Exploring D365 and Personal Journey with Elif Item: A Blend of Tech, Travel, and Turkish Culture

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 Dallas, texas in the United States. She's a founder and CEO of Item by Item. She has first awarded her MVP in 2023. Teaching is her passion. You can find links to her bio, social media etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, elif.

Elif Item: 1:25
Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you for having me.

Mark Smith: 1:29
Good to have you on the show. I always find it interesting talking to other trainers. You've obviously got quite a history in training.

Elif Item: 1:38
Yes, I started my D365 journey as a consultant, just like many other D365 people in the space. I worked as a consultant, then as a project manager, then I was a director for several years for a partner. I was very familiar with just implementations and the challenges around training. I always felt like there was a real need for D365 training in the D365 space. A lot of the Microsoft materials are really good, but they're mostly geared towards consultants. I always felt like there wasn't enough materials for core team members, subject matter experts and end users. That's really our primary focus. That's been my passion to make sure that the D365 materials are really towards people who are going to use D365 in their day-to-day jobs.

Mark Smith: 2:41
Before we unpack all the technology, tell us a bit about you. Family, food, fun what do they mean to you?

Elif Item: 2:49
I live in Dallas and I'm married and I have two kids. Actually, the funny fact is I literally just moved to a new house yesterday. Wow, yes, a big life change. Both of my kids have just recently finished high school, they're going to college and we're going into the empty nester phase of our lives. We have moved to a smaller house and a more fun part of Dallas so that we can enjoy a little bit. I love food. I love being able to walk to places. I am originally from Turkey. I grew up in the city. Dallas is really not the epitome of city per se. From public transportation and walking perspective, I'm really super excited about living in a part that's more city life. We can walk to shops. We can walk to the coffee places. I'm very, very excited. What else is about me? I love to travel. My job allows me to actually spend time in different parts of the world without necessarily affecting my work. We do have some plans to travel to New Zealand and a few other places In the next couple of years to just enjoy being done with having the kids all the time with us and busy with their schedule.

Mark Smith: 4:23
Nice, how long ago since you're in East Emble.

Elif Item: 4:27
I actually was there last summer. Again an interesting fact. My daughter graduated from high school last year and she always wanted to take a gap year before college. We took her there last summer, which I haven't seen her since October 1st. She's been having an absolute blast in Istanbul, making friends, going to school. My son will do the same. I actually am not from originally from Istanbul, but I went to college there. It's just a beautiful, crazy city. I'm heading out there in mid-June again. It's really a great way of just being a part of the culture and enjoying really the city life. Have you ever been?

Mark Smith: 5:18
Yes, yeah, I love Easton, bullo, easton, bullo, kappadokia, ephesus, Anzac Cove, all those type areas, because, for New Zealand, turkey has always paid a big part of our culture because of wartime activities. And so, yes, my wife and I spent, I think, a couple of weeks in Turkey.

Elif Item: 5:42
That's great.

Mark Smith: 5:43
Yeah, when we're living in London and, of course, we love Turkish food Very much. So yeah, yeah.

Elif Item: 5:51
That's great. I've actually been to the, to Chanakale also, where the a lot of the Anzac, you know boys, are still sleeping. So I think it's also special for us to go and see it. It just kind of shows you the, the, the effects of war. You know, all of these young guys traveling you know thousands of miles to a part of the world that's just so far away and never making it back home. So it's it's. It is crazy and some sad, but they're in good hands, they're sleeping in our land and we will take care of them from this point on.

Mark Smith: 6:28
So yes, what I found very interesting, which I never knew, is that it was part of the whole that period of the breaking away. Probably it wasn't the Ottoman Empire and you know, and Constantinople and the, the key Turkish guy and I can't remember his name, his big statues and memorials to him down there.

Elif Item: 6:47
Yes.

Mark Smith: 6:48
Who've really founded modern-day Turkey right?

Elif Item: 6:52
Yes, so his name is Atatürk. So it's, it's interesting because they yes, they before the modern per Turkish Republic Turks didn't have last names. Everybody was called by their parents like son of such and such sort of stuff. So Atatürk means father of the Turks in Turkish and the Turkish people gave him that last name. His name is actually Mustafa Kemal, but his last name is Atatürk and it was. Yes, it was that part where Turkey was split off, like Ottoman Empire was ending and it was kind of split in between the European countries and Atatürk was fighting to keep a modern Turkey. And then we were, you know, obviously fighting with England or Britain and as a part of that war that we've fought with, with the New Zealand as well, but not necessarily New Zealand, but New Zealand kind of represented the British Empire. But at the end it all, we ended up keeping what is modern Turkey now and then the remaining of the Ottoman Empire got split into the country, the countries that we know in more in the Eastern Europe, you know like yeah, it was interesting because after being there I then read the largest book I've ever read in my life, I would say, which was the.

