ERP Modernization Without the Chaos with Alicia King [MVP]

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Welcome everybody to another edition of the M665FM podcast.
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Today we explore technologies, digital transformation AI,
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business application, and people driving innovation across the Microsoft ecosystem.
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Today's episode is going to be especially value for any involved in the ERP
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modernization.
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Finance transformation, Dynamics 365 for Enterprise Technology.
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I'm joined by Alicia King,
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pre-sales engineer director at RSM, US, LLP, Microsoft MVP, Speaker, and podcast host.
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Also, Alicia works closely with CFOs and CIOs, helping organizations reduce disruption,
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control cost, and successfully modernized and consolidated ERP systems using Microsoft Dynamics
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365 finance and supply chain. She has supported more than 100 Microsoft ERP transitions across
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more than 40 countries and bringing a unique perspective to the combination,
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finance, technology, executive strategy, and real-world implementation experience.
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Alicia, welcome to the podcast.
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It's a pleasure being here today. Thank you for having me.
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Yeah, thank you. Can you, can you, for the people who don't know,
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you can you a little bit tell us about your background and how you fit into the Microsoft ecosystem?
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Absolutely. So when he was Alicia King, I lived in Greenville, South Carolina,
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the United States. I've been in the Microsoft space since 2009,
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and my journey through the Microsoft channel has been an amazing journey.
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It's one of those things where you start out, you really don't know what you're getting into,
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right? When you first start out, and you start meeting people and having experiences,
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and I have to say that the Microsoft community is so welcoming,
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and friendly. You can go up to anybody and pretty much ask any question, and you're going to get
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some honest feedback. And so I started my journey in supply chain years ago,
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and then when I started doing Microsoft in 2009, I started doing finance.
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So being, I had that supply chain background and marrying it with finance has proved to be
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really, really powerful, and my implementations as well as in my sales demos that I'm currently doing.
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And then about three years ago, I became a Microsoft MVP, and that opened up a whole new
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world to me, a different circle, and put me in a level of influence. And so for that, I'm certainly
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grateful, and it's really opened up a lot of thought leadership and given me a platform to
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blog and podcast, and to go to speaking events. Awesome, that's really cool.
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What will you say when you look a little bit about your career, you have done 100 transitions?
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So what is this so much? So is that anything you have learned through these projects,
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where you say this was really amazing for me? One of the things that I've learned is that we're
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not in a technology business, we're in the people business. Whenever you go into a company,
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you start learning people and their culture, and it's so important to understand who they want
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to become as a company. So that way you as an implementer or as a thought leader inside of
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that company can start and help them get to where they're going to go. It's not about going in and
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showing them how smart you are. It's going in and showing them how you can help transform them
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and get them to where they want to go so they can serve their customers better. And I've had the
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privilege of working in about 14 different countries, so my platform and my experience is across
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this ecosystem of international type companies and industrial life sciences, service industries,
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and across those different platforms, you start to see a common thread. And it's really about how
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people want to view their business. So anytime you go into a project or you start talking to a
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potential client, you always want to say who is my audience and what's my business objective?
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And then when you get in alignment with that, you help create clarity. Once you have clarity about
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what you're going to do with a client and where they're going to go, that's where the magic happens,
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because now you're working in the state of flow. And there's a lot of trust between you and the client.
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And that's really where you start putting that momentum and you start seeing a huge value ad.
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Awesome. A little bit about Dynamics 365, Finishing Supply Chaites. Sorry. How have this over the years
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evolved from your perspective? And especially now we have co-pilot and AI. Is there
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a change? What did you see?
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D365 has always been a relational database, but it's not always been easy to get data out of D365.
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So back when I started, I was in a product called AX2009. And then 2009 became AX2012.
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And then AX2012 became D365, Finishing Supply Chain. So through the years, the systems
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you became easier to get the information out of, but not just that Microsoft's platform for
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meeting their customers needs is to go and buy ISVs or Integrated Software Winners applications
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and bring it into the core application of D365. So when I started out in 2009, people went out
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about best of breed software and then integrated them together. So for example, they may go out and get
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AX2009 for finance and maybe manufacturing, but they would go out to some other third party system
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for like AP automation. And then they would integrate that in our warehouse management back in the day
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and integrate that with Microsoft. And then Microsoft then in AX2012 without
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bottom warehouse management system and made that part of the core application. So then you no longer
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had to go out and buy a warehouse management system. It was part of the core application. Then in
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D365, Finishing Supply Chain, you've seen that with credit collections. And again, with warehouse
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management, some of the other features, they've gone out in asset management, for example.
