item information,business central has certain
item fields, uh, excuse me,characteristics of fields,
whatever you like to call them,on an item that may or may not
(28:35):
be uh relevant for an e-commercesite, or they may not have a
place for an e-commerce site, ane-commerce site may have some
information, a PIM may haveadditional information.
So you can bring all of thattogether and then distribute the
relevant information to thesystems with the information
that they need only, correct?
Now another thing thinking aboutthis, with it being a data hub,
(28:56):
uh and I've had my fair share ofintegrations, I can assure you,
uh, probably more than you knowyou can't remember at some
points.
And it's almost because here in2025, uh everybody wants systems
that talk with each other, andit's becoming easier and easier
as technology advances and hasbeen over the past several
years.
Can you also filter the datathat goes to each system?
(29:19):
For example, I could have aShopify store one that has is
just specifically for mywholesalers, a Shopify store two
that's just for uh retailers.
My product may be different uhbecause of the nature of the
business or the nature of whoI'm selling it to.
And there may be differentpricing or there may be
different uh pieces ofinformation that have to go to
the different sources.
(29:40):
So can you route it based uponsome sort of filtering mechanism
or security mechanism to uh keepthe data from flowing into
systems that shouldn't?
SPEAKER_01 (29:51):
Not only can you uh can you set rules to decide
which systems are going toreceive that data, you can also
use Use uh our rules engine todecide which data is going to go
through which transformationsand translations.
And so let's say in your thesituation that you lined out in
(30:12):
your example where differentstorefronts, um, it might be
that um when you're dealing withdifferent sales channels, some
might be B2B and some might beB2C, and that data may need to
be treated a little bitdifferently.
So not only about where topublish it or where to send it,
but how does it need totransform and translate in
(30:33):
route?
SPEAKER_03 (30:35):
That's great.
And as far as the the storage isconcerned, it when I hear of
data hubs, I'm used to businesscentral, everyone talks about
business central and the and thedata storage and the data space.
Um how is the space allotted forthis platform for a customer?
SPEAKER_01 (30:53):
So we're providing um as a SaaS platform uh
individual accounts for usersthat and our pricing's up on our
website.
We're you know proud to havetransparency around it.
Uh where we're charging basedupon the number of pieces of
software.
Yeah, it's it's rare in theintegration space.
(31:15):
A lot of places, you know, youyou've got to have uh three PhDs
and consult your you know yourcrystal ball to figure it out.
SPEAKER_03 (31:23):
Um I won't even go down that road of fine your
life.
Like you said, it's uh I swear.
Yeah, I swear, as much as I loveBusiness Central and the whole
Microsoft platform and all that,I swear you could have two
full-time people that understandthat work just strictly with
Microsoft licensing and theywouldn't understand it if that
even was their job 24 hours aday.
So I do as Chris had stated, Ido like the transfer.
SPEAKER_02 (31:45):
And easy to understand.
SPEAKER_01 (31:47):
So yeah, yeah.
So it ours is based upon thenumber of pieces of software
that you're integrating.
And so basically we're countingthose, if you want to think
about it, like API connections.
So if you have one instance ofBusiness Central, that's one
integration.
If you've got one instance ofMagento or Adobe Commerce or Big
(32:08):
Commerce or Shopware, whatevere-comm, that's that's another.
But to us, now those e-commerceplatforms, you might have six
storefronts running out of it,right?
You know, that we're notcounting how many brands you're
operating or such.
We're just thinking about howmany instances of the software.
Um, and so our our initial planstarts at a flat$500 a month,
(32:31):
and that includes unlimited datathroughput.
So we're not nickel and dimingfor the API calls, the
bandwidth, the storage, thenumber of admin users that you
want, you know, to have accessto the iPass.com account, to the
number of data flows between thesystems that you know you want
to start flowing a variety ofdifferent data, no problem.
(32:55):
Um, we're simply looking at thethe number of integrations, and
then there are a few add-onsthat you can tack on if you want
a sandbox account um because youwant to hook that up to a dev or
staging environment, you can getthat, you know, at a a rate and
such, and all that information,like I say, is published and and
readily available.
(33:15):
Um so we find that that's reallyadvantageous.
Now, I mean, for somebody that'syou know, if we're talking to a
Fortune 500, we're gonna bedealing with uh a single tenant
implementation that we're gonnaquote out more uniquely.
But we've had I mean, you know,huge organizations using our our
multi-tenant SaaS um groups likeNintendo, the Cleveland Cavs,
(33:38):
the Minnesota Wild, the AirForce.
Um, so you know, we're we'rewe're really consistent in um in
the the absolute the 99% of ourusers being able to utilize uh
that multi-tenant SaaS pricing.
SPEAKER_03 (33:52):
Okay, so it's it's it is a it you had get gotten
into some other points because Iwas also going to start talking
about the throughput and theperformance, but you had
mentioned and it sounds in theconversation that you had just
had, you can have multi-tenancyor single tenancy if your
implementation requires itbecause of the volume of
transactions that you have, ormaybe the number of connections,
so you have some flexibility onthe right.
SPEAKER_01 (34:11):
We've got our SOP2, etc., etc.
But if somebody's infosecting,you know, that they are going to
require something a littledifferent, we can we can deal
with that as a one-off, ofcourse.
SPEAKER_03 (34:21):
Uh no, I like these integrations with the mappings
because as I had mentioned,there's so many integrations
that are occurring today, andeverybody seems to want to uh
create them from sc uh from Iuse the word from scratch.
You know, it's my northeasternvocabulary here.
So as far as as going throughthe implementation and setting
this up.
Uh in you mentioned you havesome templates.
(34:41):
Uh what do you in the templatesagain?
Just I I I understand theconcept, and I'm sure I've a lot
that work with business well.
They're intended to get youstarted.
Right.
You may, as you had mentioned,you may get everything that you
need, but you may have someuniqueness to your business that
you may need to make someadjustments for this.
And that adjustment process, howis that typically handled?
Do you do that adjustmentprocess?
(35:02):
Is does the customer do thatadjustment process?
Does the partner do thatadjustment process?
How does somebody go abouthaving some of those
uniquenesses of their businessput into this platform for them
to distribute the information orreceive the information?
SPEAKER_01 (35:16):
So our platform, um, you know, it there's obviously,
you know, there's trainingmodules and there's information
on how to uh administrate andand implement uh and such, and
that's all pretty fast, rapidkind of training and
information.
Um, but we know that the averageorganization, they don't have
(35:38):
the bandwidth to take that on,um, even if it's a smaller
project.
That the idea of building theproject plan, asking the right
stakeholders, making sure it'sunderstood what are the business
processes that that areunderlying these integrations,
what does success look like atthe end, building out that
project plan, thinking about youknow what do the baseline
(36:01):
integrations in the marketplacedo and what needs to be uh
supplemented there, whatadditional fields of data need
to be mapped, and then mostimportantly, testing.
Um, you know, so to us, uh everyproject, even something that's
gonna use really more off theshelf, what's in the templates
should go through some some UAT,some user acceptance testing,
(36:23):
thinking about not only the mostcommon, but also some edge
cases.
Um, and that's where you knowyou'll find that organizations
forget things that have beencustomized in some of their
software, um, or you know, thatthere's some field of data
that's that was missed, or thatthere was a typo somewhere.
We that all that should ideallybe caught in that process.
(36:45):
And so working with a servicesprovider, uh, or you know, might
be uh and you know, depending onuh their their area of
expertise, we've got over 80 ofthese um agencies, SIs, VARs, uh
consultancies, and and otherservice providers in our partner
network, and that number justkeeps growing, um, they can come
(37:06):
in and they can provide theresources that are going to be
great at overseeing the projectand and making sure everything
is successful and that it getsdone within a reasonable
timeline, where often peoplethat are trying to
self-implement, um everybody'sgot finite resources, and most
people in an organizationalready have full plates.
(37:28):
And so trying to get you knowpeople to to do this internally,
could they?
Yes.
Um, you know, if they have thetime, absolutely, but uh we
always prefer starting from theconcept of you know, can you
pull in experts that can guideyou through it and make sure
it's it's a a really, reallysuccessful experience, and from
(37:50):
there figure out you know whatcould be done internally to cut
down on on any services cost,um, and how do you marry
together, having you know thesefolks consult and having your
internal team do certain things.
Um, but nonetheless, you cankind of go in either direction.
But we find that our our team isgoing to be responsible for the
(38:11):
uptime, the security of theplatform, um, the the general
features and evolution of ourplatform um as a system, but we
leave it to the partner networkto be able to provide that that
services layer and deal with theunique needs of people's
individual businesses and andthe unique issues of their data
(38:32):
and data hygiene and what haveyou.
SPEAKER_03 (38:35):
I understand that it it that all makes sense to me.
I mean, working withimplementations, it is great to
have somebody who understandsyour business working with it.
And I'm happy that you hit uponuh some key points.
Uh you know, I could you know Itell everybody I could go and
redo some landscaping in myyard.
I would love to do it, but Iwould do it at night because I
still have to work during theday.
It would take much longer to getdone.
(38:56):
So sometimes thatself-implementation, if you have
the availability, is great todo, but sometimes you can get
also done a lot quicker if youhave somebody who understands
what needs to do.
And you know, to be quite blunt,it's their job, right?
It's what they're supposed todo.