Mark Smith: 8:18
I don't know who authored the book, but it was on Winston Churchill and it was there that I found out, because Winston Churchill was always a hero to me, and there I found out it was him that actually sent the Anzacs, the Australian, the New Zealand, into this and it was his arrogance really that caused such an absolute slaughter and his sleight of hand around, you know, taking ships off Germany and whatnot, that actually created the whole kerfuffle in the first place. So my view of Winston Churchill over time started very high and over. As I've learned and read more of history, it's lowered and lowered and lowered, more and more.

Elif Item: 8:57
It's. You know, you see how, like the different nations, goals end up being carried by other nations who have nothing to do with it. So it was a similar thing, you know, when Ottoman Empire ended also, nobody thought about leaving some land for modern Turkey. So everybody thought that they could just split the whole thing off. But you know, it's just, I think those were like, you know, like when you think about the modern technology today and the phones, and a little bit watching the Ukraine war, you know, I think it was. You know, I think none of that would be possible now, Everything being decided behind closed doors without really being thought about the effect on actual people. Those times are a little bit over, I think. But it's definitely a part of history, Whether you're. You know, I think, one way or the other, we need to learn from it and appreciate it and hopefully we won't have to live it again.

Mark Smith: 10:01
Yeah, the other thing that really struck me and this is coming from a very young country, I think one of ours as an Al country is one of the youngest in the world as in discovered colonised that type of thing is that I couldn't get over the very strong Greek influence on that southern part, that region. You know, ephesus and things like that, like stuff I'd read in history books that were like live Troy, you know, is just for me.

Elif Item: 10:32
It was amazing, amazing, amazing yeah it's funny because we went to Istanbul Archaeology Museum a couple of years ago when my kids were a little bit younger, and they have just redone that museum and it's spectacular. By the way, if anybody goes to Istanbul, you should definitely visit it. It just reopened last year and at the entrance there were these two lions on each side of the door. You know, and you know kids are all over these things, like getting on it. We're like taking pictures as if it's just like a rock piece of rock. And then you look and then at the bottom it's like 7500 years old, some sort of some crazy number, and it's there's just so much history. Almost it becomes a little bit like the norm. Oh, it's another column, it's another thing, but it's just there's definitely. You know it was one of the firstly populated parts of the world and then that's the reason that there's just so much history and that you can visit in person and sometimes even touch or sit on it.

Mark Smith: 11:43
The other thing I couldn't get over and I know this is not the subject of our podcast, but it's interesting is the, at the point when archaeology was starting out, so much of it was done there, and done badly, you know, as in, and you know. When treasure was unearthed, what did they do? They sent all the locals away. They grabbed it and they took it away to their countries. And I couldn't believe, you know, and what I observed of some of the reading and part of my travels. I've been to Russia, I've been to Moscow and I've been to the Kremlin and in the Kremlin, seeing all their treasures that had been acquired from around the world, and then going there and finding that that's where a lot of the treasure was taken away, to either Germany first, and then ultimately, through history and just you know, the taking away of some Unbelievable artifacts to other countries, to you know, that were built there was just, it was mind-blowing, that whole stuff that happens through history the spoils been taken away.

Elif Item: 12:53
For the locals. Sometimes, even at that time they didn't probably realize the importance of it. They also probably didn't realize that there's just an abundance on of it. I mean, when you go to offices in different parts are just like a field and fields of artifacts. So I think for them it was probably, they were probably they're talked into or I've heard so many different weird agreements that were made that some you know that that they were just kind of like the locals didn't really understand and somehow they, they, they were, they also maybe didn't feel like it was that important and a lot of that stuff, you're absolutely right, ended up somewhere in Europe. But I think there were some efforts in the last, I would say, 1020 years to get some of them back and I think Ottoman Empire did a pretty decent job of also trying to get them back. But it is just a lot, you know, I think as long as I think it's seen by everybody and it's not in somebody safe in the way from the world, I think everybody would be OK with that, because as long as people know that, where it's from and the history behind it, yeah, yeah, so true, let's talk about what we came here to talk about.

Mark Smith: 14:16
Tell me, tell me a bit about. First of all, let's I just want to unpack your company because I find it very interesting. We'll make sure we put links to the show notes. So, item by item, tell us a bit about what that company does and what resources it provides to people.

