Oct 6, 2026 · 54 min · 11 segments
Send us a message about this episode! There's one piece of ERP work you keep putting off. You trust your partner, you like them, they answer the…
Peter NicholsonHost
Nirav ShahHost
Emily BrowningHost
So today's topic is really focusing in on your white paper, right? I, I read it earlier this morning, and I found myself nodding along with a lot of the points that you make in that.
And really we'd wanna really explore this whole idea of, of where and when several partners make more sense, right? So, um, we'll obviously link to your white paper, and I, I was really interested to see that backstory of, you know, the old way of ERP when it was on, on-prem, especially with Navision's proprietary database.
It was very kind of the only thing you could do it- was even from the licensing point of view, right, is have that single vendor.
But in today's world where everything is more and more is online, we're now away from on-prem, most of us are trying to move, migrate to the cloud, where everything suddenly wants to be connected to everything else, right? Which has its difficulties and complexities, but it does open the door to what your white paper explores is this whole idea of, well, you know, don't just think that you have to ha- continuously work with your one ERP partner, um, especially when you have a gap in your business process or a gap in your ERP, right? And there's this third-party solution that would be perfect, and maybe you feel that you can't really leverage that because your ERP partner isn't skilled in it or doesn't know how to integrate it.
But in general, w- I wanna start with what kind of, what kind of made you write this in the first place? What were you seeing out there?
So really what, what, what, what spurred it was I'm out there, I'm talking to businesses, they're running Business Central.
There's a clear gap or issue or some pain, right? And, you know, I f- I feel like I could help or, or other people that I know could help, and almost always the first instinctive reply is, "Well, we're, we're happy with our partner," or, "We're not, we-- we're not interested in changing partners right now." And in my head, I'm thinking, "Who asked you to change partners?"
Right? And I got to the realization that I believe that a lot of people just are under this assumption, due to whatever reason, that they have to have a Business Central partner, right? And that partner, it needs to be the organization that provides all of the support, all of the consulting, anything that has anything to do with Business Central tangentially or, or directly, like that, that that has to go through that partner.
And that if they decide to bring in someone else, maybe a s- a smaller partner, an independent consultant, whatever, that, that there's gonna be friction and hurt feelings, and people are gonna be upset and threatened and scared or whatever the, whatever term it is, right? And it just got to be like, you know, it do- it doesn't have to be that way.
It shouldn't be that way, right? So, so where I got to, where I got back to is like, why, you know, thinking, why are people afraid? Why are they not willing to, to utilize multiple partners? You know, so I started going down that rabbit hole, right? And the, and I got back to the first point was, well, it's, they really don't have a partner strategy, right? They just have a, a Microsoft partner, a Business Central partner that they work with.
And by the way, this could apply across other ERP solutions as well, you know, besides, besides just Business Central.
But, you know, and it's because they really haven't ever thought about it, I don't think.
my point is just that y- you're, it's getting more and more difficult to find one partner that's an expert in everything that an organization might need them to be an expert in.
And so I think i- because of that challenge, you, you just have to get into this mindset of, let me define my partner strategy.
So today's topic is really focusing in on your white paper, right? I, I read it earlier this morning, and I found myself nodding along with a lot of the points that you make in that.
And really we'd wanna really explore this whole idea of, of where and when several partners make more sense, right? So, um, we'll obviously link to your white paper, and I, I was really interested to see that backstory of, you know, the old way of ERP when it was on, on-prem, especially with Navision's proprietary database.
It was very kind of the only thing you could do it- was even from the licensing point of view, right, is have that single vendor.
But in today's world where everything is more and more is online, we're now away from on-prem, most of us are trying to move, migrate to the cloud, where everything suddenly wants to be connected to everything else, right? Which has its difficulties and complexities, but it does open the door to what your white paper explores is this whole idea of, well, you know, don't just think that you have to ha- continuously work with your one ERP partner, um, especially when you have a gap in your business process or a gap in your ERP, right? And there's this third-party solution that would be perfect, and maybe you feel that you can't really leverage that because your ERP partner isn't skilled in it or doesn't know how to integrate it.
But in general, w- I wanna start with what kind of, what kind of made you write this in the first place? What were you seeing out there?
So really what, what, what, what spurred it was I'm out there, I'm talking to businesses, they're running Business Central.
There's a clear gap or issue or some pain, right? And, you know, I f- I feel like I could help or, or other people that I know could help, and almost always the first instinctive reply is, "Well, we're, we're happy with our partner," or, "We're not, we-- we're not interested in changing partners right now." And in my head, I'm thinking, "Who asked you to change partners?"
Right? And I got to the realization that I believe that a lot of people just are under this assumption, due to whatever reason, that they have to have a Business Central partner, right? And that partner, it needs to be the organization that provides all of the support, all of the consulting, anything that has anything to do with Business Central tangentially or, or directly, like that, that that has to go through that partner.
And that if they decide to bring in someone else, maybe a s- a smaller partner, an independent consultant, whatever, that, that there's gonna be friction and hurt feelings, and people are gonna be upset and threatened and scared or whatever the, whatever term it is, right? And it just got to be like, you know, it do- it doesn't have to be that way.
It shouldn't be that way, right? So, so where I got to, where I got back to is like, why, you know, thinking, why are people afraid? Why are they not willing to, to utilize multiple partners? You know, so I started going down that rabbit hole, right? And the, and I got back to the first point was, well, it's, they really don't have a partner strategy, right? They just have a, a Microsoft partner, a Business Central partner that they work with.
And by the way, this could apply across other ERP solutions as well, you know, besides, besides just Business Central.
But, you know, and it's because they really haven't ever thought about it, I don't think.
my point is just that y- you're, it's getting more and more difficult to find one partner that's an expert in everything that an organization might need them to be an expert in.
And so I think i- because of that challenge, you, you just have to get into this mindset of, let me define my partner strategy.
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