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They went out and bought these different solutions and made it part of the core product.
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So now when people go buy the product, they're no longer looking to say, hey, what's the best of breed?
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They're looking to say, what holistic system best fits, fits, what holistic system best fits my
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business department. So now D365 is kind of that one stop shop where you can get really fantastic
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financials, manufacturing asset management, least management, project management, all of those
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different components inside of one ecosystem. There are still some times where you do need to go out
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and get a best of breed to integrate in. But largely D365 is really that holistic system. So everyone is
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working out the same database, working out the same system from business to business in processes.
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Interesting. That's really, really cool. You worked directly with a lot of CFO, CIOs.
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What are the biggest mistakes organizations make when they approach an ERP organization?
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Most companies, when they come to us, they've already done their homework. They're no longer trying
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to say, what is D365? Or who are you as an organization? They've already done their homework and
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found out who D365, the financial supply chain is, the functionality inside of it. They already
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knew who I am. Usually when I get to the door, they've already looked at my LinkedIn profile.
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They already know about company. We are. So I work for RSM. And they've done that homework. So when
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you walk in the door, you're no longer introducing yourself. You're really validating what they
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already know to be true. So when you walk in the door, it's no longer saying, "Microsoft's a great
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product. RSM is a great company. I have all this experience." They're really wanting you to make
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sure that you're in alignment with what they already believe to be true about you. And it's really
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about mitigating risk because used to it was a CIO and the CFO that were the decision makers, but now
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you have buying committees. So it's no longer resting on one person to make the decision.
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Yeah, I understand. I think a little bit, we have this, yeah, this executive alignment.
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How important is this before the project starts?
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Alignment is key because alignment shows clarity. Whenever you go into a company, they're not
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looking for guarantees. They're looking to make sure that there's clarity around what you're going
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to deliver. And when you run into difficulties, how are you going to manage those difficulties?
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Because everybody knows ERP implementations are hard and they're long because it's literally like
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heart surgery, right? You're going in and you're removing or replacing this core element of the
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business because ERP literally runs the business. So you have to go in very strategically to replace
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the ERP system with the currently on and putting in the new one to make sure that you can still
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deliver product to your customers on time. You don't have negative impact on cash flow,
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that your inventory levels stay where they're supposed to be. All those pieces are very, very important.
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And so going into this, they want to know like, hey, when we do run into a problem, how are you
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going to manage it? How are we going to share this risk together and communicate and mitigate risk?
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Yeah, that's I think the topic is here, organization should a little change. How,
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what impact have a modernized or modernizing ERP on the organization and how can they handle
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the change, yeah, especially in the company to the employees or to their processes?
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Change management is key. We can go in and do an amazing implementation, have error, all the bills
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and whistles working, everything tested. But if the users don't adopt the change, it will fail.
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So if you were to go out right now and do a search and say how many ERP implementations are deemed
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successful, you will see that only 50% of ERP implementations are deemed successful. And that's
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across all applications, it's not just Microsoft, it's all of them collectively. So you have to
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step back and ask yourself why. In the reason why most of the time that it's true is because there has
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not been good change management inside of the organization. And as a result, the users have not
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adopted the change. So one of the things that is key in doing that is one is leadership
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has to make sure that the users feel safe. And the reason that's so important is if I've been doing
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my job on a green screen, say an AS-400 type application for the past 30 years, and now let us say,
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near handing me this software is a solution, Windows based or internet based application.
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That's scary because I myself, one, can I do it? If I can do it, what how am I going to do my job?
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Someone has literally shifted my world. So in many cases, it's easier for people to get
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defensive and talk about how the system won't work for them instead of how the system will work for
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them. And until they actually start using the language of how the system will work for them,
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you're going to get that resistance. If you're getting resistance, it's not you're not going to get
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adoption. So I would say, for the folks listening to this podcast, if you're in a leadership position,
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make sure that your users feel valued and they feel safe and they have the confirmation that they
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can do it, that they can own the system and they can be successful. So there's one component of it.
