 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat, and I'm here with Shannon. Hello. Hey, Christian. How are things going? Nice and cold here in Nashville, ready for a little bit of summer, hopefully soon. Nice and cold everywhere, but for folks that don't know who you are, where you are, what you do, why don't you give us that run down. I'm Shannon Mullins. I'm a Microsoft MVP of business applications. I work mostly on the business central side Dynamics 365 and also work with CRM or D 365 for sales and my background is actually Great Plains started with Great Plains about 20 years ago. I'm going to ask you about that because when you say 20 years in Dynamics, so when the acquisitions happen and all that change, so I'd love to hear some of that. Yeah, I'll explain that in just a second how I got started with Great Plains, but we, we actually are a Microsoft partner I work with a company called Accelerant. Behind me you'll see Arbella we actually just changed names about 30 days ago and I haven't updated my sticker on the wall. Um, but we are a Microsoft Dynamics and security partner we do a lot of work around the Dynamics platform as well as Azure and Sentinel and Defender with Microsoft security so we've got a great security practice and got some great partners I'm working with so. Yeah, very excited to be here I'm actually based out in Nashville Tennessee, but anyone follows me on Twitter or Instagram they know I'm traveling pretty much all the time so I have an MVP that you're pre COVID as we were saying before I started like I was a two to three events a month kind of schedule and just was constantly around the world and which is, you know hey good and bad, you know, they're, they're definitely some pros to that you see a lot of beautiful parts of the world. So the last month I were last week I was in Denver and I was actually wishing to be home in my own bed, so I'm glad to be home this week, and back out in the road with clients next week, but it's, it's been a fun life. Yeah, a little bit about my great planes background so I actually was working in accounting while I was finishing my accounting degrees, and I have two degrees in accounting ones of bachelors and ones of masters and while I was getting and finishing my first degree I started working in the accounting department, who was moving from QuickBooks into great planes and back then it was great planes. And that was right around the time where Microsoft was starting to buy the software and great planes was actually on not sequel based servers it was on pervasive and went through that whole transition went through moving to GP. And interesting fact is that at that time, Microsoft partners was actually doing that implementation, and the guy that was leading the implementation said you know you'd be really good at this consulting thing you should consider it and I said oh no, I can never never do that. I don't want to be on the road I don't want to be teaching people all day long like I don't, I don't think so I think you know I want to be an accountant, you know that's what I go to go went to school for. And they kept in touch I kept in touch with several of them, and then that came back up in a job. 10 years right afterwards where another consultant that was helping us with great planes said you know, are you sure you don't want to go into consulting and I thought. And about six years after that when I decided to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, I was like, you know what, I really do like databases I gotten into sequel reporting and crystal reporting and decided, I think I might try consulting and was when my kids were younger, I could actually be traveling and and do things that you know you need to do in the consulting world but yeah I started off with great planes and taught myself self taught myself business central, which is, you know based off of what I have and similarities, I feel like they're two different worlds. In fact, when I go back to great planes now I feel like I went back to 1998 sitting back in front of the screen. I mean there were really three very different products solutions that were under that banner, but it's, I mean it's good to see we're seeing more MVPs from the dynamic side kind of join in and certainly there are a number that are with the business application space that are pure power platform so they may be productivity collaboration people, they kind of found their way over that direction, but we're seeing more just my observation I don't have numbers to speak to, but of people that have that deep dynamics background and some of the history there that are starting to come over into become MVPs in some of these different areas. So first off for those that aren't don't know this they, I mean like I'm an office apps and services MVP, I started as a SharePoint. I moved to Office 365. Then they was office apps and servers, then became office apps and services. And so it evolves and changes and they will shift things around based on a lot of those things as well so like there was, I believe at one time there was just like a dynamics which could have been anything under not need that. And now it's, I don't know if there's still dynamics MVP, I don't think so. No it's business applications and in fact, one of my MVP friends who's actually an MVP of business applications for BC, she didn't even know if she was a BC MVP, or a Power Automate MVP and until we were at Directions EMEA, she had Microsoft look it up and they have like your subcategory but if you go on to the MVP portal, you can't tell like what speciality some of these. And you can because depending on the audience to like sometimes I'll refer to myself as a SharePoint MVP. If I'm talking with that crowd that's what I started as I still write about still talk about that. But all the rest of the productivity. So they they're actually because there used to be like an Excel MVP and a PowerPoint MVP and a one note kind of all to those areas which are all now part of office apps and services. And but Microsoft just said, you know, if you're comfortable saying, hey, I'm a, you know, focused on CRM so I'm going to be focused on that or I'm, I'm specifically Power Automate and that's my focus you can say Power Automate MVP, although it's business applications so Yeah. And honestly, you know, I do so much work in so many different applications now I'm really heavily focused most of my, my sessions I'm teaching at conferences this year on the Power Platform with Dynamics with teams. I've really grown very, very fond of teams and its capabilities to SharePoint and leveraging those capabilities so much more within the dynamic stack than we would have done it