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 Sydney , new South Wales , australia . That's where I report into business-wise . She's an ERP consultant in Microsoft Dynamics BC at Valrata . She was first awarded MVP in 2022 . She's a proud mum of two and a Bicram Yoga enthusiast . I want to unpack that feeling the heat doing yoga .
She is particularly interested in exploring how they can bring together different technologies to solve complex challenges with real-world problems . As always , full links to her show notes , bio , etc . Will be in the show notes for this episode . Alexandra . Welcome to the show .
Hi everyone . Hi Mark , thank you for having me .
Good to have you on Now . I can detect an accent . Where do you originate from ?
Australia for over 15 years . But back in 2019 , before pandemic , we lived for five years in the United States , in Boston . Then we came back again to Sydney . It's been four years . Sydney introduced me to ERP , sydney introduced me to Microsoft technology . That's an interesting part to be back and change career .
Yeah , Before we unpack your journey into this side of Microsoft business applications , tell us a bit about your family , your favorite foods and what you do for fun when you're not working at Bicram Yoga .
I forgot what I have been working a lot recently . I forgot what I'm not doing when I'm not working . I have a family in Sydney . I have two young girls , two daughters . Bicram has been my passion since I was a student . Again . I was introduced in Sydney . I went to Sydney Church of the University . I did my master degree in accounting .
Bicram Yoga was just across the street . It helped me to distress and settle as an immigrant student in Sydney . It's stayed my life till now .
Wow , let me get this right . Bicram Yoga is when you do yoga in a room that is heated to a certain temperature .
Exactly . Yes , it's nine to minutes in a sort of the temperatures up to sauna , but you can find nice sports . You can put your mat next to the door and have a bit of breeze during the exercises . It's not for everyone . I personally love it . I found it's very relaxing and distressing and unwinding and helped me to more worn with things .
But not for everyone , it's individual choice .
How did it come about ? Like you know , traditional yoga , you know you grab your yoga mat and a couple of blocks and things like that and you can do it pretty much anywhere . Who introduced the concept of heat into the mix and what was the idea of adding heat to doing yoga workout ?
Well , there was a yoga founder a big crumb yoga founder that was based in California . I had a bit of bad publicity recently regarding all other stuff , but the idea was and it resonates with me is that heat helps you to stretch your muscles quicker than normal .
Usually , if you're not flexible by nature , then it's more difficult to get into yoga and get into routine , which is consistency .
But then when you do that in heat up room , it helps you not to feel that pain and get a bit more deeper in your practice and they build up a consistent like a routine of exercises that involve all muscles in your body during the 90 minutes of the practice .
Very cool . Tell me about food .
Food , I eat everything , I love everything , I love traveling and I'm an adventure in the food to explore different food and different traditions . I think that's the beauty of our life that we can explore different tastes and different cultures and traditions .
Interesting Good . It would be remiss of me not to talk about Ukraine . I've had many MVPs on the show from Ukraine and we've discussed it at length . We've done a dedicated show just on the situation there . Tell me about your . How are you feeling ? What's going on for you in that respect ?
Well , that's very sad . It's terrible what's happening . I do have family there . My family is in the city that has not been impacted as much as other cities , but I do have a lot of friends based in Sydney , in particular , and back in Boston . I think that their families was devastated by this .
Unfortunately , it doesn't look like it's the recent end at this stage . My brother was taken to the army , and that's something that we all live and have to cope day by day .
Yeah , horrible situation . As we jump into your experience in your history and your origin story of tech , you mentioned that you started an accounting . Was that , then , a logical progression into software or the software side with ERP ?
Yeah , my story is interesting . I got by luck anyway . In Boston I had amazing boss and I was hired for the position of system accountant to migrate from Microsoft grade plans into Salesforce . That was my first introduction to train everyone on new software to find to improve business processes with a new ERP implementation . I love it .
After that experience we flew back to Sydney and I was given an opportunity to join a small Microsoft partner in Sydney where I was exposed to CRM , business Central , power BI . That's where it all started . Never look back .
Wow , did you ever work with NaviGen or NAV ?
No , I don't have experience with NaviGen . I learned so when I start my job as a Business Central consultant . They documentation was available for Norwegian previous one , the one that is back back time so it was useful to you to learn some areas of your business central using our Norwegian .
So when we look at what you're working on , let's say since the start of this year , what are your priority focus areas ? Business central is a growing applications a lot of areas to it . What's are you specializing more in ? Warehouse management or general ledger ? What's the areas that you focus in with the product ?
On day to day . We focus in mostly finance , with inventory , not warehouse , trans warehouse , not as deep , but what I'm focusing is reporting . I'm focusing on reporting on what's available .
What business central migrating and ways developing into better financial reporting tool again Power BI and that's what our clients want , Because I believe accounting is moving from just not a rational part of the business , it's moving into analytical part of the business to take advantage of analyzing your data .
What business central helps our clients to simplify day to day using GL accounts by introducing posting groups and help accountants and finance teams focus on , be more creative and utilize that data and make better decisions in the future .
What do you think the impact of AI is going to have on the finance operation inside organizations in the coming years ?