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The other component of it is during the training and during the implementation process,
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one of the beautiful things about a D365, I don't know, supply chain, is the fact that you can
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personalize your screens. Whenever you go in and look at the core application, it can be so
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overwhelming because it is huge. It's a huge application. There's so many different modules and
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so many different workspaces and thousands of fields on the screen, right? So from an implementation
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perspective, go in and find out how that individual needs to use a system. Then hide everything they
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don't see, you need to see move things around so that their tabs are in a certain order,
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do the things to make their day-to-day life easy. Once you make something easy, people start to
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believe that they can do it and once they believe that they can do it, they will adopt. And then
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that's how you get success and adoption during an ERP implementation. I see often in my space,
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Microsoft Fabric, a lot of companies say, "Oh, we need this technology, IT, do does it for us,
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but for my feeling, it's they don't do business process redesign, how can look up this business,
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the process redesign and dynamics are in ERP systems." You always have to say, what is my business
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objective? So let's say for example, I was working with a company and we were looking at the chart
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of accounts, just as an example, in financial dimensions. The first thing I would start asking is,
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how do you want to see your reports? You always start with the end in mind and you say,
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how do you want to run your business? Do you want to be able to see region in your trial balance?
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So now let us say, if I can say for this particular region, this was my cost-lit-as-sold and this is
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my revenue. Now let us say, and I can measure profit margins by region. If I want to say, maybe it's
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by product group, that way you can figure out which product group is making you the most profit.
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Because in every business, you have money-makers and money-takers. So you have to figure out which
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products are going to give you the biggest profit margins, but you can't do that if you don't
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configure the system right. If you don't configure the system with certain financial dimensions or
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certain fields being populated. But if you set the system up in a certain way, now of a sudden
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everything is easy. So it's always starting with the end in mind and working backwards into the
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configuration of the system. That's how you're going to get the information that you're looking for.
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I think another topic with especially important is data quality and ERP success.
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What experience have you collected in the year? And the year you working with ERP and companies
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especially about data quality? You know, it's funny. I worked on so many different projects and
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most of them do costing because a lot of the projects I've worked on have been in manufacturing.
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And it's so interesting to me at how many times people put costing off to the end. They're like,
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oh, it's just costing. And I'm like, do you hear yourself? You're saying it's just costing. Do you
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realize if your cost is wrong? Your profit margins are wrong? If your profit margins are wrong,
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you don't know how much money you're making. It is so, so, so important. So it's one of those things that
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if your data is wrong, you're going to run your business wrong. If you go in and you're setting up
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your customers and you don't pay attention to the addresses that are being brought into the system,
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guess what? The wrong address is going to get put on the sales order or the person putting in
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the sales order isn't enough what address to pick. The customer has to own the data. That doesn't
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mean the partner can't help you transform the data into D365, but it is so, so critical that you go
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through different iterations of that data migration to make sure your data is clean because I can tell
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you from experience, if your data is dirty and you go live, it is so much harder to fix.
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It is well worth the time to go through that process during your user acceptance testing, during
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your mock go lives, make sure your data is clean, then you're going to have to set yourself up for a
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high level of success at go live. But again, if your data is dirty, you're going to suffer.
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Yeah, yeah, I think that's through a lot of company, yeah, a little bit wrong, but so when you see
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this, this projects, did you think companies become more realistic about timelines and
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express stations actually or? One of the things that I've seen is a lot of companies don't
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provide enough resources on their side. So they'll look at the finance team or the supply chain team
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and they'll be like, "Oh, well, you can do this on top of your existing job." Well, guess what?
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These people are already working 40, 50 hours a week, sometimes more, and now you're going to ask
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them to do this European implementation on top of it. It's just you're really setting people up for
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burnout and failure, and that's part of why you get the resistance as well because they're so burned
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out and so overworked that they don't have the capacity to get excited about the new processes and the
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new business opportunities for doing the European implementation. I would highly recommend to an
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organization to pick your key users, your smager, or subject matter experts, and they start off-loading
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some of their work before the project starts because they obviously have to keep doing part of their
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existing job. It's not like you're going to free up your whole team to do this, but it starts off-loading
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different pieces of their work. So they have some bandwidth and capacity to take on the work of the
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European project because if your people aren't involved, your implementation is going to struggle. It
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doesn't matter how good your implementation partner is because your implementation partner does
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not know your business the way you do period. We know the system, we know best practices, we know
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how things are, how folks should work, but you know your business and you're going to own it.
