Serendipity in Systems: Andrew Lencsak's Unplanned Path to MVP and Championing Dynamics ERP & Community Content Creation

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 States. He's an ERP delivery director. His first awarded is MVP in 2023. He's a Microsoft certified trainer, dynamics AX and D365FNO business transformation leader, specializing in manufacturing and supply chain. You can find links to his bio show notes as well On the episode of this podcast. Welcome to the show, andrew, or do you prefer Drew?

Andrew Lencsak: 1:34
I guess I would prefer Drew I've always been known as Drew to close friends and family. Then it was funny when I got to my most recent employee, there was another Drew. It became a battle of who's Drew number one and who's Drew number two. Whichever you feel comfortable with, I won't be offended.

Mark Smith: 1:52
Nice, I always like to kick off with food, family and friends. Do you know what? Food, family and friends? No, that's not what I normally do. I normally say food, family and fun. But I said friends at time because you mentioned friends. Anyhow, food, family, friends and fun what do they mean to you?

Andrew Lencsak: 2:12
Sure, I guess would mean a little bit of everything. I'm the dad of two young kids. All of those things revolve around the two of them. We like to say they're in the age of beige. It's a lot of brown and beige type foods on their plates, not a lot of exploration and creativity there. Their food life is a little bit boring. It was funny. My wife and I we got Thai food last night ourselves. They didn't want anything to do with it, they were eating pizza and bread or whatever. But yeah, they're the most of my time, I would say. And then there's work after that. But they're at a good, fun age. My son's almost six and my daughter's about a year and a half, so they keep my hands full for sure.

Mark Smith: 2:59
I bet, I bet, I know what that's like. I've got one daughter turning three this week. Congratulations Happy birthday One and four months yeah, young. So I know what you mean. They take your time and they certainly do that. How did you get into IT? What was that career path for you that brought you up to where you are today?

Andrew Lencsak: 3:25
Accidentally, I would say. Maybe I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Coming out of university in the US fully my first, I guess, career full-time job that I took a hold of was selling IT products, kind of like a middle-ware almost. That was very broad. That could be software, hardware. It was a lot of cold calling, good company, good reputation. It was not the role for me. Sitting and calling up people on the phone all day and trying to talk about their general IT needs was not something I enjoyed. I fell into dynamics accidentally as an end user. It happened through someone in my family who worked for a company and recommended I look into it that transition into a business analyst role in a UK facility who was using a very early legacy version of dynamics. I did that for about five or six years. I started to really learn the ERP system, enjoy that side of it, enjoy having a more focused problem-solving type of career versus something that was extremely broad. After doing that for a long time I wanted to get into consulting because I had worked a lot with our partners and consultants. That interested me, just working with lots of different industries and clients and helping them learn the software and implement the software and find ways to either revitalize or just help do their job, for lack of a better word. It was important to me to share that knowledge because it was not easy to find it, I would say in the early days of dynamics ERP.

Mark Smith: 5:16
You talked about industries, then what are the common industries you've worked across, I suppose? What industries do you enjoy the most to deploy the tech into?

Andrew Lencsak: 5:27
As an end user. I started out in primarily manufacturing roles. I really liked that. I liked the idea of a company coming up with a product to solve a business need, even if that was a very niche industry. I wasn't familiar with the industries we were in. We were selling to life sciences and university labs and research centers and defense industry. I liked the thought of them coming up with ways to solve those needs. I've always been drawn to manufacturing. I really got my start actually in master planning, which is more holistic in the supply chain side, but it was focused in really our production planning processes. That is one thing that's been consistent throughout my career, from an end user to a consultant and now as more of a manager and director. I really like that, whether it's in manufacturing or even just straight distribution. We work with a lot of companies, whether they're 3PL distributors or just transportation companies that still need that type of consulting and those types of solutions built for them. I really love that aspect. I'm not a huge finance guy, definitely, but supply chain and manufacturing is where I like to lay my head. That exposes me to lots of fun companies and clients.

Mark Smith: 6:50
Across your career, being able to see what the landscape of tech is out there, particularly around manufacturing, whether it be SAP, oracle. Of course we've got Dynamics and there's other products that are bespoke and built in these spaces as well. Why have you stuck with Dynamics? Why not, you know? You know SAPs considered the big gorilla of the space, and of course you've got Oracle and others. Why have you stuck with Dynamics?

Andrew Lencsak: 7:28
It's a really good question. I'd be lying if I didn't say there's comfort in it. Right, I know it and that allows me to know I can hopefully succeed in this space and I've learned a lot over the 15 years or so I've been in the dynamic space. So part of it is that, part of it is having a place where I have a certain level of understanding and expertise. I think the other piece is Microsoft and their growth and their change. I'm not going to lie and say I know who Satya Nadella was when I got into Dynamics and his vision for the company and his role in Dynamics and what they're doing now, or even their just role as a business. You look at the things they've done with AI across the board. All those things are really exciting. I think to me, for some reason growing up, that Microsoft name was more important because, as a person who maybe wasn't in business and IT and ERP, I knew it from being an end user on a computer and office and Windows. So to me that name always stood out. Sap didn't stand out, or a cold and stand out. Ibm didn't stand out. So maybe there's a kind of a draw to it in that aspect, in the nostalgia of it, but I have always found it growing and expanding and I like that and it really exposes me as a consultant and as a user of the product to all sorts of industries and spaces that I never thought I would. So sure, sap and Oracle not going to knock them, but I just always really like this space and I think it will continue to grow and expand and I'm really excited about that.

