The Digestible Dynamics Podcast: The Evolution of Business Applications

KG:

Welcome to the Digestible Dynamics Podcast, a podcast for the innovators from the experts. We know that you are busier than ever, and the last thing you need as a business applications innovator is a lengthy, drawn out podcast where you walk away with the possibility of learning something new. Well, that's how the Digestible Dynamics Podcast is different. Each episode will contain one digestible tidbit about Dynamics 365 that you can immediately apply to your business. With the combined experience of three decades in the business applications space, Dr. KJ and I understand that the power of technology is not about the features and functions, but rather the value it can bring to your business to help you transform and drive growth. That's why we'll focus on the most useful things that you need to know about the Dynamics 365 platform.

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Digestible Dynamics Podcast, your number one source for snackable tidbits to help you maximize your Dynamics 365 experience. In this episode, we take a trip down memory lane and leverage our guest's extensive history and experience working with business applications. We discuss how companies have gone from green screen to internet applications, to where companies will likely go with the advent and investment in AI. Our guest, Greg Williams, the VP of Strategy at Western Computer shares how technology has changed, but the best practices of aligning technology in business applications with your business strategies and goals is a foundational principle for technology success in present day and moving forward in the future.

Before we go into this week's episode, let's learn a little bit more about our guest, Greg Williams. Greg Williams is the VP of Strategy at Western Computer. He's a Microsoft Dynamics expert and champion of digital transformation. Greg has over two decades of experience in the realm of Microsoft Dynamics and has been a trusted partner for businesses seeking streamlined operations. His expertise lies in the intricate dance of manufacturing and distribution where he's orchestrated solutions that drive efficiency and growth.

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Digestible Dynamics Podcast. Today we have a great guest in Greg Williams who's the VP of Strategy at Western Computer. Welcome, Greg.

Greg Williams:

Thanks, guys. Nice to be here.

KG:

Yeah, we're really happy to have you on. We want to just ask you really quickly to start off, given your extensive history and experience with technology and specifically business applications, how have you observed the transformation of that technology since you started working with them?

Greg Williams:

Oh, there's been a ton of change. When I first started working in this space, it was right around Y2K when I was getting out of college, and most of the systems then were character-based green screens. They ran on AS/400s or COBOL. There wasn't point and click capabilities. You had to buy really expensive Unix servers from IBM. It was a different world back then. And as a young person then, early, mid-20s, I was very passionate about getting companies onto a Windows system because I just love the point and click ability, and the ability to have forms and have it be more intuitive, and not have to memorize all those function keys.

KG:

I like that. I remember my first computer really interacting was green screen, so to hear that's how businesses were being operated is fascinating to me. And honestly, I have some customers that still do the same thing because if it's not broken, don't fix it. I know that there's that mentality. So from a green screen, you've really seen it all go from green screen to now things are like point and click. What's been the biggest adjustment that you've seen customers having to adapt to?

Greg Williams:

Well, when they first started going to Windows applications, they were slow compared to character-based applications. They had an easier learning curve, meaning that you could just sit down and start using it right away. But when you got proficient, it wasn't as fast. I'm sure if you've checked in an airline counter and seen how fast they fly through all those keys to get to different screens, that's because they've been using that same computer system for 10 years and they know every little keyboard shortcut to make it work quickly. But that's not sustainable for most businesses. Most businesses have turnover. They have new people coming on board, and they need an intuitive system.

So that's probably the biggest change I've seen over the years is that the systems get more and more intuitive. And then in the last several years, we've also seen more workflow and automation as well.

Dr. KJ:

No, I love that though. Workflow and automation, I think that's key for any customer wanting to use business applications or just Dynamics in general. So what are your thoughts around the AI era that we have going on? I would love to understand how you think about it and how Western Computer helps customers implement it.

Greg Williams:

I mean, at its most basic level, I think of the current generation of AI is like spell check on steroids. It's going to be part of Word and you're going to use it all the time and you're not going to know how you did without it. I think that's going to be the first generation of AI. Second generation to me, and we're already there with customer insights and products like that, is really finding exceptions in your data for you so you don't have to look for them. That is the next thing that's really going to make business leaders more productive because they're not going to have to run a report and say, "Okay, where are my exceptions on report? Where are my outliers?" AI is going to serve that up to them.

Dr. KJ:

No, I love that. And so when you're doing some implementations or working with your team, what are some of the strategies that your customers are coming to you with? Or problems, I should say, with their strategy, and how are you helping fix it then?

Greg Williams:

Yeah, so there's a number of different areas that we address there. Every business has different pain points that they're dealing with. Some say, "Hey, my financial data is not accurate enough. It's taking me too long to close my month." So we need to make sure that everything is posting correctly to the GL and in a way that we can roll it up and report on it quickly. That's the common need.

Other businesses that are maybe earlier on in their growth cycle, they're looking for automation in the warehouse or just faster ways to get things done. So that comes up quite a bit. It really depends on where a company is in its evolution.

And then the biggest pain point we hear nowadays is that on-premise systems are insecure and they're likely to be hacked. So that's the biggest pain point we hear is that, "Hey, I got on-premise systems. I don't feel they're secure, and I want to find a way to get to the cloud and offload that security headache to someone else."

Dr. KJ:

It makes a lot of sense to me.

KG:

Yeah, I agree. Greg, in today's day and age, when we think about technology and AI, a company and organization can really go any which way that they want. The whole idea of empowering a citizen developer means you're democratizing the ability to create new solutions for business problems that exist today. So my question to you would be, can you help our listeners understand how they should think about technology, whether it's AI, automations, et cetera, in the context of their existing business strategies?

