Carol Simonson: You clearly like this idea of
interviewing other people for your Dynamics GP posts now. Why are you
doing this?
Jack Boyer: I’m doing this because it occurred to me that my
thoughts and ideas, while fascinating to me and my kids (ok I’m lying
about the kids) are only so interesting due to my limited experience as mainly a
sales and marketing professional and business owner.
I’m also interviewing people because it allows me to learn more. One of the nice
things about blogging is that you need to come up with research, create, or in
this case borrow thoughts on a pretty much daily basis. This allows you to learn
a lot of new things. I thought to myself if I could not only learn new things but get introduced to people I
admire and/or know but want to know more about their ideas-an interviewis perfect.
Carol Simonson: Who are some of the people that you
admire and would like to interview for your blog?
Jack Boyer: Tom Higginbotham is a person that I’ve known
for about 20 years and who I admire. I don’t need an introduction to meet
Tom, but I can share with you that he has some strategic ideas users and
consultants within GP user sites can benefit from. Tom is very strong with
understanding how the rest of the Microsoft stack integrates with Dynamics GP.
This is a valuable thing for most organizations.
Ron Pederson, our own Dynamics GP Practice Manager is someone that really
impresses people on his ideas on why GP is an outstanding choice of products to
run your business on. Ron worked for Arthur Andersen (pre-paper shedding days)
and a number of other public accounting firms before gaining 15 or so years of
solid Dynamics GP experience.
Erik Vigesaa from our team who has at least 14 years of Dynamics GP experience
is another person I admire on the GP side. Erik keeps clients happy and
performs the role of business analyst and GP consultant in an expert way.
Carol Simonson: You seem to be coming up with more experts
on our staff than outsiders with Dynamics GP. Why is that?
Our staff is great. Also having worked for Solomon Software for 9 years,
my contacts on the Dynamics SL side are still a bit better. Fortunately Erik
Vigesaa worked in Fargo for Great Plains 10 years ago and still has a strong
base of contacts. Erik promised me a few interesting characters.
Carol Simonson: Are there other internal people you would
like to interview?
Jack Boyer: Sue Matter from our staff had 6 or so years
of Dynamics SL experience at a client of ours and now is primarily a Dynamics GP
developer. Sue has learning some interesting things in the past two years by
creating a .net-based Requisitions module for one of the largest YMCA’s in the
country that is located right here in the Twin Cities. She created the programs
in .net (C-Sharp) but is also someone that can work with Dexterity to create new
programs for users that prefer, for the user interface, to be the same as other
Dynamics GP screens.
Carol Simonson: Have you done this before-interview someone
you thought would have good ideas?
Jack Boyer: Yes, I interviewed Jon Augdahl, our Dynamics
SL Practice Manager, last week and I
thought he did a fine job of telling
people why the latest version of Dynamics
SL-version 2011 is such a large
leap from version 7, its predecessor.
I interviewed a Houston consultant named Kurt Bradley as well. Kurt has
20 years of Dynamics experience, a University of Michigan degree, and a house
that’s been paid off for the past 10 years-so he must know some things I
don’t.
I would also like to interview several other people as additional
candidates-Scott Boedigheimer a former Microsoft employee that has strong
industry knowledge, Paul Adkins of Regency- a client who has used Dynamics GP at
a number of different employers and brought us with him at his last career move,
and the people that Erik is promising me he will suggest once he thinks about it
a bit more. That group that was lead by Doug Burgum 10 years ago was pretty
committed, and enthusiastic so I’m expecting some good people.
I would love to interview Doug Burgum himself if there were a way. That
one may take some work however to get him to agree, but I’ll be
persistent.
