Dynamics Business Central (NAV)
Experts:
Shopping for a new BC23 partner
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Shopping for a new BC23 partner
Our long-time NAV/BC partner was acquired by another company and since then their service has plummeted. Worse, they botched an upgrade and now want to charge us to fix their mistakes.
What’s the best way to shop for a new consulting partner company?Thanks,
Devora
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4 Replies
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Hi Devora,
That is really sad to hear. I would suggest a good way would be to go to Summit in Orlando on Oct 19-23. If you’ve never been, it’s a great educational opportunity with lots of sessions, and many partners have booths in the exhibit hall where you can meet the folks and talk to them in detail. You could think of it as speed dating for a new partner. It’s a great way to find out if their industry experience / culture / tech expertise is a match. Here’s a link to the event: Home – Community Summit North America
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Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. As a partner, I encourage you to look for a partner whose industry experience matches yours. Once you identify a few partners for your industry, schedule some calls and find out who matches well with you. We often start with a small project (either training or dev) to make sure it is a good fit on both sides before committing to the change.
If you are going to Summit, it can be a great place to actually see partners demonstrating their knowledge of the product. The expo is okay, but research partners before going so you can see if any you’re interested in are presenting at the conference.
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I’d recommend finding an independent ERP selection consultant.
Truly independent, though. I’ve dealt both as a user and in the channel with “ERP selection consultants” who receive referral fees and don’t disclose that this is the case unless asked. The not-so-independent ones usually charge less; there is a reason.
I unfortunately can’t recall their name, but I dealt with a selection consultant years ago who consulted about our processes, what was important to us, why things were important to us… I essentially learned what real software consulting looked like from them.
Some selection consultants can be hybrid technical consultants. I used to dabble in this when the first wave of people afraid GP was going to be obsolete soon needed help with both getting their new Business Central system working correctly and help with finding a different partner who could support them more broadly.
Being in presales currently myself, I would suggest something not to do when evaluating: don’t request partners produce a “conference room pilot” type A-Z demo script that covers functionality you already understand. This style seems logical and fair, but you will not see any difference between how partner X and Y will handle a procure-to-pay scenario. Instead, provide them with scenarios for outcomes that are important to you. By focusing on what’s important, you can assess how a business handles problem solving, tradeoffs, goal framing, etc. That said, one issue you might face with partner organizations is the people demonstrating how the partner might achieve your goals think differently than the people who are actually responsible for this; this can be especially true with large organizations. One thing the partner I currently work for tends to do is bring in particular consultants into the conversation if there is a need to validate capability in a functional area or an ISV solution. I could discuss everything myself, but it is for the prospective customer’s benefit to evaluate multiple people they will be working with.
For your case, I would pay particular attention to upgrade philosophy and strategy. I am working on an upgrade now that could have gone sideways if not for an extended discussion of exactly what success looks like. I’ve found it tends not to be technical issues that botch upgrades as much as an unclear understanding of success criteria. It’s difficult to say “this is complete” if you haven’t adequately defined what “this” is.
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