Shaping the Future of Technology: Stuart Baxter's Pioneering Work in Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP Show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from the United Kingdom. He works at Kerv Digital as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Solution Architect. He was first awarded as MVP in 2023. He's an event co-coordinator of the Scottish Power Platform User Group. He also is a Power Platform Community Superstar. You can find links to his bio and social media in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, stuart Hi thanks for having me, mark. Good to be here, good to have you on the show. Whereabouts in the UK are you based?

Stuart Baxter: 1:39
So I am in Fife in Scotland, about 25 miles north of Edinburgh.

Mark Smith: 1:43
Nice, nice, and tell us a bit about food, family and fun. What do you do when you're not doing the tech side of your life?

Stuart Baxter: 1:52
So I have a six-year-old son and I got married last year, so most of the time I'm not working and chasing a six-year-old about or exploring various parts of Scotland. We recently went to the Isle of Arran on the west coast, also been up to the Isle of Skye on the north coast and various bits of Perthshire and all sorts of countryside in Scotland as well. In terms of food, I like to eat them, whether it's pizza, pizza, Italian, Indian Neckleys, anything at all. Really, I just like to eat them.

Mark Smith: 2:30
And are you a whiskey man?

Stuart Baxter: 2:32
I am indeed. Yeah, my favourite at the moment is the Isle of Arran. There's various other ones I quite like. They're quite like Talisker and, of course, mccallum 30 as well, but it's a little bit too expensive for drinking regularly.

Mark Smith: 2:46
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been to Isle. And the number of distilleries on that island, it's amazing.

Stuart Baxter: 2:58
That ferry trip over is amazing as well, isn't it? We've seen what it's done.

Mark Smith: 3:03
Yeah, I did the ferry. That's how we went.

Stuart Baxter: 3:06
Our friends at CalMac, or Caledonia McBrain as they're known, have a really tough job at the moment with the ferry, but they do such a good job getting people over to these beautiful parts of the world.

Mark Smith: 3:16
Oh, amazing, amazing, it's otherworldly. Definitely Tell me about your journey into tech, Like. What were those kind of career highlights, pivot points for you, where there was dynamics All of a sudden came onto your radar? Tell me what are those kind of key inflection points in your career that brings you to today.

Stuart Baxter: 3:38
As well a lot of people that I've met throughout the community. I fell into dynamics by accident. So I was working in a contact centre in a fraud team back in 2015 and we realised that Excel was not the tool for us, and back then, in those days, you would build a SQL database running Microsoft Access over the top of it that kind of thing and a new job came up on the job board, working with a nice little system called Microsoft CRM4. This was 2015. By then, that was significantly out of date and really needed an overhaul. So we trundled along for a little while on-prem patches at two o'clock in the morning, barely slept for the best part of four years. And then along came a nice little opportunity to upgrade to Dynamics 365 sales and field service, and that's where my career in dynamics really began. It went from doing patches and fixing bugs to keep a system running to really revolutionising what we could do, exploring things like resource schedule optimisation, integrating with the existing SAP system all sorts of really interesting stuff as opposed to just keeping the lights on. And as that project started coming to an end, my friend and colleague, david Bradley sat down to me and had a chat around what was next. He was a contractor. His contract was coming to an end. I was a full-time member of staff but when the system was built we just didn't know what we were going to do next and he'd suggested exploring contracting. At that moment in time I had a young son and I was like, well, contracting is not for me, but consultancy does sound interesting. So met up with a friend, jamie Gilson, who's probably listening to this, and he introduced me to a company called Fabric IT down in McEauxfield, england. During my time there they really pushed our development, helped me through a whole load of Microsoft exams, got my first certification about six weeks after it started there and did a whole lot of work with a customer called AG Products. So they are a really, really revolutionary agricultural machinery manufacturer. Really interesting company headed up by a husband and wife, andy and Hannah, and they were looking at Dynamics Field Service. So as well as manufacturing the machines, they supported the machines as well, and his entire ethos was our systems should work for us, we should not work for our systems. And he really fell in love with Dynamics and took it from a kind of vanilla field service implementation that just let his guys get on with doing their job to a really, really cool, heavily customized field service system that allowed the guys to do their job even better and made their life easier. About six months in moved to a senior functional consultant role, continued working with AG Products, various other customers for the short while and then, july 2021, moved to my first solution architecture role with company called Brightwire up here in Peeble, scotland, just south of Edinburgh, where we started to work with my first particularly challenging system, I'll be honest or a company called National Highways and used to be known as Highways England. They managed the motorway and major road network in the UK and they wanted to look at where they're spending money and also track all the different pieces of roadworks that are going on. So a little bit of an example that our friends down in Birmingham might be disappointed to hear they planned on closing the M6 Junction 26 to 27, for example, and then six months later closing Junction 28 to 29. Now, because they weren't working with a joined up system, common sense wasn't kicking in and they weren't thinking actually, let's close that whole stretch of road, resurface the whole. One contractor, one set of closed roads, one set of disappointed travelers, let's do it all at once. So our joined up system, with the help of my colleagues Stuart Ackroyd, marcus Naylor and Colin Miller, who headed up Brightwire, got in a really, really great system for them. And that was also my first dipping my toe in the water with ProCode as well. So quite a lot of JavaScript involved in that front end scripting, connecting with PCFs and all sorts of cool stuff. So really really enjoyed that project. And most recently in September last year I moved over to Curve Digital where I worked with some community legends like Padi Byrne, from Scotland up my way, cheryl Netway, who a lot of people know, and of course, will Dorrington, who needs no introduction Anyone in the Microsoft community knows who Mill is and it's really cool and really interesting working with him. And my favorite part of the job at the moment is working on the UK driving theory test, so something that pretty much everyone who's ever got behind the wheel of a car has been involved in. It's been a big honor to have been involved in that project and to now speak to people who are booking theory tests using a system that was built on data first and they have no idea. Then it works, and it functions like any other website. It's just really fast, really easy to use and a great customer experience. And that's always the aim when they work on projects. It's great to do a good job for the customer, but it really boils down to the customer's customer. They're who you want to make happy, happy customers make money. Money comes back to consult and say and we get more money and that's a quick whistle. Stop to it of my career so far.

