Boyer & Associates’ newest Dynamics 365 Business Central solution architect has 30 years of experience and nearly two dozen ERP certificates. John Bellinger has split his career between accounting and consulting, most recently for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Bellinger started his accounting career in the early 1990s. After getting an accounting certificate at a vocational school and dipping his toe in the industry through basic clerical jobs, he decided to pursue a higher education. He started taking night classes and eventually earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting from Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn.
He joined Frank Consulting in the mid 1990s to work with his professional mentor and become a full-fledged accountant. There he provided general accounting services to multiple clients, serving as an interim controller who helped companies create budgets, prepare for audits, write financial reports and more.
“I was doing a little bit of everything,” Bellinger said.
During that time, Frank Consulting debuted a practice focused on Microsoft Dynamics GP, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business management and accounting software. This gave Bellinger his first glimpse into the ERP world, and he was hooked.
“I decided I kind of like this ERP stuff,” he said. He joined Norcomp Corporation in 2002, which was later acquired by Symbiant Technologies. Bellinger stayed with the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP reseller for 9 years, working on new implementations.
One of his clients was Bloomington-based Activar, which offered him a job in 2012. Bellinger spent another 9 years servicing the 150-user system as the company’s business systems and application manager.
“I was a team of 1 and supported all their NAV needs,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of tweaks to the system.” That included light development, report building, customizations and integrations to third-party solutions.
Eventually, he ran out of tweaks to do, as the system became a well-tuned machine.
“We kind of got to the point where I wasn’t seeing a lot of new challenges. They were very stable,” Bellinger said. “In the end I still wanted to stay in the NAV world … There just wasn’t enough for me to do there.”
With little to do besides end-user support, he decided it was time for a change. Bellinger had met Jack Boyer several years earlier and enjoyed their occasional conversations. When Boyer offered him a job, he decided it was a good fit.
Bellinger said he enjoys the variety of consulting, meeting new people and digging into new systems. He is excited to work with Boyer’s clients and expand his knowledge on the cloud version of NAV, Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Bellinger lives in Bloomington with his wife, Mary Jo, and their two boys. Jack, 15, just got his driver’s permit and 12-year-old Joey stays busy with baseball and basketball. Bellinger spends his spare time with his family and can often be seen on the bench at his son’s baseball game.
