Podcasts about navision

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. Greetings and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Peter Paterson, also known as SolusSpider, a Scotsman living in Kentucky, USA. This is my second HPR recording. The first was episode 4258 where I gave my introduction and computer history. Once again I am recording the audio on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, running Android 14, with Audio Recorder by Axet. The app was installed from F-Droid. Markdown For my Shownotes I learned to use Markdown by using the ReText app, which allows me to write in one window and preview the result in another. What is this show about? When I visited Archer72, AKA Mark Rice, in November 2024 in his University of Kentucky trauma room I reminded him that I work for God's Pantry Food Bank. He said he wanted to hear more, and highly suggested that I record the story as an HPR show, so here we are. I plan to ask the questions I hear from so many, and attempt to answer them as best I am able. What is the History of God's Pantry Food Bank? Reading directly from the About-Us page of Godspantry.org Mim Hunt, the founder of God's Pantry Food Bank, vowed to leave "the heartbreaking profession of social work" behind when she returned to her hometown of Lexington after serving as a child welfare worker in 1940's New York City. She and her husband, Robert, opened "Mim's," a combination gift shop, antique gallery, and health food store, but after seeing poverty in Lexington that rivaled what she'd fought against in New York, she found herself unable to remain silent. Mim began her work in Lexington by filling her station wagon with food, clothing, and bedding, and distributing it directly to individuals in need. Soon, neighbors were bringing food donations to what became known as "Mim's Pantry" located at her home on Lexington's Parkers Mill Road. But Mim quickly corrected them. "I don't fill these shelves," she said. "God does. This is God's Pantry." God's Pantry Food Bank was born out of this work in 1955 and remained mobile until the first pantry was opened in 1959. Since its founding, the food bank has grown in many ways. What started with one woman attempting to do what she could to address a need is now an organization serving 50 counties in Central and Eastern Kentucky through a number of programs with a dedicated staff committed to the mission of solving hunger. Mim Hunt devoted her life to helping others, and we continue to honor her legacy at God's Pantry Food Bank. Her work is proof that one person, with every small action, can make a large impact. We invite you to join us in continuing Mim's work. Where have been the locations of the main Food Bank facility? My ex-workmate Robert Srodulski recently wrote a reply in Facebook when our newest building was announced. He stated: "If I count right, this is the 6th main warehouse location in Lexington. Congratulations! > Mim's house and car Oldham Avenue garage A building next to Rupp Arena (which is now gone) Forbes Road Jaggie Fox Way, Innovation Drive." My friend Robert was employed by the Food Bank for 26 years. I am chasing his time as the longest lasting male employee. Two ladies have longer service times: Debbie Amburgey with 36.5 years in our Prestonsburg facility. She started on 19th October 1987. Sadly my good friend Debbie passed earlier this year, and I miss her greatly. She never retired. Danielle Bozarth with currently just under 30 years. She started on 30th May 1995. It would take me just over 11 years to catch up with Debbie's service record, which would take me to the age of 68. Unsure if I shall still be employed by then! What exactly do I mean by Food Bank? In February 2023 I wrote a blog post with my explanation of Food Bank. My website is LinuxSpider.net, and you will find the direct link in the shownotes. The blog was written as a response to friends, mostly from the United Kingdom, asking me very this question. To many there, and indeed here in USA also, what is called a Food Bank is what I call a local Food Pantry. Nobody is wrong here at all. We all gather food from various sources and distribute it to our neighbours who are in food insecure need. Most Pantries are totally staffed by volunteers and often open limited hours. The Food Bank has a larger scope in where we source food from, the amount sourced, does have paid staff but still dependent on volunteers, and we are open at least 40 hours a week. More if you include projects that involve evenings and Saturdays. God's Pantry Food Bank has a service area which includes 50 of the 120 Counties of Kentucky, covering central, southern, and eastern, including part of Appalachia. When I started in 1999 we were distributing 6 million pounds weight of food per year. This is about 150 semi-truckloads. Over 25 years later we are looking at distributing about 50 million pounds this year, about 1,250 truckloads. Over 40% of our distribution is fresh produce. We are an hunger relief organisation, so this amount of food is assisting our neighbours in need. In those 50 Counties we have about 400 partner agencies. Many of these agencies are Soup Kitchens, Children's Programs, Senior Programs, as well as Food Pantries. God's Pantry Food Bank is partnered with the Feeding America network of 198 Food Banks. In my early years I knew them as America's Second Harvest. In 2008 they changed name to Feeding America. Their website is FeedingAmerica.org What they do is outlined in their our-work page, including: Ensuring everyone can get the food they need with respect and dignity. Advocating for policies that improve food security for everyone. Partnering to address the root causes of food insecurity, like the high cost of living and lack of access to affordable housing. Working with local food banks and meal programs. Ending hunger through Food Access, Food Rescue, Disaster Response, and Hunger Research. I have visited a few other Food Banks, but not as many as I would have liked. We all have our own areas of service, but do often interact as the needs arise, especially in times of disaster. The Feeding America network came to Kentucky's aid in the past few years with the flooding in the East and tornadoes in the West. Feeding America aided the Food Banks affected by the devastation from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. How did I get started at the Food Bank? As mentioned in my introduction show I moved from Scotland to Kentucky in May 1999 and married Arianna in June 1999. Before our wedding I had received my green card. My future Mother-in-Law Eva recommended I check with God's Pantry Food Bank to see if they were hiring. She was working for Big Lots and had applied for a warehouse job at the Food Bank. Unfortunately for her she never got the job, but she was quite impressed by the organisation. She knew that I had warehouse and driving experience. So, one day after dropping Arianna at her University of Kentucky Medical Staff Office I stopped by the Food Bank on South Forbes Road to ask. The answer was that they were indeed hiring for the warehouse, and to come back that afternoon to meet with CW Drury, the Warehouse Manager. I drove home, put on smarter clothes, and drove back. It was a pleasure meeting CW and hearing about the job. Although most of the explanation of what they did in their mission went over my head at the time, I knew needed a job, and wanted to join this company. A few days before our wedding I received a phone call from CW offering me the position. I accepted and went for my medical the next day. My first day with God's Pantry Food Bank was on Tuesday 6th July 1999, the day after our honeymoon. I will admit that although my previous job in Scotland was a physical one, quite a few months had passed, and the heat was hot that Summer in Kentucky! I went home exhausted everyday, but totally enjoying the work I was doing. I started off mostly picking orders, assisting Agencies that came in, going to the local Kroger supermarkets to pick up bread, deliver and pick up food barrels of donations, and all the other duties CW assigned me to. I particularly enjoyed the software part of the job. I forget the name of the software back then, but do remember learning the 10 digit Item Codes. 1st is the source 2nd and 3rd are the category. There are 31 officially with Feeding America. next 6 is the unique UPC - usually from the item bar code 10th is the storage code of dry, cooler, or freezer The first code I memorised was Bread Products: 1040010731 This broke down to Donated, Bread Category, UPC number, and Dry Storage. I must admit we did not create a new code when we started storing Bread Product in the Cooler. That is probably the only exception It has been my responsibility all these years to maintain the Item Category Code sheet with different codings we have used and had to invent. An example is that when the source digit had already used 1 to 9, we had to start using letters. Although there were concerns at the time, everything worked out well. When I started at South Forbes Road there were 11 employees there and Debbie in Prestonsburg. 12 in total, in 2 locations. These days we have over 80 employees in 5 locations: Lexington, Prestonsburg, London, Morehead, and a Volunteer Center on Winchester Road, Lexington, near the Smuckers JIF Peanut Butter plant. My time at 104 South Forbes Road was for a full 4 weeks! In August 1999 we moved to 1685 Jaggie Fox Way, into a customised warehouse with 3 pallet tall racking, and lots of office space. It felt so large back then! On my first couple of days of unloading trucks there I totally wore out a pair of trainers!! Jaggie Fox does sound like a strange name for a street, but I later learned it came from 2 ladies, Mrs Jaggie and Mrs Fox who owned the land before the business park purchase. Anyway, that's what I have been told by mulitple people. Technology was fun in 1999, as we had a 56K phone modem, about 10 computers, and 1 printer. You can imagine the shared internet speed. I forget how long, but we eventually got DSL, then Cable. What have been my duties at the Food Bank? For my first decade of employment I worked the warehouse and as a driver. This included delivering food to the 4 to 5 local pantries that we ran ourselves in local church buildings in Fayette County. Funny story is that a couple of years into the job, I was approached by the Development Manager and asked if I knew websites and HTML. I informed her that I was familiar, and she made me responsible for the maintenance of the website that University of Kentucky students had created. It indeed was quite basic with only HTML and images. I had this duty for a few years before a professional company was hired. I mentioned Inventory software. In early 2000 we moved to an ERP, that is an Enterprise Resource Planning suite named Navision written by a Danish company. That company was then taken over by Microsoft. For as while it was called Microsoft NAV, and these days it is part of Dynamics 365. Feeding America commissioned a module named CERES which assisted us non-profits to use profit orientated software. Inhouse, we just call the software CERES. Even though I was no longer maintaining the website, I was still involved in IT to a degree. I became the inhouse guy who would set up new employees with their own computer. Ah, the days of Active Directory. I never did like it! I was also the guy the staff came to first with their computer problems. Funny how a lot of these issues were fixed when I walked in their office. If I could not fix an issue there and then, we did have a contract company on-call. They maintained our server and other high level software. This was still when I was in the warehouse role. After that first decade I was allocated to be our Welcome Center person, which I did for 3 years. This involved welcoming agencies, guests, salespersons, volunteers, and assisting other staff members in many ways. I also went from being a driver to the person who handed out delivery and pick-up routes to the drivers. During these years I became a heavy user of CERES working with the agencies and printing out pick-sheets to our warehouse picking staff. Although I really enjoyed the work, I will openly admit that I am not always the best in heavily social situations. I did have some difficulty when the Welcome Center was full of people needing my attention and I was trying to get software and paperwork duties done. Somehow I survived! My next stage of employment was moving into the offices and becoming the assistant to the Operations Director. This is when I really took on the role of food purchaser, ordering fresh produce and food from vendors as part of our budget. I also took over the responsibility of bidding for food donations from the Feeding America portal named Choice. National Donors offer truckloads of food and other items to the network, and we Food Banks bid on them in an allocated share system. The donations are free, but we pay for the truck freight from the shipping locations. A full time IT person was hired. We are now on our 4th IT Manager. The last 2 each had assistants. Although I am grandfathered in as an admin, my duties in this regard are very low, but still have the abity to install software as needed. Quite handy on my own laptop. As well as being the Food Procurement Officer I also became the Reporting Officer. This has been greatly aided by our team receiving the ability to write our own reports from the Navision SQL database using Jet Reporting. This is an Excel extension that allows us to access field data not directly obtainable in the CERES program. The fore-mentioned Robert Srodulski used to spend a day creating a monthly report that included all of our 50 counties across multiple categories of data. He would step by step complete an Excel worksheet with all this information. I took his spreadsheet, converted it into a Jet Report, and it now runs in about 5 minutes! It is my responsibility to supply reports on a regular monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to my Directors, fellow staff, and to Feeding America. Yes, I do have an orange mug on my desk that says "I submitted my MPR". That is the Monthly Pulse Report. It sits next to my red swingline stapler! What are God's Pantry Food Bank's sources of food? This is probably the question I get asked the most when friends and online contacts find out what I do for a career. We receive and obtain food from various sources, including: Local donations from people like you. Thank you! Local farmers. Local retail companies and other businesses giving food directly to us and to our Partner Agencies. We are the official food charity of many retailers, including Walmart and Kroger. National Companies, mostly through the Feeding America Choice Program. The USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, supplies us with multiple programs of food: TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program), CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation), and CSFP (Commodity Supplemental Food Program). Purchased food, including Fresh Produce, via donations and grants. Without all this food coming in, we would not be able to distribute to our internal programs or to our partner agencies, allowing them to run Backpacks for Kids, Food Boxes for Seniors, Food Pantries, Mobile Distributions, Sharing Thanksgiving, and a multitude of other services we offer our neighbours. We have a team of Food Sourcers that work directly with the retail companies, so I am not fully involved there, but I am the main Food Purchaser for the majority of the food we buy. Specialised internal programs like Backpack and local Pantries do order specific foods that they need on a regular basis. I try to supply for the long term. With the USDA CSFP program I am responsible for the ordering of that food through a Government website. Often 6 to 12 months ahead of time. Here's a truth that staggers many people when I inform them: If you are spending cash on food donations to God's Pantry Food Bank, the most efficient use of those funds is to donate it to us. I truly can obtain about $10 worth of food for every $1 given. An example is that I recently obtained a full truckload donation of 40,000lb of Canned Sliced Beets (yum!) that we are paying only freight on. Do the maths. #Where is God's Pantry Food Bank located? As mentioned we have 5 locations, not including our own local pantries, but our main head office is at 2201 Innovation Drive Please check out our webpage at GodsPantry.org/2201innovationdrive as it includes an excellent animated walk-through tour of the offices and warehouse, including the Produce Cooler, Deli Cooler, and Freezer. They are massive! I personally waited until the very last day, Friday 13th of December, to move out of my Jaggie Fox office and into my new one at Innovation. Our official first day was on Monday 16th December 2024. What I tooted and posted on that Friday caught the eye of my CEO, Michael Halligan, and he asked me if he could share it with others. Of course he should! In the Shownotes I have included a link to my Mastodon toot. It's too long a number to read out. I am absolutely loving our new location. It's my challenge to fill the cooler, freezer, and dry warehouse with donated food! My new office is 97% set up to my workflow, including my infamous hanging report boards, and spiders everywhere. The last line of my blog says: All that said, it truly is the only job I have ever had which I absolutely enjoy, but totally wish did not exist!! This remains true. Our mission is: Reducing hunger by working together to feed Kentucky communities. Our vision is: A nourished life for every Kentuckian. #How may HPR listeners support God's Pantry Food Bank The quick answer is to go to our website of GodsPantry.org and click on Take Action. From there you will be given a list to choose from: Donate Food Volunteer Host a Food Drive or Fundraiser Become a Partner Attend an Event Advocate Other Ways to Help Thank you so much for listening to my HPR show on God's Pantry Food Bank. Apart from leaving a comment on the HPR show page, the easiest ways for people to contact me are via Telegram: at t.me/solusspider or Mastodon at @SolusSpider@linuxrocks.online I look forward to hearing from you. Now go forth, be there for your fellow neighbours, and record your own HPR show! … Adding this comment to the Shownotes, that I shall not be speaking aloud. Although I consider this show topic to be Clean, as it is basically about my life and work, not my beliefs, there may be some worldwide who hear the name God's Pantry and consider it to be religious. Therefore I am flagging the show as Explicit. just in case. It is merely the name of our non-profit Food Bank, as called by our founder Mim Hunt. Although the majority of our Partner Agencies are faith based non-profit organisations, the Food Bank itself is not faith based. … Provide feedback on this episode.

Send me a Text Message hereFULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/610  Francis Msangi Masera, a passionate Chief Innovation Officer from Nairobi, Kenya, takes us on a fascinating journey through his career in the tech world. From his initial spark of interest in computers during high school to becoming a Microsoft MVP in 2024, Francis' story is one of dedication and innovation. We explore his transition from being a C-sharp developer to specializing in Navision and Business Central, emphasizing his impactful role in implementing these solutions locally and internationally. With the rising popularity of Business Central and Power Platform in Kenya, especially among SMEs and large organizations, Francis provides valuable insights and shares a glimpse of Nairobi's vibrant culture, including the culinary delight of Nyama Choma.Our conversation shifts to the exciting integration of AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot in Business Central, and how Azure OpenAI service is enhancing functionalities for businesses. Francis sheds light on the importance of prompt engineering in optimizing these technologies, offering practical examples like invoicing with specific item queries. He also shares strategic tips on becoming a Microsoft MVP, emphasizing the significance of community contributions and effective showcasing of work. His experiences, including speaking at events like Experts Live Kenya, highlight his commitment to community engagement and knowledge sharing. Join us to discover how Francis's expertise is helping businesses unleash the full potential of ERP platforms through AI advancements.OTHER RESOURCES: Microsoft MVP YouTube Series - How to Become a Microsoft MVP  90 Day Mentoring Challenge - https://ako.nz365guy.com/Support the showIf you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.Thanks for listening

In this special episode of the Greg Albrecht Podcast, Rinalds Sluckis, the CEO of Digital Mind, discussed the acquisition of EIP Dynamics and its strategic implications. The conversation shed light on the reasoning behind the decision, the unique qualities of EIP Dynamics, the challenges faced during the negotiation process, and the future prospects for the company. This podcast delves into the details of the discussion, providing a comprehensive analysis of the acquisition and its significance in the Central and Eastern European markets.https://dynamicseip.comTimestamps: 00:00:00 Highlights00:01:55 The Decision-Making Process Behind Acquisitions00:04:24 The Unique Qualities of EIP Dynamics00:06:55 Building a Regional Champion00:08:02 Navigating the Negotiation Process00:10:34 Managing Team Dynamics During Transition00:12:25 Building Trust and Communication00:14:58 Embracing Change and Growth00:17:06 Learning Through Unique Experiences00:19:02 The Importance of R&D in a Competitive Market00:21:16 Crafting Solutions for Mid-Market Clients00:23:01 Envisioning a Bright Future for the Team00:25:18 The Influence of Sports on Business Leadership 00:27:00 Insights from the Swedish Institute Management Program00:28:22 Valuable Lessons from Business Books00:30:21 Final Thoughts#współpracapłatna___________________________________________________ SUBSKRYBUJ ten kanał i bądź na bieżąco!

