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 Dallas , fort Worth in the US of A . She's a senior BC consultant . She was first awarded her MVP in 2023 . She is experienced as an end-user partner and consultant . She was first awarded her MVP in 2023 . She is experienced as an end-user partner and consultant .
Her mission is to empower companies to get the most out of NAV and Business Central by bridging gaps , identifying needs and conferring solutions and providing training and support . You can find links to her bio in the show notes for this episode , as well as any social channel that she is operating on . Welcome to the show , kim . Thank you , nice to be here Now .
You've only been a B at an MVP for a wee while .
Did you get a chance to go to the MVP summit recently ? I did not . Yeah , just too busy at the moment .
Too busy , that's for a lot of people , right . There's a lot going on , right . So I understand that , before we unpack your story into technology and running your own company and everything business central in our vision , or NAV , tell us a bit about food , family and fun . What do they mean to you and your part of the world ?
Oh , yes , I have a big family , uh , I'm one of 10 , and so , yeah , lots of brothers and sisters and cousins , and and then I have four kids . I can't call them kids anymore . My youngest is 30 .
So , um , yeah , and , uh , grandkids In fact I've got a granddaughter in the other room right now um , so , yeah , it's , it's getting together as often as we can , which , in Texas , is a little bit hard .
I'm in Fort Worth , two kids are down in Houston , one's in Austin and one's local , but you know , so everybody's kind of all across the state and it's it's a big state so it takes a while to do the drives , but , um , yeah , fun is outdoors . Uh , as much as possible , right , uh , go into lakes and um , all that good stuff .
I grew up in the country , so , um , feeding chickens and riding horses and things like that , and food , all kinds of food is good , especially Mexican food in Texas .
So , yeah , you make me feel hungry . I thought I came from a big family I'm one of seven siblings , but you've definitely topped that right . So that's amazing . And I grew up rurally as well , and so I know what it means to feed chickens . And , yeah , interesting , tell us about how you got into tech .
How did you transition from that rural lifestyle to one of technology and one , in , ultimately , a business central with Microsoft ?
You know it's really funny . I was on my last semester of college and I took an introduction to data processing . It happened to be a business basic programming class and I loved it . But I was on my last semester .
A lot of computers were going into businesses and I happened to get into a business when Ford Motor Company started selling systems to their dealers and I was with one of the very first that we put in . The funniest story I have of that and I have to share this I did something on the keyboard one day .
I don't even know what I was doing , but it came up and it said shut her down , clancy , she's a pumping mud .
Wow .
And I thought I broke this brand new computer system . Oh my gosh , I literally yanked the door open to this special room . You know , keep the computer cool . I don't know what I thought I would see . And so I called Ford and I told them they're like no , no , no .
Years later I'm actually working on a nav system in Louisiana and I told the story and one of the people there said I know the developers who put that in it wasn't ever supposed to leave development right , it was just it was something they put into catch and error and they forgot to take it out . But so it kind of went from there .
You know , in having having seen that programming , I have a knack for numbers so I have did a lot of accounting . I got into nav kind of haphazardly when nav was first coming to the U ? S . It was actually , I think , called a Vista and a company out of Houston said hey , I was doing some just consulting for him . And they said would you look at this ?
People keep calling me and they want me to sell this and I don't have time to look at it . So he said spend an hour . So I looked at it and I said you know , if you don't start selling this , I think I'm well . I was so impressed with it and so he signed up .
He was the eighth company in the US to start selling the system , and a few months later Navision came to Houston and trained about four companies and I happened to get trained . I hate to tell you how long ago that was .
I know how long ago was that .
It was in January of 1996 . Yeah , so I'm starting my 29th year of working on the product and it's , you know , we've always it's , it's been such a great product and we've always been sharp resources Right .
So I learned development , I learned implementation because you had , because you had to kind of learn it all , because nobody else out there knew it , and so salespeople are out there selling it and people are saying help , help , and so that's kind of how I got into it .
And it was really probably seven , eight years later where they started trying to get together a user group . And as soon as I found out about it , by that time I was an independent consultant and oh , then I went to work for an end user and I found out about it then , and so I got involved and started helping organize meetings and things like that .
And , lo and behold , I started speaking , which I can talk a lot . I've never been one to stand up in front of people and talk , but I learned that and I've been involved with the BCNAV user group really since about 2005 . With the BCNAV user group , really since about 2005 . And you know , we helped put on Summit .