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So make sure you give your people some bandwidth to actually do the process with you and with the
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partner. What are typical, are seeing roles on company side you need to work with and how they
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have a different look on on the project? You need to make sure that both sides, your
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implementation partner and the customer has a strong PM project manager. The project managers have
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to really be in alignment and there cannot be any ego or any guarded, like I'm going to hide
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information, type mentality. It's okay to have risk on your raid log. It's okay, you should have
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risks. I worked on projects before and we want to start notitating potential risks and the client
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will tell us, no, no, no, we can't go to the board with any risks. And I'm like, do you realize what
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kind of exposure that is? By having a risk on your actual status sheet shows your leadership that
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you've identified potential risk and you thought through how to mitigate the risk in the event that
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it happens. If you go to your board and they're upset that you have risks on there, there's like a
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cultural problem inside the organization. It's actually a good thing to have risks on your status
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reports because again it's showing them that you're thinking ahead, you're mitigating risk by
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anticipating potential risks so that you can think through how to fix those. On the project
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management side, that's why it's so important to be fully transparent because we're humans and
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we make mistakes and that's okay but the finger pointing can't happen. You've got to go in and just
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be honest, say hey, this happened and now let's work together to fix it or to mitigate the risk.
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So the other thing too, on the D365 side as a project manager, we know what we're doing but we don't
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always know what's going on inside the organization so it's important for the clients project manager
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to share with the D365 project manager other things that are going on in the business. It doesn't
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mean you have the the D365 project manager has to know all the details but it's good for the D365
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project manager to know that these other projects are going on or maybe some of the resources that
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are working on ERP are also working on other projects which again is not highly desirable but that
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does happen sometimes but it's important that everyone's just very open and honest and there's a lot of
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trust. And other roles are I think sea level or IT, what's their role in this project? The sea
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level must, it's really really important that the sea level has is an alignment and excited about
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the project. Years ago I worked on a project at a large company and it didn't matter what was broken,
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it didn't matter if their printer didn't work or their email didn't work, oh the systems broken
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and then they would run into the to the boss's office and be like, oh the systems aren't working,
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the systems aren't working. And the reason they did that is because the manager didn't want the
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project and so he would sit there and listen to them and not tell them that they needed to get
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an alignment and help things work together. And then one day something shifted, somebody went and
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talked to that particular individual and said, hey the system is here to stay on it, let's make it
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work. The next time that someone went into the individual's office and started complaining they
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told them, no, no, okay, you know what, this is our system, let's own it, let's make it the best we
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can make it and immediately all the problems went away. Leadership sets the tone, so if you're in a
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C level, make sure that your the level below you is fully supported and make sure that your
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directors and your managers are fully supporting the team below them. Once people feel safe and they
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realize that they're doing all of this in the best entrance of their customers because again,
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people do ERP implementation so they can learn their business better so they can service their
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customers better. So I would say always keep the end customer in mind and make sure that everyone's
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in alignment and understanding why they're doing this project and understanding the impact is going
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to have on their end customers because now they're believing it's something bigger than themselves,
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they're seeing the big picture. And once that happens, which again is done by the leadership,
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once that happens, you're going to see an entirely different project and entirely different
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implementation. It'll actually be fun for the users.
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It's cool. I think a little bit about the thing, how we can call it, I've been a shared transformation
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vision, I call it so how important is to have a vision of the transformation and that it's also
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shared with the company or with the employees there are involved and how can it look?
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Sometimes people think if they do an ERP implementation is going to magically fix everything in
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their business and that's just not reality. As a leader, so if you're in that C-suite, you need to
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take a look at your business and say where do I want to go and once you understand where you want
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to go, then you start saying do I have all the elements to get there? Because it could be a cultural
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problem. Just like say, for example, if a particular company has a cultural issue around conflict
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and they're always having conflict, conflict, while hiring a conflict coach to come and
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do a two-day workshop is not going to fix it. Right, sometimes people think, oh, if I pay enough money
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and I get the right person here is going to magically fix it, you have to go to the root cause.
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You have to understand why you're having the issues you're having, then bring in the right people,
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bring in the right software, bring in the right tools to fix your business. ERP is a tool.
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It's not going to fix all your issues. So I would suggest if you are a leader in a company, figure out
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who you are as a company. Are there any internal issues that need to be resolved? Find out as a
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company who you want to become, then go find a partner to help you get there. I see often the people
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in the company, they're a communication gap. And the people, I get mental sick, they have to go to
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a mental asylum or so. What's your tip, how organizations better bridge the communication gap
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between business and technology teams? It's getting an a room together. Your CIO, your CFO,
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your CO, they need to get an a room together. They need to make sure that they are in alignment.