Mark Smith: 9:15
So for the last couple years, what are the main industries you've worked in?

Andrew Lencsak: 9:20
Well, a pretty wide range. My last major role as an independent contributor, a solution architect we worked in a pork manufacturing industry. That was really the first time I've worked specifically with somebody who does that full time as a manufacturer Really just food manufacturing. I came from more discrete assembly type manufacturing rules, so getting into more of the process food pharmaceuticals that's been a big change in growth area for both myself and us. I think, as we've seen across our clientele in the supply chain, we deal with probably more 3PL logistics providers. I think in the past I'd probably work more with manufacturers who distributed their own goods and now also working with a lot more 3PLs and companies just maybe doing one leg of the supply chain journey.

Mark Smith: 10:14
So I don't know what 3PL means.

Andrew Lencsak: 10:17
So third party logistics. So you might be a warehouse or transportation company and pharmaceutical or retail, they don't have the operation side right, so they ship their goods to you or you go and get them, you stock them and you ship them to their customers. That's a big growth area, especially when we look at some of the solutions Microsoft building, making things that are standalone, making warehouse only standalone in Dynamics 365 ERP, where you don't have to use it with financials or things they're doing in the cloud. The supply chain center Help us get those types of customers and companies into the dynamic space which we weren't seeing previously.

Mark Smith: 11:01
Can you just explain to me the different types of manufacturing, how it kind of sits in the market? You mentioned discrete manufacturing. Then can you explain kind of what the common models are when it comes to manufacturing?

Andrew Lencsak: 11:16
Sure, so I would say, at least the way we like to explain it in the Microsoft ERP space and the way we position it as a provider. We have four major areas. So discrete would be things like assembly I'm making a bike, I can take it apart, I know what part is what part and how much goes into it. Process would be your food and pharmaceuticals. It's more of a mixture, it's a formula, it's things that you can't disassemble and turn back into those unique things that made it holistically what it was right. That changes a lot. Then we get into lean manufacturing. That could apply to all sorts of manufacturers, but that's more about the process cutting down the non-value-added activities, focusing on minimizing waste, focusing on one piece flow and pull to the customer. I would say the fourth, which we don't always necessarily position, but the fourth I would see, would be projects based manufacturing. Things you see with, like contract manufacturers, oil, anybody who's doing contract type work really would use projects based manufacturing, where you might be doing discrete or process based orders in the system, but everything is about long projects and billing those customers right. If you're a construction type company and it's mostly based on projects, you might be looking at manufacturing like that. So those are typically the four buckets we see our customers in, and they could be mixed.

Mark Smith: 12:40
Yeah, lean and discrete Are they? I mean, they sounded pretty similar as an. I know lean is something that came out of Toyota right, it was a Toyota way, I think, originated, but when you describe them they sounded similar in a way. Is that you talk about building a bicycle and of course I think of when I think lean, I think of Toyota. So therefore I think obviously building cars it's building a product as such. So how is it more that lean was that kind of you know out of Japan way of thinking about manufacturing, or is it? Is it quite different the way you'd set that up in dynamics?

Andrew Lencsak: 13:21
In dynamics it's definitely different if we want to focus on that piece first. So with discrete manufacturing, you would use a term like production orders. I have an order that I discreetly process, so I have components, items that I need to pick, I have labor I need to consume and those get registered to the system. With lean, we're focusing on using con bonds for and those are going to be triggered in different ways. Right, we might have the typical bin system where you use one and you take on and things like that, or they might be event con bonds that are triggered by demand in real time. So that setup is quite different. The costing effects are quite different. With lean, we're using back flush costing. You don't typically see these really granular variances at one order level. You're seeing it as a holistic cell level. So there's a lot of differences, definitely in dynamics and then mostly in theory, for sure. And how you set up your processes, how you set up your machines, how you set up your material flow, that's going to be the biggest difference for sure.

Mark Smith: 14:28
Interesting. What changes, what have kind of been the big moves that you've seen in the manufacturing space, whether it be the introduction of robotics, whether it be hyper automation coming to the process? What are the big things that you're seeing or seen change in the life, in your career, really in the space? What changes are you seeing and what changes are we seeing for your life? How is it your business outside of your friends and family, having your friends and brides and過去 in that own place or whatever?

