Robert Pope's Blog

Recently I was persuaded to undertake “the Fred” – a massive hilly bike ride round the lake district;

The Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge – a gruelling 112 mile ride around and over 15,000ft of hills in the Lake District – that’s like riding up The Shard over 15 times in height alone. All done in one day. It’s widely known as the hardest event of its type in the UK and includes a number of the steepest road climbs.

I thought it worth providing more background on why;

Firstly, let me be honest to start with – I’m doing it because I like riding bikes, admittedly usually mountain bikes but I’m not fussy. People have commented about how long / steep / hard the climbs look and I agree but as a mountain biker at heart, familiar with dragging myself and my trusty steed up to the top of anything steep, what goes up must come down and going downhill, at speed, for long stretches is what I’m going for 😊. My only hope is for good weather and the support of the puncture and crash gods.

Secondly since its quite a big event – like a London Marathon Plus but on wheels I thought it worth trying to raise awareness for Raleigh International as they are close to my heart and often get overlooked because of other more popular health (or animal) related charities (all good causes of course)

Raleigh International is a sustainable development charity working around the world. They work for and with young people, alongside rural communities, to create positive and lasting change. Their work focuses on three areas: providing access to safe water and sanitation, protecting vulnerable environments and building livelihoods. For more information about what they do visit http://www.raleighinternational.org.

I was a volunteer on a Raleigh International Expedition to Chile in 1995 (it was Operation Raleigh then and I was somewhat younger and braver). The expedition involved a number of community and adventure projects including building a doctor / hospital outpost in an isolated area south of Coyhaique – near the Tierra del fuego (as south in south America as you can get). It was an amazing experience to contribute and be part of such a wonderful organisation and expedition.

We supported the local communities but also supported members of our expedition who came from very different, less fortunate backgrounds (from within the UK who would have been unlikely to have access to this sort of experience) and watched them transform and grow.

Thirdly I’d like to try to raise some money for Raleigh International to support the great work they do. My awesome employer Microsoft will match what I raise (to £7500) so every £1 you donate will be doubled and even the HMRC might let you gift aid it further increasing your donation. Your donation will be appreciated as it will make a tangible difference to a number of people and communities– not just the community the project is delivered in but also the people being offered the opportunity to contribute and experience the hardships and great satisfaction of volunteering their time and skills rather than other less fulfilling and destructive paths.

Thank you for reading – if you fancy donating https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Robert-Pope7

Btw for any runners out there the Fred is way harder than the London Marathon (😊) involves wheels and has downhill – what’s not to like?

You’ve made it through New Year, Dry January and Blue Monday – and survived! However, you’ve still got the feeling that a change is needed. If you’re interested in technology, developing your career and have a background understanding how a business functions, you could be just what our Dynamics NAV partners are looking for.

Starting a new role is also nerve racking and exciting, the fear of the unknown, of making the wrong decision and leaving behind the comfort blanket of familiar technology and colleagues. I speak from first hand having recently joined Microsoft. Of the many new conversations and insights that have inspired me, is the excitement and buzz emanating from the Dynamics NAV partner community. In the words of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Office 2016: Reinventing productivity and business processes – he describes how solutions that change business processes are a catalyst to organizational productivity.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that provides small and medium-sized businesses greater control over their financials and can simplify their supply chain, manufacturing, and operations. and Dynamics NAV Partners are at the hub of some of the most exciting business transformation projects.

Working in the Dynamics NAV Partner community – sales, delivery or support now offers the best of both, if not all worlds. The ability to work not only with a best of breed ERP solution for SMEs embracing the best that both the cloud (and let’s not forget on premise) has to offer, but integration with class leading Dynamics CRM, delivered on award winning Azure technologies supporting the ever dominant Office 365 end points such as Excel and Power BI.

The enthusiasm and opportunities to sell, deliver and support outstanding cross platform solutions, all delivered from an integrated stack, provides a great sense of satisfaction but also exposure to the toolsets of tomorrow such as Azure and Power BI.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV partners are looking out for people like you – technologically engaged and touched by ERP. Either a seller, implementer, day to day user, consultant or developer. Having an understanding of how a business works and a desire to evolve and transform is often more important than knowing a specific product. The most successful and skilled team members now in the Microsoft space previously used technologies such as Sage, Access, Netsuite, Xero and many others, but have seen the adoption of cloud, devices and at a granular level Office 365 as an opportunity to transform, grown and develop skills and careers.

1. Dynamics NAV partners are delivering in new innovate ways, often remotely and changing the way teams work, deliver and ultimately greatly improving work life balance and job satisfaction.
2. Dynamics NAV partners feature highly in awards such as Best Companies to work for and Deloitte Fast Technology 500.
3. Dynamics NAV partners are looking for people like you – people reading this, so get in touch and watch this space for day in the life and further insights into the opportunities within the Dynamics NAV community

If you’re interested or want to find out more about working the Dynamics NAV Partner Channel, then contact Robert Pope through LinkedIn

Where are you in the evolution of man or more accurately evolution of communication, where is your business in the cycle of those embracing technology and those nursing a recession hangover?

Microsoft Lync (for those not familiar with the name consider it business grade Skype – if you’re not aware of Skype I suspect you are beyond hope) brings many commercial advantages to bear that are discussed at great length elsewhere based around cost saving, improved productivity and collaboration but one aspect overlooked in many cases is federation.

Federation is a Microsoft Lync capability to see into another organisation (or indeed individual via Skype) and to leverage all the advantages of Presence and Instant Messaging but also to move up the communication value chain with voice, video and desktop sharing.