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Because as an organization, you may have a CIO that's like, how do we need to go this particular
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path, but then you may have a CFO that has an entirely different vision or a CO that has an
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entirely different vision. And a lot of times because everybody's so busy and there's just
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the kind of life gets in the way, these individuals don't necessarily get an a room and talk all the
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time. And so you'll see them kind of pushing and pulling against each other. And sometimes there's
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a lot of conflict amongst the circle. So it's important if they get in a room together and they
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have a conversation and they have a vision board saying who are we to become in and then talk
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about how you're going to get there, but they need to be in alignment first. If they're in alignment,
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we're going to see so much more progress in success. So just to give you a story, I worked on a
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project one time with a very large company and we were working with the IT team. Yeah, when we started
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working with them, we talked to the IT director and he said, this is an IT project and we're going to
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push it on to the business. I immediately rift flag started flying up all over my head. And
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their mentality was is that sales order processing, invoicing, all these different components,
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inventory management was going to be an IT function. So it was going to be, it was an IT solution
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to a business problem and they were going to tell the business how to do it. Well, needless to say,
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I went to my partner at the time and like this has got failure written all over it. And the other
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thing that they also did is they said, because this is an IT project, we're not going to do any kind
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of solution verification at the beginning. We're just going to start picking away at stuff and we'll
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eventually get it all done. Well, they worked on this project. We were probably the second or third
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partner they pulled in on this particular project. And they have been working on this air quote IT
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project for five years. I can't even imagine how many millions of dollars they had. Long story short,
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we went in and we told them like before you start you have to do a solution verification, you have
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to know where you're going, you have to document these processes, otherwise you're never going to go
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anywhere. And that's what ended up happening. The the leadership in the business that we've already
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spent X and R millions of dollars and until you actually change how you're going to do the project
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or shutting it down. So it's so important because again, the CIO, the CFO did not get in a room
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together and have a collaborative conversation about where they wanted to take the business.
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And it failed. We actually pulled out. We're like, we can't this isn't this isn't this is got failure
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and all over. So we actually pulled out of the project. So that's what has to happen. There has to be
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internal alignment before you can hit external success. Awesome. I you have these these international
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experience with the 14 countries. So I like it a little bit to ask what challenges come with
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with global EAP projects? Depends on what country you're working in. So if you're working in Latin
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America versus Europe, it's very different from a cultural perspective and on the timing of things.
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Years ago when I first started working in Latin America, I remember I was working on a project in El Salvador
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and being in America were typically very proud. So I would usually get there a little bit early to
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the meetings. I would make sure it's fully prepared. So whenever we got in the room, we would start the
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project. I started the conversation and I remember I showed up and no one was there and I'm like,
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oh no, I'm in the wrong room. So I sat there for like 10 or 15 minutes and again, no, we came and I'm
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like, okay, what's wrong? So I actually got up and started asking. So I'm like, hey, you know,
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I'm in the right room, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll come. And I'm like, okay, and so I sat there
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and sure enough and about an hour people started twinkling in. And I was just like, okay. And then I
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noticed that that happened quite frequently. So this whole concept of time, I think is perceived
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differently in different cultures. I remember you also worked on a project in Puerto Rico and
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everything was urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent. And so you would be like, okay, you know, and I get it
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done and I give it to them. And then they would literally sit on it for like a year or two years. And so
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it's this mentality of everything's urgent, but then there's no action lots of times. And I don't
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mean that in negative context. I mean that in the sense of knowing, being an American, thanking a certain
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way and then going to these different countries and learning how they think. So I just had to get
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myself in alignment with what they did. And then once I did, then I understood how things flowed and
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then everything was good. So I'm not saying that one culture is good and one culture is bad. It's just
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different. So learning how to work inside of that. I also, once I worked on a project in Turkey,
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I remember no one wanted to make a decision because for me, again, my mindset is you do a
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risk reward value ad analysis. You look at your options and you pick one and then you do it.
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For me, it's just, it's kind of cut and dry. You know, you do the analytics and you then pick the
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the path of highest success probability. And when I was in Turkey working on this project, I kept
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I'm doing that. I'd provide them with this options and I'm like, okay, what do you want to do?
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And I want to make a decision and I was like, okay, so literally you would do this
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probably like five or six meetings later and then someone would finally make a decision.
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So it's that thought process of learning how they analyze data differently or how they go about
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making decisions differently. I've worked on projects in Europe as well and the, their mindset is
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a bit more similar to probably what I'm used to. But again, it's more of a collaborative type approach
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to business than some of the other cultures that I've worked at. I've also worked in the UK
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and going through the process of things is a little bit different. It's very similar in a lot of ways.