Greg Williams:

Right. I think that companies, to the extent that they can, they need to take a holistic look at their overall technology stack and make a decision that's going to fit them 10 years down the road. Because you don't want to implement ERP systems more often than that. A lot of our customers have been with us 15, even 20 years, and we keep them updated through the different products that are available to them.

But one of the strategic mistakes I see companies making is focusing too much on feature functionality and their evaluation and not enough on the overall strategy for the solution that they're picking. Through configurations or workflows or even customization in some cases, you can always typically get even on functionality. As long as the functionality's close to what you need, you can always get even there. But you can't go to a lesser provider and make sure that they have an industry standard cloud, that they have a big support team, that they have SLAs in place. Those are all the things that you can't just easily find or replace.

An example there is I help a lot of customers when they're choosing ISV solutions or third-party apps to plug into their Dynamic stack, and the first thing that every user thinks about is, "What functionality does this have?" And then they got three different solutions and they're trying to look at which one has the features that fit them the best.

When I come in, I look at it differently. I'm like, "Functionality is important, but it's maybe 50% of my decision weight." I look at what's the company standing behind this product? Do they have people in the United States that can support you, or in your country wherever you're at? Do they have proven support hours? Do they have an implementation team if needed? Can they help you with all those different factors? And that's really important because a guy in his basement could build an application that has a few more features than what you have now, but that doesn't mean that's the right solution for you long-term.

KG:

Agreed.

Dr. KJ:

No, 100%. And I kind of think of everything that you said as like a center of excellence. Have a plan, let's develop that plan, then let's go and execute it. So from that standpoint, where does security fit into those conversations for you? Is that a top-of-mind thing? Is that an afterthought? How are your customers absorbing the security or offloading, like you said, to the cloud?

Greg Williams:

Yeah. We're believers that the most effective way to get your business application secure is to host them in one of the major clouds. And so we're lucky to be partnered with Microsoft in that regard where they offer Azure, and it can do anything we want. If you have some old legacy apps that need to be hosted in the cloud, it can do that. If you need an integration that's cloud driven, it can do that. So we have all those capabilities within the Microsoft stack, and that's what we offer to our customers. Our approach typically is you can't spend as much money as Microsoft can on security, so just let them do it.

KG:

Great point.

Dr. KJ:

We like that approach and we appreciate it.

Greg Williams:

Yeah.

KG:

Fantastic. And you're 100% right, and even more so security is becoming this ever evolving hot topic with Copilot, right? We think about how Copilot is going to be embedded in almost every facet of a line of business worker's, end user's workflow. That security is going to become so important, so I like that you said that. Lean on the machine and behemoth that Microsoft is. And you can of course have your own governance policies, but that's a very, very good point. We love that.

Now, when we think about strategy pitfalls, what are some of those pitfalls that companies tend to make when they are investing into technology, and how can you help them avoid that?

Greg Williams:

I'll speak into the guise of a typical ERP implementation because our core business. There's a few mistakes that companies make. One is to try to put too much functionality in the first go live scope creep, or colloquially known as biting off more than you can chew. That kind of scope creep can be dangerous for new implementations because you really want to understand the application that you're working with before you add more functionality to it.

But I often say that it's upon us as partners and as the executives, the end user companies, to tell the different department heads and users, "Hey, we're going to optimize this solution after we get it live. We're going to add more functionality. You're going to get all your workflows and automations. We're not going to do that all upfront because we just don't know enough yet in order to make those decisions properly." And that's an important discussion because otherwise what happens is, I like to say when Dad had his checkbook out, everybody wants candy. And that's what happens at companies. They're like, "Hey, if I don't get this in my project now, then I'm never going to get it." And so that's why people push for scope creep.

KG:

Scope creep, okay. That's a good nugget that we want to make sure that our listeners are aware and we'll put that in the show notes as well. So Greg, bringing it full circle, I want to ask you, you've seen the transformation of technology from green screen to AI. We kind of touched on it, I'd love to get your thoughts. How do you see AI being and Copilot more specifically being advantageous for end users and organizations?

Greg Williams:

I think that AI can make users more efficient by highlighting exception-driven data for them and helping them with what they need to focus on. We've already seen some solutions within the Dynamics ERP applications, for example, where you can take a picture of an invoice using AI and it reads that invoice into the system and pulls the right data elements out. In the past that was all done through OCR and you had to buy these expensive OCR engines. So Microsoft's really disrupting the market there with AI by taking it to a modern approach that is better and also costs less.

KG:

Yeah, that is a good point. Greg, thank you so much for taking us down memory lane with regards to technology and providing our listeners with some strategic best practices on how to think about technology before you just invest thousands and thousands of dollars, maybe millions, into a solution that could be not as advantageous as you want if your foundational principles aren't set. So thank you for coming onto the show.

Greg Williams:

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. It's my honor.

Dr. KJ:

Thank you for tuning in to Digestible Dynamics Podcast, a show for you, the innovators, with content directly from the experts. While we only cover one tidbit of Dynamics 365 per episode, if you want to learn more, head over to our LinkedIn page by searching for Digestible Dynamics on LinkedIn so that we can guide you to the right resource to help you maximize your Dynamics 365 experience. If you have any other questions, email your host KJ and KG at digestibledynamics@microsoft.com. Until next time, folks.