The federation feature of Lync establishes trusted and encrypted relationships between organisations, allowing greater collaboration, or in simple terms just makes it easier to see the person you need to speak to is free and available to instant message / take a call or share a desktop..

Communication methods have changed over the centuries from smoke signals, telegraph, radio to faxes, e-mail, social media and in most recent cases you have to have access to the technology to communicate – some of the readers may remember the first telephone in the house, the first fax machine at work. Fast forward to today and without an e-mail address you would be disenfranchised.

It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users – but if you’re not on it you’re not in it.

With over 60% of enterprises 500 seats above using or adopting Microsoft Lync federation will become more and more important on both sides of the commercial chain.

If you as a supplier aren’t part of the preferred (and free to use) network of Lync users then you’ll likely to be become the great aunt – thought about but becoming a distant, little dealt with entity due to lacking an effective way of communication. Or in fact it’s not even the lack of an effective way – you still have a phone and an e-mail address (and likely a fax machine) but as each method evolves less convenient, more onerous methods will slip away.

It seems perhaps a little ridiculous to think but for users of Lync the act of reading a number from an address book or screen and punching in digits to a dial pad has become that little bit less convenient than just double clicking the green jellybean and therefore those are the calls that happen first. Further ease of use by being able to call straight to the “from” person in an e-mail to query or follow up. Users tend to act as if fundamentally lazy – they will do the easiest thing first.

As MS Lync is adopted more and more rapidly it becomes the method of choice, a fully deployed solution which turns a device (including a mobile / tablet / laptop) into a handset, the contact a person no longer a number. The ability to select a name and instantly communicate, no more finding a number, transposing into a dial pad to potentially leave a voicemail, just straight forward, instant communication across organisations.

My colleagues and I speak more times to our suppliers in a day via Lync than in a week or longer to the ones we have to phone. Similarly we can provide a better level of support to customers and partners using Microsoft Lync – for them and for us it’s a straight forward connect, communicate and collaborate.

Microsoft Lync can be considered the new e-mail – the ease of communication and the ability to leverage instant, free communication, triggered often by the availability of the recipient – when the Green Jelly Bean glows your good to go.

But federation is key

Federate or die out

Announced May 2014
*Robert Pope – Finalist Microsoft World Partner of the Year Awards*
Sales Specialist Award
From over 3,200 nominations from 112 different countries.
http://www.digitalwpc.com/Awards/Pages/Home.aspx#fbid=HrnU9QDJjIH

letter of recommendation below

In the hunt for cloud success my experience has taught me one crucial element is often overlooked. In the Partner organisation who sells and who gains from the cloud are often not aligned, the sales team, account managers, and Directors have differing motivations and compensation.

However for it to be a success there is one group whose motivation is clearly defined, and for cloud to be a success their motivation has to be aligned to the common goal of growing recurring revenues. This all comes down to a sticky conversation around sales commissions.

Never forgot sales people as a general rule will work towards commission, not necessarily corporate goals – remember the first job of a sales person is to hit target, the “best” sales people will do this in the most efficient way as by their nature they are a lazy group (after all if they worked hard they’d do a proper job a professional services consultant once told me  ). Sales people are also the initial prospect facing element of the business and key role is to influence the prospect to buy your services – as part of that influence don’t be surprised if they include what compensates them the best as part of that influencing.

However cloud is all about building recurring and not upfront cash, so how to change a commission scheme based on upfront deal signing and cash without further jeopardising cash flow? Furthermore an upfront Gross Profit based target, common across many partners will not promote cloud revenues as the relatively small (compared to upfront) monthly payments won’t come close to a traditional GP based model.

To make the maths easy;

Cloud Deal – £1,000 a month
Cloud Deal GP per month £400 (40% GP)

On Premise £12,000 upfront
Cloud Deal GP month 1 £4,800

With sales leaders often looking for an average of £30,000 a month GP (£60,000 to £100,000 a month T/O) a traditional commission model is never going to promote cloud, and therefore sales people are highly unlikely to push it to clients, it becomes that last chance saloon of deal approaches.

In three years however the above deals (£1,000 a month cloud for a year or £12,000 a month for a year on premise) have a very different value – the traditional on premise is worthless from a business sale and on-going revenue position. However my years’ worth of £1,000 revenues (even now its 36 months old) is still worth £123,000 of revenue a year and the business stream could be conservatively valued at close to £250,000.

So this creates a number of problems including funding that switch of revenues in the short term but also to incentives cloud promotion by the sales team. So in line with a cloud model there needs to a significant shift in the way numbers are discussed, represented and paid out against in an organisation – the £100,000k deal becomes a £3,000 a month deal, a commission target becomes £2,000 a month GP rather than £30,000 a month GP (Feel free to adjust the numbers but hopefully you get the idea).

As well as commission this leads to an interesting issue with scale and plaudits – the £100,000 deal, banded around the office and channel is no longer capped, potentially its value (based on £3,000 a month could be extrapolated over 3 years (including 7% churn) to £100,000, but is still paying £30,000 a year out (including churn) after year 3 so it becomes a question of time – in 5 years it’s going to be a £150,000 deal.
That said a £3,000 a month deal doesn’t sound quite as good as a £100,000 (or even a £150,000) deal and sales people tend to be vain.

A recurring revenue commission model allows you to tie staff in and make them less likely to leave (with the associated costs of recruiting and getting new starts running). It will enable them to get over lean periods without feeling they have to leave (or their commissions slip to 0) and will take the hit out of massive deals – by paying commissions more gradually rather than the boom to bust that a traditional on premise model tends to develop. These factors can make cloud a more stabilising, long term plan for an organisation – it just needs a different view and perception of the numbers.