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Location: Tampa Bay, Florida
Transcript
Tim 0:02
Welcome to another AUG Blog Audio Post, located at AUGForums.com. You can find this specific audio post at AUGForums.com/AudioPost6. This is your host, Tim Rodman, coming to you live on Sunday, January 26, from Las Vegas, Nevada, where we are at Acumatica Summit 2020. In this audio post, I’ve got Bob McAdam here. Bob, thanks for joining us.
Bob 0:40
You’re welcome, Tim. Thanks for having me.
Tim 0:41
Bob is a podcast veteran, so I’m a little intimidated here, but he does know our two rules here. One of them is: No Editing. So Bob, just be aware of that. It’s all or nothing. Then he knows the other rule, which is: Publish Immediately. Now, he’s our first interviewee on an AUG Blog Audio Post. So there is a little secret rule, and that is that, with an interviewee, after we’re done recording, you can decide if I’m going to publish or not. I won’t publish it without your blessing.
Bob 1:16
I have much confidence, we’ll be fine.
Tim 1:19
So I want to talk to you, Bob, about your experience with, can I call it Great Plains? Does that resonate more?
Bob 1:26
Yeah, that name sticks, that name will stick forever.
Tim 1:28
That does? It kind of plucks the heartstrings better?
Bob 1:31
It really does.
Tim 1:31
So I’ll call it that. We’ll call it your experience with Great Plains and with community in general. Very appropriately, we just wrapped up here with the first user group meet and greet event here at the Summit. Good attendance, I heard over 200 people, and, you know, we’re in the beginning of user groups and community in general, from a user perspective. So I’m just curious to get some of your thoughts on, first of all, maybe we start with, how did things start for you personally, getting involved with Great Plains user groups?
Bob 2:07
Okay. Well, you got to go back to the beginning of dynamic communities, which is where I work now. Dynamic communities is a company headquartered in Tampa, Florida, founded by a guy named Andy Hafer. Andy worked for a company in Tampa, he was the CIO, and they purchased Axapta, before it was called Dynamics AX. He was an SAP guy, so he went looking for an Axapta user group so that he could garner knowledge about his new purchase and he didn’t find anything. So he went to Microsoft and said, gee, you don’t have a user group, and this product is relatively new to Microsoft, they had just purchased it from Damgaard, maybe 18 years ago. And he kind of got Microsoft to find other CIOs in his position, who are struggling with Axapta rollouts to get together and collaborate with one another so they could all get smarter on this relatively new acquisition for Microsoft. So they did, they create Axapta User Group, Inc. and they’ve just basically set it up out of necessity. They held events, they collaborated online, they had sponsors, and, after a couple of years of this, things started to percolate.
Tim 3:25
What year are we talking about?
Bob 3:26
We’re talking 2004. So, a couple years, 2006 goes by, and Axapta user group is starting to resonate with Dynamics AX customers. Microsoft comes to Andy and said, would you do something like this with Dynamics GP, which is Great Plains? And he’s like, sure, and, you know, in North America, Great Plains has probably 35,000 customers.
Tim 3:51
What’s his motivation do you think to do this, given that his company has nothing to do with Great Plains?
Bob 3:56
Andy’s very mission oriented. Part of the reason he wanted to do this was to help himself, but he’s interested in building a community around Axapta because everyone’s going to benefit in the end. He wants to find success with Axapta in his deployment and he wants other people to as well. So, they come to him about Great Plains, and he knows about GP, so he says, ok, I’ll do that. And, in March of 2007, I’m at convergence, the old Microsoft show for Dynamics customers, and he’s up there at the front, rolling out a Great Plains user group. I’m like, wow, I didn’t realize that Andy knew about Dynamics. I knew Andy because I live in Tampa and he was part of the Tampa Bay technology forum like I was and we talked about doing a GP support group, but I always figured it would be local. I didn’t realize that he was going to open up something worldwide. So he did in 2007. The following year, at Microsoft’s request, he opened up CRMUG for Dynamics CRM. And then, later in 2008, we got together with the folks who run the Dynamics NAV User Group who were willing to give up leadership of that group, as long as we told them we would grow it, which we have.