In episode 35 of his podcast, Martin welcomed Martin Blaha from the Czech Republic, who moved to the UK in 2016, where he still lives and works. While Martin worked in various consulting roles for various Business Central partners for 11 years, he embarked on an entrepreneurial journey last year. Hence, Martin now owns MB365 Consulting – a new generation Business Central partner. Being asked why he calls his new company a "new generation Business Central" partner and what distinguishes the "old" generation from the "new " one, Martin B. outlined that his way of working, compared to traditional partners, is characterized by flexibility, agility, and a focus on delivering quicker results at a lower cost, the lower cost resulting from working remote and thus having no corporate debts. He referred to his small but very efficient team, consisting of the best developers on the market. While many traditional partners still adhere to the so-called waterfall-project methodology, meaning that each project step runs over many months, he works in a hybrid agile environment as Microsoft recommends, allowing him to run a first iteration quickly and collect feedback very quickly.Leading over to the, as Martin K. called them, "hard facts of Business Central", they started to talk about the topic of Martin B.'s latest blog post "Five things you didn't know about planning worksheets" and why he is so passionate about it. According to Martin B., his enthusiasm for production stems from his journey from working with manufacturing software to transitioning to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Business Central. He emphasizes the value of understanding manufacturing processes and the desire to share knowledge to prevent common pitfalls in implementations. He has seen, as he puts it, "so many missed or failed implementations where people just did not know what they're doing". His passion for the planning worksheet is rooted in the fact that it brings significant value to the customer "by sorting out the daily work in logic sequence and manner". Talking about the "Frozen Period", a key concept of the planning worksheet, denoting a period where the schedule is fixed and shouldn't be altered, Martin B. stressed the importance of setting the start date in the future to analyze urgencies, such as unshipped sales orders or missed planning opportunities. Lead times and communication also play crucial roles. Another best practice recommended by Martin B. is to define the worksheet process plan and then run it in small steps to achieve specific goals and balance supply and demand for each area individually. Moreover, utilizing filtering options extensively allows for running planning worksheets for bespoke purposes. Categorizing items is another key aspect, helping streamline the planning process by organizing products based on their characteristics. However, these practices might require adjustments to fit each company's unique needs. Additionally, Martin B. places a lot of emphasis on the significance of personal relationships in successful ERP system implementations, stressing the value of on-site interaction over remote communication alone. While planning worksheets in Business Central play a crucial role in balancing supply and demand throughout the manufacturing process chain, reservation entries serve as the glue holding everything together by ensuring alignment between supply and demand, and orders being fulfilled in the correct sequence.The conversation ended with discussing the importance of finding a balance between flexibility and strictness when using reservation entries in Business Central for manufacturing. 

FULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/492 Ever wondered how an accountant would transition into a tech guru? Meet Steven Chinsky, the director of Dynamics Practice at Accelerant. From his thrilling escapades like sky diving and racing Lamborghinis to his passion for barbecuing, Steven is all about living life in the fast lane. But what truly stands out is his seamless shift from crunching numbers to dominating the tech industry, all thanks to the push from his mentors to explore ERP software. Steven lifts the lid on his journey, becoming an MVP since 2023 and how Xapta, birthed from Navision, along with Dynamics 365 BC, is revolutionizing operations in multinational corporations.Get ready to uncover the untapped potential of Business Central in any manufacturing environment. Steven dishes on his personal journey to becoming an MVP and how he sailed through the application process, pandemic notwithstanding. His association with Microsoft has led to a myriad of opportunities to speak at various conferences, sharing his wealth of knowledge and experiences. Prepare to be inspired by his insights on the ever-evolving tech industry, his journey as a Microsoft MVP, and his valuable nuggets of wisdom for those aspiring to follow in his footsteps. So buckle up and join us on this exciting ride!OTHER RESOURCES: Microsoft MVP YouTube Series - How to Become a Microsoft MVP  90-Day Mentoring Challenge - https://ako.nz365guy.com/ Dynamics Community: https://dynamicscommunities.com/community/members/steven-chinskywipfli-com/ AgileXRM AgileXRm - The integrated BPM for Microsoft Power PlatformSupport the showIf you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.Thanks for listening

In episode 34 of his podcast, Martin welcomed José Miguel Azevedo, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Senior Solution Architect with KPMG in the UK, one of the BIG4 consulting companies. José has more than 24 years of experience with different ERPs, ranging from SAP and Oracle to Dynamics 365 Business Central, his focus areas being Navision and Business Central, where he held various roles in consulting, like business consultant, functional consultant, project manager, program manager, etc. He has worked in companies of all sizes and with clients from the fashion, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and services industries. Although Jose admitted that speaking foreign languages is not big fun for him, he dared to move to and work in London and join Martin for the podcast.They kicked off their conversation by delving into José's personal journey, highlighting his move from Portugal to London. José's decision to leave his comfort zone and embrace new opportunities at KPMG underscores his passion for manufacturing. He emphasized that the industry resonates with him due to its dynamic challenges and the need for out-of-the-box thinking.Martin and José explored the essential tools and strategies for successfully implementing Business Central in manufacturing, and José stressed the importance of identifying whether a company is make-to-order or make-to-stock and tailoring the approach accordingly. According to him, simplicity is critical for setting up Bill of Materials (BOM) structures and utilizing lead times to aid Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Available to Promise (ATP) calculations.When discussing Capable to Promise (CTP), José outlined that while it's a powerful tool, it should be introduced only after establishing a solid data foundation. He pointed out that most manufacturing companies already possess historical experience and can set lead times and workarounds at the item level to provide customers with realistic delivery dates.The conversation wrapped up with a focus on the significance of relationships in the manufacturing sector. José recalled his challenging implementations, noting that successful projects were marked by solid professional relationships. Both Martin and José agreed that while technology is an enabler, the people behind it genuinely drive success.Despite both admitting they're not particularly language-oriented, they exchanged friendly banter about Martin learning some basic Portuguese before meeting at Directions EMEA in Lyon. José ended the podcast by expressing gratitude for the conversation and the opportunity to share his insights.

In his latest podcast episode, Martin hosted Ivar Keskpaik, who, amongst a plethora of other roles and positions, works as a Business Consultant for Softera Baltic, Lithuania. He holds an MSc in Physics, is a chartered engineer, a certified Theory of Constraints (TOC) practitioner, and has been titled the “most famous Interim Manager of Estonia” by the Magazine “Director”. Ivar and Martin discussed how manufacturing companies working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can apply the Theory of Constraints.Martin introduced the podcast's topic by asking Ivar to explain the Theory of Constraints (TOC) shortly. As Ivar outlined, this concept was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in the late 70s of the last century and describes a management philosophy and methodology that allows one to focus only on the constraints in a process and to make good bottom-line results for a short period in any type of company. TOC is more complex than other management theories, such as Lean or Six Sigma, and Ivar admitted that it took him 20 years to grasp it fully.As Ivar went on, the high complexity of TOC lies in its being based on a flow-based approach and not on a resource-based one. Flow-based thinking is about making sure things move smoothly and efficiently from start to finish, therefore trying to detect the constraints - or bottlenecks -  in a process and maximizing them to the maximum flow. Transferring this to the typical Business Central manufacturing customers, namely SMBs, their constraints are always on resources. However typically, the bottleneck isn't stable, but it keeps on shifting from one work or machine center to another.Once the constraint has been detected - by scrutinizing the workload of the different capacities - the planning must only be done for this resource. The workload should not be distributed equally among all resources to remove the constraint.Talking about best practices for implementing TOC at manufacturing companies using Business Central, Ivar related that it always starts with a visit to the customer and talking to the management board to understand the company's problems. Then, of course, there will be an inspection of the shopfloor to see and understand the technologies the customer is using. Based on these findings, the bottlenecks are then analyzed: where are they located? Are they floating or not? etc. After that, the planning and scheduling part will be dealt with. But, as Ivar stressed, the first step always will be to detect the bottleneck.Often, customers mistakenly think that their most expensive resource is their bottleneck and hence are not happy when hearing that to remove the constraint, they will have to disbalance their resources and even take away workload from their most expensive machine. They fear that this will bring their production cost up or that the cost per unit of this machine will increase significantly. Ivar encountered these arguments, in which the conflict between the cost-based approach and the flow-based approach becomes evident, by pointing out that both approaches have the goal to make a profit but that the flow-based approach will bring results like better profits, a bigger turnover, and higher customer satisfaction in a comprehensively shorter time than the resource-based approach. The bigger flow through removing the bottlenecks will lead to delivering more work orders in time. Sometimes, Ivar even offers to set up a mini-project for the respective company so that the decision-makers can see the results and then discuss the main project. 

Martin's guest is Andrew Good, CEO of Liberty Grove Software from Canada. Andrew is an engineer, project manager, analyst, manufacturing expert, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. His extensive knowledge and background have been built from personal experiences with many companies, working in various operational and management roles. Projects have ranged from new implementations to streamlining business operations. 21 years of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV experience mean that he can fall back on many different perspectives when working with customers.  He has helped clients get the most out of their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV systems through integrations, upgrades, and extensions that allow them to deal with their changing business environments, regardless of whether financial operations, rentals, distribution, and manufacturing.  Being asked whether providing the master data that are so essential for a functioning planning process also means fun to him, Andrew admitted that, overall, from an organization's perspective, it is a painful process. Nevertheless, as he pointed out, the dividends that are paid to the organizations are huge both in the short and long term because, in the end, they are rewarded by getting a single system that provides them with trustworthy financial, inventory, and manufacturing information. And according to Andrew, the process of providing and maintaining master data is an ongoing one. The system needs to remain trustworthy and stable also after go-live, and for this, the data must be kept in good shape continuously. Depending on the organizations' size, there are a variety of techniques at hand for this.Martin then brought up the claim "Transform your business with human-friendly solutions to power progress" that he read on Andrew's website when preparing for the podcast and that he would like to investigate further. Starting with the "transform your business" part, Andrew outlined that when you look at the transformation necessity for the manufacturing companies, it is not primarily related to their "direct processes", meaning everything connected to manufacturing, but mainly concerns all their indirect processes, like engineering, purchase, finance, etc. where the day-to-day work can be significantly streamlined and improved to make people more efficient. Andrew sees a second area of transformation opportunity in leveraging the already massive data that are available in the organizations by using tools like Power BI to provide insights into how the factory is run. Of course, this also will impact production itself because Power BI can also be used to monitor real-time production data, thus finding out if production is running to its quote, finding fundamental issues with a certain part, etc.Discussing the "human-friendly solution" part of the claim, Andrew stressed that he is no fan of productivity initiatives being introduced by top-down directives. Not including the experience and opinions of all staff members will generate a lot of resentment and resistance to those initiatives. Andrew advocates for a more collaborative approach where also the view and the voices of the "direct" people in the project count. According to Andrew, it is always key to get people on the shop floor involved.Regarding the third part of the claim, "to power progress", Martin wanted to know whether and how Andrew measures and documents the progress his customers make. Andrew related that he encourages his customers to gather and analyze data and examine how it changes over time. They should also keep track of the activities having been executed during the same period to see the impact of these changes. He is a firm believer in constant measuring, monitoring, and then acting based on the monitoring. The typical metrics that get tracked in manufacturing companies, of course, depend on the companies' focus. 

In his latest podcast episode, Martin was super excited to have one of the North American Business Central manufacturing rockstars with him. Steve Chinsky is the Manager Dynamics Practice with Accelerynt. He has over 23 years of experience consulting, implementing, and managing Dynamics NAV and Business Central projects. His over 180 NAV and BC implementations were done in manufacturing, supply chain (aka WMS(, food and beverage, jewelry, retail, service, oil and gas, chemical, industrial equipment, and home goods industries. In addition, he worked over 16 years as an Accountant (CMA) in various positions (Director of Finance, Controller, and Director of Operations). Steve is, among others, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Most Valued Professional (MVP), a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), and a Certified Navision Manufacturing Specialist. He is a Board Member and Program Committee Chair of the NAVUG (the NAV user group), Summit Program Committee Co-Chair, and he is on the Program Committee for DynamicsCON Live and the Content Committee for Directions North America. With this impressive background, the question naturally arose what is so special about NAV and Business Central that it qualifies for such a level of commitment.Steve related that having worked for 16 years in accounting, it finally became somewhat repetitive and rudimentary, and due to lots of recommendations, he started to look at ERP and a "company called Navision." He was really fascinated because it was so easy and simple, and over time, he knew that he wanted to get involved with the community that was building itself in the early days. Moreover, he has always loved helping people, so when he started to work with different partners, he supported anybody new and wanted to know how the software worked. From there, it was a small step to organizing conferences and being part of advisor boards or committees. And this is what he really loves doing.Being asked what piqued his interest in manufacturing, Steve said that, originally, he mostly worked in the supply chain environment. But when he met a customer who produced the glue for the United States postal stamps, he was intrigued by being involved with manufacturing literally, as he put it, "from soup to nuts." He likes to mold different companies that are coming to NAV and Business Central into the software and to accompany every step, and that's what kept him there.Steve was happy to share some of the best implementation practices and tips he has ready for manufacturers in the NAV and Business Central environment:Include some of the people from the shop floor who do the actual work in the defining and design processes. Everybody should have a voice because this is your new ERP system.Don't ever second guess a process - have it explained loudly in the room.Don't stick to processes because you have always done them that way - people change, steps change, equipment changes.Evaluate every routing from its beginning to the end - consider the time elements associated with a routing, and don't forget the crap.Let the people on the shopfloor test the system throughout the whole implementation process. As Steve outlined, implementing an ERP is always also a business process reengineering task because, if you want to move from an old system to a new one, you can't do this without analyzing all your processes and, most likely, subsequently also changing some things. He illustrated his point by saying that you can't change your favorite ice cream flavor from a chocolate chip to another one but want to keep the chips, the color, and the flavor. As Steve said, "Everything is on the table with a new ERP system." 

Our podcast is back! After a half-year break, Martin felt it was time to "revive" the podcast again, last but not least because many Business Central manufacturing enthusiasts reached out and encouraged him to continue with it. So, in episode 30, he was happy to talk to Jeff Brickler, solution architect at an ISV called CADtalk in Cincinnati, USA.Jeff's background is quite outstanding because he hasn't been an IT/manufacturing person for his entire career. He started as a Latin teacher in high school with a master's degree in Classics. He joined CADtalk eight years ago and has worked closely with manufacturing customers as a support specialist, consulting and services manager, and solution architect since then. Dwelling on the fact that Jeff has been working with manufacturing companies for quite some time, Martin wanted to know more about Jeff's experience with these companies: what makes them unique and what is the intellectual challenge of working with them. Jeff described that, although the customers he deals with are very different, they all have some things in common: they are all quite "down-to-earth," meaning that they work hard to make good products and are also very cost conscious. What is more, he also meets a lot of engineers who are very detail-oriented and ask a lot of questions, so the challenge here lies in offering or showing them products that are really going to work and provide value.When asked what he thought was the most important skill needed for working in such an environment and whether his teaching experience helped him in his new job, Jeff said there's not much difference between a demonstration for a software product and teaching. As he put it, a lot of teaching is really about trying to give a good overview of what you're about to teach or what the subject matter is, and then frame it in a way that makes it interesting to the audience, and then listening to that audience to know what's interesting to them. So what you need in both jobs is patience, not getting frustrated, and an ability to explain in multiple ways. Because sometimes, the way he thinks of something may not be the same as the way the customer thinks of it, meaning that we might have a different vocabulary or how we structure it in our mind might be different.The two then talked about the similarities between the users of Business Central and those of other ERP systems and came to the conclusion that independent of their size (the Business Central companies are usually a bit smaller than the others), they share the same challenges. They all design and produce complex products with a relatively small lot size that require engineering. In Business Central, they have also to manage the BOM.Regarding whether CADtalk's Business Central customers use the manufacturing or the jobs module, Jeff stated that their customers mainly use the standard manufacturing module because that helps them keep a standard BOM. In his opinion, even when customers have lot sizes of one, it is always preferable to create a standard BOM instead of just creating a job for that one-off. A BOM makes updates more manageable in case of engineering changes which would be quite difficult with the Jobs module.Talking about the impact of having so many ISV solutions for Business Central, Jeff outlined that this makes working with customers a little bit challenging in the sense that at CADtalk, they need to keep being aware and up-to-date about the products on the market. Customers would very much appreciate them knowing the ecosystem and preferably having some kind of relationship with the other vendors so that they are always aware of how all the different products or software interactions work together.Jeff and Martin ended their talk by expressing their hope to meet at Directions EMEA in Lyon later that year and continue their discussion.