They're supposed to show up, getit done, and then uh support and
maintain and work with youthrough the rest of the journey,
but it gets you off the groundfaster to maybe transition some
(39:16):
of that over to you so that youcan manage it if you have the
time.
SPEAKER_01 (39:19):
And you might want to call them in every now and
then that maybe some data failsto flow and there's uh an API
error that we're reporting froma system that you know some
systems provide really detailedinformation when data failures
happen about, you know, why itis okay, the character length
was too long, or the um, youknow, there there was uh
basically there's a questionmark and a number field, or you
(39:42):
know, or or there's some or youknow, maybe uh an API key
expired with some system.
Sometimes it's just you knowit's a pretty bland failure and
you don't know why.
And somebody needs to dig in alittle bit.
Our system will, you don't haveto recreate the error, you don't
have to look for a needle in ahaystack, not only does it let
you know, but it will show youall the payloads between the
(40:04):
APIs.
It'll show you all thecommunications, you can trace
where the the issue arose, butnot every user wants to do that
on their own.
Um and so this is where you knowday-to-day operations, mapping a
new field, maybe they do, youknow, the the end user does that
for themselves.
Um something that gets a littlebit more complex in debugging,
(40:25):
maybe they want to call in thecavalry.
SPEAKER_03 (40:29):
That's good, dude.
I understand that.
No, I like the flexibility ofthat as well.
And uh as far as the template iskind of uh how many do you have
now within your templateportfolio as sort of the the get
started kit?
So you had mentioned businesscentral, I'm hearing a number of
names.
Shopify, business central,Avalara.
SPEAKER_01 (40:44):
Well, Dave, do you have a good number off the top
of your head?
SPEAKER_02 (40:48):
Or I mean dozens and dozens, but it's definitely
growing uh daily um and weekly.
SPEAKER_01 (40:55):
Uh to pin a it's probably around 60, if I had to
guess, off the top of my head.
Yeah because we've been addinguh a lot, and at any given time
we're working on several newones.
SPEAKER_02 (41:08):
I I think too uh Brad, what's really interesting
is over the last couple ofmonths there's been a real
appetite for partners, we callthem MISPs in our network, um,
that are looking to writeintegrations to our platform,
right?
So uh these may be uh sometimesthere are maybe one-off uh uh
(41:30):
endpoints or systems that areneeded in in in you know a
specific project, but sometimesthey're very common ones that uh
partners would like to writeintegrations for.
We would certify that in ourmarketplace, and then it becomes
available to everybody, right?
So that's one of the realadvantages of kind of our our
platform and let's call it theflywheel, where as we build and
(41:54):
as our partners build, it justsort of starts to pick up
velocity and become more andmore valuable uh sort of week
over week, right?
SPEAKER_03 (42:02):
So no, I understand that.
So partners can also createconnectors for their customers
to use to make it easier tointegrate their system with an
ERP system.
I'm a little selfish.
I always talk about ERP.
SPEAKER_01 (42:17):
And I'll take it a step further.
So these integrations in ourmarketplace, our marketplace
acts a bit like an app store.
We've written them the vastmajority of these integrations,
but when partners list them,that's the last piece of the
pricing that you'd see on thepricing page.
If a a partner can list anintegration as being free, they
can also add a monthly fee.
(42:37):
It's just a line item on theiPass.com uh invoice that our
our clients receive, that oursubscribers receive.
But in that way, for instance,um there's currently two where
there's a fee.
One is another ERP, I know.
Um but the um but Sugar CRMwould be another$125 a month if
somebody wanted to integratewith it.
(42:58):
And that makes our marketplacemore scalable because what
you'll find is that if you tryto box it all in into one
platform like us beingresponsible for writing and
maintaining every integration,it slows everything down.
And with us, every integrationis a universal translator to our
hub and is interoperable withall these other integrations
(43:22):
that are in our marketplace.
So it really does uh you knowimprove our value proposition
very quickly as we're adding andadding these.
Um but to the point, sometimesyou just need you if you need to
integrate five pieces ofsoftware for somebody, um, four
of them might be in themarketplace, and one of them uh
(43:42):
may need to be written with ourSDK, and maybe it's a bespoke
piece of software or somethingend-of-life, or something that
we would never commercially youknow be out there adding, you
know, with the ex expectation ofselling in droves, right?
But um, you can still you knowpay uh as someone from our
partner network, one of theseservice providers, to write that
(44:03):
integration, and then it's goingthrough all the error handling,
it can talk to all these othersystems, and all these other
integrations are beingmaintained so that you don't
have to.
And so there's still all thatvalue proposition of being able
to you know map new fields andmanage everything from a
low-code interface.
And you know, it it's a it's amock system.
(44:25):
Um, so it's built you know, thisis where we I get even more
nerdy, right?
But it's built withmicroservices, API first, it's
it's cloud-based and it'sheadless.
And so that is to say weauto-scale in the cloud, we're
built on top of Azure.
Um, and so you know, there are alot of different microservices
running.
If one of them starts to get alittle bit high in resource
(44:48):
usage, we automatically spin upmore copies and balance the
load.
And so we're prepared to dealwith big bursts of data.
Our system actually, we've got alot of features to make sure
that we don't overwhelmeveryone's third-party software,
that we don't overwhelm theire-commerce website or or their
CRM or whatever other systems.
(45:09):
Um, but you know, uh aside fromthinking uh about it um in that
way, it's also you werementioning earlier, you know,
dealing with uh organizationsthat have multiple brands,
multiple storefronts, differentthings.
Our interface is really nice.
We love demoing it because it,you know, it's uh it's very
(45:31):
modern and it's very intuitive.
But there are cases where let'ssay you're dealing with a
manufacturer that needs to hookup something with you know a
thousand distributors or afranchise with a thousand
franchisees, you may not want tomanually deal with turning on
data flows with a thousandShopify stores, one or a
(45:51):
thousand point-of-sale instancesfor each franchisee that's got
their own data going back to tothe franchise to calculate
royalties or push productcatalog information or whatever
it may be, you can script it allwith us.
Um and basically when you're inour interface, when you click
buttons, you're basicallycalling APIs.
(46:14):
You can just write a script tocommunicate with those same
APIs.
You don't need to do it athousand times just to script it
and let it run.
Um, and so there are a lot ofdifferent scenarios that we run
into depending on the size of anorg and and what they need to
achieve, where sometimes thereis going to be some coding to be
(46:35):
done um in order to really uhachieve what they need, but I
haven't seen a better way outthere, right?
I'm I'm used to seeing peoplehave to really, you know, set
something up a thousand timesversus how they could do it with
us.
SPEAKER_03 (46:50):
Oh, in 2025, I still see that.
So it's uh it's good to automatesomething as well.
I'll ask you a uh uh it's kindof it's the loaded question, but
it's not a loaded question, butit's it's something that if
someone's looking for solutions,they talk about.
And I know and just so thateveryone also uh is hopefully
aware that there isn't a onesize fits all.
Every organization's different,every integration's different,
(47:12):
every piece is different.
But what would you say is theaverage time to implement a
connection to a system withBusiness Central?
And again, I understand that'svariability based upon which
which information you'reintegrating, uh if there's any
customizations, and I you know,just understanding some
variables, but just uh if youhad to say the typical
(47:35):
implementation, right?
You know, minor enhancements,minor modifications, how quickly
can someone get working withthis?
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (47:43):
Now, and I'll give you a couple of quick examples.
If we were talking about movingsome customer data between
business central and a marketingsystem like MailChimp.digital or
clavio or a CRM like HubSpot orsomething that you know that
maybe put you know 10 hours in,maybe 20 in a more complex
(48:03):
project, and that's including inin my head at least, you know,
project planning and testing andso on, soup to nuts.
Make you know that, and that'sme having enough buffer in there
for you know for the unusual.
Uh that's an expectation.
If I was dealing with a complexB2B uh e-commerce situation
(48:24):
where there's a lot of dataflows of customer data, product
data, order data, quotes, and umuh so on and so forth, you know,
gift card data flowing in theresomewhere, whatever it may be,
um, you know, I I could easilysee an average being more like a
hundred hours, um, perhaps more,you know, uh depending again on
(48:45):
the specs, how many product uhyou know fields need to be
mapped, how many um, you know,how many storefronts are there,
that we do see projects on ourplatform that certainly take
hundreds of hours, but you know,if I'm trying to think about a
more average, you know, somebodythat's got you know uh a
business central and uh I don'tknow, a big commerce website,
(49:09):
and they need to get thesethings hooked up, you know, I
I'd be hoping to see a projectlike that in dozens of hours.
Uh you know, maybe and andagain, I you know, my foot fits
really uh well in my mouth.
I know from life experience,every project is different.
I don't know how many more waysI can protect myself, but uh, I
think 50 hours, 60 hours isprobably a good starting point
(49:33):
for a very complete, thoroughproject that's been um that's
been properly tested and such.
But again, somebody that's justgonna turn on some basic data
flows that we already have andget their their inventory and
pricing and what have yousyncing and some order data
flowing, you know, they could doit in a few hours.
SPEAKER_03 (49:53):
That's good.
No, I know it's a it's a verydifficult question, I guess.
It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (49:58):
I'll get partners and clients, you know, calling
me saying, What are you talkingabout?
This project that we just didwas more.
Uh and and it we see it.
SPEAKER_03 (50:07):
It's the same thing with an ERP implementation.
I always have to ask thatquestion because uh I get asked
that question quite often.