Mark Smith: 9:50
So good, so good and some incredible companies you've worked with and, obviously, a lot of exposure to Dynamics 365 Field Service across your career. What do you find most compelling or what is the best feature that you have implemented in Dynamics 365 Field Service?

Stuart Baxter: 10:13
I would say probably on the CDMT system for national highways, we built a PCF that integrates in with the ArcGIS system and what that allows them to do is basically put on a map where the issues with the road are, but also view the surrounding issues as well. So it went from here's a point on the map to here's a whole load of points on the map that give you more information about what you're working with. It wasn't really Field Service, it was a bit of other bits and pieces rolled into it. But what I really like about Field Service is these opportunities to extend. So when Field Service was first a thing you had like RESCO mobile, at that point Field Service was great, but RESCO mobile really tipped it over the edge and kind of added on to that product. That's my favorite thing about Dynamics in general I suppose the ability to use the great things that friends at Microsoft have built but also work with PCFs and extensions and add-ons and things built by other people.

Mark Smith: 11:20
Tell me about RESCO now in the context of Field Services. Does it still a must-have component or do you feel the mobility from Microsoft Solution now really addresses the gaps that it used to have in the past?

Stuart Baxter: 11:39
I really prefer the Microsoft Solution. Now, where the Microsoft Solution excels for me is it looks and feels like any other model driven app. So, for example, someone who let's go back to British Gas they have some guys who they call senior engineers who most of the day are working in the office supporting with scheduling, having conversations with engineers, but three or four times a year will go out on the tools and go and do a job For them. They log onto their mobile and it looks like a responsive version of what they've been using all day. Every day For a new engineer being trained up, the dispatchers in the office can show them how to use it and, most importantly for me, if you have problems with your laptop, for example, you could by all rights log on using your mobile and just work in the same way. Resco was great for a long time. I feel like RESCO is kind of They've gone the same sort of direction as Dynamics 365, marketing and Quick Dimensions. For a long time they were the must-having, the best of the best, and it feels like Microsoft have caught up and continued to innovate and we just don't see that same innovation with some of the older ISP products are kicking around.

Mark Smith: 13:02
Brilliant analogy, perfect, in fact. I'm gonna use that in the future. It's interesting that you're talking about that roading infrastructure and ArcGIS integration. How's this? Back in 20. 2014-2015, we built a similar system before Microsoft owned field service or even the company that they acquired, and we built from scratch a system that did ArcGIS integration into toughened devices that sit in road worker trucks for Western Australia. So Western Australia and just to give you an idea of sizing, western Australia is 11 times the size of the United Kingdom, 11 times the size. And so this is the beauty of dynamics right Right back then, you could create these amazing applications and solutions and integrate it into so many other things. And what were we using to actually build that entire roading? You know it covered roading bridges, all the power fixtures on the roading network. All of that was built into our solution. And what was crazy, it was all built on Dynamics 365 sales, because it wasn't any other field service didn't even exist back then, and all the job orders, work orders, everything were all custom built on Dynamics 365 sales.