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But really for me as a consultant, it's making sure that I get an alignment with them. I don't look
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at them as a hey you need to get an alignment with me. Okay, it's their business. So I'm there to bridge
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the gap and to try to make sure things move along and then I work with it's within the parameters of
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what their culture and their businesses. So there are differences, but I think it's going into
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with an open mind and loose hands, meaning I'm not going to go in there in white knuckle or get all
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been out of shape because I don't do something the way that I do. I start getting curious and asking
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questions and then I adapt accordingly. And how different are the finance processes between
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the regions? So it depends on what country you're in. So I can France and China, they actually have
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statutory chartered accounts. Also they do IFRS, International Financial Standards reporting. In the US,
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we have GAP, you know, acceptable accounting practices. So they're very similar. They're
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the reporting is a bit different. Sometimes they're chartered accounts are a bit different.
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You'll notice there's other kind of posting differences on how everything sit on the trial
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balance. Whenever you look at some of the financial reporting for some countries, like in the United
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States, when you look at a trial balance, for example, it gets from the most liquid asset to the least
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liquid asset. And then in some countries, that's flip-flopped. So the finance piece of it is different,
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but similar in many ways. So setting up the posting profiles and different things inside of E365
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is somewhat similar, but I always ask the questions because I'll come at it from the approach of
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what I think it should be based upon my experience. And then I obviously lead on the client
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for verification, for that put it where country to happen to be in.
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Awesome. I think a little bit about the importance of localization and dynamics deployment.
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How do you see this?
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Microsoft has done a lot to get the localizations expanded across more countries. So like in the
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United States, we do not do e-envoicing. E-envoicing is the rest of the world type functionality. So e-envoicing is
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whenever you send a customer invoice to a customer, it actually has to go through that local government
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to get registered with a token before it actually gets sent to the customer to ensure that you,
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the company actually pay the correct amount of tax or value out of tax to that government.
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So there's localizations around that piece of it. There's some other localizations that get around
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the chart of accounts, for example. VAT or value out of tax is significantly different than
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U.S. sales tax just to give you an idea in the United States. We have about 15,000 tax codes
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in the rest of the world. You have like six ballpark. So you have standard reduced, you're rated
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in some special ones. So tax is significantly different. So Microsoft is doing a good job in
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expanding that footprint because also the other thing around taxes, you have value out of tax on
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transfer orders, purchase order, sales orders, and some different things, which we don't typically do
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like tax in the United States on transfer orders. And you can, there's some certain rules around it.
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But the localizations, Microsoft's continually expanding that particular footprint. There are still
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some gaps in D365 for some countries, but Microsoft is expanding that footprint pretty subtedally.
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That's I think why tax advisor earns so much in the U.S.
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Yeah, there's a lot to it.
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What have you learned from all your international projects, especially what teaches you in leadership?
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From a leadership perspective, I think it's to again make sure that there's clarity and alignment
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with where the company wants to go. I recently talked to a publishing company in the UK and they're
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actually, they're a global type company or it's a publishing company. And understanding what's
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important to them is key. So I think the same human elements are pretty much the same across
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countries in the sense of the CFO and the CIO and the CIO and the C-suite need to be in alignment
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with each other. I mean, that's true regardless what country you're going into. But understanding
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what kind of nuances are related to their particular countries is important. So I worked on another
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project. It was a life science company and we expanded them into eight different countries.
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So just understanding how the companies across the different countries interact with each other
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because lots of times you do intercompany transactions. And so if I'm maybe making a product in the
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Netherlands and I'm sending it to Germany, for example, or I'm sending it to France or I'm sending it to
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UK or sending it to Asia, that intercompany transaction can attract different types of requirements
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like certificates of compliance. And there's different kinds of things that are associated with
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each one of those countries. So it's really important to understand how that fits together.
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From a leadership perspective though, a lot of the companies I've worked with are in Europe or
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just somewhere else like Canada or somewhere else in the world, but they will also have a US footprint.
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So it's important to make sure that we understand from the implementation perspective
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how the companies are going to run differently versus US first and compared to some other
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country or how they're going to be similar. And again, that comes into leadership. Leadership has to
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talk to each other across these different countries so that they have a big vision of where their
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business is going to go so that they can serve as their clients better. Yeah, actually I think we put
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in every product, we have the word AI, AI, ERP, Dynamics, co-pilot, so it's really the same.
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What does that actually mean in practice?
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So co-pilot is your companion or your buddy or your friend largely. So there are independent agents.