with great planes I mean that just wasn't something we did. But now I feel like because Microsoft's connecting it all together. I do really cares though. If you're talking to SharePoint MVP and you're talking to Dynamics MVP were two different worlds right but our worlds kind of collide together at that that stage of Refer to ourselves sharing documents of Microsoft MVP instead and that's yeah exactly so it's interesting that Microsoft has been over the last, you know, two three years, where it seems like Microsoft has really stepped up and doing, you know, investing in dynamics, it's coming to the forefront. Why why what's with the change what's what why finally was it because Satya owned a bunch of that before he became CEO and so he just wanted to push on those those areas, or what do you what do you think that has been. It's been an interesting transition so I'll tell you that Microsoft kind of shook up this world about six seven years ago at. It was one of those events where they essentially sat down with the partners and said, you know, we're going to build a cloud based ERP. And back then at that point it was we were going to build it right we're going to start from scratch we're going to build this product, and everyone's like, what. Coming from people who have been doing this a long time right we're going, why, why are you just building from scratch just take something you have right and it took them a while to get there and it was very frustrating for about two years. But when they finally got to business central and they decided now was going to be that base and the vision was always a well used well known product. Moving it into BC and making it truly cloud to compete against net suite really was a game changer. And I'll tell you what the game changing features are so one is that compatibility with office 365 right, we have that capability we have that. So piece where we can create sales orders and outlook we can automatically store files to one driver SharePoint, we can send records and teams. I mean that capability that people are using the office stack now all of a sudden your ERP is embedded with it. We've got rid of VPNs, you know VPNs where the bane of our existence still are the bane of our existence from clients, and for the customers themselves right no one wants to have to be pinned to RDP to connect to get into a program now on my phone, my tablet, I have my ERP data and I can, you know, do almost everything that I need to do on those on those devices so I feel like it's funny because I feel like the timing of Microsoft getting this product to the cloud and then COVID was just like the perfect excellent, I'll use our name accelerant to cat to be that catalyst to just say you know we had it companies calling us in 2020. We got to get off these VPNs we got to get off these checks we got to get off this on prem software right this is a horrible situation we're in when we're working remote. And so I feel like really that's been the driver to get everyone to kind of push and of course net sweet had gained a lot of a lot of traction but I feel like their software because they started so early in the game in the 90s the interface of it looks very 90s ish or Microsoft's coming out with a very modern cloud looks very much like our office applications, you know, all of those different pieces, which just makes it so nice and flowing and, and it's just, it's a very, it was demoing at one time for a customer and they said you know, we saw in that sweet we thought it was like the, it was like the, the, what did he say they get the, not very good cars but Corvette. So it's like the core of that because, but now you showed me, you know, Business Central this is like the Ferrari, like we've seen it's slick it's smooth and then you know usually what people want to know is what is the price point and the price point is so ridiculously low you know for BC it's insane. And they're like, What, I get all this for this price I mean it's really, it's a slick deal for how much ERP you're getting so it's pretty nice. Likewise growing so fast I know you've got to run you've got another another call but one last question it's kind of bigger question but do you see, you know, in your space with Microsoft loop, because you know every time you see the scenarios that they that they do they they show kind of like an ERP interaction using loop and getting real time. Yeah, so I find it interesting I saw a little bit about loop I wasn't able to attend a lot of the sessions at the conference and so I saw people start talking about loop and how exciting it is. I think it's going to be one of those slow adoptions I mean I feel like people are just getting to the point to adopting teams with dynamics. I don't know if we necessarily need another product, because we have teams now. I agree with you as a standalone, but as an integrated, like I was actually, you know, as an integrated solution. I actually go back to if you remember a few years back when Julia white did the demo of gig jam on stage at the conference. So like five, six years ago is where we saw that that that loop type technology real time, but have really segregated content and use the example of, you know, be able to pull something from the ERP we want to interact with this group of people around that data without showing them access to everything else around just focus around that one change it from different locations in real time like that you conceptually like just that was really inspiring even though that demo was complete smoke and Yeah, well that's how we felt about BC when it first came out so I'm Christian I'm like I'm not opposed to it but I have to see real use cases I think that Microsoft is doing a really good job of moving towards more centralized processes within organizations and that's a huge selling point for our CIO's CTO's you know it's it's fantastic that people were meeting with they love it so it's pretty great. I really appreciate your time today and getting something to hear about this. Shannon people want to find out more about you get in touch what are the best ways to reach you and find you. Yeah, so you can follow me on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn profile is at one at one Shannon Mullen one or look for Shannon Mullen Microsoft MVP I'm also on LinkedIn and then you can go out to our website accelerant.com and find me there. And of course you'll be able to find all this info if you're finding this via listening and via podcast or fighting on YouTube then you go to buckleyplanet.com and I'll have all of her social links as well within a blog post there so Shannon thanks so much for your time and have a great Great weekend.