Last week I delivered a keynote presentation at the enjoyable event that successful Dutch D365 BC partner HB Software organized for her Trade customers. The event took place in the Microsoft Netherlands office at Schiphol airport.

The company noticed that not just technology is changing rapidly these days, but also the preferences of their customers. And the customers of their customers! And that it is crucial for long-term success to understand these changes and respond appropriately.

Being successful in the hectic world of trading is not easy. The two most important words for today’s buyers are ME and NOW. And being prepared for these buyers requires more than just buying cool technology! So Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers in Trade industry do well to pay (more) attention to their company culture, their team attitude and the overall focus.

The topics

Some of the topics we’ve discussed are:

• The importance of defining an attractive and business related project goal. Unfortunately, staying in time and budget doesn’t really qualify…
• Engaging your senior management is necessary for achieving success
• It is hard to overestimate the importance of proper organisational change management
• Lift & Shift - modernising software without updating processes, customer orientation and mindsets is useless
• (over)Customisation can easily be compared with peeing on your pants and is a direct enemy of long term project success
• The importance of preparing your complete organisation including the management to project success is oftentimes bigger than the final choice of the software solution

Together we collected new insights, learned a series of non-traditional success elements and had some fun as well. 😊

The feedback

This is what CEO Alfred van Buren said after the presentation:

“We asked Guus to be the keynote speaker at our customer afternoon at Microsoft for our customers in the trading segment. The combination of our stories about Business Central, our SmartTrade solution and PowerApps and Guus' story gave our customers the best of both worlds. By using striking metaphors, Guus had the full attention of the audience. For example, he stated that it would be a shame to have the engine of your old Trabant (Dynamics NAV) rebuilt in your new Audi A8 (Business Central) during a cloud migration. All customers present were technically updated and 'managerially shaken awake'. They are motivated to put their customers at the center of their processes and thinking. And they have been warned about the pitfall of transferring their old system 'as is'.“

I want to thank HB Software for having me and I wish their customers success in achieving project success and putting their customers in the center of all they do.

What about you?

What do you do to inspire your current and future customers?

#projectsuccess #businesstransformation #dynamics365 #d365bc