Elif Item: 14:36
So, basically, what we provide is a learning platform, subscription to a learning platform in which you can consume materials to learn about whichever D 365 product that you're interested in. So instead of the traditional. You know, usually when you're trying to learn about D 365, the traditional way of thinking is there's X number of training for, like, let's say, finance or supply chain or different parts of it. But we really didn't want to take that approach and create a large chunks of training. So instead our mentality was if there is a skill that a learner needs to know the performing d 365 let's create a video for it, and that is a micro course in our world. So in each video, we're teaching the learner how to either perform a task, whether that's creating a transaction, creating an order, doing a procurement action or doing an accounting act, etc. Or we are trying to teach them a concept. There are these concepts in the 365 that are new when you're like trying, starting to work with it. I'm and we we basically created these videos more than 1200. Of these micro courses in the platform, and you can think of them like little Lego blocks. So it gives us lots of flexibility of mix and match these small videos in any way we like. And then what we did is we sat down and thought about Different roles and responsibilities within an organization. Who are the people who are going to be learning and using the 365? You have accounting staff, a controller, a inventory analyst. You know all of these roles and we created learning paths and combine these micro courses together In a particular order and we have some assessments in there, some game vacation. So the one, the learner gets into the platform, they can see what I signed to them right away, what learning pattern assigned to them. It's relevant to their job. It's very intuitive. They click on the learning path and they right away start to go through these videos. Because the videos are short, they can pause it anytime. They can bring up a D365 instance, replicate the process there. They don't need to take lots of notes, they don't need to remember a lot of steps. So it's really helps to have this micro learning strategy, which is, you know, really helpful to adults to really learn a topic in a quick way. It also gives us ability to find exactly what you're looking for. You know, let's say that you're doing some testing and you forgot how to do something. If you have the traditional training, you're gonna have to dig through two days of training materials and find exactly where you know you learn that one particular thing, but with this you can just do a keyword search and find out one video, watch it and be able to go your way. So it's some. What we're doing is we're connecting with customers who are implementing D365 and helping them throughout the implementation, whether that's training their core team or their end users. Then sometimes they want post implementation when they're hiring new staff or they want people to be cross-trained between departments. Obviously, what we provide is standard training, but we also have capability of adding custom training on top of what we have. Sometimes customers create the custom training and we just added free of charge. Or they ask us to create the custom training and we do that and there's a special fee for that. Then we have had great success and we can definitely see in the implementation. Today, actually, I had a meeting with a customer and we were discussing this because they were struggling to engage some of the core team members to log in and follow the IBI platform, and they reiterated this that I hear from all of our customers the people who are spending more time on training in the platform are so much more vocal and much more active within the meetings, the meetings are so much better and interactive and the decision-making is much stronger. Hopefully, that's what we're bringing to the table as a value proposition to the companies that are implementing D365 and get them to a level where partnership is better with them and their partner.

Mark Smith: 19:31
Very good, tell me about how you became an MVP.

Elif Item: 19:37
I have been in the D365 space for a while and I was at a conference last year and this topic was being discussed within a breakfast that I was attending. Everybody was talking about such and such as became MVP. How do you become MVP? As someone mentioned that you have to be nominated by someone from Microsoft to be an MVP. I met a couple of Microsoft people and mentioned that to them the next day, and one of them actually nominated me. I did receive an email and then I honestly didn't know much about it. I didn't know the requirements or I didn't know how to go about it. I do have a unique background and what is amazing also surprising to me is there are not that many D365 FNO MEPs in the world and in the North America as well. What I came to find out is there are only 20 worldwide, or 20 plus maybe 20 to 25, and we are around 10 in North America, which is US plus Canada. Then I just went through the application process. I was already quite active. I have the website that I'm active on LinkedIn. I do a lot of collaborative blog posts, videos, obviously as a part of my job. I did not hear anything for several months On the website. They don't really tell you. They don't really tell you they're going to tell you no. So I'm like, well, I guess this is no. But then I found out. Actually the day before my birthday I received an email and I'm an MVP. So I was really lucky because I got to go to the MVP summit In Redwood in April and I got to meet some just spectacular people. It is really a great community and we got to learn a lot from Microsoft during the summit, also connect with others. It was the first one after COVID. I think everybody at Microsoft was also happy to have people in the campus, so it was a really, really fun activity. I'm just super excited because I like the D365 training part. Obviously, it's my passion and I work a lot with customers. That's also the business part, but I also like to work a lot with youth and college students on career planning and attending. Just talking about especially about particularly business applications. Like I mentioned before. You can see there's a huge excitement about like Power Apps and Power Platform and there's big community. I think that gets a lot of voice through the MEPs. But I just want to let everybody know that there's a huge career opportunities within the BizApps world, like on the more on the FNO and CE side. So I've already done some work with Microsoft through the students in college. But I'm also going to do some local work in some local colleges here in Texas to just talk about career options, training opportunities for them as well.

Mark Smith: 23:23
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.