Like many of you that read my stuff, I too am following the Ignite Sessions related to Dynamics 365 Business Solutions. I had too many things on my calendar, to make it in-person, but the recorded sessions are the next best thing. As I watched these, I was having trouble relating some of what I was seeing to my actual current business.
Inspiration
It is hard to watch one of these sessions without getting inspired. There is some truly jaw-dropping stuff here. Clearly the team has been given an unlimited amount of rope to go out as far as they can. From a competitive standpoint, no one else is even on the game board. It provides a partner with a strong sense that there is a long runway with Microsoft.
Aspiration
As I see these things however, I cannot imagine being able to actually deploy any of it today. Frankly, I don’t know that I could even explain a lot of it to a customer, in such a way that they could grasp it enough to move forward. But I aspire to… someday. Today, it all feels very “futuristic”, and to be fair, much of it still is. I do appreciate Microsoft sharing their inspirational vision of the future, even if it is only “aspirational” for me today.
Basic Blocking and Tackling
The Microsoft Labs style of thinking, “Forget about today, throw your head back and imagine tomorrow”, has crept into every orifice of Microsoft now, including the Dynamics team, obviously. But sometimes it feels like we are talking about installing a jet engine into a car that has a flat tire. All of the focus is on how cool it would be to have a jet engine in a car; lost in the excitement is the fact that the car, as it sits today, has flat tire. “Umm… hey… are any of you imagineers gonna fix that tire? This is all great, but I really just need that tire fixed for now.”
Engineer Envy
It must really suck to one of those engineers who is told “We think you would be awesome on the B Team!“. Sitting in your cubicle, in the B Team area, hearing all of the cheering and high-fiving going on down the hall from the A Team area. But guess what? You are way more important to me today, than they are. There is no partner that makes a dime on products that are in the pipeline. I feed my family on the products that are on the current price list. I need those products to be bullet-proof. So please know that you are the most important part of the team to me today. So buck up, and go grab that tire iron.
Feet ahead of Body
So ten points to the first person who knows the slogan that goes with my post image. That image, is how I feel that the Microsoft partner strategy is today for Dynamics 365. Their feet are quite ahead of their body. At a certain point, this guy will fall backwards. While the future is of critical importance to us all, and it certainly looks very bright indeed, we need to make sure we are taking care of the here and now, so we can all get there.
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RT @stevemordue: Dynamics 365 – Inspiration vs. Aspiration https://t.co/bNZlA6zBis #msdyn365 #msignite #mspartner https://t.co/Z5b9gH5xwQ
RT @stevemordue: Dynamics 365 – Inspiration vs. Aspiration https://t.co/PRxY2tJrSC #msdyn365 #msignite #mspartner https://t.co/dHezc6RKmV
Dynamics 365 – Inspiration vs. Aspiration | Steve Mordue https://t.co/UG0ppK0Cur
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Couldn’t agree with this more @stevemordue – love the jet engine analogy – perfect 🙂 https://t.co/gR9XXyiagL
Dynamics 365 – Inspiration vs. Aspiration by @stevemordue https://t.co/wo26MvLPs6 #MSDyn365
Great article Steve. The here and now with Dynamcis 365 has become much more confusing. By the way, the image looks like the ‘Keep On Truckin’ motto. Dead fan here.
Keep on trucking Steve!
Steve you are on point here. I have seen the demo where you can edit a customer quote right within an email and it updates back to the ERP. That is really awesome – but totally useless for any company I have ever worked with. It is an awesome proof of concept, but not in any way matching the way companies work.
I spend a great deal of time on ERP and those folk are passionate about depreciating fixed assets, about accurately recording landed costs, allocating project costs across 3 projects and about accurate allocation of serial numbers to orders before they ship.
I have not seen anything in the last 2 years that even mention core accounting functionality. But I do know that you can build a simple mobile app, or see weather patterns in power BI!
Equally on the CRM side having a service app and a project app – with no integration to an ERP is kinda silly. (Lucky eOne is here to fill that gap!).
Potentially awesome and today – useless.
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