  I had a chance to sneak up on Vahe Torossian, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President and the man in charge of Sales for Microsoft Business Applications. While Vahe has been with Microsoft for 30 years, many of you may not know him, so I wanted to fix that. Vahe is no ordinary Seller; he's the “Top” guy who sets the sales strategy and motions for the entire global team. Vahe is also the guy who runs the really big enterprise customer meetings, and he's super-friendly, as you would expect for the Chief Rainmaker. We covered a lot of ground in this one, so enjoy! Transcript Below: Vahe: Hey, Vahe Torossian speaking. Steve: Vahe, Steve Mordue, how are you? Vahe: Hey Steve. In fairness let's say Charles mentioned that somehow you were going to call me. I didn't know when, but it's great to talk to you. Steve: After I interviewed him, I asked him who would be a good person to talk to? And he dropped your name. So it doesn't surprise me that he gave you a little heads up. Have you got a few minutes to chat? Vahe: Yeah, of course. Thanks Steve. Steve: Oh, perfect, perfect. So before we get into it, maybe we can tell the listeners a little bit about what your role is. I know you've been at Microsoft forever, I think like 30 years or something like that, and you've held a lot of different positions. But now you're in the business application space and that's been fairly recent. So there's probably a lot of folks that might not be familiar with you, who should be. Vahe: Oh yeah, thanks Steve. You're right. I've been celebrating my 30 years anniversary at Microsoft in April in 2022. I actually took the helm of the Biz Apps sales organization globally in late 2020. So basically I took my one way ticket to Redmond in December 2020. And the plane was almost empty, it was during the pandemic. And it was kind of a strange feeling for someone who has been traveling so much in the past. And of course, let's say I came with the lens of the business application, of course. Having led let's say Western Europe in my past role, having all the businesses of Microsoft. And I think Western Europe was quite successful on Biz Apps, our trajectory growth. And I guess that was also in fact the good match to some degree to try to take it at the global level. Steve: So is it a little easier to think about a smaller segment of the product mix, now really being able to focus like a business application? So I think before you were looking over all sorts of different things, weren't you? Vahe: Yeah, actually it's a great question. Because I think it's very different way of looking at the business. When you are, let's say almost you are the CEO of Microsoft in the countries that you are, let's say leading. You have all the levers to engage customers, partners, government, in different circumstances. And you try to leverage as much as you can the portfolio that you have to maximize the value. In the context of let's say the business application. I think it was, the interesting bet to some degree Steve, was to say, Hey, this has been a portfolio at Microsoft, whether you call it Dynamics 365 or Dynamics only as a brand in the past. And if you go back 20 years, let's say almost, with the Navision and Axapta, and Solomon Software and Great Plains. All these stories, all these product came together. And 20 years later, I think it has been part of a portfolio somewhere. Vahe: And you had almost what I will call the strong, let's say, portfolio of Microsoft, the platform, the modern workplace and environment. And I felt the work that James Phillips in the past, and with Alyssa, and Charles, and Amy here now on the marketing side. Have been a strong inflection point to bring together both the technology in the cloud environment. But at the same time, a market environment that requires very different, let's say tools to make the most of this transformation. And I felt that there's one piece at Microsoft that requires a huge catalyst leveraging the innovation. But responding as much as we can to what the customer need or even don't know yet what they need. And I think that's what I think to me was almost a bet. It's almost like all of a sudden you move to the little dog, if I may say. But with a huge potential of transforming something with great asset for Microsoft, and the customers and partners. Steve: Well I have to say, having been involved with Microsoft for a while, we have a phrase over here called redheaded stepchild, which is kind of what Dynamics was for many, many years. It was off campus, it was just this thing out there and under Satya, when Satya came in, he's the first one that I think came into the position that recognized this should be another leg on the stool, not some remote thing out there. And I think that's made a huge. Difference because I was involved in the years before Satya with business applications and they were not just something over here on the back shelf, and now they're right front and center. I think that between Dynamics and what's happened with the power platform, cloud in general. Microsoft's ability to get into and help customers is massively different than it used to be. And in your role now, you're dealing with a lot different type of customer. You're talking about Office 365 or Azure, you're dealing with IT. And now you're mostly dealing with business users. It's a completely different audience you're having to work with today, isn't it? Vahe: Absolutely. I think also you're right since Satya took the helm of the company, to some degree you of course we have seen how we tackle the cloud computing hyper-scale environment. But at the same time, in fact what happened with the Covid in the last two years, have seen an acceleration of what we call in the past, the productivity tools to become more and more collaboration environment. And from almost an application or a set of application, it became more and more a platform on its own. And so it's almost like when you think about where we are today and we were talking about the Covid, I don't think the Covid is yet over fully everywhere. But now everybody's talking about recession, right? And there's no one headline that you look, you say, oh my goodness, what's going to happen? Which just means in terms of planning for 22, 23. Vahe: So I think the assets that is now quite unique to some degree, or differentiated as you said, between the Dynamics 365 platform components and the Power Platform, it's almost bringing together. But I think, I don't remember Steve, in a few years back, I think Satya was talking about the mobility of the experience. And that was more from a device perspective initially. But actually what you see now is that with Teams as a platform, the system of productivity almost connect with the system of record more and more. And it's re-transforming the way you are thinking. It's almost like, you think about, you don't have to go to a CRM environment or ERP environment to get access to the data. It's almost like wherever you work, if you use an Excel or if you use Teams or whatever, you get access naturally, almost intuitively to your data set. And the data set are that's almost fulfilled naturally. And so we have no additional task. Vahe: And so I think that's the transformation world in which we are. Which connects cheaper well. We almost do more with less, right? And that's going to be almost the conversation we're going to have in the coming month. And it started already with many customers and partners. How we can optimize the assets that they have, how they can let's say increase the deep provisioning of some assets that they have. They are paying too much to concentrate a bit more, to get more agility. And I think this is where also, from a partner perspective, Steve, I see a lot of potential. You are referring to Power Platform, it's fascinating to see what it was in the very beginning, this notion of citizens developer, what does it mean? Vahe: People didn't know exactly what it is, we're quite afraid to touch it. But now when you see the shortage of developers in the market in general. And how you can make the most of some absolutely topnotch people who are not developer, touching the last mile execution challenges. Have been facing crazy environment and situation that they say, I can't believe how my IT guide doesn't solve these things. I've been telling them the customer pain point for so many years. And now with some, let's say [inaudible 00:08:45] place, let's say available for them, along with some let's say technical assets, you can really make the magic in the very, very, very time. Steve: Charles came up with a term on the fly, ambient CRM. Kind of where we're heading here when you talk about things like Viva Sales and some of these pieces that are really wiring all these components together. Covid was a terrible thing, but it certainly was a perfect storm for pushing the technology forward into a place that it's been fighting to get to, it's really been fighting to get to that point. And Teams was a great product. But certainly Covid created the perfect environment where Teams made insane sense for companies that were maybe just thinking about it or dabbling with it, and suddenly they're all diving into it. And you guys of course poured the investment on top of that. And I think that the silver lining of Covid, for technology, is how far it really allowed it to advance in that period of time. Maybe we just need a pandemic every five years to push a technology forward. I don't know. Vahe: No, but I have to say that even in my previous role when I was running Western Europe. Even the most skeptical people in regard to the cloud or the transition to a cloud environment. Having the one that rushed in the first, almost to a cloud environment, once the pandemic has been a bit of a real situation to face, and to drive the economy or the public services let's say on. So I think you're right, so you don't want to wish for another pandemic or whatever, but it has been absolutely a forcing function in many domains. And that's true. Steve: I think the challenge we have is particularly in the business application space. You guys have launched so many things in such a short period of time. And as you mentioned before, Power Apps, people picking it with a stick, they don't even know what it is. And there's also this first mover fear, I think. Microsoft has been, in my mind, kind of famous for coming to the game late and then just taking over the game. We were very late to the cloud, but once we got there we just took over the cloud, and it seems to be a pattern. But when you look back at the early days of cloud before you guys stepped into it, it was wild west. And all sorts of challenges with cloud. And I think that that gave a lot of people fear about, I remember I moved into cloud early and we got destroyed. Steve: And so I think there's a lot of folks out there, just from a technology standpoint, that have gotten their hands burnt by moving too quickly. And we're at that point with the platform and dynamics, where these are not new anymore. Relatively in history, they're new. But they're not new products and they're not built by some garage shop somewhere with a couple of developers. This is what 15,000 people building this stuff back there. This is professionally built, well built stuff, that is ready for prime time. So the first movers have already come through and they all survived. So I really feel like we're at that point where it should just take off now, it should just absolutely take off. And I'm sure you guys are seeing this. Vahe: Yeah. And Steve, I think one thing also is that you're right, there's a usual thing about let's say the first mover advantage. At the same time from a customer perspective, you don't want to be the Guinea pig, right? On any situation, especially from the technology standpoint. I think that increasingly what I see in the conversation is that there's almost now, because of the quality of the native integration of the several different applications. Whether you are in the customer experience environment, on the service side, on the supply chain, on the finance or the local no code or app. All these components are absolutely connected to each other. And basically whether you have Teams as a platform in your company, or Azure in environment, all these component are connected very, very easily to each other. Vahe: And so I would say that the beauty of it now is that you have all almost the notion of marginal cost. If you really want to leverage many of the assets that we can bring, and you don't have to take all of them at once, of course it has to be matching what you need now. But the right is that, let's say there's an almost fully integrated benefit all the connectors with the rest of the world outside of Microsoft environment, which is a great value for the partners, ISV and [inaudible 00:13:58], and at the same time to the customers. Who think now, hey I should do more with less. How should I think about my investments for the next, let's say five years? Most of the customers now are really thinking about the longer term relationship. And defining what's the value SLA almost that you're expecting both from the partner of the vendor and the vendor itself. Vahe: And so it's almost like, you remember when we transition from a world of build revenue and licensing, to now more consumption and usage. It's almost the user and consumption discussion is a forcing function about the customer success, how we align on the same definition of the customer success. And what's the time to value that you committed? What are the key milestones, in full transparency, that you need to bring in? And I think that's where we are now. And because Microsoft, I think overall as a company, have been increasing tremendously the level of trust. From the security standpoint, the compliance components, and so on, and the scalability. Vahe: I think that's the great leverage for us now in terms of the conversation and making sure that the customers are getting the value that we have been selling to them. How we show how much skin in the game we have to make them successful. And then it's a flying wheel. It's almost like the innovation will help you to bring new things, respond, anticipate, take the feedback of the customer to the engineering, develop new stuff quickly to the market. So I think it's what we are heading to now, Steve. And I think from a partner perspective you might even see and feel it, right, more and more. Steve: Oh yeah, I mean I think the sales motion has changed completely. Only a few years ago we go into a customer and try and convince them to replace Salesforce with Dynamics. And they'd say no, and we were done. We'd say okay, well we'll come back in a couple years and ask again. We had nothing else to sell them. And now today, I mean if they have Salesforce, fine that's great, keep Salesforce, let's add some things around it. Salesforce will work with Viva Sales, Salesforce will work with Power Platform. Steve: There's so many doors now, I think, for a seller to be able to get into a customer and solve problems for that customer without having to do the one big yank and replace. Which is very difficult to do, it's difficult to do on opposite as well. I mean once a customer gets a big solution like Salesforce or Dynamics 365 installed, those are very difficult to uproot, it takes a very long time. And you guys have created now, this product mix, where we don't have to uproot something to sell that customer and to get engaged with that customer. We can go all over that business without having to uproot something. And I think that's huge. Vahe: I agree Steve. And I think that it's almost this notion of rip and replace type of strategy, right? In some cases it works because this is what the customer wants. They are fed up about let's say competitive environment that didn't deliver on the expectation. And we should be ready to cope with that and respond, and we have a lot of this. But at the same time as you said, what we call the strategy of having a hub and spoke, let's say, almost environment, gives us for every line of business. That we decided as a company to go and have a significant acceleration of growth and market share, is very much to give that option to say, Hey, you know what, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, you decide to be on that type of environment, who we are to ask you to change? Vahe: If you are happy that's fine. But what we can bring you is almost to enhance what you have with some component that absolutely will be transparently integrated to what you're using. And it's a great circuit, an additional circuit for the partner, it's a great value for the customer. We don't feel harassed to change something because we know the cost of transitioning from one to another one. And then it's up to us to demonstrate the value we can bring and eventually we can take from there to the next level in the future. Steve: It's got to put some pressure on the competitors also. I if think of, I might just use Salesforce because they've always been the big competitor. I'm sure that they were confident sitting there at their large customer when all we had was trying to replace their instance that was going to be difficult to do and then we'd go away and they didn't have to worry about us. Now we're coming in and we're circling around, and we're solving problems in this department, and we're building apps in this department, and we're literally bolting into Salesforce. And one potential outcome is that the customer decides over time that wow, all of this Microsoft stuff that we've brought in works really, really well. Steve: That's gotta put some pressure on the incumbent big application in there that hey, you're surrounded by a bunch of stuff the customer is very happy with, you better make sure they're happy with your stuff and they don't reach that point. Cause like you say, oftentimes when you see those rip and replace, it's because the product, or the company, or something hasn't met the expectation. And to be fair, that could actually happen with any of us, right? It has a lot to do with implementation, design, how thing was put together. Less to do with the application itself, that could happen to any vendor. But certainly raises the bar to some of these competitors when they're surrounded by well performing Microsoft products that are satisfying customers. Would you think? Vahe: Yes. Absolutely. And that's why there's a continuity between what we sell, how we sell, to who we sell, and how we drive the implementation. It's an ongoing wheel that is a very different mindset that we all learn in the transition to the cloud, let's say, environment. But absolutely. I think it's a good forcing function to raise the bar to some degree, raise the bar for the benefit of the customer. You mentioned the competitiveness of what this type of hub and spoke strategy can create. You're right. But in the end, the biggest, let's say winner, will be the customer, right? Which I think is always and should always be the north star for us and our partners. Vahe: And I would say the relevance of the innovation should be in fact the pressure that we put to each other to make sure that say we listen carefully to what the customer is facing as a challenge, but potentially to translate their current challenge into the future challenge, to push them also to think differently. Because I think the notion of rip and replace [inaudible 00:21:06] One of the thing was, I don't know if you remember that the initial issue and worry was that people were saying Oh, we are moving to the cloud, therefore we are transforming. Well it was not that tried and true. People were just keeping the same processes in the cloud and the one that they had on premise. Which was not benefiting at all of the scalability and the agility of the cloud environment. Yeah, you remember that right? Yeah. Steve: They just changed the way they were paying for it. Vahe: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that's what we have seen on this application modernization, on some of the enterprise wide innovation also opportunities that we had discussed, is how much you can really say, in this new world of competitiveness, of un-expected challenges. How you can, let's say, keep your applications fitting always in fact proactively the challenges that you're going to have too. As opposed to keep going with a quite heavy code to maintain, with people who leave that cost you a fortune to maintain. So I think this agility that the power apps, [inaudible 00:22:22] to made, have been bringing I think is the reason why we have seen this huge acceleration of growth, which is today is six, seven times faster than the market growth of local no code. Vahe: So I think it's a great, let's say indication, of what people start to realize. And I think in the conversation that you had with Charles when he was referring to, hey some of the AI capability have been slower to be picked up by the vast majority of customers. And it's true because there's a level of, let's say, can I trust this thing? Am I going to lose completely ground and control of what I'm doing? All these natural thing. I think as we bring more and more, let's say tools, are manageable. The Power Platform environment, or let's say the device sales capability on top of the teams or Salesforce environment. That people will start to test this. Vahe: And I think we're going to be more and more advocate about Hey, what are the benefits of the organization that are using this technology and how we can trust them lean forward. And I think Charles was referring to our digital sellers. Their daily life is very much, let's say, using all these AI lead capabilities in terms of reporting, in terms of let's say incident management, in terms of even coaching for themselves to do a better call next time, is just fascinating to see. Maybe we should even do a kind of, let's say talk on this, once we have a bit more, let's say after the GA, maybe a few months after, we should have, let's say what the key learnings and [inaudible 00:24:00] from a customer standpoint. Steve: Yeah, it always makes a customer confident when they know that the vendor is using the product that they're trying to sell them. It's interesting, everything moving to a subscription has changed kind of the mindset, not just of you guys obviously, where there's no big sale. There's a sale of a big subscription, the revenue of which will come over a long period of time. But the customer has this option every month to say, you know what, I'm not happy, you're not solving my problem. In the old days they were kind of stuck, they bought all this stuff and they had to make it work. Now they don't have to make it work, we have to make it work, we have to keep them happy enough. Steve: We recently launched a professional services on a subscription, which is an interesting model, that I lay awake at night thinking about that same thing. That before a customer would pay you a bunch of money to a bunch of stuff and now they're paying you a little bit of money every month for as long as you keep them happy. And this bar of, I mean we've always wanted to keep customers happy. But it's never had the impact or importance that it does when you're on a subscription with that customer who can just any time say, “I'm not happy, goodbye.” It raises the bar I think for you guys to have to continuously innovate, what do you done for me lately? You got to continuously innovate and bring new things. And you've got more motivation probably than the company's ever had in history because of the subscription model. Do you feel that internally? Vahe: Yes, yes. As I said, it has been a great enabler to raise the bar. And it's almost like you know can have a beautiful slide deck and saying the right things, but the execution doesn't match what you are saying somehow, that you don't walk the talk. I think you could have been in that situation in a kind of on-premise environment. I think the cloud has been a forcing function to say, hey you know what, you can claim you are customer success, or you are customer first, or you are customer obsessed. But the reality is that if you don't deliver the service properly, if you are not as responsive timely, if you're not proactive, customer will say enough is enough, I can stop my subscription. Steve: I have options. Vahe: I have options. So I think it's a good hygiene, how it makes you having an embracing habits, that I would say are the natural thing when you engage with customer. But I think it's almost, let's say, for the one who might have forgotten that basics, it has been a great, let's say, opportunity to bring back the roots of what is it to satisfy a customer, right? And I think that's what the cloud licensing model helped put together. And I think there are still always room for improvement. Vahe: And similarly I would say, what you have seen on the collaborative applications, what we have seen on the low-code, no-code, you are going to see it now, also I would say on the supply chain environment, which is shipper, shipper at stress because of what we have seen on the Covid, but also in fact on the geopolitical aspect and some of the recession discussion. And also, on the overall, what I would say the contact center in our environment at large. How this world is going to change is going to be led a lot by the capability that technology can bring, and the ability to listen carefully to the strategies and the challenges of the corporation that are involved in. So it's quite exciting actually. Steve: I don't get involved a lot with the call center operations. But I picture the old call center is this massive building full of cubicles and people with headphones. And I picture that now that most of those people are probably working remote. A call center now could operate at my desk, just about, and have thousands of people all working from their home. So, that whole industry feels like it's changed significantly. And yes, I'm sure they're starving for the technology that fits the model that they're being pushed to adopt. Vahe: Yeah, yeah absolutely. I mean it's interesting, if you summarize some of the business challenges or the things that are coming from multiple conversation. We had the nuanced [inaudible 00:29:04] a few months back. And so it's almost the first fiscal year where we're going to be able to strategize, operate together as one organization. And it's great because somehow you take their own experience in terms of conversational AI and what they have been leading in for many years. And at the same time you hear both, let's say, the customer feedback when it comes to, as you said, the traditional contact center or call center evolution. How to translate this into a modern service experience, right? Vahe: And how AI can contribute to that on the seamless integrated way. How to think about customer retention in this world where people are a bit more struggling with their bottom line. How to protect the customer privacy as well. Because you talk about voice capability and recording, but how you cope with the privacy and the security during this service journey. So all these are absolutely great opportunities for us to combine what we're hearing, the technology and the acquisition that we did a few months back, to put that into a great component. And I would say the data analytics that the power Platform Power BI gives us on the back end, is going to be a great platform for us again to differentiate from the rest of the world. Steve: Well and it'll also help kind offset the fact that these people are all remote now, right? They used all be sitting in this big room. And people were standing up there looking over a rail at them making sure they were doing what they were doing and available. And you can't lose any of the customer service quality just because you've moved everybody out of the building and nobody can physically see them anymore. AI is the only way to plug that hole really of being able to know what's going on in this organization with all those people remote. In your day-to-day activities, I'm assuming that since you're head of sales that you get engaged with all of the big opportunities that come to Microsoft. And you're in there leading the charge to get them to make a decision for the services. What are the areas that you're seeing among those larger customers that they're really excited about? Is it the low-code stuff, is that very exciting to them? Or are they still wrapping their arms around that? Vahe: No, no. I would say that the notion of, let's say, application modernization, which doesn't mean I do the same thing I was doing before in the cloud. Really thinking about, what do I want to fix? And how much I can include some perspective about what could happen in some, let's say options or scenario? That capability that Power Apps has been giving them. And now we see that the corporations who are the most successful are the one who are almost creating a center of excellence within their own organization, that let's say help the IT to monitor someone, in fact the usage rate. But also to amplify the user experience and to spread it across the organization. And the ability to almost measure the positive impact. Vahe: The second thing I've seen is on the low-code, no-code, is the time to value. It's almost like you can almost now, and when I say “we,” it's almost we with the partners. We can almost say for this type of let's say expectation, or application, or challenge, it will take three month to be ready, not three years, two years. Or we have a heavy development environment. And so this center of excellence, let's say mindset or framework, is a very powerful one. Because it helps to almost create a concentration of hey, what are the most critical things to fix and how long it's going to take? Vahe: And people are almost, let's say very impressed, about how quickly you can have great quality because you bring both the expertise of, as I said, almost the person who is facing the challenge every single day. Being non-technical guy, we have in fact the support of IT. And I think that's the business decision makers along with the IT. I think to me, that's why we have been on this six, seven times faster than the market rate. We have huge ambition there. And be aware that we have also 20 million of users of Power Apps today that came from the city campaigns. So people are actively using it, not yet paying it. So that means that it's great, it's the future almost by, for us to go after. Because people are starting to use in fact at least the basic functions to get adjusted customers to and so on. Vahe: The second thing I would say is that people have realized how easy it is, and recognizing that Teams became a platform close to 300 million users. It started at 25 or 30 million almost pre-pandemic. And so that became, almost as you said, you are at home, or you are wherever you are and that's the interaction that you have with your customers, partners, ecosystem and employees. And so now it's a marginal component to say hey, can I have one tab that is going to do that type of task? My forecasting, my thing. So this is again the connection between what you use every single day at scale, and the marginal cost of bringing a component of Dynamics 365, a component of the application that you create quickly for Power Apps or Power Automate from the process, implementation, and automation. So I think that's what I see the two biggest part of the customer reaction, and I would say feedback for us. And encouragement to be fair, to keep going in that direction. Steve: We've got lots of examples that you guys have got out on the case studies of large companies that have really got in head first. And just thousands of apps in the organization solving thousands of problems. And just excellent, I mean you just have to almost grin when you look and hear about these things. But for every one of those there's still a bunch of them out there where, I don't know, IT maybe is still an obstacle. I mean IT has been, it's interesting because IT's been a friend of Microsoft for a long time because a lot of the products that they have engaged with were Microsoft products, servers, et cetera. They've had to make this transition to cloud, which was scary for them. But they ultimately did it for the most part, not all of them, did it. And now here comes low-code, no-code that's got to scare the bejesus out of a lot of IT folks. And how are you at that company size? Because frankly, we struggle with the same thing in the mid-market. How, at that big company size, do you deal with that occasional obstinance from it? Vahe: Yeah, it's a great point. You're right. I think Microsoft in general, I don't want to generalize, but in general have been for the last four years, very, very close to the IT decision makers. And rightfully so, because there were so many and still so many things to achieve in partnership with the IT and CIO environment. At the same time, when it comes to business applications or business process, I would say that you need to find the balance between the business decision makers, who are the ultimate decision makers when it comes to what is going to affect their business, or the way they work from a Salesforce perspective, or the way the marketing leaders wants to automate some of the processes that they believe is important. Vahe: And so that we probably are in a unique business case at Microsoft, where you have to talk to both. And the learning is that in the very beginning where you were only talking to IT, for example in the low-code, no-code, you could have signed a deal with IT, but then you know almost had to start to sell it again internally. Because you had to knock to all the doors of the business decision makers to say, Hey, do you know that you have this thing in your corporation, and anyway this is the thing that you can do, do you mind starting over there? Vahe: And so that was basically almost a waste of cycle. And so we said we have to do these two things together. We need to be able to articulate what is the value of low-code, no-code, maybe in FSI, financial service, or manufacturing, or in retail. And of course there's a strong common denominator. But there are some specifics that may resonate more for some industries more than others, and therefore the decision makers. And we have seen that when we do these things well together in parallel, when you sign the contract, or the deal, or the agreement, the time to move to usage or the business case implementation is much faster. Basically you bring more value both to IT and the business, and for Microsoft. And so I think that's the piece where I think it evolved on low-code, no-code, from being afraid in the beginning or skeptical, to a place where they are increasingly embracing this center of excellence environment. Where they own it as [inaudible 00:38:55]. It is connected to the business decision makers, therefore it brings value. Vahe: And so IT brings value to the business decisions or the business unit and the line of business. And then what was missing so far was, how can we give them the monitoring environment, almost the control board to manage the budget, to manage let's say, or having warning to say, hey, business A, you know are over consuming. Should we lower the investment or should we accelerate because of what you are doing? So I think that the kind of tools that we are bringing now to the IT, so that they are absolutely part of the success of the company and they are connected to the business decision makers. I think that's the best way for us to demonstrate value and keep it completely aligned with the business directions. Steve: And the opposite would be true also if you're going in trying to sell the line of business owner without talking to IT. And you convince the, now you got to go sell IT. So it's two cycles. Vahe: Absolutely. Steve: You have to somehow get them both in the same room and do it at once. So we've got so many products coming, we've got so many products here. And if you imagine a generic customer of a large size that you're going to be going to talk to next week about all the Microsoft has to offer. What are a couple of the key products that you're going to want to make sure you land in their head, that you feel across all companies are extremely high value or differentiators? The thing you don't want to walk out of that room without mentioning? Vahe: Yeah, I would say, and somehow you touch on it Steve, earlier on. As part of the transition that we are driving, one of the thing is also to simplify. To simplify the portfolio, to simplify the go-to market, to simplify the strategy. We discussed the hub and spoke, let's say strategy. And so I would say at the very beginning, what we said is that instead of saying, hey, there's a proliferation of products. And every year we add more and more and more. And at some point you confuse your own sellers, you confuse the customer, you confuse the product, it's super tough to digest everything, and even understanding what's the hierarchy across all these things? Steve: For licensing Vahe: And licensing on top all this complexity, right? I mean we have gone through it, and it's still not perfect. But at the same time I think what we said is that there are the categories, or the line of business, that we want to go in. We want to have a fair shot to take a leadership position in the next let's say years. And what it takes to get to that point, from an innovation perspective, from a go-to market perspective, from a part program perspective, from a sales and seller investment capacity perspective. And so on. And so I would say that's more the starting point Steve, where we say we define five categories, a fine line of business, where we believe we have a shot to become a leader. And these categories we need to be able to be clear on where the value that we bring. Vahe: For example, if you take the customer experience, let's say OLAP, which is more the connected sales and marketing, if I may summarize at the high level. It's going to be all the conversation about the collaborative apps, the customer experience transformation. You have already Teams for the vast batch of you, hey that's what you want to achieve. The Dynamic 65 sales is going to give you that capability, or the LinkedIn Sales Navigator on top of it is going to give you that type of insight. You know are not touching about AI, you think about almost sales automation, Salesforce automation. Let's show you how the AI infused capability within Dynamics 365 sales and marketing, give you that asset absolutely naturally integrated on your team's environment. Vahe: And same thing on Viva Sales, the sales productivity, we can measure it the way you want, and you're on control of that. And by the way, if it works on the environment that you are working, could be Microsoft, could not be as we discussed, that's more the conversation that we want to have. And of course on the back end you are going to have Dynamics 365 sales, and marketing, and Viva sales, most of the time for that line of business. If you think about let's say low-code no-code, I would say you will have probably three type of conversations. You know will have a conversation about hey, you're a large enterprise, multi-deals coverage. And basically the benefit of having an enterprise wide, let's say engagement, what does it mean? What's the framework for you to make the most of it? And how we commit with our partners to deliver you the value. Vahe: And so you can commit on five years maybe with Microsoft and how much value we can bring already to you. Or it's purely an application modernization. You move to a hyper-scale environment, but you have all these old fashioned applications. So basically, you are a platform that is modern but all your application are still old fashioned. How low-code, no-code is going to help you to accelerate that transition. And let's start with one company, one app. Pick one and let's do it right, and then replicate from there. And then potentially, in fact, the last one which I think is going to be the biggest one potentially, is the business process automation. Think about the forecasting process. I have to say that when I was running my business in Western Europe, we have been doing this traditional forecasting process, which in every company when we talk with business leaders or CFOs, that's the same thing. You ask the forecast at the lowest level of the organization, then the manager of that organization, do a judgment. That judgment moves to the next level of management. The management do another judgment. Vahe: So all the way up to the top level, who does a judgment anyway on top of it. Or they find, depending on who is doing the forecast, almost let's say a coefficient of let's say correction based on who is doing the forecast. When you start to do that thing into AI and you say what, we know the behavior of people [inaudible 00:45:26] potentially, you come after 18 months or one year to a trend of forecast that is so close to in fact what you were getting before. That you say how many hours, thousands and thousands of hours of productivity saving I'm going to have just because of this AI forecasting capability? That's the kind of example of it, for say an application for low-code, no-code, that is just checking in fact the behavior or the intelligence so far to help you to drive your business. Vahe: And so we have been running that internally as well and it's quite impressive. And so that's the kind of conversation that you want to have both with the IT, but you see this perfect example of hey, having that conversation with the CFO, or the sales leader, is a great one. Because it's a marginal cost again, to what you are using already. And the same thing happened on finance, and supply chain, and service when it comes to, all right so where you, what are you using? Are you still on-prem? The vast majority of ERP, the vast majority of contact center and call center are still on-prem. So you can think about hey, what does it take to move to a cloud and more agile environment? What are the best that you want to do? Which is the strategic partner or vendor, who are going to take this? Because you're not going to change this environment every two years. It's a 5 year, 10 year bets, right? Steve: The marriage. Vahe: It's a marriage. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean does it help Steve? Steve: Yeah. And I think interesting, one of the things I think about AI in forecasting, is it doesn't have any personal bias. And obviously in larger companies I'm sure there's a lot of checking and cross checking. In the middle market it's a bunch of optimistic sales people coming up with optimistic projections that have no basis in history or anything else that's going on, of what's going on. And I've been in meetings where we've been displaying some AI facts, or figures, or forecasts, or projections. And listen to senior people just adamantly disagree. That number is absolutely not correct. And I've had them tell me I've been doing this for 30 years, I know, I know. And then here comes next month and guess what was right? The AI model was right and the guy who's been doing it for 30 years is making up some excuses. Steve: So I think that the world right now is fraught with bad projections on everything. Cost projections, sales projections, there's too much personal bias involved in the process of creating those things. And as leadership of a company, you're relying on these things. They're going to drive you right over a cliff potentially, if you're not careful, if you don't have good information, if you can't get the bias out of it. And I think that's one of the big things that AI brings that I've found resonates with leadership sometimes, is kind of remove all the bias. I mean it's just removing all the bias. You don't want to hear smoke, you know want to hear reality so you can act accordingly. You're surrounded by a bunch of people who want to make you feel good, but AI doesn't care how you feel. It's going to tell you the truth, doesn't care if you get mad. Vahe: Steve also, it's interesting because sometime, you point to this that sometime when you are too early on the innovation, some people might be again scared or skeptical as we said. But I remember we were looking at let's say some numbers when it comes to, are we operating consistency, for example, in the world? Or there are some that say practices that are bringing more growth or more relevant than other places. And so, one thing was interesting was in the services line of business or category, you think of case management. And it's one of the opportunities. And you might say well case management is not super innovative. Well, it's something that is quite well known. But case management was one of the fastest growth in majors. And that was because it was responding to the fact that vast majority of the case management processes are still on-prem today. Vahe: And the one we're moving to the cloud, especially in public sector, to make sure that the queuing system is working, you have a full up, let's say email to tell you and tracing where you are on the request that you put in place. All these things we believe is generic everywhere, but it's not, it's by far not. And across mid-market, and large corporation, and private sector, and public sector. So it's not always innovation that drives in fact the next generation of work. It's also in fact the basics that are not fulfilled today and that create a bad customer experience. And that's interesting, in a way, to keep very humble about let's say what we still have on our plate. Steve: I can remember not that long ago, when you talk about customer service, the goal of many companies was to provide as bad as service as possible so they didn't have to do it. I mean it was a cost center for them. They hadn't come to the realization yet, this is decades, but hadn't come to realization yet that customer service is what drives future revenue. They just looked at as a cost center and figured the worst it is, the less people will use it and it'll cost us less, so that mindset has changed. You talk about fears that people have of technology. And so a lot of this is people self preservation fears. They see something coming, we saw it even in the partner channel, uh-oh here comes low-code, no-code, customers are going to be doing all the work themselves, they're not going to need us partners anymore. And it's like this first reaction that people have about anything new, is how's that going to affect me? And generally they're going to assume negatively. Steve: Our business is busier than we've ever been as a result of low-code. So it's actually been the opposite. But partners, and just like people, you know need to be prepared to pivot into that wind. If you're just going to stand there with your arms crossed and not move, yeah low-code's going to hurt you. You know need to lean into that. And the same thing with individuals that are looking at new technology. It's coming and you can either stand there with your arms crossed and let it knock you down, which is a foregone conclusion. Or you can bend with it. And to be honest, the younger folks are more flexible than us older folks. So they're not having any trouble with this technology at all. We recently signed a new customer, it's all young people and man they just get it. I mean there's no explaining anything. They understand every single thing you're talking about, why and what. And I mean they're born with a cell phone in their hand. None of this is foreign, but we still got to get rid of all of us old guys. Vahe: I agree, I agree. And time flies. And it's almost like, often, let's say, you need read to embrace that. Always a zero regret strategy in this type of, let's say, evolving environment. Anything that you postpone, to some degree, is almost let say a loss. And that has been proven in the technology run. And when I look at, we always have to be humble. It's a highly competitive market, and people are smart, and that's great. Cause as we discussed, it's all good for the customer. But I think that when I look back to the commitment of the company, the investment that we put in place last year with the support of Satya, Amy Hood, [inaudible 00:53:27]. With more than 1000 sellers injected in the marketplace, we keep going on the investment on the local no-code, even more so to drive the acceleration of the growth in addition to the Dynamic 365. Vahe: When I look at every category that we are in now, and I think it's a good confidence level that we on the path here. That first of all, we are between two times and three times the growth of the market for each of these category, that's a good indication. And I think that also raise the confidence level of the product sellers at Microsoft. To bring these different components together and add more value to the customer. So look, it's a journey Steve, and it's quite exciting to be on this. And people like yourself because we have been there also for a long time, and you know what it takes to transition. And you never fail, you learn always. And everything that you learn and that works, it's almost to think how we can scale and bring that to the mass as quick as we can so that people can benefit from it. Steve: Well success breeds success. And you know guys have got it going right now. I've taken up enough of your time. Anything that you want to get out there that I didn't ask or we didn't talk about? Vahe: No, I think, Steve, you did a good overview of let's say where we are, how we think. Again, I think that the simplification, the portfolio, the much more focused approach, the category, and more consistent execution on the go-to market is really the next level for us. And the hub and spoke strategy across all these categories gives much more room to increase the business opportunity for us and the partners. Steve: Yep, I think so, I think so. All right, listen, it was great talking to you, I'm glad you made the time. And I definitely hope to able to talk to you again in the future, get something new to talk about. Any time you want to reach out, and jump on, and talk about some stuff, let me know. We're happy to get you on. Vahe: We are all, let's say reading all these, let's say headlines on the recession. In a few months from now, between now and then of calendar year, we're to see a bit more clarity on how the planning is happening for the mid-market, large corporation, how the public sector is evolving in this dimension. And also, we'll have a few, let's say product launched that we talked about, Viva Sales, any learning from that, let's say maybe the first two, three months, would be interesting to see how people react. And maybe that could be a great opportunity for us to chat. Also what's going on the [inaudible 00:56:17] Steve: Yeah, yeah. Vahe: Plenty of things to talk, I guess. Steve: Sounds good. All right, well hey, thanks again for your time. Vahe: Thank you. Take care Steve, have a great day.