Well , it's a long journey yet there's a lot of impact right now that simplifying actually produce a great tool . It still needs a human supervision , but it's amazing to use for drafts and to utilize them to simplify some repetitive technical task . We are far away from having it replacing someone else job , but I guess we all know from as a form of accountants .
We all know that what used to be bookkeeper , it's already basically not existing position because it can be replaced . We all need to use our intelligence , our creativity to bring better decisions for the business .
So I take it , power BI is one of the main tools that you're using .
No , it's not the main one I'm using . Main one for my job today is business central . But yes , power BI is one of the tools we're using .
Okay , so before , when you're talking about , you're doing a lot in the area of reporting . When we look at the continuum of reporting , there can be reporting on historic data which I can't do anything about . It was history , it's what happened .
If we go through the reporting lifecycle , we update to what's happening in real time to then , if you're like with algorithms and fused , you can be predictive around the future . Are your customers at that maturity level that they're looking at ?
How can we make informed decisions on what we're going to do in the next quarter or the next half year based on our historical data , but also what we're predicting to happen in the future in our business ?
You can use for requesting capabilities of business central power BI is there too . Of course , that's a part of being analytical creative with your historical data to make better future finance decisions .
What training do you recommend people do to really develop their skills in that analytics area , to be able to understand where an organization is at , but also to be able to advise , to take them into a future state that makes them more informed , more capable of making those decisions based on data ?
Well , I'm not sure about the training in particular . I think that's a complex right , complex of few different skills that come together . But what I'm looking from my perspective and what I'm seeing from our clients' engagement is moving to more robust ERP systems that gives you that capabilities .
So if we stay with the previous generation accounting systems , that's where you meet your limitations . By introducing Business Central to business , you unleash the more availability for your team to analyze the data , to work on other priorities and be more up-to-date with the technologies . The same Business Central helps not only with the reporting right .
It has great capabilities with integration . You can use it in Teams . You can use it with Power Platform for approvals and a lot of time-consuming with making it like a lot of team members involved in sort of bureaucratical steps that needs to be done and they are manual in businesses . That's where Power Platform helps .
That's where Teams you can simplify those processes . You can eliminate Excel templates . You can eliminate hard copy approvals . Make it simple , make it easy . Free the rest of the time for more innovative approach .
What are you seeing from a maturity level around and I don't know , because my area of expertise is definitely not in Business Central Do you see , are you having clients that fully embed functionality from BC into Microsoft Teams and via Power Apps ? Is that becoming a common scenario ?
It's becoming a very common interest from the client . Yes , but I don't see it that it's widely used yet as I would like to , but it's going that way .
Yeah , one of the things I'm seeing in the SAP space is using Power Virtual Agents to query data from Teams . So you can ask a chap what's the inventory level of X or Y ? This purchase order came in . Here's the purchase order number . What's the status of it ? Blah , blah , blah . Is those scenarios also happening with BC ?
Yes , exactly , then it's the more we , microsoft , invest into product development and get much easier to use . So those low-code solutions with chat boards become much easier to use to end users without involving consultant or developer .
Tell me , how did you become an MVP ?
That's interesting . The first one introduction was with Tatiana Pupko , who has been MVP for five or six years . She's based in Spain with a background in Russia . I was based in Sydney with background in Ukraine For some period of time . We collaborate , we work together . She introduced me to co-presenting on some community events .
We end up delivering great session in the directions for partners last year in Germany . That was a huge thank you to Tatiana . She has been instrumental in introducing me to MVP community , introducing me to help you how expert engage with each other , how strong this community is and supporting . That was the initial one .
And then I was lucky enough to meet another MVP , manon . We see that based in Sydney and she's simultaneously my colleague in Valrada . She has been just amazing and inspirational leader model for me that I was looking up for . That's all together . Come to MVP vote .
Interesting . I met Tatiana in 2019 in Seattle as when I first met her and I've had her on the show as well . Fantastic to see that connection happening across the community . When you presented at directions , did you fly there , did you go there or were you doing it ?
Yes , you have the older direction for partners . They have in person sessions . So , yes , I did fly . My company , valrada , has supported that , so it was amazing and thank you to them for such a great experience . That was a highlight of my MVP journey to MVP .
Yeah , how many MVP summits have you done now ?
I haven't done none yet , so I haven't attended them yet .
Were there many virtual sessions on in the recent MVP summit . There might be , but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend any yet Okay , because I'm still going through the playbacks and the recordings of a lot of those sessions myself there , because I didn't attend either . But there's so much new content .
Of course , with Microsoft Build happening this week , there's all that stuff that we learned a month ago is now becoming out to the public . What excites you most about the future of the business ? Central product .
Well , probably most of all that . How much reporting would be available out of business central AI co-pilot Amazing . I want to see how our clients will take advantage of that too .
Yeah yeah . It definitely seems to be changing every part of our industry . Finally , before I let you go , what advice would you have for others that want to become MVP ?
I think that's just engage with the community . It's amazing community to find your niche , find what you're passionate about and find the people who will support you . There are so many great experts and enthusiastic people in this community . You will find your bunch of people and you will be feeling supported on your way to MVP .
But it's mostly about your passion and what you like to do . Mvp hasn't changed anything for me personally . It's just great to have , but what I've done for the community and what I'm doing for the community , how my level of my engagement is staying the same .
Hey , thanks for listening . I'm 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 .