We used to do a lot of local chapters and I , you know , it's just fun to help people . You know they struggle with the software , they , you know , and you can say , oh , just go do this and their eyes light up and they get a big smile and you know it . Just , it makes it worth it to help people like that .
So , and I guess I went to a session where a bunch of a bunch of ladies talked about just being women in tech right , and one of them had said in tech right , and one of them had said you know , I want to see more female MVPs , and she was like one of either the first or the second female MVP in kind of the NAB business central space , and somebody
came up to me and I said you know , I really need to do that . They said somebody came up to me and and I said you know , I really need to do that . They said you're not already an MVP , and I said no , and she said , well , you're gonna be . And so she helped me . I've never done a blog before , uh , which I totally enjoy .
Um , I try to find something that I don't know about and go learn about it and then write up what I learned and do screenshots and try to help people , and so I've learned a lot , and I think that's the thing when you're helping others , you learn right , Because you may not know the details of something till you dig in to try to help somebody else .
So it's a win-win for me . You know to help others and also do this , so yeah , I could talk about this for a very long time .
This is awesome . This is awesome . How big do you think the community is in NAVBC now that just in your sphere that you have engaged with ?
So to give you some background , we did our very first kind of get together , trying to bring people together was in Vegas I don't even remember what year now and I think there were maybe 50 people there . Mm-hmm , this year we're expecting and last year actually we had 5,500 people .
Now I have to say that's not just BC , because we bring all the user groups right GP , f&o , crm , power Platform . So because there's users that cross over , a lot of those they're using one or two of the products and they all have needs , they all want to know more and get more out of their system .
But I think we always we probably hit 800 to 1,000 of that 5,500 , maybe a little more so , and there's a lot of times where it's a lot of new people right . So I don't know , I think the user group probably pushes a couple thousand . You know , in North America .
Tell me your thoughts on the journey between NAV , bc . There seemed to be a bit of a tumultuous time in that transition .
Back in the day and I observe from outside because I'm not a consultant that works in that space , but I work for a company that has about 6,000 consultants working across BC projects globally and it was actually interviewing , uh , an mvp inside my business in that space that I realized how big a deal bc has become .
As in you know , there's been a separation for a long time . Microsoft is kind of more marketed f and o um because that's for the enterprise . And then I'm seeing these massive enterprise deployments , global deployments , using bc end-to-end .
So it's obviously has the capability to serve that end of the market you know it , it really is scalable , and not as much as fno , but it is scalable . You know , when I first saw bc , I was like I can do that . You know , it's not that much difference . I , I can see it . Then I got in there and I was like where is everything ?
Because in Nav you had these little pictures at the top of your menu and I'm very visual , so it was easy for me right . Then I get to Business Central and they're not in the same places . And when I first got in in the earlier versions we had three places where it was called Navigate and there was one in Nav .
So when you wanted to navigate you went to that one , and now we had three choices . I did a session with a friend and we called when we got it and what we did was we compared the user interface . Here's what it looks like in VC , here's what it used to look like in Nav and what are the differences .
And when we put that together , it really helped me and so I've shared that with so many people going . This will help you make the connection . And we talked about the great navigate debate why are there so many ? And since then they've changed the terminology some , which has really helped users . So it's a very different user interface .
But what I see is that people who are new to the product they didn't come from now but they just installed VC they take to it so fast because it makes sense .
Some of the stuff now did was maybe a little old school or maybe it was written in Denmark and there's different communication right , we all speak differently , but but this interface and with telemetry that they're using , they're looking at what things do people click on all the time , right , and they're adjusting that user interface to put those front and center so
you don't have as many clicks to go do things , and I think that's a really big thing for a lot of users . I find it really helpful . I'm like , oh , it's right here , and to be able to show users that helpful . I'm like , oh , it's right here .
And to be able to show users that the ability for users to quickly adjust their screens to what they want to see is also super powerful .
And they've just added so many shortcut call them shortcut tools , but tools to let me adjust the data that , oh my gosh , the analyze views where we have pivot tables in Business Central People just their eyes , you know , light up and the data that they can get to .
I've always felt like we got , had a lot of data that we could get to , but now how do we present it , how do we show it ? And we're getting more and more of that , which is exciting .
I like it .
Yeah .
In the next 12 to 24 months . What excites you most about this period that we're going into ?
Well , I didn't think I would have probably had this answer three or four months ago , but it's really co-pilot with AI . We have something coming out in , I guess , next month already . Yeah , 24 wave one . Yeah , for bank reconciliations , where because I was always like , how are we going to use AI in an ERP system ? What's it going to do for us ?