Andrew Lencsak: 14:55
I think those are definitely big pieces of it. Automation, and whether that's decrementing headcount and automating something that's simple, or it's maybe adding automation to the systems, right, maybe it has nothing to do with our people and our process lines, but there's a lot of backend processing and manufacturing. If you're using dynamics for your ERP, for finance, master plan, a manufacturing warehouse, there's a lot of things that need to be processed and for manufacturers who are growing, they might not be used to a lot of that, so being able to automate those things are really important for them. Asset management is a big growth area. We've seen with our manufacturers being able to analyze their machines based on production output or production long hours and feeding automation into that, feeding analytics into and out of that, to be able to predict machine breakdowns, because they can't afford to have a machine down for a day a week, maybe even an hour, depending on their volume or what they're making. So those are definitely huge growth areas. But with that, I think, maintaining the right level of security and auditability. With a lot of our manufacturers, if they're making things that, or for government or something like that, there's a lot of regulations that they have, so it's a pretty difficult balance to maintain.

Mark Smith: 16:26
I would say Tell me about becoming an MVP. What was it, junie, for you?

Andrew Lencsak: 16:30
It's been an interesting one. I don't know if it was always a goal. Some years ago I was introduced to now a colleague of mine who I believe was on your show, kelly Kane at the time Kelly Gustafsson. Now she had just become MVP for the first time. She's an MVP seven years running now and her and my boss were both interested in me becoming an MVP because I had been spending a lot of time helping users through the forums. I got really involved with dynamic communities in their regional and local events, their yearly conferences. I had started to share some things on social media. But at the time it seemed like they had almost this minimum level of threshold and they said you have to blog, you have to blog multiple days a week and that's the only way you're gonna do it. And I just kind of laughed because I was like I'm not just gonna come up with arbitrary ideas and start blogging to win an award. So it was a rather long, strange journey. Kelly did nominate me a couple years ago and I did not get it. So it went from considering it, nominating me years later and then being nominated again this year by someone else. I think a lot of it had to do with. I'm in a role where I'm very, very lucky to be able to contribute a lot of my time to learning and sharing. It's part of my job anyway, so I benefited from that and I was able to this year, start doing a lot more things like my podcast, and really putting a lot into my YouTube channel. I did a series called Dynamics 365 A to Z where I posted a video every day for the letter of the alphabet sharing things in D365 finance and operations. So that really, I think, pushed maybe the award for me this year for sure.

Mark Smith: 18:26
What's your, you know, when it comes to content creation and, of course, community contribution is what spins your wheels the most. Is it YouTube? Is it podcasting? And, by the way, what's the name of your podcast, just so people can look it up and check it out?

Andrew Lencsak: 18:43
The name of the podcast is Dynamics Unplugged. The YouTube channel goes by the same as well. I would say I've definitely put more into YouTube so far. I'm more interested a little bit in the podcasting selfishly. I feel like it's a fun excuse to talk to friends and people who I find interesting. So I would like to do more of that, definitely.

Mark Smith: 19:09
Tell me about tools of the trade, and folks listening to the show are aspiring MVPs, and sometimes it's just even those little technical things around how what's your workflow? So let's just unpack your workflow for YouTube.

Andrew Lencsak: 19:29
For me it was always tough. I'm someone who a lot of times overanalyzes things I want to post, so I always want to come up with either a theme for a short period of time whether that's a week or a month that I'm either going to focus on one topic and get really granular, or I'm going to do maybe broader topics, but they're going to be very structured and limited, because I don't want it to just become a page of absolute absurdity where I have all various lengths and it can be tough to come up with a focus. So that's why, for example, I did the A to Z thing. I structured it beforehand, I came up with topical areas Every day. I had a plan. I was able to knock that out. For people who want to become an MVP, I think. Find an area that you are passionate about learning. That's always going to be your avenue for sharing people, or always willing to share what they learn. And if it's something yet you've had knowledge of 15, 20 years, you're likely to either forget about it or not maybe find an interesting reason to always write about it. So for me sometimes it's easier to start with the new stuff. What haven't I done? How can I share knowledge about that and, in turn, I'll learn about it and other people will learn about it. That's a good way I've seen people become MVPs is just sharing what they're doing and how they're learning and getting feedback and just getting smarter and better in return. I like it.

Mark Smith: 21:03
I like it. What software are you using to do your YouTube?

Andrew Lencsak: 21:12
I haven't gotten too sophisticated yet. I've been using mostly Teams meetings with myself first to record them and then editing them through ClipChamp, clipchamp, microsoft's ClipChamp. Yeah, yeah, I just I haven't had a lot of time to try new tools and get fancy with my edits.

Mark Smith: 21:32
ClipChamp's good. I've done well over I think I've done over 70 odd hours in editing in ClipChamp, so it's a good, robust product. Yep, I wish it handled audio a bit better but as an, allow me to export audio without exporting video. But it's all good and at respect. Hey Drew, it's been awesome to have you on the show. Any last thoughts that you want to leave with the guests before I let you go?

Andrew Lencsak: 22:00
Just keep sharing your knowledge out there. Keep putting out positive information in the community. It's been great for me just hearing from people that they've enjoyed shows like this and people sharing their information, and I thank you for having me on and giving me the chance to say hi to the community and always happy to help out.

Mark Smith: 22:29
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.