Tim 5:05
So that was the only one that was kind of established already?
Bob 5:08
That’s right, exactly, organically, literally out of necessity.
Tim 5:12
Great Plains and CRM was all kind of done from scratch, and then Navision joined the party.
Bob 5:17
Yeah, they had their own group already. And there’s not that many NAV customers in North America compared to, say, Europe. But they had their own group and they wanted to grow it.
Tim 5:26
What about SL, did that take a little while longer?
Bob 5:29
Yeah, they’re a little more stubborn you know, but, they are loyal. And I think that’s really what it comes down to. Look, at the SLUG, which is DSLUG, they don’t call themselves SLUG, bad acronym. I like it, but they don’t like it.
Tim 5:35
It describes the product well.
Bob 5:44
That’s right, you know, look, they like their product. And the Great Plains users like their product. And I feel like the Acumatica users like their product. If you can get your arms around that in a user group fashion and find the pride and the fun and the enjoyment, not to mention the functionality and the help that it gives to running a business. If you can get your arms around all that, you can create a user group that builds momentum just because the people in it want to find success. They bought this product, they’re trained in it, people like you have done end user testing, and user acceptance, and all that stuff, supported it. This is where we’re investing our time and money because we’re logged in five days a week, sometimes six, sometimes more. And we’re going to make this thing work. After a while becomes a part of the business. And, if you can get your arms around that, and say, we’re going to build on this pride and this level of functionality that we enjoy learning about and garnering information from, that’s where I really think a user group can take flight. The Dynamics SL people are a perfect example. Their numbers are dwindling, but the people that are left there, they love it, they don’t want it to go anywhere. They’re gonna keep going, they’re gonna fight till the end. And I find that in the Dynamics GP space as well. There’s a little bit of pride in an ERP system and, if you can encapsulate all of that, you can find success.
Tim 5:44
That’s a good word. So pride, pride is what you’re tapping into for our user group.
Bob 7:17
Right. And you know that there are users out there, you have customers that love the products that you’re developing for them, you know, and deploying for them. And you want to get them together with other users who enjoy using these systems and make something out of that and just build momentum off of that alone.
Tim 7:35
So then, when you call something a user group, what does that mean? So, I guess, my first question is, how much of that identity is in person versus online, from your experience? And I guess, I would also, as part of that, it sounds like you connected a lot with Andy because you both happened to be in Tampa and already belonged to a community in the Tampa Bay area. So then, when you’re launching, if I can use that word, let’s stay on the Great Plains part of it, do you launch just in Tampa? Or do you launch everywhere? How do you get off the ground, how do you have an identity? And how much of it is online versus in person?
Bob 8:24
Okay, I think the online stuff helps, certainly you can collaborate online, with the right message boards, etc. But I really think the in-person events, like the one we’re at this week, or the ones that we’ve been to before, that’s where people really meet. Okay, so, to me, the in-person stuff is great. Tampa is where GPUG started, that’s where the company’s headquarters is, but we all kicked this off in San Diego at Microsoft Convergence in 2007 and we told people, hey, if you want to start a chapter in Kansas City, in San Francisco, in Dallas, in Buffalo, then do it, we’ll support you to the best of our ability. We were small then, you know, start with a local user group.
Tim 9:05
And “we” means, officially like a nonprofit or just a group of people?
Bob 9:08
The members, just a group of people who want to maybe make a contribution to a user group because they want a level of professional development, they have some skin in the game as far as their ERP is concerned, and they want to find success and network with others who are in their industry, their location, their role, etc. So things like that. You get these commonalities together and get people together to talk about things and you can blossom pretty quickly.
Tim 9:32
And when you get together, what does that look like? Is it a two hour event? Is it a four hour event? And then what do you do? Is there food involved? Are there presentations?