How long will it take?
And again, it's like uh how longis a piece of string.
But again, you still can saythat based upon you know a
certain size or a certainintegration, you can expect, you
know, as you had mentioned, ifit's a larger implementation, it
could be uh a couple weeks.
If it's a very uh standard orsimplistic uh implementation, it
(50:30):
could be a couple days.
Yeah, and look, I mean we it'sall a meta for what just go back
to.
SPEAKER_01 (50:34):
I know I've seen people, I hate to say it, you
know, but I've seen people takea year on an implementation with
us, but typically they'relaunching other software in the
midst of that.
Not everything was ready for us.
You know, it's not like theycame in and said, Oh, you know,
it's uh let's implementiPass.com, everything is ready,
we're just gonna stitch thistogether.
(50:55):
They've got bigger projectshappening in the midst of all of
it that we're you know, we'rethe glue in between, but you
can't finish implementing andtesting your data flows until
your other software is ready.
So there's kind of a uh there'sa safety net there um that I'm
throwing myself in terms of uhyou know from the time that all
(51:18):
of your fields are ready thatyou you're ready to really
implement, yeah, you know, it itcan be pretty rapid.
Um but uh you know you've got toget your ducks in a row as part
of the project as well.
SPEAKER_03 (51:30):
Oh yes, you have to assume that the systems are in
place.
It's it's pretty difficult tointegrate with a system that's
not there.
SPEAKER_01 (51:37):
So you'd be surprised that and sometimes
it's good that sometimes you'vegot people starting to put data
in, and they're not wrong forwanting to start testing.
In fact, you know, we like that.
They just don't realize thatthey're not gonna be able to
really go through full useracceptance testing until
(52:00):
everything is is really inplace.
Um, or at least but in manycases, we love to see people
testing each flow as that asthose fields are ready and that
data's ready.
Um, so it's kind of a hybridwhere ideally you're doing these
things in lockstep, but untilyou get to the end, imagine you
know you want to see orderscoming over successfully, but
(52:22):
the product data is not ready.
Well, you know, you're notreally testing everything end to
end.
You've gotten, you know, 90% ofthe way there, let's say, but
there may still be some touch-upat the end when you you get it
everything really, reallytogether.
SPEAKER_02 (52:36):
I I know uh Brad, in a previous life, this has caused
me to, it's probably a littlebit of PTSD, but there was uh I
remember a couple of projectsthat um where the website was
being built out, and uh wedidn't have a strong like, okay,
when when when you're done andthings are ready for production,
then we'll start.
(52:57):
This was kind of like one ofthese piecemeal implementations,
and it was it was pretty painfulbecause weekly there would be
things that would be eitheradded on or custom fields added,
or and and when you're trying tointegrate that, it it's it's
like a moving target, right?
So yeah, lots of fun.
SPEAKER_03 (53:16):
Oh I've lived through those as implementation.
Chris may know a few about thattype of stuff.
Yes, yes, you go through someimplementations, you you have uh
uh oh, by the way, and oh we'vewe we forgot to do this.
Oh, we didn't talk about thatscenario.
So there's always thechallenges.
SPEAKER_01 (53:34):
The bigger the project, the more the scope
creep at the end, and we findthat there's no malice 99.9% of
the time, right?
There nobody intended for thatto happen.
But until you start to testthings, they don't realize all
the things that were neverdiscussed, that were never
documented, that nobody evermentioned were going to be
(53:56):
requirements, and well, nowthere's more work to be done.
Um, so we we absolutely seethat, and and we believe that
that especially, you know,sizable projects, they should
have, you know, and that's whereI go back to I think the most
important part of the wholeprocess is the testing phase,
because that's where the rubbermeets the road.
Um and you know, it's uh we wedon't really have a lot of fear
(54:20):
about iPass.com as a platformbeing able to perform.
We we know it can perform.
It's really a matter of um, youknow what's being thrown out of
left field and what's left therebetween the service provider and
so on to be able to you know uhaddress that last mile.
And in some cases, you know, weum even the integrations in our
(54:44):
marketplace, as I mentionedearlier, that they support a
variety of data flows.
Uh there might be something thatnow they want to hook up to a
system and they want to get somedata flowing with it in a
certain direction that we don'tyet support.
And so now, you know, there arecases where we might be able to,
you know, rush that through ouruh our dev team and make
(55:07):
available.
There are other cases where wewe might have to point toward
our SDK and suggest, well, youknow, you should write something
supplemental for that.
Um, but those are the kinds ofthings, it's yeah, it's it's the
uh that you know 11th hour stuffthat gets you.
SPEAKER_03 (55:23):
Yeah, it's excellent.
Well, Dave, Robert, weappreciate you taking the time
to speak with us this afternoonand tell us all about iPass.com
uh and how it can enhance uhsomeone's integration to many
different systems, not justBusiness Central, which is uh
yeah, it's I like theflexibility and to be able to
have the interconnectivity withmany systems and to have it uh
(55:46):
much easier.
I mean, uh with Business Centralhaving the ability to have APIs
and and custom APIs, it's niceto have something that can
summon it on the other side tohelp them integrate with other
systems instead of havingspecific solutions for each one
of those.
And if someone wanted to learnmore about transparency.
If someone wanted to learn moreabout iPass, uh what what's the
(56:07):
best way that they could learn alittle bit more about it?
SPEAKER_01 (56:11):
Dave, I'll throw it to you.
SPEAKER_02 (56:14):
The easiest way, go to iPass.com.
Um, lots of information onthere, including the pricing,
uh, lots of developer tools andother information, including
like the marketplace, so whatyou know integrations are
available, which MISP partnersare part of our network.
Um, but also you could reach outvia email.
Uh, or Robert and I are bothfairly active on LinkedIn as
(56:37):
well.
So certainly connect and DM usthere, or Dave.malda at
iPass.com.
In Robert's case, Robert.rand atiPass.com.
More than happy to help.
SPEAKER_03 (56:48):
And that's iPass with IPAAS.com.
SPEAKER_01 (56:52):
Integration platform as a service, yeah.
And uh people can I like it.
Yeah, they they can book um ameeting right through our
website.
So we try to make that reallyeasy because we know seeing is
understanding, and we're alwayshappy to walk people through the
tech.
SPEAKER_03 (57:09):
Great.
It sounds like an amazingproduct.
Uh and thank you again for yourtime.
Uh speak with this afternoon.
SPEAKER_02 (57:15):
Thanks, Brad.
Uh, talk to you again soon.
Thank you.
Take care.
Yeah.
Bye.
SPEAKER_03 (57:20):
Thank you, Chris, for your time for another
episode of In the DynamicsCorner Chair.
And thank you to our guests forparticipating.
SPEAKER_00 (57:27):
Thank you, Brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for join joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlife.com.
That is D V L P R L I F E dotcom.
(57:48):
And you can interact with themvia Twitter, D V L P R L I F E.
You can also find me atmattalino.io, m-a-t-a-l-in-o.io.
And my Twitter handle isMattalino16.
And see you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
(58:10):
Again, thank you everyone.
Thank you, and take care.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
This is gonna be a fun,integrated conversation.
I'm your co-host, Chris.
SPEAKER_03 (00:09):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onNovember 7th, 2025.
Chris, Chris, Chris.
Integrations.
Who doesn't need an integration?
With all of the systems that areon the market today, and
everybody has a little piece ofinformation, you need to have
your information integrated.
With us today, we had theopportunity to speak with Dave
and Robert from iPass.com.
SPEAKER_02 (00:54):
Doing really well.
You guys?
SPEAKER_03 (00:56):
Uh, you know, it's Friday.
It's going well.
And I've always vowed to notrecord on a Friday, so I don't
know what will happen becausetypically the Fridays turn into
some sort of fiasco for me.
So we'll do our best today.
Hopefully, we can here we are.
We can make it through this one,okay.
But uh maybe we should justswitch to doing all recordings
(01:18):
on Fridays.
SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Fridays are good for recordings, it's just the day
you don't want to push code.
SPEAKER_03 (01:25):
Um when you do it, do it on Friday.
Uh Friday night is usually thebest time.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Friday's rough for us because it's like a lot of
people want to rush out, youknow what I mean?
I'm like disconnected already,you know.
I'm not even in my normal studioright now.
SPEAKER_03 (01:50):
So yeah, Friday's not a good day to push code.
Although I know a lot of peoplewho like to do it on Friday, and
I have always been one not to doanything on Friday.
The rationale, I I I try tothink of the rationale.
I understand it's like, well,you know, there's risk, less
risk because you have more timeto fix it, but I also go with,
well, there's more risk becausetypically there's less people
(02:12):
available.
That's right.
Uh they don't like weekends.
You can schedule to have peopleavailable, but uh sometimes if
you push code out there, youdon't know if it works, it
doesn't work.
So do you have people waitingall the time?
Uh no, because everybody testseverything so thoroughly.
Oh, no.
So there are never any problems.
SPEAKER_00 (02:28):
Those are the people that don't like weekends.
It's the problem.
They don't like the weekends.
SPEAKER_03 (02:36):
So we'll see.
Uh but thank you both for takingthe opportunity to speak with us
afternoon.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation.
Uh, before we jump into theconversation, would you mind
telling us a little bit aboutyourself, Dave?
SPEAKER_02 (02:46):
Sure.
Yeah, so uh Dave Malda, I'm hereat iPass.com.