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So let's kind of break this down into two separate buckets. Buckets, there's co-pilot,
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which is going to help you do things. So let's talk about the supplier agent,
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inside of D365, finance and supply chain. The supplier agent inside of D365 actually has two different
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components to it. It has the, they're both AI, but one's a genetic component to it, and another one
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is just more of like an informative piece to it. So the AI part of this informative allows you to go
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through it and re-sthrough all of your, your purchase orders to say, hey, when is this purchase order
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going to be late? For example, and you set this up in your query so you could say, show me all purchase
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orders that are supposed to be delivered on Friday that have a, that I, that I want to follow up with
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the vendor. So you maybe you want to be proactive. So today is Thursday and so we want to make sure that
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you know everything is going to deliver tomorrow, just as an example. So you can set up this AI
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agent of sorts to go through and re-through all your purchase orders to see what should be delivered
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and then email your vendor, say, hey, is this going to be delivered tomorrow? Just as an example.
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Or if you're being retroactive, you could say, show me everything that was supposed to been delivered
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on Monday that hasn't been delivered yet and send an email to that particular vendor. So D365,
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on the agent side, who actually draft the, re-through all your purchase orders based on that criteria,
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draft a per, an email for you to that vendor. So you have two options. It'll draft the email so you
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the human can go through, look at it, tweak it, change the verbiage, whatever you want to and then send it.
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Or you could tell the agent component of it to actually draft the email and automatically send it.
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So again, isn't it's doing work that I would manually have to do for me? So it's surfacing all
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that information. It's calming through the data, it's surfacing that so that me, the human can then look
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at it and say, yep, that needs to go. And then when I'm comfortable with it and I get used to
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how the system works, that could have it go automatically. So there's also, so every time I'm an MCP,
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right? So MCP is allowed you to go out and kind of do what a human does, but you can do it from
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like teams, for example. So if I wanted to put in a purchase order, I could go into teams and say,
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credit purchase order for this particular, the vendor for this particular item in the system will go
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generate that data for me. It's a tool, AI is a tool and it's very powerful, but from what we're saying,
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as people are coming up to us and saying, how can I use the AI to get information out of the system?
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And then how can I use AI to once I look at something to tell it to update the system? So there's not
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a lot of autonomous agents being implemented yet, at least not from what I've seen, but we are
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starting to leverage AI a lot as a tool to surface data. So I'm not having to go manually look for
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information. I can give it a human language, a large language model, LLM command and let it go
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to the database and get that information sent back to me. And what's the topic I think about governance?
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What are the risk of implementation these group pilots, AI without strong governance?
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So I think it depends on what industry you're in. So I think the governance can be a little bit
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looser for some industries versus others. But again, the way D365 is configured, whenever you're
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using MCP, for example, or you're using AI, it looks at your security permissions. So D365 has
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role-based security permissions. So it's looking at Alicia's permissions, to say does Alicia have
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permissions to see or to write to this data or to this table. So it's fully governed. So if I'm in
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teams and I'm actually telling the system credit purchase order, ND365, using a command profit in teams,
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it's looking at my Alicia's roles to say does Alicia have permissions to do this? So it is fully
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governed inside of the Microsoft umbrella of those different pieces. But you do have the capacity
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to pull in external resources from like SharePoint files or other external applications.
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And that's where governance could get a little bit more tricky. But inside the Microsoft umbrella,
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as far as D365 goes, when I'm using AI to pull data or to push data into the application,
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it is fully governed by my security role. And what do you think will AI reduce ERP complexity or
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actually increase it? I think it's going to shift it. So before we had a lot of human effort going out,
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mining data and looking at again, like just like with the supplier agent, a person
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would use to, would go run a report to say, show me everything that was supposed to be delivered
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on Friday. And then they would have to go through there and manually send an email to those 20
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different vendors that have product that should have been delivered or is going to be delivered.