Bob 9:42
Yeah, for a local user group, it’s generally four hours once a quarter. The local user group leaders have autonomy over the topics and how long the meeting is. So, if they want to meet four hours twice a year or three hours every quarter, that’s fine, it’s up to them. We have done catering at local user group meetings for years. It’s a loss leader, but it gives someone who is local, on an application, a way to come to a meeting and find out if they’re going to get anything out of it. And then the topics have to be educational, unless an ISV comes in and agrees to sponsor, then they can pay for time in front of the users to show off their wares. But this is not about partners poaching others. This is not about ISVs, or partners, taking over meetings, local users run the meetings. And that’s that. Partners and ISVs are important members in user groups. It’s not just end users, they’re included too, but, at the end of the day, the local users have to run it, it has to be educational. It’s not a sales job, anybody can do that, partners can do that all day long. You want to bring people to a meeting where they learn something and take something back to their colleagues that will be beneficial in running their business.
Tim 10:57
That’s interesting that what really started the Dynamics communities was a customer, not a VAR or an ISV. Although he did go to Microsoft, and they might have helped out.
Bob 11:08
They helped him collaborate with other CIOs who have the same problems. And they all met and they all became friends, and eventually just kind of handed it to Andy and said, here, you do this, we’re busy. And so he started keeping track of all this stuff on a spreadsheet. And then it turned into events and sponsorships and catering. And, next thing you know, you have an event community, and you’ve got to help manage it,
Tim 11:30
Which you’re now very much a part of that right?
Bob 11:31
Yeah, I’ve been there for seven years, but I have been involved with Andy since he launched GPUG. I worked for a Dynamics GP partner for many years and that’s where I met him at the time. And I became a partner advocate so I could contribute with education content. I always tell my partner friends, you’ve got a slide deck. The first slide has your name and the company you work at, and so does the last one. Everything in the middle is educational. If you start selling your business on slide seven, I’m going to say, forget it, don’t bother.
Tim 12:04
That’s good advice, I like that. It’s kind of a sandwich, you got a little sale at the beginning and at the end, but the meat of it is educational.
Bob 12:13
If somebody walks away from a session having learned something about, say, inventory or manufacturing, or whatever the problem is they’re having, maybe reporting, and they learned it from you, and you’re up there in your shirt talking about it, you know, with your gear on, then they’ll remember that and they’ll ask you questions. Hey, how can you help me? You’ll sell yourself without being a sales resource, on stage. It’s that simple. And that’s what Acumatica can do. You’re a partner, you can educate people on the product without saying, hey, I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread, you should come work with me. Your presence up front with the knowledge you’ll convey, will sell it on its own.
Tim 12:50
And then, when you think about nationally. So, let’s say you’ve got 50 user groups across the United States. From your experience, how did that organically turn into a user group event? Did it just kind of organically happen or how did that happen for you guys in the Microsoft space?
Bob 13:11
Well, the Dynamics AX folks did a summit on their own two or three times and GPUG did one on its own the first time. And then in 2008, we decided to bring them all together because a lot of the ISVs cross platform anyway. And they would rather have consolidated events where they can talk to all the Dynamics customers, not have to go say every other month.
Tim 13:34
And they’re paying a lot of the bill right? They’re the ones who make it happen.
Bob 13:37
Yeah, sure they are, sponsorship revenue is an important part of success, no question about it. So we consolidated in 2008, and, at Green Valley Ranch in Henderson, just near here, that’s where the first user group summit for all the Dynamics products was held. And we staggered them back then. AX and NAV went first and GP and CRM went next.
Tim 13:59
So here we are in Las Vegas having the first Acumatica user group event, and, just a stone’s throw away from Henderson, where we had the first Dynamics user group event for all the products.
Bob 14:06
Yeah, I tell you, there’s something in the water here, I don’t know.
Tim 14:12
People are willing to take a risk. They’re willing to gamble.
Bob 14:15
Right, they’re willing to roll the dice, if you will, on success across ERP applications and community.
Tim 14:21
Awesome. Well Bob, I know we’ve got the welcome reception coming up here. Any other last thoughts on community in general that you’d like to impart to us newer Acumatica people who are a little greener in this journey than you are?
Bob 14:36
Well, what I would say is, if you want this to happen, and there’s plenty of you here that do, keep going, keep plodding forward. Remember, the end users got to come first, the partners and the ISVs have to take a secondary role. I always say, look, partners and ISVs are part of user groups, and they’re important parts, but the end users have got to be on the top rung of the ladder. Educate your end users, get your community smarter, and all the other success will come with it. But you got to be patient and you got to be consistent. And you got to enforce rules on yourselves so that it works.
Tim 15:13
Delivering things when you say they’re gonna be done, actually showing up to the meeting, that kind of stuff?
Bob 15:20
And deliver a good event where people go home smarter, right? They’re spending all this money, they got to buy a ticket to the event, they got to fly here, they got to stay in expensive hotels. Right? The Cosmopolitan is a wonderful hotel, but it’s not cheap. They’re gonna have to go home to their boss and say, at Acumatica Summit 2020 I learned x, y, & z and here’s how we’re going to change this process and that process and that report to run our business better.
Tim 15:23
That’s a good point. That’s how they come back next year.
Bob 15:46
Then the boss says, ok, let’s go next year. And I’ll go with you so that I can talk to other C level folks and get smarter on the things that I need to get smarter on. And then the community builds on itself because you need one another in the grand scheme of things.
Tim 16:01
Okay, I like that. Yeah, especially on the implementation side, and how you solve real world problems with the software. It’s a combination of technique on the soft skill side of things, and politically navigating through your organization to get things done. But then also, technically how you do it on this specific platform. And that’s the kind of stuff you’re figuring out with user groups, at least part of it.
Bob 16:25
Yeah, someone on one side of the room may have solved the problem that someone on the other side has been pulling their hair out for weeks, can’t get over that hurdle. You get them together and problems are solved on both ends. Okay, there’s an accomplishment. Build from there. It’s not rocket science, but it is effective and it’s fun to get together with people who have like-minded interest around ERP, regardless of industry. So plod along, be patient, be consistent, don’t break the rules. Stick to rules. Everybody respects the integrity of the user group when the rules are followed and enforced. That’s one of the hardest parts of my job is telling my friends, hey, you’re breaking the rules. I know they’re trying to earn a living.
Tim 17:06
Do you have an example of a rule that might be broken?
Bob 17:11
Okay, without divulging any names or company names. I’ve gone, you know, at an event at GPUG Summit, I go to check on all the rooms. How are the speakers doing? Sometimes the speakers are up there and they’ve got an ISV helping out and that ISV can’t help him or herself by showing a screen and their product at an educational session. Okay, wrong.
Tim 17:32
Red flag, can’t do that. So that rule about the first slide and the last slide is a hard rule, not just a recommendation.
Bob 17:39
Right, if you’re an ISV and you want to show off your wares, we have partner solution showcase opportunities available for sale. And, when you buy that hour, it is your hour, you can do whatever you want.
Tim 17:49
So you’re the teeth of the user group.
Bob 17:51
Yeah, I have my Switzerland shirt that I wear, my referee shirt right? These are my friends. I’ve worked with these people, I’ve been in the Great Plains space for, this is my 23rd year. And these are my friends and they want to earn a living. And it’s challenging because Microsoft has other plans around SSAS and all that. And it’s challenging, but you gotta, look, respect the integrity of the user group. We all know it’s for the benefit of everybody. So don’t break the rules. You know, it’s simple. It’s hard to enforce, but someone’s got to do it. So I guess it’s me.
Tim 18:23
Well, Bob, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Bob 18:25
You’re welcome. We’re gonna publish this right now?
Tim 18:26
Yeah, if you’re okay.
Bob 18:28
I’m ready, we’re good.
Tim 18:29
I got a little blurb I say at the end here that I’m going to read off my phone. By the way, you know, this being the first interview, how do you like our setup here?
Bob 18:37
Excellent. This is perfect. A nice quiet room. We can have a chat.
Tim 18:41
This is a mic plugged into a phone and that’s what you got here.
Bob 18:44
You’re the epitome of efficiency.
Tim 18:48
Thanks again Bob.
Bob 18:49
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Tim 18:50
Thanks for listening. And I’ll catch you on the next AUG Blog Audio Post. Take care.