Since a bit of time has passed since the last episode, let me briefly bring you up-to-date: In June, we at NETRONIC organized an event series that we run under our "next by NETRONIC" event brand. The idea of next by NETRONIC events was to host online events in which we just play a facilitating role for having panel discussions, dive into Business Central-related topics, and avoid NETRONIC scheduling demos. Hence, the "next by NETRONIC" event brand is ideal for running an event series in which actually other ISV solutions play a key role.To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". We want to provide manufacturing ISVs the opportunity to showcase their AppSource apps to a broader audience. We - by the way - will only allow presenters that have their apps in Microsoft AppSource. With the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange, we want to make it easier for our customers and partners to find manufacturing apps that close requirement gaps ... just like our visual scheduling apps do.So, the industry vertical solutions webinar was the last of the events and two industry vertical ISVs presented their solutions:Michael Bradley works in pre-sales and marketing at PrintVis, USA, the Microsoft-certified Print MIS, a software solution specifically developed for the print industry which is built directly on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Hence, Michael contributed a lot of print industry-specific knowledge to the discussion.Adri Cardol is the Product Manager at TO-INCREASE from the Netherlands. TO-INCREASE specializes in the development, delivery, and support of industry solutions, and connectivity tools for Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC to Microsoft Dynamics partners. We had Adri in the panel discussion to share with us details about the industrial equipment manufacturing industry.

