Welcome to the MVP Show . My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills . If you have not checked it out already , I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP . The link is in the show notes . With that , let's get on with the show .
Today's guest is from Spain . He works at Aluma Technology Solutions as a senior technical D365 FNO consultant . He is first awarded as MVP in 2023 . He is a Spanish software developer working with D365 FNO as a technical consultant and product developer since 2017 .
He has participated in many projects , both on a national and international level , from a consulting perspective and working in product development . You can find links to his bio social media . Check out his YouTube channel in the show notes of this episode . Welcome to the show , Fernie .
Thank you . First of all , I want to say it's an honor to participate in your podcast , mark . I know many great FNO professionals that I truly admire have been also like Martin Drabb , adriana Rieste , juanan and many more . I have to say it's a privilege for me . Thank you for the opportunity .
Thank you . It's fantastic too . I always love to see new folks coming into the FNO space because it's grown so much over the years . I always from outside looking in . It seems to be a harder journey getting into the FNO side of things . It's a different skill set than , if you like , getting into the CRM side of things and the power platform side of things .
Full respect to you operating in this space .
Thank you , ax . It used to be . It was a very isolated technology . Now everything's coming closer , all the ecosystem but it's still very specific technology . That's good and bad for us .
Whenever you get to know enough , you have a lot of opportunities because there's also a few offer of professionals , but also it's hard to sometimes to learn and new stuff and so on . It's kind of fit . It's where life brought me .
Yeah , good , tell us a bit about you as an outsider in the technology space . I've lived for three months in Spain . I've been all over Spain , where I walked the Camino de Santiago across the top of Spain for 33 days . Then I honeymooned , originally in Barcelona .
I traveled all up that coast north of into France , then , on the other coast , I've traveled right down to Gibraltar , spent time in Madrid . I was involved in a thing called Vauntown , which is an English language school for Spanish people that are in international business . I did that for a couple of weeks with my wife .
Needless to say , we love Spain and , yeah , I find it amazing as a country so diverse and so much variety is available . So where do you come from in Spain ? What's your story ?
I studied physics in the University of Valencia and it's hard to get a job as a physicist and the easy way to go was just find whatever was available . And that's how I started with the ERP . They were hiring freshers from maths , physics and whatever , so I learned how to program with AX .
It's not the common way to do it , but once I started programming , I just fell in love with programming and I continued with AX . I started , in fact , with 365 Finance and Operations with the cloud version of it One of the first projects in Spain about it and after that I had to work , also in 2012 and 2009 .
But mostly my career that it's been six years , I think . It's been mostly in Finance and Operations and always working from Valencia . I have worked for AXS in Madrid , but I refused to move from Valencia . I like Valencia , I like to be close to my people and so on , and now I work for ITS Illumina Technology , so I work for US .
I am the only one that is in Europe in the company , yeah , so it's like I never left my home in Valencia , but I got to work with so many different cultures and got to travel so much that I am very grateful for that .
This is amazing . This is amazing . Tell us . I think I know the answer , but what is your favorite food ?
My favorite food ? Well , I'd say croquettes . I know you were thinking about Paella , probably . Yeah , paella is like the typical . I love Paella , but yeah , there's so many options here that I couldn't just mention one . Like it's croquettes . You have a lot of jamón serrano from you know , I don't know the word , but it's .
You know I don't know the word , but it's bello the food , the good pigs , or pork , pork meat . Yeah , it's fed with . Yes , and yeah , we could spend one hour talking about food , if you want .
So what do you do hobby wise ? Are you right on the coast there ? Are you right on the mid ?
I am like 20 minutes away from the coast , from the beach , but I am not a beach guy .
You're a mountains guy .
Kind of yes , I prefer mountains . Yeah , and yeah , I like to do paddle . It's like tennis but different . I try to do some sports because being there all day in the office is not that healthy .
Yes , yes , yes , awesome , awesome . So you did a physics degree . You got into , you know , to AX . What type of projects are you typically working on , without revealing the names , companies etc . Who they are , but do you sit within a specific industry sector that most of your work is ? What ?