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So by the system doing that, now me the user is streamlining my processes. I'm still gathering
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the same information, but the system is actually gathering the data for me. So it's making
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freeing up my time so I can do other tasks. So I don't necessarily see it getting rid of people. I mean,
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there's some capacities like if I persons job is simply to sit there to mine data out the system and do
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kind of repetitive work, it could be replaced by AI. There is going to be some of that. But I think
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we're going to see that you're going to see this AI is going to free people up so that they can make
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more decisions and do more with the information that they have. So I think it's going to be a shift of
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work, not necessarily an elimination of work, even though there will be some elimination of work
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depending on the role. And when you say, I have looked into a little bit of dynamics and
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there are so cool AI things, I think I really love this predictive forecasting. What's your favorite
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thing in dynamics? You know, I think this apply region is pretty cool actually because I think
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it really takes a lot of work out of doing that follow up in that form of communication. Demand
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planning does have a lot of really good analytics and co-pilot functionality, AI functionality inside
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of it. The other thing where AI is really going to start taking off, I think, is leveraging the data
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and the data lake. It's for like Power BI type information. So if you have multiple data sources and
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you pull it into a data warehouse like data lake or something like that, you're going to be able,
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you can do like anomaly type AI analysis on it, you could have it look at the data and make
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decisions on it and propose certain activities. So I think that it's the footprint. So Microsoft's
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actually doing this whole thing with co-pilot where it's, I forgot what it's called, it's called
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iWork, I think, I think it's called iWork, I may have that wrong. But anyway, but it's going to be
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co-pilot that reaches across word, outlook, Excel, Teams, T365 because it could be that I got an
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email from a vendor, right, they emailed me and I can't remember where it came from, like, oh gee,
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I know Bob emailed me about that, but where is it? So the co-pilot is actually going to reach across
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all of your applications, your Microsoft applications and pull that information. So when I query
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on something, it's not just looking at D365, it's actually coming through my Teams chats and through
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outlook and those different components. So I think it's really about servicing data in a meaningful
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way so you make better decisions. Awesome. Well, yeah, in every podcast I do a ref at Fireground,
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I ask a short question and you say first what comes in your mind. So the biggest ERP move,
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the biggest ERP, the biggest ERP move, is that what you said?
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It means I pronounce it the most bastards. What shall they do about ERP? What shall they,
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yeah, look like when it's about topics, what do people think wrong or say wrong?
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So when people think about ERP, what is the thing that they think about that might not be correct?
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So when people think about ERP, I think lots of times they think it's going to fix everything,
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that somehow it's going to fix things inside of their business that ERP is not intended to fix.
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So ERP again has a huge impact on the culture of the business, ERP has a huge impact on how
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your business processes run, but again, it's a tool. So it depends on how you leverage the tool
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to get the desired outcomes. One thing every CFO showed pre-orrorized now. Prioritize what you want your
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business to look like in five years. Oh, let's also address that. What skill future consultants need?
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Say that again. What is the, yeah, what one skill consultants need in the future?
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The main skill that people need for the future is to be flexible.
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Take, understand AI, understand the things that are changing in our world and don't resist the
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resistance, but don't blindly accept everything. That's not what I mean by that. What I mean is
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get curious about what and how you can leverage the tools like AI that are coming out to actually
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increase the quality of life for your clients and how you can deliver product to your clients.
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One Microsoft technology more people should learn.
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I think that one of the things that people should learn inside of Microsoft is really how the
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whole ecosystem can work together. Microsoft is not working as silo, idea before, like in the past,
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but Microsoft is really connecting all of its different components together. So whenever you think
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about Microsoft, don't think about ERP, somehow being independent from your other, your other
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Microsoft applications, think about it as holistic system. So I think it would really, the skill people
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need to do is like, mind shift a bit and start thinking how the Microsoft ecosystem actually works
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together. Coffee tea or energy drink during your life. Say that again.
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Coffee tea or energy drink during your life. Coffee tea or energy drink. You know, for me it's
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probably coffee. What was the best career advice you ever received? The best career advice I ever
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see was to stretch myself. When an opportunity comes up, don't feel like you don't have the skills
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to do it, grow into it. There's always good on the other side of hard, and that does not mean
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fake it till you make it. I am not a believer in a fake it till you make it mentality. I believe
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that whenever someone gives you an opportunity, you learn the skills that you need to actually accomplish
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it and to do it well and get curious. No one expects you to have all the answers. Figure out what you
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need and ask questions and learn from other people. That was the best career advice I ever got.
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And is there any upcoming speaking event podcast or project you would like to
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yeah, addition? Yeah, so we just came out of Donnie and Max Kahn, so I had three different speaking
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events there and then this fall, we'll be speaking at Microsoft Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. So
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super excited about that. So then my last question is when the people show thing or
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one information should take from this session, what should it be?
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Be comfortable being uncomfortable. So as you're going through your career whether you're implementing
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an European implementation or you're just in life or personal growth, the best advice that I can
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give you and what I want you to walk away with is learn how to mind shift, learn how to be comfortable,
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being uncomfortable because on the other side of that is so much joy and so much success. So stretch
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yourself, learn how to network, input your surround yourselves by people that you want to become like.
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Yeah, so Alicia, thank you so much for joining the AMC65 podcast. This was an incredible, insightful
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conversation around ERP modernization dynamics 365 finance AI, executive leadership and the future
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of enterprise transformation. So thank you so much for being here. This was really amazing. Thank you.
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Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. But I have a good day.
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Okay.
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