 Following last week's shopfloor discussion episode, here is the 28th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Again, this episode originates from our Business Central Manufacturing Exchange webinar series. It is a recorded panel discussion on warehouse challenges and solutions. I hosted this panel discussion and was excited to have Žilvinas Lapačinskas (Software Baltic), Mark Hamblin (Insight Works), and James Crowter (Clever Dynamics) as my guests. To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". With the event series, we want to provide manufacturing ISVs the opportunity to showcase their AppSource apps to a broader audience. So, last week, we ran a warehouse solutions webinar in which three warehouse ISVs presented their solutions. At the end of the webinar, I hosted a panel discussion with all three warehouse experts. Namely, these are Žilvinas Lapačinskas is a supply chain management consultant at Softera Baltic from Lithuania. Softera is a well-known Business Central partner in the Baltics. They understand how manufacturing, commerce, and service companies work so that they can offer fitting industrial and process automation solutions.Mark Hamblin is President of Insight Works, a Canadian-based ISV specializing in manufacturing and distribution apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.James Crowter is a Microsoft MVP and the Managing Director at Clever Dynamics from the UK. Clever Dynamics provides a range of clever apps for smarter manufacturing and distribution that are seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.I highly recommend that you not only tune into this podcast which is the recording of this panel discussion. Instead, I also recommend that you watch the recording of the entire webinar to see how Softera, Insight Works, and Clever Dynamics can help you with your warehouse challenges.

The 27th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show is somewhat different than all the others that you have been listening to so far. This episode is not a conversation with one guest. Instead, it is a recorded panel discussion on shopfloor challenges and solutions. I hosted this panel discussion and was excited to have Bent Korsgaard (Naveksa), Mark Hamblin (Insight Works), and Matthew Woodhouse (Clever Dynamics) as my guests.A bit of background: Recently, we at NETRONIC ran a webinar series that we called the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange. Oftentimes, when we speak to customers (and also to partners), we are confronted with requirements that are outside our scheduling core competency. Sometimes, we are asked for shopfloor solutions and time tracking. Another time, it is product configuration. And yet another time, it is that people request some warehouse functionality from us. Not seldomly, we are also asked for manufacturing solutions that are specific to one particular industry.  Hence, we grasped a general need for more transparency on the Business Central manufacturing apps and solutions landscape. We took that need seriously and launched the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange to address this need. To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". So, last week, we ran a shopfloor solutions webinar in which three shopfloor ISVs presented their solutions. At the end of the webinar, I hosted a panel discussion with all three shopfloor expertsI highly recommend that you not only tune into this podcast which is the recording of this panel discussion. Instead, I also recommend that you watch the recording of the entire webinar to see how Naveksa, Insight Works, and Clever Dynamics can help you with your shopfloor challenges.

Introduction to Season 4 Welcome to the Get Your New View podcast. Keep listening to learn how we work with frustrated Business Central and NAV users who struggle to use their system and find the answers they need. We teach them to truly understand how the system can support their business processes to make immediate improvements. As a result, they get more done in less time and make better business decisions. In this next season of the Get Your New View podcast, I'd like you to meet even more members of our Get Your New View team who have brought examples of their favorite projects they've worked on with our customers to create efficiencies, utilize automation, and use even more of the features of their business central platform. Two of our consultants, Cari Corozza and Cynthia Priebe, also trainers, share stories about why this class is so important and impactful to our customers.  Essential points covered in this episode: ✔️Even if someone has been using Business Central for years, they always discover and re-discover something new in the first hour of our BC/NAV personalization & navigation classes.   ✔️One of the main things that people take away from our course is knowing that they can get more time to do the actual work rather than waste time figuring out steps or processes.  ✔️We often meet users who complain that they can't find things in the system. It's taking them too long, or they're frustrated and bookmarked 30 items and still can't find stuff anyway. ✔️ We teach navigation and personalization as a prerequisite for some of our other classes to train the often underutilized or forgotten basics. It's important for us to help users have their aha moments and walk away from a class armed with little tricks that will create big success. ✔️ The Saved Views feature has been available in the NAV system since 2009, yet many users have to filter their list views for the same thing repeatedly. This is the personalization that is underutilized and could save so much time.  ✔️There are many ways to do things in the BC/Nav system to accomplish the same end result. But we like to show the 'righter' way so that you can do it more efficiently & accurately.  ✔️What's our biggest difference at New View Strategies? We teach our classes by taking real-world experiences that we have ourselves and what we've seen people and organizations do. Working with numerous end users showed us the positive and negative impacts of changes people make in personalization. Whether it's the quick entry, personalizing the screen, expanding and collapsing fast tabs, or promoting fields, these little things make a difference to the user's experience that can make their work and life easier. About Kerry Peters & New View Strategies: Kerry Peters is the CEO of New View Strategies, a company known for solving mission-critical business problems and a straight-talking, experiential approach to training and process improvement for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV. Our relationships are long-term, and our clients report that they have boosted efficiency, solved business problems, and had fun in the process!   Let the experts help you tap into the true power of your BC / NAV system.  You're struggling with challenges, and you know your Business Central / NAV ERP solution can help, but you're not sure how. We do. Whatever you're challenged with or searching for, we've been there – as a user and partner. You won't find the level of no-nonsense, front-line experience we offer anywhere else, and we're here to put that experience to work for you.  ✅ Why Choose New View? With our team's average of 15 years of real-world BC / NAV partner and end-user experience, we know where to look and what to ask to discover how to make your BC / NAV investment work better for you.  Contact us today: https://getyournewview.com/services/    

Witam w sto pięćdziesiątym ósmym odcinku podcastu „Porozmawiajmy o IT”. Tematem dzisiejszej rozmowy jest ścieżka kariery programisty ERP.Dziś moim gościem jest Michał Chyczewski – Starszy konsultant/programista ERP. Do zespołu IT.integro dołączył zaraz po ukończeniu Szkoły Głównej Handlowej. Od 12 lat pracuje z systemem ERP Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, znanym wcześniej jako Dynamics NAV oraz Navision. Brał udział w parudziesięciu projektach wdrożeń, upgrade'ów i bieżącego rozwoju u klientów o różnej skali działalności i branży. Zajmował się analizą wymagań, szkoleniami użytkowników, wsparciem, programowaniem. Obecnie koncentruje się na zarządzaniu projektami, release management, opiece nad nowymi pracownikami.W tym odcinku o ścieżce kariery programisty ERP rozmawiamy w następujących kontekstach:czym są i jaką rolę sprawują systemy ERP?jakie technologie obecnie są używane w ERP?czym się zajmuje programista-konsultant ERP?jakie kompetencje poza technologiczne musi posiadać taka osoba?jak zacząć karierę programisty/konsultanta ERP?jak wygląda praca konsultanta Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?jak rozwija się cała branża systemów ERP?czy ta dziedzina IT, jaką są systemy ERP jest przyszłościowa?czy w tym zawodzie występują specjalizacje domenowe?jak może wyglądać ścieżka rozwoju kariery programisty-konsultanta ERP?jak wygląda rekrutacja na takie stanowisko?Subskrypcja podcastu:zasubskrybuj w Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spreaker, Sticher, Spotify, przez RSS, lub Twoją ulubioną aplikację do podcastów na smartphonie (wyszukaj frazę „Porozmawiajmy o IT”)poproszę Cię też o polubienie fanpage na FacebookuLinki:Profil Michała na LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/michalchyczewski/Praca w IT.Integro – https://kariera.integro.pl/Wsparcie:Wesprzyj podcast na platformie Patronite - https://patronite.pl/porozmawiajmyoit/Jeśli masz jakieś pytania lub komentarze, pisz do mnie śmiało na krzysztof@porozmawiajmyoit.plhttps://porozmawiajmyoit.pl/158

The guest in episode 26 of Martin's Business Central Manufacturing Show was Andrei Panko. Andrei is a program manager in the Business Central engineering team at the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Having a Microsoft employee as a guest on the podcast was really a novelty. In the other episodes so far, all speakers were Business Central manufacturing experts working for a Microsoft partner. So this podcast provides most interesting insider insights into how things work in the Microsoft Business Central development team.Andrei started working as a consultant, developer, and project manager in 2004 - back then it was Dynamics NAV, of course - and was an MVP for six years running. He has extensive field experience in the supply chain and has engaged in many other aspects of the Business Central application and platform as well. Besides, he is the author of the book "Supply Chain Management in Microsoft Dynamics NAV", which was published in 2008, and he holds a patent for metadata-driven machine learning for systems.Before diving into how things happen at Microsoft, Martin first wanted to know how Andrei got into manufacturing and how it does matter to him. Andrei related that one of his first customers was a small manufacturing company that needed to improve its processes and for whom he purchased and implemented Business Central.According to Andrei, the great strength of Business Central, even back then, was that it could be easily and flexibly modified to fit specific unique company processes. While Andrei and Martin agreed that this strength still exists, they both think that the way of creating these enhancements has changed quite a lot. In their opinion what had been real customizations in the past, now increasingly get turned into apps.This led to a discussion about whether Business Central has become a much more core part of Microsoft's overall strategy, by e.g., providing the AppSource infrastructure or integrating it with Power Platform.Andrei gave a short "historical" discourse from how the ERP was deployed 20 to 30 years ago to how it is done today by way of SaaS. The red thread running through this development over time is one of the core initiatives at Microsoft Business Central. The team has been helping partners reduce the number of ad-hoc developments. This not only changed the selling and deployment model of many partners but also changed the requirements for Business Central.In order to help partners and customers reduce the number of ad-hoc developments, Business Central has become tighter integrated with the Office products, tools are now much better integrated with the overall ERP and there is much more tooling support also from the power platform.In this context they talked about another way of reducing ad-hoc developments, namely listening to, and using the feedback they get from customers and partners. Andrei related two interesting facts:The development teams do not receive much direct feedback from end-users and customers.Mostly, the partners only give feedback about their own needs instead of those of the end-users, and they prefer to get tools to solve their customers' problems instead of getting solutions for these problems directly.

Episode 25 of  Martin's podcast was all about the difficulties and obstacles that can stand in the way of a successful implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.The guest in this jubilee episode was James Crowter from the UK. He is the founder and Managing Director of Technology Management, an established Navision and Business Central partner whom everybody knows as TecMan. In addition, Microsoft has appointed him as MVP (most valuable professional) for business applications for the sixth year running. And if that was not enough, he last year volunteered to become the chairman of the Directions EMEA committee.James is passionate about how businesses can improve their efficiency by getting process optimal more of the time. And for the last 25 years, he has been working to help organizations of all sizes and types implement the ERP and CRM software that typically they decide they need when things are going wrong. While he has seen projects run unbelievably well, at the same time he has also had some unbelievably hard projects.Of course, this statement was the ideal hook for Martin and he wanted to know the reasons why projects become hard. Likewise, he asked for tips on how to avoid such negative experiences. James stated that in companies wanting to implement a new system, often the misconception prevails that buying software is a magic bullet to make them well organized.But there is more to it. For James, accuracy is not achieved by just implementing software but is a state of mind. Hence, in some cases, in addition to changing the software, companies also have to change their people's approach to the way that they do things.According to James, "garbage in, garbage out" is one of the main reasons why projects sometimes become so hard. To avoid this, ERP users should strive at having a well-structured and maintained database. You can have the best tool in the world but if you don't use it in the correct way and if you feed it poorly maintained data, you won't get a good result. Consequently, people need to know that they have to be prepared to put in the work to get the results they want. From James' experience, this bit is often what they lack. In that regard, an important parameter for many ERP-supported processes in manufacturing is precise time estimations. Often the responsible people only have a rough idea about what process is going to take how much time and will be done by whom. But it is vital that the processes get quantified precisely. You have to outline them as early as possible in as much detail as possible. As it is absolutely essential that a significant amount of time is put in for initial data entry and initial data structure definition, the question arose as to what extent this is manual work or can be automated. As James put it, the key question here is rather "What do you actually need?" than "What have you historically done?" and that requires not the data entry per se, but needs decisions about what the data should be. This is a process of evolving and revising and hence is very individual.This led them back to the key message of their conversation, the importance of the manual and thorough and thoughtful parameter set up - now with a focus on item parameters. They agreed that it is vital that this is done by the production managers or whoever is in charge of the production because these people know their company's needs and hence should not delegate this task to temps or outsource it.The conversation then ended with Martin's admission that before the two of them would meet again - this already being a done deal - he certainly would need to get smart on item parameter setting.