Geography more than others , because you're obviously working remote predominantly . But where do your customers that you're working for ultimately typically sit ?
There's so much variety in that I don't think we have a specific project that it's predominant . I've worked for educational projects , for retail , logistics , big companies , so I don't know , I don't see any like any , let's say , preference or any , you know , any field that it's predominant .
And yeah , like now I am also working not only as an employee , but sometimes doing some works as a freelance also , and I don't know , whatever is available and whatever I think I could contribute and it's a good opportunity , I mean , you know yeah .
So it's interesting that you mentioned freelance , because just recently I've heard a lot of conversations in the MVP community around freelancing , or people moonlighting and you know , doing other work , and one of the common questions is how do customers find you for freelance work or how do you find freelance work ? Is there any particular website you use ?
Is it just word of mouth ? What have you found effective in picking up freelance work ?
Well , in my case it was the opposite , like first I received the offers and then I decided to go for freelance . I think our situation in FNO it's not very common because there's as I mentioned before I think there's a lot of opportunities and low offer of professionals .
So they are always asking and just in LinkedIn I don't have to look for opportunities right now . I hope it's that way many years . But yeah , I don't use any platform or just opportunities come .
And so are these people mainly reaching out to you via LinkedIn that is private messaging and say hey , we got work , Is it ? Are they reaching out because they're just reaching out to every FNO consultant , or are they reaching out because you've spoken at events , you've got your YouTube channel ? Where do you think they're hearing about you ?
Or is it purely they're doing LinkedIn search ?
Well , sometimes it's just a template message , template email , that they changed Luckily they changed your name and other times it's because of some . For example , in my YouTube channel , in my blog , I have talked a lot about electronic reporting .
It's a technology that it's very specific and there's no much around , so that has many opportunities has come because of that , because they needed some electronic reporting expert and they looked for electronic reporting and my profile was there . So sometimes it's One thing and other times , like the work I do for the community , also helps .
And even when they reach out to me with that template email once I say , hey , look at my CV , they can't see all the other stuff . So I think it always helps . It always helps , yes .
So that type of freelance work ? Where are most of those people coming from that are asking you Are they mainly in the US ? Is it mainly Europe ? Is it south of the equator ? What type of people are you doing work for on that freelance stage ?
Europe , basically Europe , because even I work as an employee for a US company . So it's better for me to work as a freelance in Europe so I don't have overlapping . In fact , the work I do as a freelance is very , very few hours per month . I am the opposite of brave .
I am a co-worker freelance because I have my regular job as an employee and I am not taking risks right now , but mostly in Europe , so I can coordinate better with my work as an employee for a US that totally makes sense .
Are you working , being that you're working obviously in a different time zone for the US employer ? Are you working like US hours or are you walking your own in its offset ?
In theory I work my hours , but if I do that we only have three or four hours of overlapping . When you're in a project we are now in , for example , in a go live in a project , I can't do that basically . So I end up starting a little bit later just to have more time for those meetings and so on .
Yeah , okay that makes sense , I'm going to ask you lots of questions around how you work and stuff , and the reason is because a lot of people have these questions in the community and I also work full time for an employer but do a lot of freelancing independent of that and have done for five years .
So another question I'm going to ask you how do you handle kind of your payment system , as in how you get paid ? So I'll tell you why . So for me , I used to live in London when I traveled .
I moved to London and I came across a technology there called they had Revolut , they had , I forget , another banking system , but they then got onto WISE and so I went for everything and then I closed the other accounts and I've settled on WISE and allows me to get paid in US dollars .
I also do work in Europe , so therefore I get paid in euros , and then I live in New Zealand , at the bottom of the world , so I get paid in New Zealand dollars . So it's kind of like three main currencies and then some of the other work takes me . I take Australian currency as well , and those would be the main scenarios that I apply .
How do you handle bank accounts and things like that in your payment structure ?
In my case I don't need that complex system that you need Like I don't have and unfortunately I don't have so many sources of income in different currencies . But yeah , like for my employee work as they use an intermediate company for that , so I get paid in euros from the US .