Um, we're in the integrationspace, and so I've been, you
know, in the let's call it EDI,e-commerce, ERP uh integration
space for around 17, 18 years.
So fairly well versed in all thedifferent endpoints, but that
(03:06):
doesn't mean there's a day thatdoesn't go without you know
learning something new, right?
That's what I do love aboutthis.
Um but yeah, I'm joined herewith uh my colleague Robert, and
uh so we you know really play inthe um a bunch of different
ecosystems, including uh theMicrosoft ERP ecosystem.
So lots of tenure with the olderdynamics nav, AX, SL, um, you
(03:33):
know, those EP is was anotherpopular one, and then of course
now it's Dynamics 365 and allthe different versions, right?
So uh it's great to be here andthanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03 (03:45):
Great.
Robert.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
Oh well, uh so I'm Robert.
I head up partnerships andalliances at iPass.com and uh I
cut my teeth in in the industryin the e-commerce space, and so
helped uh lead a digital agencyfor about a decade, brought
brands like SwissGear andInvictaWatches into e-commerce,
a lot of cool different B2B andB2C projects, um Google Premier
(04:11):
Partner, Inc.
5000 company, uh sold in 2017,um exited, and from there I
headed a partnership at adifferent integration platform.
Dave and I went from being uhyou know working at companies
that were complementary to um tobeing in a bit of conflict, and
then I headed a partnership at aweb hosting firm that dealt with
(04:33):
a lot of um you know cloudinfrastructure and uh mission
critical hosting.
And uh I joined the team here atiPass.com about uh two and a
half years ago now.
And uh very excited to bejoining you today and get to
talk a little bit about, as Davesaid, you know, where that all
comes together with uh theMicrosoft community.
SPEAKER_03 (04:55):
No, that's that's what I'm looking to hear a
little bit more about.
Uh it seems that you have uh agreat background on integrations
and uh a breadth of exposure tothe dynamic space.
So if we could talk a little bitabout that.
When you talk aboutintegrations, exactly what do
you mean by integration?
SPEAKER_01 (05:13):
So for us, it's really about flowing data with
your other best-in-classsystems, or hopefully best in
class, right?
We all hope that everyone'susing the best software for
them.
But and that's actually one ofthe challenges is that getting
your systems to talk together sothat your finance operations,
sales, marketing, uh, shippingand warehousing and fulfillment,
(05:37):
so that the differentdepartments in an organization,
every org's a little different,you know, depending on whether
they're more services orientedor or more um retail or
wholesale or distribution ormanufacturing, whatever you
know, sphere they may work in,you know, certainly
construction, healthcare, etc.,um, they've got data.
They've got customer data,perhaps product and data, order
(06:00):
or transaction data of somesort, invoices, things that are
happening um that are importantto other stakeholders in an
organization and should be inother systems.
And so at the heart of it, it'sreally about just getting the
data flowing, getting ittransformed and translated and
orchestrated to all the systemsit should be in and flowing
(06:23):
naturally, so that nobody'swaiting on on some other team to
try to get them what they needthat they've got access to the
key information, and more thanjust people having access today
in the world where you probablydon't have a podcast episode
that doesn't somehow touch onAI.
SPEAKER_03 (06:41):
Um I I don't know what that word is.
SPEAKER_01 (06:46):
Okay, this uh this artificial intelligence stuff,
it's more important than ever tomake sure that you've got not
just data, but clean data,having accountability for that
data, because with AI, just likewith anything else, trash in,
trash out, um, you've got tohave the data flowing where it
needs to go so that you canbenefit from these new systems.
(07:08):
And just in general, tech stacksare growing.
And so you need to be able topull together you know all these
systems so that you've got thisunified approach to operations.
SPEAKER_03 (07:19):
Excellent.
Excellent.
So IPass, you can integrateexternal systems to business
central.
We'll call them external systemsbecause I'm a little selfish and
I like to call Business Centralas you know, the central, the
main system, but businesscentral could also be uh
ancillary to some other systems,as you had mentioned.
Many organizations have uh manydifferent products that they
(07:41):
use.
Uh, as you had mentioned, youwant to use the best product for
the job that you need to do, andsometimes that's not always
within Business Central, believeit or not.
Uh I've learned that over myyears with it.
It's a great product, featurerich, does wonders for art, but
sometimes you'd have tointegrations with other systems.
SPEAKER_01 (07:57):
Absolutely.
I mean, and if you were to thinkabout, for instance, e-commerce,
if you're thinking about wherethe biggest brands are growing,
it's with platforms like Shopifyand Big Commerce and Magento and
Adobe Commerce and Shopware andand so forth.
And you know, it gives you justan idea of oh, yeah, you know,
there are these other softwareecosystems out there that
(08:18):
businesses are are reliant on,but that need to be
interoperable.
So I'm with you, you know, butthe ERP really is the anchor.
No doubt about that.
Business Central is is at theheart.
But we would it at iPass.com,iPass stands for integration
platform as a service.
(08:40):
And what's funny is that if youwere to look at how our system
operates, we become the hub.
We're the glue betweeneverything, we're kind of the
pipes.
So, you know, in a diagram,you'd see when we're involved,
you'd see us in the middle, um,with one integration into
somebody's business centralinstance, um, being able to
(09:02):
transform and translate datawith myriad other systems all at
once.
And it's kind of a one-to-many.
SPEAKER_03 (09:09):
So, with with that integrations, um, you mentioned
that it integrates with BusinessCentral.
I'll take it back from the ERPbecause I have questions on the
other side, but the ERP softwarewith Business Central.
Does it work with BusinessCentral online or Business
Central on premises or both?
SPEAKER_01 (09:23):
Yes.
So, really, what we're dealingwith is API connectivity.
Um, and so if we can reach theAPIs um of Business Central, the
application uh programminginterface to basically get data
in and out, um, then we'regolden.
Um and that's really what it'sabout for us.
So we, for instance, we actuallywork with uh with nav with you
(09:46):
know what was Navision back inthe day, same premise that um,
you know, if it's an on-prem,sometimes there's uh a few steps
to go through to uh you knowwhitelist some IPs and um and
and get proper access.
But at the end of the day, aslong as uh as idass.com as a
platform can communicate withthe APIs, we're in great shape.
SPEAKER_03 (10:09):
Okay.
And do you have a standard listof APIs as part of Business
Central that you add as part ofthis uh experience with the
integrations?
Yes.
Um when someone goes to theimplementation.
SPEAKER_01 (10:20):
Yes, and so the way that our platform is built,
every integration that we havethat's already built is in our
marketplace and actually listsout all the supported data flows
that are already available.
Um we have an SDK for peoplethat need to expand and um deal
with uh with things that aremore custom.
(10:40):
In some cases for users, we'lljust go and you know add support
for an additional API endpointhere or there um and expand upon
the integration that that'salready available.
But uh absolutely that uh, youknow, and with a system like
Business Central, you'lltypically see a mix of, and
obviously there are layers uh tothese kinds of data as you deal
(11:02):
with the relationships betweenum you know companies and
customers and uh you knowproducts and as it relates to
inventory and prices, and um,you know, if we're thinking
about you know orders as itrelates to invoices and
shipments and so on and soforth, that we'll have all those
sorts of data flows ready torock and roll.
SPEAKER_00 (11:24):
So you have you have templates ready for you for them
then.
So for people that want tointegrate something really
quickly, you they have a goodstandard um to stand on and then
be able to easily add more datapoints.
SPEAKER_01 (11:38):
Exactly.
So we'll for instance you'llhave when you spin up those
templates.
So there's kind of theintegration itself, which is
handling the API communicationsand being that that translator
on on that side to okay, what'sthe API and business central and
where is that going iniPass.com.
And then we've got mappingtemplates, and mapping we think
(12:02):
of as okay, you know, this fieldneeds to go to that field, and
what might need to happen inbetween, what kind of
translation or transformations?
We're a a no-code to low codesystem, so sometimes it's just
first name over here has to goto given name over there.
Um, sometimes you need to domore things to split data apart,
(12:22):
append data together, or doother things to work with the
data and get it ready forwhatever system it's trying to
go into so that it's properly uhformatted and uh and it's going
to be successful.
But in that process, we've gotfor each integration templates
of the common fields that we uhanticipate running into most
(12:43):
often.
And so if I'm thinking aboutproduct data, you can imagine
fields like the product name,description, skew, price,
inventory, sorts of things.
But then somebody that'sselling, let's say, you know,
cell phones, they might havefields of data about how many
gigabytes is the phone, and umwhat carriers does it work with,
and um you know what screensize, and so on and so on.
(13:06):
They might have a hundred fieldslike that.
We provide a uh node, a low-codeway of mapping those fields and
getting that that thoseadditional pieces of data
flowing.
And so you're kind of gettingsomething where we hope in most
cases you're about 70% of theway there when you turn it on.
Sometimes you're 100% of the waythere.
(13:26):
Um, but you know, you can buildupon it.
There's a inherent flexibilitybuilt in.
So it's meant to be aspringboard, but not to be a
black box.
SPEAKER_03 (13:37):
No, I understand.
So it's so you connect to thebusiness central APIs, you have
the ability to enhance thoseAPIs.
If you have a business central,a lot of implementations have
extensions that add additionalfields or even additional tables
that they may need to use.
So you have a mapping tool thatallows you to integrate to the
APIs that are visible withinBusiness Central, so that kind
(13:59):
of covers that.