Martin talked to Bart Vanbelle from Belgium who is Business Consultant with the Belgian partner ESC. Bart's background is different from all the guests in the podcast so far. He started his career with international experiences as a cocktail bartender. After shortly running two catering businesses for a few years, he first came into contact with Navision, version 2009. He was a key user in a Navision implementation. Surprisingly enough, being part of an ERP implementation enthused him more than mixing drinks. Hence, he decided a U-turn move for his career at the age of 30. He started studying supply chain management full-time, had his bachelor after 3 years and joined ESC. At ESC, he is mainly responsible for manufacturing implementations and just recently got promoted to being the team lead of ESCs center of manufacturing excellence. In the conversation, Bart surprised Martin with the ADKAR model and mixed a delicious "knowledge cocktail" of how to successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.Phase 1 - A like AwarenessAs Bart pointed out, every company that wants to implement an ERP, should be crystal-clear about the purpose for this step. Depending on the kind of company the answers to this will, of course, differ. Some companies want to gain some extra revenue, for example, others again aim at saving time. Just saying "we want it", would not be the right motivation at all.Phase 2 - D like DesireOnce the purpose for the implementation is clear, the questions will get more specific. In the desire phase, the key users should learn the reasons why they are going to make the change and what will be in it for them, and, of course, how it will help the company in general.As Bart related, he has often met key users that either didn't know the answers to these questions or just said, "because we have to". And again, this would not be the right motivation.At this point, the implementation team not only needs to provide the technology and analyze and optimize the processes but also make clear to the users how they will benefit from the change.Phase 3 - K like KnowledgeIn the K phase, the key users will acquire knowledge about the new system. There will be trainings and workshops in which they will learn how the system works and see what is the best fit for their department and their end users. Depending on how the key users have adapted to phase A and D, the K phase will be more or less successful.Or, as Bart puts it, the learning curve will be higher or lower, depending on the reaction to phase 1 and 2. When somebody isn't interested in learning a certain topic, why should he?What makes Bart as a consultant the happiest is when he gets to a point where users are so interested in the solution that they start learning and doing research on their own initiative.Phase 4 - A like AbilityAccording to Bart, a lot of knowledge is needed to work with Business Central and looking at it for the first time can be really overwhelming. But once users have acquired the knowledge, they can start to use the system independently and even try to challenge it.And when users start challenging the system, Bart is sure he has done a good job. If users know more than him he is sure that they will benefit from the new system.Ability, as Bart puts it, should be a consequence. If you have the desire to work with a system, the ability will follow automatically. Phase 5 - R like ReinforcementOnce the project is live, the implementation team's work is still not finished. Every couple of months or weeks they will go back to the company and evaluate the project together with the people on site. As Bart explains, there are always things that need checking or can be improved. 

Martin met with Shannon Mullins, Chief Revenue Officer of Accelerynt, and a Microsoft MVP of business applications. She has over 20 years of experience in - amongst others - deployment implementation of CRM and ERP systems and hence has a deep understanding of the functional aspects of projects' process automation and system design and the reporting needs and requirements for complex ERP systems. While talking to Shannon for the first time at last year's Directions EMEA in Milan, Martin quickly noticed to his shame, that he never had a woman as a guest to his podcast and decided on the spot to change this.So it happened that Shannon agreed to become the first in – as we hope – a long line of female guests. After having wondered a bit about the fact that more people from Europe visit the Directions North America than vice versa, Shannon related that some years ago, she switched into the manufacturing focus and that she liked manufacturing projects because they are a lot more complex and detailed than just a pure financial project.Then it was straight to the main topic of the podcast: how moving to the cloud helps smooth and automate processes in Business Central. Process improvement and automation is run by Shannon and her team by looking at how manufacturers are currently doing their processes. Then they figure out how they not only can leverage Business Central but also Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps so that the manufacturer gets a robust future-forward system. In short, Shannon recommends making multi-step processes into one step. Using ERP in the cloud together with the power platform leads to spending less time on development and more time on improvement in customer service, which in turn smoothes integration processes and also saves money.The customers' reporting needs and the KPIs they want to see depend on who is consuming the reports and here one can distinguish two types: On the one hand, the very detail-oriented accountants and on the other hand people running a plant or part of the plant who are looking more at the summary level and want to have an overall picture.Concentrating on the latter, one sees that the KPIs that are important to them very much depend on whether they are more labor-centric or more machine-centric. Of course, a manufacturer with very expensive machinery is usually more concerned about those machines being up than a customer that is very retail, who, in turn, will be more concerned about keeping delivery dates.In this context and together with the ever more advanced automation processes, one can observe that the KPIs tend to change their nature from backward-looking into becoming forward-looking and predictive. The past approach was, for instance, that companies came to work on Monday and saw that there was a machine downtime on Friday. Then they tried to figure out why. With Business Central and the power platform, manufacturing clients now can get a real-time notification and with this can make much more real-time decisions and pivots.Shannon and Martin agreed that with moving to the cloud, ERP has totally transformed in that data have become much more real-time and you can automate more processes. The danger associated with an increasing automation degree, of course, lies in getting rid of people.But this is not what is intended - the purpose is rather to make people's work more meaningful and also to change the scope of their work. What's more, having everything real-time and transparent certainly increases the pressure on production leaders: Now that they have to make more informed decisions, they have to make sure they have the reporting they need. And that's where automation can come in place. Rather than sitting there and watching reports all day long and trying to figure out what's going on, they get an automated notification if something happens that they should be aware of.

I met with Ken Sebahar, who is the President of Solution Systems, Inc., a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner near Chicago, Illinois. Ken and his colleague Michael host the great podcast “A Shot of Business Central and a Beer” in which they provide listeners with news and updates related to Business Central in an entertaining manner. Of course, with a podcast like this, beer was the ideal hook for our conversation. At the beginning of our conversation, you can learn which of us enjoys an advent calendar with German beer. If you listen until the episode's end, you also hear who loves drinking a hot wine punch at a Christmas market. Well, after and before chatting about drinks, we flew full circle on Business Central production orders, jobs, and assembly orders.Once we had the beer advent calendar thing clarified, we started to differentiate typical manufacturing companies. Ken used two key criteria. I would call one criterion the "degree of process repeatability and predictability". Dimensions of this criterium are item structure, BOM, routings, operations, scrap percentages, etc. The second criterion to look at is both the billing and the cost recognition process. The combination of those criteria helps you to figure out if a manufacturer tends to qualify either for the Business Central manufacturing module or for the Business Central jobs module.  However, oftentimes the decision between the jobs and the manufacturing module is not an either/or decision. Instead, Ken favors combining both functionalities for those manufactures with individual, project-type deliveries that base on standardized, but proprietary items. Combining jobs and manufacturing enables customers to benefit from all WIP billing, costing, and revenue recognition advantages that the job module brings. Likewise, customers can add all required items as job planning lines to the bespoke job - independent if those items get purchased or manufactured. The integrated Business Central planning engine sees the demand from the job planning lines and creates suggestions in the planning worksheet. That way, customers can create production orders. When they complete them, they can output the items into inventory. Then, these items can be used by the job journal to consume those manufactured items. Thus, the cost for making those items get associated with the project.However, customers that build bespoke items do not necessarily need to work with production orders. Ken not only points out to assembly orders. He also positions them as "manufacturing light" and precisely describes the sweat spot for assembly orders as follows:Very simple manufacturing processVery predictable amount of time that it takes to produce each unitVery little scrap, and no variance in the amount of scrapSmooth operationSo ultimately, Ken recommends that manufacturers with a project-type of delivery look a jobs and either production orders or assembly orders. He is also very clear about the fact that manufacturing allows taking into account much more parameters for both planning and scheduling.Interestingly enough, this brings us to the Business Central function called capacity constrained resources. Ken shows a very pragmatic approach to when and how to use this function. However, other than many other folks I spoke about it before, he manages to discover and justify a place for that function.This pragmatism truly inspired me, and we kept going for more pragmatic scenarios of using and implementing Business Central jobs, manufacturing, and assembly. Ken coined the phrase "crawl, then walk, the run" and agrees that we currently observe a paradigm shift in implementing EPR projects.

Two weeks ago, I met Krzysztof Bialowas from Poland who not only is the Dynamics Business Central Team Leader from the Danish company Dynaway. Krzysztof is also a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) and the inventor of the famous Dynamics bearings. Before the show, we figured out that we share a passion for football (some people dare call it soccer), but decided to keep that part out of our conversation.Instead, we did what is expected in the Business Central manufacturing and chatted about, well, Business Central and manufacturing. The conversation quickly became very hands-on and practical. Krzysztof had a lot of real-life experiences to share. Hence, this episode is full of Business Central manufacturing tips and best practices.From Krzysztof's experience, the ideal approach to implement Dynamics 365 Business Central manufacturing is to start with understanding the production processes. Once (fully) understood, they can get mapped in the ERP system. For him, gaining an understanding of the production processes is so crucial that he highly recommends starting any manufacturing project with a factory visit. If this isn't possible due to travel regulations, partners and customers should make sure to involve a variety of people in the remote consulting meetings. A Business Central manufacturing project is likely to fail if only the management team is involved. Instead, Krzysztof advises compensating for the missing factory visit by having meetings with the shopfloor operators. Talking with them helps best to get a comprehensive understanding of the production processes.Once the processes are understood, a system such as Dynamics 365 Business Central can get successfully implemented. Then it unveils all its advantages for the customers. One fundamental advantage of Business Central is that it is not solely designed for manufacturing. Instead, it is designed all about finance. Business Central allows manufacturers to integrate the shop floor processes with all financial processes. This goes from automatically registering time and quantity on production orders with PLC devices to automatically sending invoices after the successful shipment to the client. With that degree of integration between production and finance processes, manufacturing customers can significantly reduce any sort of manual work.When implementing Business Central for a new client, Krzysztof favors a staged approach. He is against doing everything at the same time. Instead, he always would start with implementing the warehouse as this is the place, where production starts (with all the raw material) and where it ends. Starting with the warehouse helps to layout bot the structure and the flow of the items. Once this is in place, manufacturing can get implemented as well. After that, customers should first work with the system. They should understand how planning and scheduling, and hence the entire system works. This level of understanding is crucial for then starting to integrate external services and automate processes. It is step by step.From the above, I was under the impression that "doing it all once" would be the biggest mistake that manufacturers can make when implementing Business Central. However, Krzysztof surprised me by pointing the most critical point of failure in implementing Business Central manufacturing. This is the transition period from the previous system to Business Central (btw: Typically, Business Central isn't the entry-level ERP system for most manufacturing companies. This was empirically proven by our State of Business Central and Manufacturing Report). 

Sonja Klimke ist ein Urgestein in der Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Welt und bei Partnern und Kunden bekannt und beliebt. Sie schreibt Bücher, organisiert Anwender-Messen und ist als Consultant mit dem Händchen und Blick für die und aus der Praxis natürlich ein wunderbarer Gast, wenn es darum geht - Business Central: Wo kommt es her, wo geht es hin, was ist alles drin? Aber wir sprechen nicht nur über Business Central (fka NAV oder NAVISION), sondern auch die Rolle des Consultants in der neuen Welt, über die Online-Version und deutsche Internet-Wüsten, über die Fülle (oder Flut?) an Apps für BC, über Community-Arbeit und vieles mehr. Bei Fragen steht Sonja gern zur Verfügung (Ein Tipp: Sie mag Schokolade). Ihr findet sie auf LinkedIn und hier: https://www.spots-bss.com/

Heute sprechen Daniel Höhnke und Tim Schestag über das von Shopify angekündigte ERP Programm mit z.B. Microsoft (Dynamcis Business Central = ehemals Navision). Damit sollen Anbindunegn von ERP Systemen an Shopify deutlich vereinfacht werden, was ein super Ziel, aber in der Umsetzung sehr schwer zu erreichen ist. In den News der Woche: - VueStorefront sackt Finanzierungsrunde über 17,4 Mio. Dollar ein - SAP Chef Fordert Digitalministerium - Amazon in Indien von Reuters bei Produktkopie und besseren Platzierungen "erwischt" Übern Tellerrand geschaut: - Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall: Wie uns Deutschen die vermeintlich kleineren Europäer zeigen wie Digitalisierung geht.

Heute nehmen wir wieder eine App für Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central unter die Lupe. Belege und Berichte in Business Central sind bei jedem ein Thema. Sie sollen dem CI des Unternehmens und den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen entsprechen, einfach anzupassen sein und das bitte nicht immer für viele tausende Taler in tausend Tagen. Mit der Erweiterung ForNAV soll das ganz easy sein. Jennifer Singleton, Geschäftsführerin bei ForNAV ist unser Gast in dieser Folge und gibt uns allen tolle Einblicke in die Welt von ForNAV. …und das Thema „RDLC und Word-Reports lokal drucken“ hat ForNAV auch gelöst. Da sich unsere Moderatorin Birgit und Jennifer schon seit über 10 Jahren kennen und "alte NAV / Business Central Hasen" sind, gibt's natürlich auch ne Menge Real-Talk über die gesamte Microsoft Dynamics 365 Plattform. ForNAV in bewegten Bildern findet Ihr hier: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpjnuA-F0c9PllSe-RjsBWIytWegCfvc

This episode is sponsored by ExpandIT.   Field service solutions maintain a unique position in the world of business software. It serves a distinct purpose and is used by very specific roles, and yet it also needs to work alongside other critical systems like a Dynamics ERP solution.   John Macdonald, group CSO and regional president for North America at ExpandIT joins us to talk about the types of businesses adopting field service today and how his firm's solution has matured alongside common ERPs like Dynamics 365 Business Central. We discuss the types of deployments and business outcomes his clients are seeking today, including some of his observations from recent customer conversations. For example, he estimates that eight percent of the prospects his sales team talks with are not moving from another field service solution but rather using manual, unstructured processes today.   As you will hear, John brings a unique perspective as a solution provider. Before joining ExpandIT, he held roles at Navision and Microsoft, so he is understands the challenges of the ERP-focused partner and how field service touch points should be optimized.   Show Notes: 1:20 - John's history with Navision and Microsoft before joining ExpandIT 3:35 - What types of organizations benefit from field service software? 6:00 - The story of a growing business that was falling behind on service 9:00 - What are organizations' starting points today? 12:30 - Have ERP project experiences prepared customers for getting the most out of a field service deployment? 16:00 - How ExpandIt engages with customers and partners 20:00 - Navigating the need for a single source of truth between field service and other systems like ERP 23:45 - How a field service deployment typically rolls out (hint: speed matters) 28:00 - The types of business outcomes services firms are seeking   About ExpandIT : ExpandIT Field Service software puts information at your service technicians' fingertips – digitally. Easily track key information, access up to date data, view a real-time overview of job related information, complete checklists and provide photographic proof of work completed.

Ja was ist das denn? DYNAMO APPs für Zahlungsverkehr, Finanzwesen und Kartenterminal-Anbindung in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central - die machen Anwender einfach glücklich. Angelika Lanbin, erzähl doch mal was die DYNAMO APPs so alles können. Wer mich kennt weiß, dass ich seit 2004 ein Microsoft-Mädchen bin, vom Kopf bis unter die Füße. Damals hieß Business Central noch NAV (und kurz vorher noch NAVISION) und die heutige APP DYNAMO PAY hieß "Diskettenclearing / elektronischer Zahlungsverkehr". Leute, wo ist die Zeit geblieben?

I met again with Robert Jolliffe for the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He is our first guest, who is on the podcast for the second time. Robert is President & CEO of Sabre Limited in Canada. He has been an ERP consultant for 25 years and holds a Microsoft Engineer designation.  In this episode, Robert shares why Dynamics 365 Business Central is the right system for engineering-to-order (ETO) companies. Of course, he does this thoughtfully and points out what makes ETOs so special.This question of what characterizes an ETO also marks the starting point of the conversation. According to Robert, ETO's normally have more engineers than "typical" shop workers. This means that those companies are more engineering-heavy. These engineers are highly technical people, thus managing human resources is much more important than in production or manufacturing, where you would see a lot more scheduling of machines and equipment. When we try to understand this in the context of Business Central, Robert explains that the ETO does not typically have any predefined routings nor bills-of-materials (BOMs). BOMs are made even after quotation when the order from the customer has been received already. This is because every final output is a highly customized product with a very low quantity. Oftentimes, the batch size is one.As a consequence, material requirements planning (MRP), inventory control, and safety stocks, which are the backbone of "typical" manufacturing companies are not important for an ETO. Most of the time, materials are just purchased for a specific project. Hence, data is much simpler and more abstract compared to the data required in a non-ETO manufacturing company.  

Heute geht es um die Extension Experts - DAS EVENT für Dynamics-Anwender rund um NAV und Business Central Lösungen. Zu Gast sind heute 2 Vertreter des Organisationsteams: Jennifer Singleton und Thorsten Behrens. Beide sind schon seit Jahren im Business Central Umfeld unterwegs. Wir sprechen über die Idee des Events, worauf sich die Teilnehmer freuen können und über die geplante Extension Experts 2022 live und in Farbe in Essen. Die virtuelle Ballsaison 2021 für Business Central ist eröffnet. Spannende Vorträge zu Funktionen, Erweiterungen, Apps und Extensions - alles an einem Ort. Die virtuelle Veranstaltung findet am 16. September 2021 statt - kostenlos für alle Besucher. Zur Event-Seite mit Infos und Link zur Anmeldung geht's hier: https://www.extensionexperts.com/

I met Matthew Kiernan, Business Applications Director at Bam Boom Cloud in the UK. The conversation turned into the next episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show.When we met before the show, Matt said: "The manufacturing end of Business Central, although can be complicated, doesn't need to be super scary." I picked up that statement and opened the conversation with the WHY question. Well, the remaining 30+ minutes just flew by and Matt managed to demystify Dynamics 365 Business Central. This went as far as transferring the concept of an MVP (minimal viable product) from software product development to ERP implementation.Matt started the demystification of Dynamics 365 Business Central by nailing a benefit that each customer gets from just get going with the standard version. This is the ability to gather information and learn from it. This ability translates into making data-driven decisions.Matt pledges for an MVP (minimum viable product) approach to the ERP implementation. From his experience, this approach is the best to deal with changing requirements: Avoid serving all initial requirements from the beginning. Instead, start with the standard Business Central system, use it and gain experience. Based on these experiences, refine the requirements and implement apps (or do customizations) to close "experience-based gaps". 