Oh , wow , okay .
And also as a freelance . Everything I've done is in Europe . So euros , yes , yeah yeah , for me .
I always knew that with intermediary companies and stuff , everybody takes a slice of the action to do that , and that's why I found WISE and this is not a plug for WISE , but I found it so amazing because I do a lot of work for Microsoft and Redmond and so they don't want weird bank accounts to other , they want it to be nice and clean .
We want your US bank account that we can pay you in USD . The beauty of WISE anytime I wanna start a new currency , I literally go into the app and go give me pesos and as an example , and it will create me an account . Here's my account number , here's my bank address in that country .
Done and it comes into my app and only when I spend it do I do the currency conversion and it's generally lower than any other currency conversion that I can get out there and so it's not complex . It's actually super simple because it's all just done on an app on my iPhone , right To do these transactions , and so , yeah , yeah , it's a new European invention .
I think it may be even Eastern European invention , but I tell you what it's been a game changer to be able to work in a global market and just take that kind of the friction out with whoever's employing you , you know , on a short-term contract , for them to think about how are they going to get you the money and where ?
They just want to pay in their local currency because that's simple for them and I think it's a simple way of making it possible . When it comes to Dynamics 365 , f&o , it's a big product right . It's really many products in what it can do . Is there a particular area that you specialize in ? You mentioned reporting . What else is there ?
Is there areas that you are like , okay , I'm a guru in these areas . I would touch these other areas , but they're not my primary skill set .
Well , my profile is very technical . It's very , very technical . So when you talk about areas , I guess you're referring to functional models like logistics , or so I'd say I have the basis of each model to be able to make the developments and to make the technical architecture , but I don't have full knowledge of any of them .
Because of that , because my knowledge is poorly technical , and in terms of technical , I think I know enough of everything to do almost everything that's needed , at least for now , and the knowlets . Now it's not just Like what we need to learn and what we are now working on it's not anymore in Fano but in Power Platform , all of that stuff .
That's the real challenge right now . Of course , Fano it's very big , it's huge , and there's always things that you didn't know , like how actually the database goes and things like that . There's a lot of stuff there . But yeah , I know I didn't answer your question .
No , I think you did , because my understanding of what you said there is that you're doing the hardcore development side of things , and so I assume that you get a specification of what needs to be done that's not available out of the box and you go in and make that a reality .
Exactly . Usually I work alongside with a functional that can be a finance , logistics or tax expert , whatever , and he carries out those details and I just have to find the better way to do it technically efficient , maintainable and all that stuff , or integrations , all that stuff . It's basically the work I do .
Last question I have for you how did you become an MVP ? What was that journey for you ?
Well , it was kind of natural because I learned from many figures that were very active in the community . So somehow I got context I don't know if that word exists , I think so from them , and so I started to look at hey , what if I start sharing ?
And also I saw it like just this , because whenever you are doing whatever you do , sometimes you get up to a point where you don't know how to continue and you ask , and there's Martin Draup answering your question , so like giving back a portion of all that knowledge that the community have given to me .
It was kind of something that I saw good for me after that also . So , like , I started with a blog , with a YouTube channel , and it's kind of addictive a little bit . You start to committing to pause regularly to go to events and yeah , it started just like , yeah , I want to do it , kind of let's see how many months I'll keep with that .
I thought I was going to get tired soon , but yeah , I continued , I dedicated more and more time and suddenly it happened Like I got nominated , but I thought I wasn't going to be elected because I'm young and so on , but luckily they accepted it .
So , yeah , it's a great opportunity and also it's good to see that Microsoft somehow gives you recognition for your work , but it's nothing more than that . It's just a title and it's okay . But the real engine is the impact you have with people and the comments of people giving you , thanking you because you help them with .
That's the real target , or the real goal .
Hey , thanks for listening From your host business application MVP Mark Smith , otherwise known as the NZ365 guy . If you like the show and want to be a supporter , check out buymeacoffeecom . Forward slash NZ365 guy . Thanks again and see you next time .