Right , and we started seeing it . With some , we can do descriptions and we can do a formal description or a modern description and some of those kinds of things . So it's like , yeah , that's great , but how am I going to use it ?
And when we start seeing , oh well , we can match things in a better way with the analytical tools , the language , large language sets , the language interpretations , the ambiguities that language has , and just simple matching that AI can do over writing , you know , from scratch algorithm and to really see that in action , to make my job easier as a finance person ,
right , or as a budgeting person , or even as a scheduler in manufacturing , what do I need to buy for inventory ? I think that's going to be exciting for all users . Right now , we're limited to what's been built in and with AI we're going to stretch that , we're going to be able to do more , and that's just astounding . I'm so excited .
I can't wait for some of it . Yeah , and Microsoft is doing a lot from a reporting standpoint too , because that's always a thing people are wanting right more ability to do reporting .
And is the reporting pretty much Power BI or does it have its own reporting surface built in ?
Well , it does have reporting built in and I think there's layers of reporting right . So there's going to be the operational reports that need to reside in the product right your invoice , your production order , simple things like that .
And then there's a layer , maybe more for mid-management , working on collections or payments or something like that , and then there's kind of executive , higher level reporting and I think we're going to see different kinds of tools for each of those layers . It's not going to be something that happens overnight . You said like 18 to 24 months .
We're going to continue to see improvements , putting more power in users' hands for those different tiers , and that's exciting . I really think users are going to embrace that a lot .
And where do you see the Power Platform coming into the BC story ?
Well , you know , it's already being used a lot . We see people creating forms where they can put those on portals and let customers and vendors set up things or view things , give them power to do something versus making a phone call , sending an email . We're also we as power platform a lot for implementations to extend workflows . To extend workflows .
I don't think you'd ever build all the workflows that people can dream up in their organizations , so that will continue to grow . I wish I knew more about Power BI and Power Platform , but I spend so much of my time in the product training on the product , helping people with setups and things like that that I never kind of find the time to do those .
But I do see those just extending more and more the power of the product and people use it all the time . Right now . It's amazing what we're seeing people do with Power Platform and Power BI .
Yeah . So my final question tell me your thoughts on the MVP program .
You know , it was like reaching the summit of Mount Everest for me . I walked around , I think , on cloud nine four days . I it does allow me to , I think , speak with more confidence .
I mean , I've been doing this a long time , but once you hit that and other people recognize what you've put in and your level of knowledge on the product , people look at you like this is somebody who knows what they're talking about . So you better do your homework right , know what you're speaking about .
I was a little disappointed that I wasn't a little more involved with what things were being considered for the next release or in doing more testing of a release and we've actually started conversations with Microsoft about that and they're like we should definitely have our MVPs doing that .
So I think it was just somebody saying , hey , we could help , right , and so they were very receptive . I feel like I've never wanted to be the person who reached out all the time and asked a million questions of Microsoft personnel because they're always so busy .
But I feel like now and I still don't want to reach out every day , which I could , but when you really have something to say I think there's a more openness to listen because you've put forth that effort to raise yourself up and help others that maybe they want to hear . You know they want to hear what you have to say . So I think it's a great program .
I have no problem with the fact that you have to keep up with it . Right , I'm doing my first renewal and saying you know , gosh , did I do enough last year ? Right , you know I do some two or three things every month , but , um , is that enough ? And I , I think , writing my blog .
I'm finding that I'm , I'm , I'm providing a link to my blog for different people going . You asked me how to do . You know ACH is here in the United States . It's out there on my blog . You want to know how to close your year ? It's , I've got a blog for it . So that kind of thing has really helped the community as well .
I'm also one of the three BC3 amigos . We have a podcast . We're not as nice as your podcast , but and we just get together there's three of us and we just talk about issues , right , and one of the things we talked about was AI . How do we see AI really being used ?
And , like I said , four months ago , we were like I don't know , I don't see where it's going , and that's all . That's all of a sudden changed . So yeah , I'm still on cloud nine half the time to be able to put MVP behind my name .
It's so cool . So that's the Three Amigos podcast . I've seen it . You guys seem to have a lot of fun on there . A lot of joking around . And I checked it out on YouTube . So make sure , if you're listening to this , go and take a look if you're in that BC or NAV space . Kim , thank you so much for coming on the show .
Totally enjoyed it , Mark .
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 . Thank you .