And then you talked about youhave the mapping tool in data
transformation.
Where does that take place?
Does that take place on BusinessCentral side?
Does that take place in theiPass.com platform?
SPEAKER_01 (14:12):
That takes place in the iPass.com platform.
So you're able to log in, um,you're able to see all of this
in in you know nice, neat uhuser interfaces, and um, you're
able to adjust.
And so it makes it easier uh inthat sense to think about what
each system that you'reintegrating uh needs and and
(14:34):
what data you're flowing to andfrom each system.
And so if you can imagineflowing with business central,
with e-commerce, point of sale,CRM, product information
management systems, shipping andfulfillment systems like
warehouse management, ordermanagement, 3PL, um, you know,
dealing with all sorts of myriadtypes of software, HR systems
(14:58):
like UKG or sales tax exemptioncertificate management with
Avalera, or you know, that we weget into a lot of different
types of integrations, but um inthat way, by having that one one
you know Grand Central Stationwhere it's being managed, uh
you're not dealing with allsorts of one-off connectors that
(15:20):
you're trying to maintainindependently and monitor
independently and uh and youknow really debug independently
because I from my experience thehardest part of dealing with
data integration over time isn'twhen things work properly, it's
when data doesn't get where it'ssupposed to go, and that's where
(15:41):
you know for us we're acube-based system, data comes
in, uh it processes.
If there's any any issue withthe data, we automatically retry
on a schedule, it doesn't getlost, we notify you so that
you've you know what's going onand give you a bit of a root
cause analysis, and the sameprocess is happening on the way
out to each receiving system.
And so, for instance, we mightget an order coming down from an
(16:04):
e-commerce website that needs togo to Business Central for
accounting, to some kind ofwarehouse management system for
fulfillment, uh, to a CRM so thesales team has visibility, etc.
And maybe it's gonna go to twoout of three systems
successfully, but one of them,like there was that AWS outage a
couple of weeks ago, and somaybe it's unavailable for a
(16:27):
while, we'll keep automaticallyretrying until it's successful,
or maybe there's an issue whereone of the fields, there's just
too many characters to go intowhatever the receiving system
is, um, and so two of them workfine, but one of them didn't.
Now you know what's going on andyou can see it, and it's not
just a matter of, oh, that orderdidn't get fulfilled and waiting
(16:49):
for a shopper to call saying,Where's my stuff?
Um, the um, you know, the oursystem is purpose-built to
really bring a lot morecountability, um, visibility,
and control to the wholeprocess, and to minimize the the
long-term uh you know expense oftrying to maintain all of these.
Our integrations to all thesesystems are maintained in our
(17:11):
marketplace.
So, you know, if let's sayShopify Big Commerce is changing
uh their APIs, which we see fromtime to time, our users don't
have to go and rewrite theseconnectors that we're doing it
and there's version control,they can just switch to
something new and go to version1.8 of that integration, uh, and
(17:31):
not have to take on that burdenof things breaking or um or or
having to spend all that moneyin what I'd consider RD
reinventing the wheel.
SPEAKER_03 (17:43):
So this is more of a central hub for managing the
data integrations.
And you'd mentioned that you canwork with multiple sources
simultaneously in abi-directional manner.
Yes.
And you also pointed out thatyou track the data flow to
because again, if you have uhproduct data going from one
(18:03):
system to uh many disparatesystems, and if you have an
error with one, uh you'll retryand do that.
With the data, is is it apass-through for the data
through this service that youhave, or is there any data
residing in the iPass.com uhplatform?
SPEAKER_01 (18:21):
So we are an actual data hub.
And in that way, you as forinstance, there are gonna be
communications happening in anorder fulfillment situation.
It's a great example where anorder is gonna maybe come into
business central from a saleschannel to be fulfilled.
Um, but then as items arefulfilled, maybe there's a split
(18:42):
shipment, right?
There's gonna be a partialshipment happening.
We need to keep updating, and soit keeps keeps that together as
sort of um an amalgamated sourceof truth, and so you can keep
dealing with the updates thatway.
Um, and it's really what powersa lot of the the one to many and
gives a lot more intelligence tothe whole process.
(19:03):
So as opposed to justpoint-to-point connectors and
getting data from A to B, we arereally thinking about um the
life cycle of the data.
And so uh and there are timeswhen data is kind of you know
splicing together from multiplesystems, and so for instance, we
might have an organization thathas a big product catalog that
(19:25):
sells in multiple regions anddifferent languages, perhaps, or
under different brands, and theyare going to use a product
information management systemlike PIMCOR or a Kenio to manage
their product data as it relatesto how to categorize the data
and all the attributes and tagsand additional information, you
know, images in a digital assetmanagement system.
(19:50):
And so the source of truth ofthe inventory and pricing might
always be business central.
That that's not necessarilygonna happen in in a PIM like a
Kenio or PIMCore, uh but iniPass.com there's one record for
that product, and we're styou're getting all of the
information about that productcoming together in one system.
(20:12):
Um so at that point it'sstitched together and ready uh
to go wherever it needs to go,as opposed to thinking about
having to get you know differentfields coming together
separately, and then forinstance, you know, how do you
even build a product into somesystems if it doesn't have
pricing or inventory, or if itdoesn't have some of these other
fields, we give that naturalplace to bring it all together.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
That's that's excellent.
I I do have a question, uh kindof uh not so much of a left
field, but from the world ofconsulting and implementing
Business Central, uh with yourtool being an integration tool,
have have others used it, notjust moving, you know,
integrating data, you know,having data uh applications talk
(20:57):
to but uh talk to each other,but more of so like moving or
migrating data.
Um so for example, if someone'scoming from a nav system that
wants to upgrade a businesscentral, could have you had
people use it to do a datamigration uh uh on top of the
other things that they're gonnaintegrate anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (21:17):
So yes and no.
Um we have features as a datahub to uh manually sync pieces
of data, to reactivate data, domore of a bigger catch-up on
getting data into a system, um,to look for unmatched data
between systems.
You can use us to see data intoa system what it's going to come
(21:41):
down to is uh you know, if ifI'm thinking about going from
let's say NAV to businesscentral, are are we set up to
move ever all of the types ofdata that are needed for that
user um wholesale and move themkind of you know
bi-directionally?
(22:01):
Uh or would you need to set upcertain things because we'll
normally think of uh of the ERPas the source of truth of
certain data, and so maybe theyou know the source of it, but
not the destination, forinstance.
Um and so there are cases wheresome data, like moving customer
records from one to the other,yeah, pretty straightforward.
(22:22):
Um, you know, trying to movecertain data, like maybe, you
know, certain ty I don't know,I'll make it up here, you know,
certain types of purchase ordersor something, you know, we might
be set up for more of aone-directional and there would
be effort to be able to bridgethat gap.
I'd also say that, you know,while our goal is to be, you
know, a quick implementation,our bigger focus is the total
(22:42):
cost of ownership, is theability to turn on new spokes to
the hub, to minimize themaintenance, to minimize the
fires that need to put out withold, you know, reactive kind of
situations with connectors thatwere strung together.
And so there's stillimplementation work.
And if you're not going tocontinue to use the product, if
(23:05):
you were just using it as amigration product, you might be
better off just you knowformatting the data more
manually, moving it moremanually.
So we do like consult onopportunities like that and look
at are we the best solution tohelp with that portion of a
project?
And with a migration, could beyes, could be no.
SPEAKER_00 (23:25):
Yeah, no, I it I I thought about that because um
you know, certainly in in manycases, someone that moves to
business central, there's morelikely a high chance that
they're going to be integratingto other uh solutions.
So if if someone was to investin moving from nav to business
central, and at the same timethey have e-commerce that they
want to integrate, it would makesense.
(23:48):
You know, they can still I meanthey could utilize the the
product itself to get some ofthe some of the heavy lifting.
Because that's always thechallenge for implementation is
like how do you move the datafrom one ERP system to another,
and at the same time having thatconsistency of uh uh perhaps
they want to get e-commerce,CRM, and all the other uh
(24:09):
integrations they want to do,um, they can still certainly
benefit from utilizing iPass inthat in that sense.
SPEAKER_01 (24:16):
So and I'll take it a step further.
So if you're thinking aboutturning on a new e-commerce
website with you know as anorganization using let's say
business central or moving tobusiness central, you know,
often you've got to think aboutwell, how is your product data
gonna get into the e-commercesite?
Um, because the source of truth,and typically that's going to be
(24:39):
us.
And that's important to usbecause back to stitching things
together, that brings moreaccountability so that we know
when an order is coming backfrom the e-commerce site, it's
gonna match perfectly withwhatever SKU is in Business
Central.
That we're not worried about youknow, somebody manually is
adding these items into thee-commerce website, and now
(25:03):
there are gonna be mismatches,and orders are gonna be failing
to flow successfully to the ERPfor fulfillment and accounting.
And so we do see situationswhere just naturally, um even if
it wasn't part of somebody'sinitial project plan, as they
start to scope out how theintegrations are gonna happen,
they're gonna realize that someof that data is gonna come
(25:24):
through us as a best practice,yeah, and they shouldn't do it
manually or through someexternal process.
SPEAKER_00 (25:33):
Yeah, I just think it about from uh uh investment
perspective, or if you're movingit to you're moving your data to
business central and you have aPIM solution that you have to
populate that, you're you'reyou're doing it in kind of one
process rather than doingbusiness central, and then you
gotta figure out from businesscentral to your PIM solution.