The Business Central Manufacturing Show is back. This podcast started as something I would call a “first COVID lockdown project” in spring 2020. Six months ago, I lost a bit of traction, then got distracted and the podcast came to an unplanned stop. However, we analyze our marketing data.Here is the finding. We stopped the podcast. We stopped to promote it. Nevertheless, the episodes that we recorded got listeners. Week, by week. So: what is more inspiring than creating content that has, well, a "fan base"?Here we are again. We decided to make the podcast a natural part of our monthly Marketing plans. Thus, we aim for one episode a month for the time being. For my first new episode, I met Antonio Checa from Spain. And we had a great conversation on how to jumpstart Business Central production scheduling.In our conversation, we flew the full circle. We started high-level (why Business Central manufacturing). Then drilled into the details (down to why setup optimization is like finding money). We concluded on a high level again with the question if Microsoft is the Empire or the Alliance.Antonio's experience with new manufacturing customers is that they rarely come especially for the Business Central manufacturing module. Instead, they come for the entire solution and platform. Especially, the seamless integration with the Office product family is attractive to them. Typically, they share one big issue. They have an accounting system and a lot of function-specific "island solutions". It is no surprise that the latter oftentimes are made with Excel. With this, these manufacturers have a lot of information that is disconnected.The challenge is to bring all these information sources into this one Business Central platform. Antonio's advice is not to oversell Business Central. You run danger to do so if you work with the assumption that the customer is always right. The result of this is a lot of customizations and big projects (which too take long to deliver fast results). Instead of this, the first concrete tip for jumpstarting Business Central manufacturing is: stick to the standard.After that, Antonio reveals what he calls the "David Copperfield" trick: He shares concrete steps on how to implement Business Central manufacturing. Second concrete advice: do not go for heaven. Start with the financial and the billing system. Live in 2 months. Then add purchase automation with the purchasing part of the planning worksheet. After that, turn the paper-based warehousing processes into processes based on state-of-the-art technology. Now, look at implementing standard Business Central manufacturing. This allows you to use the planning worksheet in full swing. Once this is done, the scene is set for finite capacity scheduling.This triggered me to ask for the conditions that should be met to make this last step. Antonio called this the "one-million-dollar question" and surprised me with this answer. The third concrete advice for jumpstarting Business Central manufacturing is: you need to have a smart guy. This person should be familiar with both how Business Central works and with how the shopfloor works.I was truly pleased that Antonio brought the "human factor of scheduling" into the discussion. It made me ask what I sense was the "true one-million-dollar question": Should the final scheduling decision be made by the algorithm or by the person working with the scheduling software? Antonio picked it up and developed compelling thoughts on the importance of scheduling parameters and the need to continuously tune them. That brought him to the fourth piece of advice for jumpstarting Business Central production scheduling: do not blindly rely on algorithms. 

AX, NAV, GP, SL … in and amongst the acronyms, there lies a fascinating story of how Microsoft sidestepped building its own ERP by acquiring existing software. Or so it thought.Fast-forward to today, where Dynamics 365 and Business Central have largely replaced Axapta, Navision, Great Plains, and Solomon. While Microsoft will continue to provide support for these legacy products, making the move to a modern cloud ERP is not a simple upgrade.In this edition of The ERP Advisor, special guest Carly Shube joins us to explore the landscape of Microsoft legacy software and provide an outlook for the future.

El diamante en bruto para desarrolladores que no verás en las noticias tecnológicas de moda

https://youtu.be/5n6g3xVFV88 Steve Preda discusses several examples of successful value-added resellers and how the practice of customization of mainstream software packages expanded their profits and helped grow their companies.   --- Value-Added Reseller Today's episode is about a topic that came up in a conversation yesterday with one of my entrepreneurial operating system client. This is a software developer. They have a slate of dealers around the world that help distribute their software to their customers, OEMs and end users. And we had a conversation about how to motivate these dealers to have them be more committed, to be able to make more money with that software. And I remembered one of my clients who was a value-added reseller and they did a really great job with that. And so I thought that maybe it's worth spending some time talking about value-added resellers and what they do. So this concept emanated from the early 90s when major software companies started to step ahead of the competition, SAP, Microsoft, obviously, also Oracle. And they basically started dominating the field. And all those other companies that were smaller software developers, they found that it was harder and harder to sell their software because everyone wanted to go with the source, sure solutions, the big boys. And then what happened was some of these companies and also other companies, consulting firms, they started making money by actually integrating these softwares. These companies were called system integrators. They helped companies implement these softwares in their businesses, customize it to their particular company. And also these companies provided training. They provided ongoing consultation services to help the introduction of something like SAP. It can be could be a major job to customize and introduce it in a company. So this is where the value-added reseller concept was created. Motivating dealers to be more committed is not just about selling software; it's about understanding the power of value-added resellers in creating true partnerships.Share on X These companies were basically resellers of the software, the SAP software or the Microsoft software. They made a small margin on that software, and they sold all their bundled services together with the software. So what I was wondering about, whether this concept, we can drill a little bit deep into it. And then I remembered my client from back in 2007. It was a software company, was started by an entrepreneur. This was back in Hungary. The entrepreneur's name was Zoltan Schvarcz, and he had been a software entrepreneur in the 90s. He had a partner and he had a company which was moderately successful at best. They grew the business, but they got over leveraged. Their margins were laser thin. And then he had the falling out with his partner. So they parted ways around the year 2000. And that's when Zoltan started his new company called XAPT or XAPT. They called this company XAPT, I guess, because they were implementing the Xceptor software, which is an ERP software from Microsoft. And the business was growing fast. Then around the year 2006, they stumbled upon an opportunity. They implemented, I think it was Navision or Axapta for a Caterpillar dealer. Actually, they created a customized solution and they were referred to another Caterpillar dealer and they started getting into customizing Navision for Caterpillar dealers, and from then on, heavy equipment dealers and it really caught on and Microsoft started to embrace them. They got some engagements in the US, then in Australia, Canada. They were on stage with Steve Ballmer and the business was starting to grow really leaps and bounds. And I remember they were high margin business. We worked for them in the year 2007 on a capital raising project, which they eventually turned it down and they went with someone else. But, you know, I looked them up just yesterday and I was shocked.

Stanisław Kukuła jest programistą z ponad 30-letnim doświadczeniem. 31 lat temu założył z Wiesławem Czajkowskim w Opolu spółkę SoftArt, która pisała oprogramowanie dla lokalnych przedsiębiorstw. W kolejnym kroku spółka stała się jeden z pierwszych partnerów Microsoft w zakresie produktu Navision. Rozmowę prowadzimy na kilka minut przed przekazaniem spółki w nowe ręce. Udziały i zarządzanie przejmuje jeden z wychowanków SoftArt oraz spółka EIP SA. Posłuchaj o tym, jak powstawały i pracowały pierwsze firmy IT w Polsce. Zobacz, co się liczy, gdy patrzy się wstecz na biznesowe dzieło swojego życia w dniu sprzedaży. Skorzystaj z tych inspiracji wcześniej. Jeśli spodoba Ci się ten odcinek, dołącz do klubu: https://www.gregalbrecht.io/klub – członkowie mają wpływ na tematykę odcinków, dostęp do specjalnych materiałów i spotkań społeczności Greg Albrecht Podcast. Zobacz inne odcinki podcastu: https://gregalbrecht.io/pl/podcast/ Masz pomysł na temat odcinka? Znasz kogoś, kto powinien być moim gościem? A może chcesz zostać sponsorem podcastu? Napisz do mnie: gregalbrechtpodcast (at) gmail.com

This week’s episode is a special edition of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Last week, hosted our online event called “next by NETRONIC – session 2”. The idea of the “next” events is to talk about topics, not about products as well as to discuss with each other rather than to have a 1-way demo. Hence, last week’s event was a panel discussion in which we looked at the constant battle between production planning and scheduling.The discussion was led by Martin Karlowitsch, and his guests were experienced Business Central manufacturing experts. If you took some time to attend our event – a big thank you from all of us at NETRONIC, if not then please enjoy this podcast. The panelists were first Peik Bech-Andersen from Denmark, who is the author of the book “manufacturing with Dynamics NAV” and who has been working with NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central since 1984. Second, we welcomed James Crowter from the UK, who is a Microsft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and Managing Director of Technology Management. Third, they were joined by Mike Fontaine from Canada, who is a solutions expert with 20+ years of ERP software and manufacturing experience from VOX ISM in Canada. The expert panel started by discussing if they agree with the general existence of a constant battle between production planning and scheduling. There was a consensus from our panel that this battle does exist and that it is something that isn’t as simple as one usually thinks. Understanding the material requirements planning and getting it right, requires a lot of fine-tuning. Especially when taking into consideration the different policies that exist within a company. Oftentimes, when the material requirements planning is not done correctly, you see a lot of confusion and sometimes you will even see customers moving back to using Microsoft Excel. If this happens, planning and scheduling no longer are aligned … and the battle kicks in. Preparing for the event, we sent out a questionnaire to everybody who registered. The majority of the Dynamics 365 Business Central customers who attended said that only one person handles both: planning and scheduling in their organizations. James assessed that it might cause problems if only one person is handling both parts of the business. The organization would become too dependent on that one person, which might cause some issues later on. Peik put this into perspective when he mentioned the only way to eat an elephant is when you take small bites. He said that he’s seen a lot of success from companies that divide responsibilities between MPS and MRP since they are split up into manageable sizes. In terms of the tools used to manage planning and scheduling, we heard a lot of feedback not just from our customers and partners, but also from our panel. Despite the abundance of ERP software, we still see a lot of companies using Excel. The panel shared their views on Excel, and why it remains popular, and why they advise against it. James explained the importance of planning and scheduling by saying that getting it right is the “Holy Grail” for most manufacturing companies. Getting customer satisfaction by having the right inventory at the right place at the right time, is exactly why manufacturing companies invest in ERP systems. According to Mike, it is software such as Business Central that can help customers with their planning and scheduling, specifically balancing their sales forecast, inventory, machines, and manpower. With the rise in popularity of the cloud subscription option, BC is so much more affordable for small manufacturers these days.

We continue our podcast episode by going north of the border. From Wisconsin, we now head to Montreal, Canada where we had the chance to talk to Trevor Moore, the Product Director of ERP Solutions at Gestisoft. Trevor started his career in the manufacturing industry, where he implemented full ERP systems in two different companies as a production scheduler. Given his experience on the end-customer side, he ventured into the NAV world where he now has a 20-year track record of successfully implanting ERP systems to around 100 companies (mostly manufacturing). Our conversation mainly centered around all aspects of how to right-size a manufacturing ERP solution for each client.Watch our Business Central Manufacturing Show overview site to see all episodes at one glance.

In der sechsten Folge unseres Podcasts sprechen wir mit Sonja Klimke, Geschäftsführerin, Autorin und Fachfrau für Workshops – das alles mit Schwerpunkt auf MS Dynamics Business Central. Ebenfalls mit im Studio ist Christoph Altdörfer, Sales Manager bei L-mobile für den ERP-Markt Microsoft Dynamics. In Teil zwei unseres Gesprächs mit Sonja und Christoph erzählt uns Sonja, wie sie überhaupt zur Business Central Fachfrau geworden ist, was sie daran so begeistert und worauf es ihr beim Schreiben ihrer Anwenderhandbücher ankommt. Am Ende gibt uns Sonja noch eine Einschätzung, wie sich die Relevanz von digitalen Lösungen im Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Umfeld verändern und wohin sich das ERP-System in den nächsten Jahren entwickeln wird. Wenn ihr noch Fragen zum Thema der Folge habt oder Themenwünsche für weitere Folgen, schreibt uns das gerne unten in die Kommentare.

We continue our podcast, where we left off last time, somewhere in the US. From the Atlantic coast in Florida, we now go to Madison, Wisconsin (virtually) for our next guest, Kevin Fons. Kevin has been working in the manufacturing industry for 30 years and with Dynamics NAV, Dynamics 365 Business Central, and ISV add-ons for about 16 years. Today he is a Senior Applications Consultant for Innovia, where he leads various NAV & Business Central projects for a wide array of customers.Starting from the general value manufacturing ERP data can have for customers, the conversation became very specific rapidly. We dived down into the concrete topic of routings and that they need to serve two purposes: costing and scheduling. Click here to get an overview of all episodes of the Business Central Manufacturing Show.

The wait is over! The Business Central Manufacturing Show is back with its 14th episode. In this episode, we talk to Olof Simren. A Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV expert who started working with Navision back in 2002. With over 18 years of Microsoft Dynamics experience, an awesome blog about Dynamics NAV manufacturing, and projects in different parts of the world, Olof now leads a US-based company called Naviona. In our interview, we discussed how an ERP system can help manufacturing companies go paperless through full-circle digitization.Get access to all episodes of the Business Central Manufacturing Show here.

In der fünften Folge unseres Podcasts sprechen wir mit Sonja Klimke, Geschäftsführerin, Autorin und Fachfrau für Workshops – das alles mit Schwerpunkt auf MS Dynamics Business Central. Ebenfalls mit im Studio ist Christoph Altdörfer, Sales Manager bei L-mobile für den ERP-Markt Microsoft Dynamics. Gemeinsam schauen wir uns im ersten Teil des Gesprächs das Microsoft ERP-System genauer an, klären welche Schwierigkeiten die Anwender häufig haben und warum es sich dennoch auch lohnt, dieses ERP-System zu nutzen. Außerdem schauen wir uns an, wie sich das ERP entwickelt hat und wie Sonja als Expertin den Plattformgedanken einschätzt – alles nur noch über die Cloud? Mehr zu Sonjas Arbeit und ein Ausblick darauf, wie sich das System in den nächsten Jahren entwickeln wird, gibt es in Folge 6 – dem zweiten Teil unseres Gesprächs zu Navision, NAV, Business Central und wie das ERP sonst noch genannt wird. Wenn ihr noch Fragen zum Thema der Folge habt oder Themenwünsche für weitere Folgen, schreibt uns das gerne unten in die Kommentare.

Episode number 13 of the Business Central Manufacturing Show was with Matthew Woodhouse. Matt is the Microsoft Dynamics Team Director at Technology Management and runs its project delivery team. Originally coming from a manufacturing & distribution background, Matt first came into contact with Navision back in 1999. Since then he has been helping manufacturing companies. The interview evolved in a way that we looked at manufacturing and Dynamics 365 Business Central from various angles (e.g. from shop-floor data capture as well as from artificial intelligence). But, independent of how we looked at it: Matt always came up with very concrete tips that manufacturers should apply when it comes to an ERP system.

Paul Hogendoorn was my guest for the 12th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Paul is an incurable entrepreneur from Canada and has founded, co-founded, or helped launch numerous ventures over his 30+ year career, including most recently, FreePoint Technologies. FreePoint's unique technology captures and delivers real-time productivity information, connecting plant floor manufacturing processes directly to managers and operators in innovative, practical, and cost-effective ways. I picked up one of his recent likes on LinkedIn and started the conversation with a question on gamification. This let to a vital discussion on why gamification matters for manufacturing companies. (spoiler: among other benefits, it can yield a 25% uptick in productivity for high-mix low-volume manufacturers). The good news is: we didn't stop with the why, but also looked at a hands-on recipe how it can get implemented, and what metrics can help with gamification.

I met with Chris de Visser for the 11th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Chris is from the Netherlands, but lives in New York and works as CEO North America for Continia. Before taking that role, he successfully ran the American business of Sana Commerce in Northern America. As such, Chris does not represent a partner being specialized in manufacturing with deep vertical know-how. Instead, he brings a lot of experience with horizontal topics such as sales and process efficiencies that are crucial for any company, and hence also for manufacturers. Hence, I took the opportunity to fly a full circle on back-office process efficiency, which includes administrative processes as well as sales and even marketing efficiency and effectiveness.

This is the 10th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. This week, I spoke with Christophe Billard, who is from France, but lives and works in Spain. After working as a business demand planner and in supply chain management for pharmaceutical and FMCG companies, Christophe became an ERP consultant 15 years ago. Since then has helped many manufacturing companies to fully embrace the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. In our conversation, we looked at best practices when implementing an ERP, getting started with MRP, and introducing an MES. Throughout this round-trip, Christophe's advice for manufacturing companies stayed consistent: do not try to take it all. Instead, start small with balanced information, before you then unleash the power of these systems by constant fine-tuning. He repeated this advice when we looked at the similarities of a successful wrestler and a successful manufacturing company.