Stuart Baxter: 14:28
I do really love the flexibility of the different modules. So there was a small project I worked on for a short time when I was at Fabric for a group of accountants so before COVID was a thing over in the UK. They would physically go out and see people and sit down and sell them packages, so they were kind of corporate accountants. They did kind of tax relief for R&D projects, all this sort of stuff, and they'd engaged just before COVID was a thing and at the time it was like we were on Dynamics 365 sales. We're a sales company, we sell stuff and then, of course, covid became a thing and we completely flipped that on its head and it was like, okay, you still sell stuff, but now you have to hold calls on teams because you can't go to people's offices and houses. Have you thought about field service? And they call that for broken boilers and roadworks companies. It's not really, though. It's for people who have conversations with customers at a place that's not face to face and it has a lot of the sales stuff as well, and they call that great. But what happens when we're not going to the customer's houses? That's a remote work order. In fact, you could even use remote assist on top of that and look at the documents that are in front of them. Don't have them scan 100 million things that you're probably going to read. Five of them. Do remote assist. See the things on screen. When you can go back out into people's houses, whenever that may be which turned out to be about two years later Continue using field services. Stop using remote work orders. And it was really good fun actually because every time they were like oh, we want to like, sell them a contract, we'll provide them services for a period of time. Yeah, that's an agreement that that's a thing that already exists, and it's really interesting how you can find kind of niche use cases for stuff that people just didn't think about. I suppose that's your job as consultants as well, to steer people in the right direction and say look, I know you said you want a yellow triangle, but have you heard about this red square?

Mark Smith: 16:45
Yes, yes, yes. So good, tell me I'm interested for selfish reasons. Tell me working at Curve. Tell me why it's such an amazing business and why it's unique as a consultancy.

Stuart Baxter: 16:59
For me, the thing that stands out with Curve can be encapsulated in two words build future is what Curve stands for, and the way they achieve that is two ways. So they look after their staff and they look after their customers. One of the kind of ingrained almost mottles that you would expect to see on the wall in the office is do the right thing, whether that's challenging a customer on something that you don't think is right, whether that's challenging leadership on something that you think could improve that. Open and honest dialogue and kind of open door policy is actively encouraged, from junior developers right up to the Chief Technology Officer and everything in between. I really like that. They do a lot of work with nonprofits. For those familiar with Cloud Thing who later became Curve, they've given away millions and millions of pounds worth of intellectual property for some really great charities and things like WaterAid, who provide clean water to regions in Africa and children need that's a bit closer to home. National Trust Scotland, who look after some of the really beautiful old buildings in Scotland and most of this is done for your charge. They value what the customers are doing more than the money in the customers bank. That really stands out for me.

Mark Smith: 18:33
I like it. I like it. As you say, got some real rock stars on the team, like Patty Cheryl and, of course, your famous CTO Will have actually been messaging him this morning, which is, of course, your evening but my morning. So, yeah, really great team of folks, obviously that you're getting to rub shoulders with them, work from and learn off each other.

Stuart Baxter: 18:56
Yes, it's a fantastic team. We've also recently had AJ Zafar joined. This is a contractor and there's a whole water coming. I don't want to say up and coming, because they're extremely talented people, but people are not really known to the community who work with a fair bit A lady called Madeline Harwood, who I know will be listening to this and will be extremely embarrassed at him. I'm telling you how talented she is. She came to us from an end user and it's been really great to watch her grow over the last kind of six to nine months from From a really good developer who didn't know she was a really good developer into a, a fantastically confident person who's starting to realize just how special they are. And I think there are people like that and when you surround yourself with strong people, it can only make you stronger and make them stronger.

Mark Smith: 19:50
So you've mentioned community there and let's wrap up with this because I see we're already on time. It's been so good talking to you. Tell me about the role that community has played in your career and what you see the value of community is.

Stuart Baxter: 20:11
So community has played a massive part in my career. I'll be honest, when I first joined Consultant, I was not confident. I was very much new to used to working for an end user. Relatively early on, I met a lady called Sarah Jones from Shortlist Recruitment who also runs a platform called VRT Virtual Roundtable, and she really, really encouraged me to get involved with the community and going along to events like Scottish Summit and so on and also attending her events as well, and through them I got together with Charlie Phipps and Keith Adleton, who now, together with me, run Scottish Power Platform User Group, and one of the comments we had the last one was there hasn't been an event like this in Scotland the site from Scottish Summit in about 10 years and we can only look forward to one Scottish Summit a year. And it was great to hear that from someone who had been working with Dynamics since CRM1. Like really the old school legacy guy who'd worked for Microsoft for so long and he was like, yeah, it makes me happy to see people learning about the thing that I'm so passionate about and that really resonated with me, because that's why you get involved in community. It's the share of what you're doing and to get other people passionate about the things that we enjoy and kind of bring on these up and coming people Lewis Babert, for example. I'll take absolutely no credit for his development. He did that all on his own, but it's been really amazing to see him coming from the kid who built some stuff for the swimming club to the little boy who everyone knows, who's no longer a little boy, is a fully grown adult and finished his GCSE and walked straight into consultancy for one of the biggest companies in the UK, working alongside Chris Huntingford. Quite literally, everyone knows his name. That's what the community is about People growing from potential into something really, really amazing. It's a big part of my career to be part of that and to be sharing the things that we've learned over the years with other people.

Mark Smith: 22:30
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time.