In this case, you can do it to,hey, I'm gonna populate these
(25:55):
things anyway, coming from asource, might as well do it uh
in in one process.
SPEAKER_01 (26:02):
Yeah, and that's what we like to see is people
thinking more about their entiredata ecosystem and thinking
about the long term, and not somuch just trying to think about
you know, reactively how to puta band-aid on it, how to how do
they minimally get these thingstalking?
Um, and that's where we seedifferent outcomes that just
(26:25):
become possible that uh byunifying these sorts of systems
that, for instance, you know,for retailers dealing with point
of sale, um, that they'll oftentoday they'll have e-commerce
and their e-commerce will behooked up to their marketing
stack, and their marketing stackwill know all all of the
shoppers' online history, but itwon't know what they bought in
(26:45):
store when.
And so you'll see brands thatare emailing people or sending
text messages, hey, you haven't,you know, come to this, you
know, to the store in a while,we haven't, you know, seen you
in a while.
Here's a coupon.
It's like I they were at a brickand mortar store yesterday
making a purchase.
And you just see these silosthat um you know that don't have
to be broken down on day one,but being able to turn on
(27:08):
another spoke to the hub andjust get that data flowing now
to the marketing stack, youknow, that becomes powerful.
Or I mentioned Avalera earlier,not I wouldn't say it's one of
our most common integrations,but if you can imagine um the
people that are often talking tocustomers about um there's you
know their orders and sales taxexemption certificates if you're
(27:30):
dealing with you know wholesaleor non-profit or government or
what have you, you know, thatthey're not usually the people
that are in the Avalera accountand that can see, or that are
necessarily in the R ERP and cansee if there's an exemption
certificate on file when itmight be expiring.
We can expose that data to theCRM where the sales and account
(27:52):
management teams have access,where the people that are
sitting in the call center cansay, oh yeah, you know, that's
expired.
Oh, yeah, nope, we have that onfile already.
And so it's just some of thosethings that cut down on a lot of
that internal, you know,transferring and back and forth
and delay.
SPEAKER_03 (28:13):
That's I just want to rewind a few to something
that you had started talkingabout.
Is so it's a central hub fordata, and you can connect
disparate systems so you canhave pieces of information from
many sources.
So if you have item information,business central has certain
item fields, uh, excuse me,characteristics of fields,
whatever you like to call them,on an item that may or may not
(28:35):
be uh relevant for an e-commercesite, or they may not have a
place for an e-commerce site, ane-commerce site may have some
information, a PIM may haveadditional information.
So you can bring all of thattogether and then distribute the
relevant information to thesystems with the information
that they need only, correct?
Now another thing thinking aboutthis, with it being a data hub,
(28:56):
uh and I've had my fair share ofintegrations, I can assure you,
uh, probably more than you knowyou can't remember at some
points.
And it's almost because here in2025, uh everybody wants systems
that talk with each other, andit's becoming easier and easier
as technology advances and hasbeen over the past several
years.
Can you also filter the datathat goes to each system?
(29:19):
For example, I could have aShopify store one that has is
just specifically for mywholesalers, a Shopify store two
that's just for uh retailers.
My product may be different uhbecause of the nature of the
business or the nature of whoI'm selling it to.
And there may be differentpricing or there may be
different uh pieces ofinformation that have to go to
the different sources.
(29:40):
So can you route it based uponsome sort of filtering mechanism
or security mechanism to uh keepthe data from flowing into
systems that shouldn't?
SPEAKER_01 (29:51):
Not only can you uh can you set rules to decide
which systems are going toreceive that data, you can also
use Use uh our rules engine todecide which data is going to go
through which transformationsand translations.
And so let's say in your thesituation that you lined out in
(30:12):
your example where differentstorefronts, um, it might be
that um when you're dealing withdifferent sales channels, some
might be B2B and some might beB2C, and that data may need to
be treated a little bitdifferently.
So not only about where topublish it or where to send it,
but how does it need totransform and translate in
(30:33):
route?
SPEAKER_03 (30:35):
That's great.
And as far as the the storage isconcerned, it when I hear of
data hubs, I'm used to businesscentral, everyone talks about
business central and the and thedata storage and the data space.
Um how is the space allotted forthis platform for a customer?
SPEAKER_01 (30:53):
So we're providing um as a SaaS platform uh
individual accounts for usersthat and our pricing's up on our
website.
We're you know proud to havetransparency around it.
Uh where we're charging basedupon the number of pieces of
software.
Yeah, it's it's rare in theintegration space.
(31:15):
A lot of places, you know, youyou've got to have uh three PhDs
and consult your you know yourcrystal ball to figure it out.
SPEAKER_03 (31:23):
Um I won't even go down that road of fine your
life.
Like you said, it's uh I swear.
Yeah, I swear, as much as I loveBusiness Central and the whole
Microsoft platform and all that,I swear you could have two
full-time people that understandthat work just strictly with
Microsoft licensing and theywouldn't understand it if that
even was their job 24 hours aday.
So I do as Chris had stated, Ido like the transfer.
SPEAKER_02 (31:45):
And easy to understand.
SPEAKER_01 (31:47):
So yeah, yeah.
So it ours is based upon thenumber of pieces of software
that you're integrating.
And so basically we're countingthose, if you want to think
about it, like API connections.
So if you have one instance ofBusiness Central, that's one
integration.
If you've got one instance ofMagento or Adobe Commerce or Big
(32:08):
Commerce or Shopware, whatevere-comm, that's that's another.
But to us, now those e-commerceplatforms, you might have six
storefronts running out of it,right?
You know, that we're notcounting how many brands you're
operating or such.
We're just thinking about howmany instances of the software.
Um, and so our our initial planstarts at a flat$500 a month,
(32:31):
and that includes unlimited datathroughput.
So we're not nickel and dimingfor the API calls, the
bandwidth, the storage, thenumber of admin users that you
want, you know, to have accessto the iPass.com account, to the
number of data flows between thesystems that you know you want
to start flowing a variety ofdifferent data, no problem.
(32:55):
Um, we're simply looking at thethe number of integrations, and
then there are a few add-onsthat you can tack on if you want
a sandbox account um because youwant to hook that up to a dev or
staging environment, you can getthat, you know, at a a rate and
such, and all that information,like I say, is published and and
readily available.
(33:15):
Um so we find that that's reallyadvantageous.
Now, I mean, for somebody that'syou know, if we're talking to a
Fortune 500, we're gonna bedealing with uh a single tenant
implementation that we're gonnaquote out more uniquely.
But we've had I mean, you know,huge organizations using our our
multi-tenant SaaS um groups likeNintendo, the Cleveland Cavs,
(33:38):
the Minnesota Wild, the AirForce.
Um, so you know, we're we'rewe're really consistent in um in
the the absolute the 99% of ourusers being able to utilize uh
that multi-tenant SaaS pricing.
SPEAKER_03 (33:52):
Okay, so it's it's it is a it you had get gotten
into some other points because Iwas also going to start talking
about the throughput and theperformance, but you had
mentioned and it sounds in theconversation that you had just
had, you can have multi-tenancyor single tenancy if your
implementation requires itbecause of the volume of
transactions that you have, ormaybe the number of connections,
so you have some flexibility onthe right.
SPEAKER_01 (34:11):
We've got our SOP2, etc., etc.
But if somebody's infosecting,you know, that they are going to
require something a littledifferent, we can we can deal
with that as a one-off, ofcourse.
SPEAKER_03 (34:21):
Uh no, I like these integrations with the mappings
because as I had mentioned,there's so many integrations
that are occurring today, andeverybody seems to want to uh
create them from sc uh from Iuse the word from scratch.
You know, it's my northeasternvocabulary here.
So as far as as going throughthe implementation and setting
this up.
Uh in you mentioned you havesome templates.
(34:41):
Uh what do you in the templatesagain?
Just I I I understand theconcept, and I'm sure I've a lot
that work with business well.
They're intended to get youstarted.
Right.
You may, as you had mentioned,you may get everything that you
need, but you may have someuniqueness to your business that
you may need to make someadjustments for this.
And that adjustment process, howis that typically handled?
Do you do that adjustmentprocess?
(35:02):
Is does the customer do thatadjustment process?
Does the partner do thatadjustment process?
How does somebody go abouthaving some of those
uniquenesses of their businessput into this platform for them
to distribute the information orreceive the information?
SPEAKER_01 (35:16):
So our platform, um, you know, it there's obviously,
you know, there's trainingmodules and there's information
on how to uh administrate andand implement uh and such, and
that's all pretty fast, rapidkind of training and
information.
Um, but we know that the averageorganization, they don't have
(35:38):
the bandwidth to take that on,um, even if it's a smaller
project.
That the idea of building theproject plan, asking the right
stakeholders, making sure it'sunderstood what are the business
processes that that areunderlying these integrations,
what does success look like atthe end, building out that
project plan, thinking about youknow what do the baseline
(36:01):
integrations in the marketplacedo and what needs to be uh
supplemented there, whatadditional fields of data need
to be mapped, and then mostimportantly, testing.
Um, you know, so to us, uh everyproject, even something that's
gonna use really more off theshelf, what's in the templates
should go through some some UAT,some user acceptance testing,
(36:23):
thinking about not only the mostcommon, but also some edge
cases.