Wie lassen sich zentrale ERP-Installationen mit weltweit verteilten Standorten verknüpfen? Wie können globale Prozesse vereinheitlicht und verbessert werden? OctoCon ist spezialisiert auf die Entwicklung unternehmensweiter Prozessstandards auf Basis von Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, ehemals NAV. Mit dem Gründer und CEO spreche ich über das auch als Navision bekannte ERP-System, die Entwicklung des ERP-Marktes und insbesondere bei Microsoft und wie sich Hub & Spoke-Architekturen zum Nutzen des Unternehmens aufbauen lassen. Viel Vergnügen! Verwandte Folgen: #44 – Microsoft in der Cloud: Azure, Dynamics365, Office365 & Co #56 – Internationale ERP-Großprojekte 1/2 #57 – Internationale ERP-Großprojekte 2/2 #101 – All about the Money: Was Facebooks Digitalwährung Libra mit ERP zu tun haben könnte Teil 1 #101 – All about the Money: Was Facebooks Digitalwährung Libra mit ERP zu tun haben könnte Teil 2 #118 – KI und das Unternehmensdatenfundament - Ein Interview mit dem Geschäftsführer der AI4BD Dr. Günther Möckesch Teil 1 #118 – KI und das Unternehmensdatenfundament - Ein Interview mit dem Geschäftsführer der AI4BD Dr. Günther Möckesch Teil 2 Empfehlungen: influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) Die Letzten ihrer Art: eine Reise zu den aussterbenden Tieren unserer Erde Die Känguru-Tetralogie (Die Känguru-Werke) Links: OctoCon AG Artikel: Tiny Gadgets – die Macht der vielen kleinen Programme Wenn Ihnen unsere Folgen gefallen, dann freuen wir uns über eine 5-Sterne-Bewertung, damit auch andere auf diesen Podcast aufmerksam werden und wir das Angebot weiter verbessern können. Zeitaufwand: 1-2 Minuten. Link zur Seite hier. In diesem Sinne: keep connected. Herzlichst Ihr Axel Winkelmann

Wie lassen sich zentrale ERP-Installationen mit weltweit verteilten Standorten verknüpfen? Wie können globale Prozesse vereinheitlicht und verbessert werden? OctoCon ist spezialisiert auf die Entwicklung unternehmensweiter Prozessstandards auf Basis von Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, ehemals NAV. Mit dem Gründer und CEO spreche ich über das auch als Navision bekannte ERP-System, die Entwicklung des ERP-Marktes und insbesondere bei Microsoft und wie sich Hub & Spoke-Architekturen zum Nutzen des Unternehmens aufbauen lassen. Viel Vergnügen! Verwandte Folgen: #44 – Microsoft in der Cloud: Azure, Dynamics365, Office365 & Co #56 – Internationale ERP-Großprojekte 1/2 #57 – Internationale ERP-Großprojekte 2/2 #101 – All about the Money: Was Facebooks Digitalwährung Libra mit ERP zu tun haben könnte Teil 1 #101 – All about the Money: Was Facebooks Digitalwährung Libra mit ERP zu tun haben könnte Teil 2 #118 – KI und das Unternehmensdatenfundament - Ein Interview mit dem Geschäftsführer der AI4BD Dr. Günther Möckesch Teil 1 #118 – KI und das Unternehmensdatenfundament - Ein Interview mit dem Geschäftsführer der AI4BD Dr. Günther Möckesch Teil 2 Empfehlungen: influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) Die Letzten ihrer Art: eine Reise zu den aussterbenden Tieren unserer Erde Die Känguru-Tetralogie (Die Känguru-Werke) Links: OctoCon AG Artikel: Tiny Gadgets – die Macht der vielen kleinen Programme Wenn Ihnen unsere Folgen gefallen, dann freuen wir uns über eine 5-Sterne-Bewertung, damit auch andere auf diesen Podcast aufmerksam werden und wir das Angebot weiter verbessern können. Zeitaufwand: 1-2 Minuten. Link zur Seite hier. In diesem Sinne: keep connected. Herzlichst Ihr Axel Winkelmann

I met Bart Pattijn from Belgium for the fifth episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He is ERP consultant at Christiaens BV, and actually didn’t start his career in an IT company. Instead, he initially was a production manager in several food companies. Hence, he has plenty of hands-on experience when it comes to manufacturing and planning. He has been working with Navision since 2004. Our conversion quickly became very hands-on, and Bart managed to unveil two underestimated superpowers of Business Central to me: this is the upgrade-ability and the extensibility. Both in combination enable manufacturing companies to achieve more with Business Central, and to cope with the ongoing need for speed and need for change.

"Focus processes, not functionalities" is the number one recommendation Peik Bech-Anderson gives to all manufacturing companies starting with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.This episode is an interview with Peik Bech-Anderson. Peik is a solution architect and senior developer, and he first saw Navision back in 1984. He is the author of the best-selling book “Manufacturing with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A comprehensive guide to the manufacturing module in Microsoft Dynamics NAV”, which can be applied 1:1 to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as well.In this interview, we

„Unser ERP-Hersteller bietet auch ein Business Intelligence-Modul an. Wenn wir das kaufen, ist alles aus einem Guss, passt perfekt zusammen und wir gehen kein Risiko ein. Das hat uns auch der Hersteller versichert".  Obwohl ich diesen Satz ganz selten immer noch höre, kann ich zum Glück sagen, dass sich die meisten Unternehmen durch solche Versprechungen nicht mehr beeindrucken oder gar verunsichern lassen. Ob sie SAP, Navision, Infor, Datev, proAlpha oder ein anderes ERP-System nutzen – die meisten Unternehmen haben ihre Erfahrungen schon gemacht. Denn tatsächlich kann eine ganze Menge schiefgehen, wenn Sie den Auswahlprozess für Ihre Business Intelligence-Lösung auf diese Weise abkürzen würden. Weiterlesen...   Der Performance Manager Podcast ist der erste deutschsprachige Podcast für Business Intelligence und Performance Management. Controller und CFO erhalten hier Inspirationen, Know-how und Impulse für die berufliche und persönliche Weiterentwicklung. Weitere Informationen zu den Machern des Performance Manager Podcast, Peter Bluhm und Alexander Küpper, finden Sie hier: http://bit.ly/2u11IW5 Unsere Bitte: Wenn Ihnen diese Folge gefallen hat, hinterlassen Sie uns bitte eine 5-Sterne-Bewertung, ein Feedback auf iTunes und abonnieren diesen Podcast. Zeitinvestition: Maximal ein bis zwei Minuten. Dadurch helfen Sie uns, den Podcast immer weiter zu verbessern und Ihnen die Inhalte zu liefern, die Sie sich wünschen. Herzlichen Dank an dieser Stelle! Sie sind ein Fan von unserem Podcast? Sie finden uns auch auf diesen Kanälen: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ATVISIO/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/atvisio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performancemanagerpodcast/ Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Peter_Bluhm Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Alexander_Kuepper/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/der-performance-manager-podcast/id1202698232?mt=2 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/atvisio

Want to know what’s going on in the craft beer industry globally? You won’t want to miss this episode! Join host Hugh Duffy as he talks with Maria Pearman, principal at Perkins & Co. about her experience traveling the world, gaining insight about the craft beer industry. As the author of Small Brewery Finance: Accounting Principles and Planning for the Craft Brewer” Maria provides listeners with inside tips on becoming a leader in this dynamic niche. Tune in to learn how she broke into the market, how her practice has evolved over the years and why meeting face-to-face is still the best way to secure new clients. Maria Pearman, Perkins & Co. CPA, CGMA, Principal LinkedIn  |  Twitter  | Facebook  |  Instagram Maria Pearman is a Certified Public Accountant who provides accounting expertise and a deep operational knowledge to the alcohol beverage industry. She teaches Finance and Accounting for the Craft Brewer, is currently in the University of Vermont’s Business of Craft Beer program, and previously at Portland State University’s Business of Craft Brewing program. Her book, “Small Brewery Finance: Accounting Principles and Planning for the Craft Brewer,” was published by the Brewers Association in 2019. Maria’s specialties include finance, managerial accounting, budgeting, tax accounting, tax planning and provisions, business strategy, Ekos software, Orchestrated Beer software, VIP, Netsuite, and NAVision software. She earned her BA from the College of Charleston in her home state of South Carolina. She resides in Portland, OR.   Accounting Marketing Doesn't Suck is produced by Build Your Firm, leaders of marketing for accountants. Questions or Feedback? Email us at podcast@buildyourfirm.com

It seems that many people are confused about where Dynamics 365 Business Central fits into the landscape. Is it an ERP... a CRM... is it for SMB... Midsized...Enterprise? Is it part of the Power Platform? At the risk of annoying my BC Partner friends once again, I will take a stab at it. Origins It would be helpful to know the origins of Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", to understand how it came to it's current position, and then I'll discuss it's current position. Once upon a time, there was a product called Navision that Microsoft acquired. There is more to that story, but that is all that is relevant here. That product, since shortened to "NAV", is still alive and well and in use by many businesses around the world. Several years ago, Microsoft started their shift of Business Applications to the cloud, following the tremendous success of Office 365 and Azure. The first product to make that move was Dynamics CRM, and at the time it was launched as "Dynamics CRM Online". Dynamics CRM was not the only business application in the stable, it was just the first to go SaaS. Other products included Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, each of which were different flavors of Enterprise Resource Planning or "ERP". Enterprise Resource Planning is a pretty vague term. It could include human resources, supply chain management, sales activities and many more, but all of these activities revolve around a General Ledger in an ERP system. GL, AR and AP are the common denominators for each of these systems... and every business must have these components. All enterprise sized companies have an ERP, and most Midsized businesses do as well. Smaller businesses may have a solution like Xero or Quickbooks, that fills this purpose at a smaller scale for simpler needs. Many Midsized businesses are also using these simpler products... some successfully, and some who have outgrown them and are considering an ERP. Darwin Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was not conceived for software. But similar rules apply. Basically the strongest will survive. What was strong yesterday, may not be strong tomorrow as the environment changes, and when previously strong players do not adapt, they are replaced by new strong players. This was what drove Microsoft to the cloud in the first place... seeing other players adapt, and become leaders. So Microsoft adapted as well, and given their war chest, they were able to adapt very quickly to a SaaS model. But along the way choices had to be made. One of those choices was, which ERP solution(s) would take the SaaS path. Shifting an on-premise product to SaaS is no small feat, and requires a significant investment. Having four on-premise ERP solutions, it was obvious that all four would not go SaaS. Microsoft drew a line across their customer base, dividing Enterprise on one side and everybody else on the other, and decided to pick one ERP for each side that would go SaaS. Why not just pick one? Well, I didn't have a vote, but I wrote about that here. Regardless, Microsoft selected AX for the Enterprise and NAV for... everybody else. It was pretty hard to argue AX as the Enterprise choice, but there was some debate about NAV vs. GP. GP is much bigger in the US, but NAV is actually bigger globally, so that decision made the most sense.... unless you were a GP partner. Cloudification I won't go into the cloud journey for AX, instead I will focus on the journey of NAV... which actually starts with CRM. Several years ago, Microsoft had an idea to create a specific offering for SMB called "Business Edition". It would be a scaled down version of the Enterprise CRM solution, better suited for the needs of Smaller businesses. Shortly into that initiative, the decision was made that this would be the best place to start the SaaS journey for NAV as well, and thus began the project code-named "Madeira". Given the SMB target segment, this was going to be positioned as a Quickbooks/Xero competing product. Understand that this was well before the idea of a "Common Data Service" was even on the future roadmap. BTW, another product that got it's start in the Business Edition effort was Dynamics 365 for Marketing. About a year into the "Business Edition" effort, Microsoft decided that the path they were on, was not going to reach the original goals as intended, and the goals had shifted as well. CRM itself was heading down a path of componentizing its parts, and separation from its platform... this ultimately led to what we now know as the Common Data Service. But what about "Madeira" and Marketing? Dynamics 365 for Marketing continued it's journey as an independent application, no longer bound by the "Business Edition" limitations. And Madeira? Microsoft Launches Business Central! Project Madeira, similarly became unbound from the Business Edition limitations, and was launched as an independent application called Dynamics 365 Business Central. There are a lot of side routes that this took that I won't go into here. Today, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of the fastest growing SaaS Business Applications in Microsoft's stable. A far cry from my earlier predictions that it would never see the light of day. Maybe the product owner at the time, Marko Perisic, made it successful just to prove me wrong. Nevertheless, it is on fire. So where did it go? Moving Uptown Once the Business Edition tag was removed, Marko quickly pivoted BC from a Quickbooks/Xero compete, into a product those customers could move up to as they outgrew them. While the CRM side of the house was going through a massive evolution into what we now know as the Power Platform, Marko was able to stomp on the gas pedal. BC was evolving at a faster pace than any other product, partly because it was in a lane by itself. Weekly updates were the norm, and the new northstar became NAV on-premise parity. A goal that I believe has been largely met. SMB might be a fine market, but this thing could go way beyond that... in some cases even standing toe-to-toe with AX for some enterprise customers. So what exactly is BC? What is Business Central? At it's heart, Business Central is a SaaS ERP. "Manage your financials" is at the top of the product's page of capabilities. As you would expect from an ERP it has the GL, AP and AR core functions, but it is much more than that. Like everything Microsoft is doing in Business Applications today, BC is infused with A.I. The next listed capability is "Automate and secure your supply chain", that sounds pretty "enterprisy" to me. Next up is "Sell Smarter and improve customer service", so BC also includes some CRM capabilities. After that is "Keep projects on time and under budget", so we can add some project management capabilities to the list. The last item is "Optimize your operations" for inventory and warehouse management. Clearly this product has grown up quite a bit from its humble "Business Edition" beginnings, and there is a growing number of partner extensions (ISVs) to extend the capabilities even further. The pricing is pretty straightforward, at least in comparison to the Customer Engagement applications. There are only three flavors: "Essentials" at $70/user/month, "Premium" at $100/user/month, and "Team Members" at $8/user/month. To figure out which licenses you need, you can review the licensing guide. You can also sign up for a free trial here. From the Pros Since I am not an expert on Business Central, I reached out to two guys who I know are knee-deep in the product for their thoughts. Andrew King is a Partner at WebSan, a Toronto based Business Applications partner. Since WebSan supports both Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement "CE" as well as Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", I thought he would be a great guy to contrast the two. Andrew shared that there is some confusion in the market, "The products are as different as Golf and Baseball, but we frequently see customers asking about the product that does not meet their needs. Like BC for CRM needs, or CE for Supply Chain. Would they work? I guess if you like playing golf with a baseball bat". James Crowter is the Managing Director of Technology Management, a UK based Business Applications partner. Technology Management also supports both Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement "CE" as well as Dynamics 365 Business Central "BC", and has a long history with NAV. James talked about the amazing pace of innovation, "I can talk to a new customer in the morning, and have them using BC by the afternoon, which is amazing! For the right customer requirements, BC is a no-brainer... but not for sales workloads, there is not even a workflow capability (for sales), which is a key component for sales!" What Business Central is not? Both Andrew and James agreed that while Business Central is an awesome solution, it is not really a very good Sales tool. Both agreed that they would typically position Customer Engagement for any CRM type requirements, and they often position both products for a true end-to-end solution. They both had some choice words for the Sales Capabilities of BC, and clearly neither one had any interest in activating those, but instead would bring in Customer Engagement for any customers looking to transform their sales processes. So I guess it boils down to, what it is that you are trying to transform. If you are looking to modernize your financial processes, including supply chain and inventory, or have outgrown Quickbooks or Xero... Dynamics 365 Business Central is an excellent option, and you could reach out to Andrew or James for more guidance on that. If you are looking to modernize your sales or service processes, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the clear way to go, and Andrew, James or myself can help you explore that further. But are these the only Microsoft options? Other Big and Small Options If your ERP requirements are really big, and include things like HR management, you might look at Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This is Microsoft 's enterprise-grade ERP. Again, we have seen Business Central get into some pretty big businesses, but F&O is the next step up. Conversely, if your sales or service requirements are fairly basic, you may find that Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement is a pretty big hammer to start with. In that case, you might want to explore RapidStartCRM, our PowerApps based CRM solution. It is an excellent option for small businesses or enterprise departments, built on the Power Platform and running on CDS so you can never outgrow it. Hopefully I cleared up some confusion, but if I actually made you more even confused than before... please keep that to yourself.

Austral Dynamics is providing software solution by using Microsoft Dynamics NAV/ Navision ERP. We are a Microsoft Certified Business Solution specialist. For more info, visit our website http://www.australdynamics.com/

¡Estamos en racha, tenemos otro voluntario! En esta ocasión se trata de Pepe Miras Ferrando, que viene a hablarnos de un aspecto de la profesión informática, quizás no tan técnico pero no por ello mas importante, como son los sistemas dedicados a la gestión empresarial, mas conocidos como ERPs. Uno de los mas extendidos es [...]

Carl and Richard talk to Greg Philpott about X++, the most popular language you've never heard of. X++ is the programming language for Microsoft Dynamics AX, an Enterprise Resource Planning product formerly known as Navision. Greg digs into how X++ allows programmers to extend Dynamics AX, adding whole new modules as well as customizing behavior in the existing system.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations