Business

Learn About Web Services at WinDays 10

by Vjekoslav Babic on April 20, 2010

WinDays is here again. Year over year, it’s hard to come to terms with the time and how quickly it’s passing by. (Or is it just me getting old, and preferring to ignore that fact?)

Anyway, this year is the tenth anniversary of the first WinDays, and the only one I ever attended as a tourist. This year the conference is split into two events: WinDays technology and WinDays business. Technology part is for geeks, Business is for suits and ties. Even though my personal interests have shifted slightly from geek towards suits and ties, I’ve again nominated a presentation (and got a speaker’s slot at the conference) in the technology part of it. Once a geek, always a geek :)

This year I’m speaking about Web Services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. It might seem no news for many of you, but in my country NAV 2009 has not yet even been localized, and with the localized release coming soon there could not have been better timing for this presentation. I’m going to show the potential and simplicity of web services, and again try to convince people that ERP as we know it is slowly dying, and is soon to be replaced by an even uglier beast.

See you in Rovinj!

{ 1 comment }

Top 5 qualities of a great Microsoft Dynamics consultant

by Vjekoslav Babic on December 5, 2008

image My last two posts have been a detour from my regular themes, into something that might remind you of human resources. I’ve explained what Microsoft Dynamics consultant does, and how it looks through phases of Sure Step implementation, and I promised to conclude this journey with explaining what I believe to be the 5 most important qualities every great Microsoft Dynamics application consultant must posses. So, here you go.

[click to continue reading…]

{ 10 comments }

Let’s meet at the Convergence!

by Vjekoslav Babic on November 18, 2008

I will be attending Convergence 2008 Copenhagen this week. It’s the premier Microsoft Dynamics event, bringing together customers, partners and Microsoft, to share experiences, gain insight into latest developments, discuss solutions and build community.

There are two Convergences each year, a European one traditionally held in Copenhagen in fall, and a US one, traditionally not held at the same place, but always held in spring.

[click to continue reading…]

{ 0 comments }

Default database approach

by Vjekoslav Babic on November 11, 2008

Last Friday, while enjoying a not-at-all healthy Salisbury steak with cheese, I had an interesting discussion with a partner: should NAV consultancies create default databases?

A default database (in this context) is a packaged solution built upon standard Microsoft Dynamics NAV, where a consultancy has introduced a number of features that they sell to all their customers as the standard solution, instead of standard NAV. The modifications to standard NAV can range from simple report adornments to minor feature improvements  to full-scale horizontal or vertical functionalities.

[click to continue reading…]

{ 0 comments }

The Sure Step Rule of Taxi Fare

by Vjekoslav Babic on October 12, 2008

Some time back, as I was riding a taxi from Prague airport to Holiday Inn hotel, I wondered about the fixed price I was about to pay for the ride.

- “Airport to city is 700 flat.” – said the driver when I asked how much approximately will it cost.

Common wisdom goes that flat rates mean you get it worse than if it wasn’t flat. Indeed, if it was on meter, and if the driver took the shortest route (I had a GPS device on me, I could’ve easily checked it!), the fare would’ve been lower. And yet, I decided I loved the flat rate.

[click to continue reading…]

{ 0 comments }

Read My Lips: Why?

September 24, 2008

Recently, a reader, commenting on my last post about Sure Step, pointed me to an article by Karl E. Wiegers “Read My Lips: No New Models!” I initially responded to the comment, but I figure the comments aren’t read as often as posts, so I decided to blog it. It’s doubly funny that the reader [...]

[click to continue reading…]

Diagnostic Phase – a signpost for implementation

September 19, 2008

Each phase of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology is equally important in an implementation project. You could argue that analysis is the most important, or that design is the most important, or that operation is less important. I’ll paraphrase Scott Adams here and ask: how one phase can be more important if each of them [...]

[click to continue reading…]

Architectures: Good, Bad and Ugly

June 11, 2008

Four months ago I attended a conference, where I had a chance to listen to Miha Kralj, an architect at Microsoft, talk about architectures. It was one of the best presentations I ever attended, and ever since I had this topic in queue, but never really had chance to write about it. Most of the [...]

[click to continue reading…]

Standard enemy

May 15, 2008

The biggest jeopardies often lurk where we least expect them. When implementing an ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV, what should be one of our best allies, turns out to be our mortal enemy. It has a simple name: The Standard. Standard processes, standard functionality, standard documents, standard system. All these gizmos can turn [...]

[click to continue reading…]

Business case – do I eat it or?

May 8, 2008

It’s a well known fact that IT projects fail every so often. Standish Group has been researching the success and failure factors of IT projects for a decade and a half, and they publish their results in their CHAOS report every two years or so. According to their 2006 report, only about 35% of projects [...]

[click to continue reading…]

WinDays 2008: Aftermath

April 29, 2008

WinDays 2008 are over. Somehow, this conference has become a milestone, in Croatian ICT community, in Microsoft community, even in my life. I met a friend there, one of those I only meet there, and realized just how quickly the year turned. Obviously, I contemplated too much, and partied too little, something to really get [...]

[click to continue reading…]