Um, and that's where you knowyou'll find that organizations
forget things that have beencustomized in some of their
software, um, or you know, thatthere's some field of data
that's that was missed, or thatthere was a typo somewhere.
We that all that should ideallybe caught in that process.
(36:45):
And so working with a servicesprovider, uh, or you know, might
be uh and you know, depending onuh their their area of
expertise, we've got over 80 ofthese um agencies, SIs, VARs, uh
consultancies, and and otherservice providers in our partner
network, and that number justkeeps growing, um, they can come
(37:06):
in and they can provide theresources that are going to be
great at overseeing the projectand and making sure everything
is successful and that it getsdone within a reasonable
timeline, where often peoplethat are trying to
self-implement, um everybody'sgot finite resources, and most
people in an organizationalready have full plates.
(37:28):
And so trying to get you knowpeople to to do this internally,
could they?
Yes.
Um, you know, if they have thetime, absolutely, but uh we
always prefer starting from theconcept of you know, can you
pull in experts that can guideyou through it and make sure
it's it's a a really, reallysuccessful experience, and from
(37:50):
there figure out you know whatcould be done internally to cut
down on on any services cost,um, and how do you marry
together, having you know thesefolks consult and having your
internal team do certain things.
Um, but nonetheless, you cankind of go in either direction.
But we find that our our team isgoing to be responsible for the
(38:11):
uptime, the security of theplatform, um, the the general
features and evolution of ourplatform um as a system, but we
leave it to the partner networkto be able to provide that that
services layer and deal with theunique needs of people's
individual businesses and andthe unique issues of their data
(38:32):
and data hygiene and what haveyou.
SPEAKER_03 (38:35):
I understand that it it that all makes sense to me.
I mean, working withimplementations, it is great to
have somebody who understandsyour business working with it.
And I'm happy that you hit uponuh some key points.
Uh you know, I could you know Itell everybody I could go and
redo some landscaping in myyard.
I would love to do it, but Iwould do it at night because I
still have to work during theday.
It would take much longer to getdone.
(38:56):
So sometimes thatself-implementation, if you have
the availability, is great todo, but sometimes you can get
also done a lot quicker if youhave somebody who understands
what needs to do.
And you know, to be quite blunt,it's their job, right?
It's what they're supposed todo.
They're supposed to show up, getit done, and then uh support and
maintain and work with youthrough the rest of the journey,
but it gets you off the groundfaster to maybe transition some
(39:16):
of that over to you so that youcan manage it if you have the
time.
SPEAKER_01 (39:19):
And you might want to call them in every now and
then that maybe some data failsto flow and there's uh an API
error that we're reporting froma system that you know some
systems provide really detailedinformation when data failures
happen about, you know, why itis okay, the character length
was too long, or the um, youknow, there there was uh
basically there's a questionmark and a number field, or you
(39:42):
know, or or there's some or youknow, maybe uh an API key
expired with some system.
Sometimes it's just you knowit's a pretty bland failure and
you don't know why.
And somebody needs to dig in alittle bit.
Our system will, you don't haveto recreate the error, you don't
have to look for a needle in ahaystack, not only does it let
you know, but it will show youall the payloads between the
(40:04):
APIs.
It'll show you all thecommunications, you can trace
where the the issue arose, butnot every user wants to do that
on their own.
Um and so this is where you knowday-to-day operations, mapping a
new field, maybe they do, youknow, the the end user does that
for themselves.
Um something that gets a littlebit more complex in debugging,
(40:25):
maybe they want to call in thecavalry.
SPEAKER_03 (40:29):
That's good, dude.
I understand that.
No, I like the flexibility ofthat as well.
And uh as far as the template iskind of uh how many do you have
now within your templateportfolio as sort of the the get
started kit?
So you had mentioned businesscentral, I'm hearing a number of
names.
Shopify, business central,Avalara.
SPEAKER_01 (40:44):
Well, Dave, do you have a good number off the top
of your head?
SPEAKER_02 (40:48):
Or I mean dozens and dozens, but it's definitely
growing uh daily um and weekly.
SPEAKER_01 (40:55):
Uh to pin a it's probably around 60, if I had to
guess, off the top of my head.
Yeah because we've been addinguh a lot, and at any given time
we're working on several newones.
SPEAKER_02 (41:08):
I I think too uh Brad, what's really interesting
is over the last couple ofmonths there's been a real
appetite for partners, we callthem MISPs in our network, um,
that are looking to writeintegrations to our platform,
right?
So uh these may be uh sometimesthere are maybe one-off uh uh
(41:30):
endpoints or systems that areneeded in in in you know a
specific project, but sometimesthey're very common ones that uh
partners would like to writeintegrations for.
We would certify that in ourmarketplace, and then it becomes
available to everybody, right?
So that's one of the realadvantages of kind of our our
platform and let's call it theflywheel, where as we build and
(41:54):
as our partners build, it justsort of starts to pick up
velocity and become more andmore valuable uh sort of week
over week, right?
SPEAKER_03 (42:02):
So no, I understand that.
So partners can also createconnectors for their customers
to use to make it easier tointegrate their system with an
ERP system.
I'm a little selfish.
I always talk about ERP.
SPEAKER_01 (42:17):
And I'll take it a step further.
So these integrations in ourmarketplace, our marketplace
acts a bit like an app store.
We've written them the vastmajority of these integrations,
but when partners list them,that's the last piece of the
pricing that you'd see on thepricing page.
If a a partner can list anintegration as being free, they
can also add a monthly fee.
(42:37):
It's just a line item on theiPass.com uh invoice that our
our clients receive, that oursubscribers receive.
But in that way, for instance,um there's currently two where
there's a fee.
One is another ERP, I know.
Um but the um but Sugar CRMwould be another$125 a month if
somebody wanted to integratewith it.
(42:58):
And that makes our marketplacemore scalable because what
you'll find is that if you tryto box it all in into one
platform like us beingresponsible for writing and
maintaining every integration,it slows everything down.
And with us, every integrationis a universal translator to our
hub and is interoperable withall these other integrations
(43:22):
that are in our marketplace.
So it really does uh you knowimprove our value proposition
very quickly as we're adding andadding these.
Um but to the point, sometimesyou just need you if you need to
integrate five pieces ofsoftware for somebody, um, four
of them might be in themarketplace, and one of them uh
(43:42):
may need to be written with ourSDK, and maybe it's a bespoke
piece of software or somethingend-of-life, or something that
we would never commercially youknow be out there adding, you
know, with the ex expectation ofselling in droves, right?
But um, you can still you knowpay uh as someone from our
partner network, one of theseservice providers, to write that
(44:03):
integration, and then it's goingthrough all the error handling,
it can talk to all these othersystems, and all these other
integrations are beingmaintained so that you don't
have to.
And so there's still all thatvalue proposition of being able
to you know map new fields andmanage everything from a
low-code interface.
And you know, it it's a it's amock system.
(44:25):
Um, so it's built you know, thisis where we I get even more
nerdy, right?
But it's built withmicroservices, API first, it's
it's cloud-based and it'sheadless.
And so that is to say weauto-scale in the cloud, we're
built on top of Azure.
Um, and so you know, there are alot of different microservices
running.
If one of them starts to get alittle bit high in resource
(44:48):
usage, we automatically spin upmore copies and balance the
load.
And so we're prepared to dealwith big bursts of data.
Our system actually, we've got alot of features to make sure
that we don't overwhelmeveryone's third-party software,
that we don't overwhelm theire-commerce website or or their
CRM or whatever other systems.
(45:09):
Um, but you know, uh aside fromthinking uh about it um in that
way, it's also you werementioning earlier, you know,
dealing with uh organizationsthat have multiple brands,
multiple storefronts, differentthings.
Our interface is really nice.
We love demoing it because it,you know, it's uh it's very
(45:31):
modern and it's very intuitive.
But there are cases where let'ssay you're dealing with a
manufacturer that needs to hookup something with you know a
thousand distributors or afranchise with a thousand
franchisees, you may not want tomanually deal with turning on
data flows with a thousandShopify stores, one or a
(45:51):
thousand point-of-sale instancesfor each franchisee that's got
their own data going back to tothe franchise to calculate
royalties or push productcatalog information or whatever
it may be, you can script it allwith us.
Um and basically when you're inour interface, when you click
buttons, you're basicallycalling APIs.
(46:14):
You can just write a script tocommunicate with those same
APIs.
You don't need to do it athousand times just to script it
and let it run.
Um, and so there are a lot ofdifferent scenarios that we run
into depending on the size of anorg and and what they need to
achieve, where sometimes thereis going to be some coding to be
(46:35):
done um in order to really uhachieve what they need, but I
haven't seen a better way outthere, right?
I'm I'm used to seeing peoplehave to really, you know, set
something up a thousand timesversus how they could do it with
us.
SPEAKER_03 (46:50):
Oh, in 2025, I still see that.
So it's uh it's good to automatesomething as well.
I'll ask you a uh uh it's kindof it's the loaded question, but
it's not a loaded question, butit's it's something that if
someone's looking for solutions,they talk about.
And I know and just so thateveryone also uh is hopefully
aware that there isn't a onesize fits all.
Every organization's different,every integration's different,
(47:12):
every piece is different.
But what would you say is theaverage time to implement a
connection to a system withBusiness Central?
And again, I understand that'svariability based upon which
which information you'reintegrating, uh if there's any
customizations, and I you know,just understanding some
variables, but just uh if youhad to say the typical
(47:35):
implementation, right?
You know, minor enhancements,minor modifications, how quickly
can someone get working withthis?
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (47:43):
Now, and I'll give you a couple of quick examples.
If we were talking about movingsome customer data between
business central and a marketingsystem like MailChimp.digital or
clavio or a CRM like HubSpot orsomething that you know that
maybe put you know 10 hours in,maybe 20 in a more complex
(48:03):
project, and that's including inin my head at least, you know,
project planning and testing andso on, soup to nuts.
Make you know that, and that'sme having enough buffer in there
for you know for the unusual.
Uh that's an expectation.
If I was dealing with a complexB2B uh e-commerce situation
(48:24):
where there's a lot of dataflows of customer data, product
data, order data, quotes, and umuh so on and so forth, you know,
gift card data flowing in theresomewhere, whatever it may be,
um, you know, I I could easilysee an average being more like a
hundred hours, um, perhaps more,you know, uh depending again on
(48:45):
the specs, how many product uhyou know fields need to be
mapped, how many um, you know,how many storefronts are there,
that we do see projects on ourplatform that certainly take
hundreds of hours, but you know,if I'm trying to think about a
more average, you know, somebodythat's got you know uh a
business central and uh I don'tknow, a big commerce website,
(49:09):
and they need to get thesethings hooked up, you know, I
I'd be hoping to see a projectlike that in dozens of hours.
Uh you know, maybe and andagain, I you know, my foot fits
really uh well in my mouth.
I know from life experience,every project is different.
I don't know how many more waysI can protect myself, but uh, I
think 50 hours, 60 hours isprobably a good starting point
(49:33):
for a very complete, thoroughproject that's been um that's
been properly tested and such.
But again, somebody that's justgonna turn on some basic data
flows that we already have andget their their inventory and
pricing and what have yousyncing and some order data
flowing, you know, they could doit in a few hours.
SPEAKER_03 (49:53):
That's good.
No, I know it's a it's a verydifficult question, I guess.
It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (49:58):
I'll get partners and clients, you know, calling
me saying, What are you talkingabout?
This project that we just didwas more.
Uh and and it we see it.
SPEAKER_03 (50:07):
It's the same thing with an ERP implementation.
I always have to ask thatquestion because uh I get asked
that question quite often.
How long will it take?
And again, it's like uh how longis a piece of string.
But again, you still can saythat based upon you know a
certain size or a certainintegration, you can expect, you
know, as you had mentioned, ifit's a larger implementation, it
could be uh a couple weeks.
If it's a very uh standard orsimplistic uh implementation, it
(50:30):
could be a couple days.
Yeah, and look, I mean we it'sall a meta for what just go back
to.
SPEAKER_01 (50:34):
I know I've seen people, I hate to say it, you
know, but I've seen people takea year on an implementation with
us, but typically they'relaunching other software in the
midst of that.
Not everything was ready for us.
You know, it's not like theycame in and said, Oh, you know,
it's uh let's implementiPass.com, everything is ready,
we're just gonna stitch thistogether.
(50:55):
They've got bigger projectshappening in the midst of all of
it that we're you know, we'rethe glue in between, but you
can't finish implementing andtesting your data flows until
your other software is ready.
So there's kind of a uh there'sa safety net there um that I'm
throwing myself in terms of uhyou know from the time that all
(51:18):
of your fields are ready thatyou you're ready to really
implement, yeah, you know, it itcan be pretty rapid.
Um but uh you know you've got toget your ducks in a row as part
of the project as well.
SPEAKER_03 (51:30):
Oh yes, you have to assume that the systems are in
place.
It's it's pretty difficult tointegrate with a system that's
not there.
SPEAKER_01 (51:37):
So you'd be surprised that and sometimes
it's good that sometimes you'vegot people starting to put data
in, and they're not wrong forwanting to start testing.
In fact, you know, we like that.
They just don't realize thatthey're not gonna be able to
really go through full useracceptance testing until
(52:00):
everything is is really inplace.
Um, or at least but in manycases, we love to see people
testing each flow as that asthose fields are ready and that
data's ready.
Um, so it's kind of a hybridwhere ideally you're doing these
things in lockstep, but untilyou get to the end, imagine you
know you want to see orderscoming over successfully, but
(52:22):
the product data is not ready.
Well, you know, you're notreally testing everything end to
end.
You've gotten, you know, 90% ofthe way there, let's say, but
there may still be some touch-upat the end when you you get it
everything really, reallytogether.
SPEAKER_02 (52:36):
I I know uh Brad, in a previous life, this has caused
me to, it's probably a littlebit of PTSD, but there was uh I
remember a couple of projectsthat um where the website was
being built out, and uh wedidn't have a strong like, okay,
when when when you're done andthings are ready for production,
then we'll start.
(52:57):
This was kind of like one ofthese piecemeal implementations,
and it was it was pretty painfulbecause weekly there would be
things that would be eitheradded on or custom fields added,
or and and when you're trying tointegrate that, it it's it's
like a moving target, right?
So yeah, lots of fun.
SPEAKER_03 (53:16):
Oh I've lived through those as implementation.
Chris may know a few about thattype of stuff.
Yes, yes, you go through someimplementations, you you have uh
uh oh, by the way, and oh we'vewe we forgot to do this.
Oh, we didn't talk about thatscenario.
So there's always thechallenges.
SPEAKER_01 (53:34):
The bigger the project, the more the scope
creep at the end, and we findthat there's no malice 99.9% of
the time, right?
There nobody intended for thatto happen.
But until you start to testthings, they don't realize all
the things that were neverdiscussed, that were never
documented, that nobody evermentioned were going to be
(53:56):
requirements, and well, nowthere's more work to be done.
Um, so we we absolutely seethat, and and we believe that
that especially, you know,sizable projects, they should
have, you know, and that's whereI go back to I think the most
important part of the wholeprocess is the testing phase,
because that's where the rubbermeets the road.
Um and you know, it's uh we wedon't really have a lot of fear
(54:20):
about iPass.com as a platformbeing able to perform.
We we know it can perform.
It's really a matter of um, youknow what's being thrown out of
left field and what's left therebetween the service provider and
so on to be able to you know uhaddress that last mile.
And in some cases, you know, weum even the integrations in our
(54:44):
marketplace, as I mentionedearlier, that they support a
variety of data flows.
Uh there might be something thatnow they want to hook up to a
system and they want to get somedata flowing with it in a
certain direction that we don'tyet support.
And so now, you know, there arecases where we might be able to,
you know, rush that through ouruh our dev team and make
(55:07):
available.
There are other cases where wewe might have to point toward
our SDK and suggest, well, youknow, you should write something
supplemental for that.
Um, but those are the kinds ofthings, it's yeah, it's it's the
uh that you know 11th hour stuffthat gets you.
SPEAKER_03 (55:23):
Yeah, it's excellent.
Well, Dave, Robert, weappreciate you taking the time
to speak with us this afternoonand tell us all about iPass.com
uh and how it can enhance uhsomeone's integration to many
different systems, not justBusiness Central, which is uh
yeah, it's I like theflexibility and to be able to
have the interconnectivity withmany systems and to have it uh
(55:46):
much easier.
I mean, uh with Business Centralhaving the ability to have APIs
and and custom APIs, it's niceto have something that can
summon it on the other side tohelp them integrate with other
systems instead of havingspecific solutions for each one
of those.
And if someone wanted to learnmore about transparency.
If someone wanted to learn moreabout iPass, uh what what's the
(56:07):
best way that they could learn alittle bit more about it?
SPEAKER_01 (56:11):
Dave, I'll throw it to you.
SPEAKER_02 (56:14):
The easiest way, go to iPass.com.
Um, lots of information onthere, including the pricing,
uh, lots of developer tools andother information, including
like the marketplace, so whatyou know integrations are
available, which MISP partnersare part of our network.
Um, but also you could reach outvia email.
Uh, or Robert and I are bothfairly active on LinkedIn as
(56:37):
well.
So certainly connect and DM usthere, or Dave.malda at
iPass.com.
In Robert's case, Robert.rand atiPass.com.
More than happy to help.
SPEAKER_03 (56:48):
And that's iPass with IPAAS.com.
SPEAKER_01 (56:52):
Integration platform as a service, yeah.
And uh people can I like it.
Yeah, they they can book um ameeting right through our
website.
So we try to make that reallyeasy because we know seeing is
understanding, and we're alwayshappy to walk people through the
tech.
SPEAKER_03 (57:09):
Great.
It sounds like an amazingproduct.
Uh and thank you again for yourtime.
Uh speak with this afternoon.
SPEAKER_02 (57:15):
Thanks, Brad.
Uh, talk to you again soon.
Thank you.
Take care.
Yeah.
Bye.
SPEAKER_03 (57:20):
Thank you, Chris, for your time for another
episode of In the DynamicsCorner Chair.
And thank you to our guests forparticipating.
SPEAKER_00 (57:27):
Thank you, Brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for join joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlife.com.
That is D V L P R L I F E dotcom.
(57:48):
And you can interact with themvia Twitter, D V L P R L I F E.
You can also find me atmattalino.io, m-a-t-a-l-in-o.io.
And my Twitter handle isMattalino16.
And see you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
(58:10):
Again, thank you everyone.
Thank you, and take care.
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