Journey Across Continents: Parag Chapre's Love for Microsoft Dynamics ERP and the Art of Continuous Learning

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 Australia. He works at DXC Technology as a senior consultant. His first award is MVP in 2023. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show Parag.

Parag Chapre : 1:21
Thank you, mark, for inviting me to the MVP show.

Mark Smith: 1:25
Good to have you on the show. Tell us a bit about food, family and fun. What does that mean to you? Where do you live, work and play? In Australia.

Parag Chapre : 1:34
So you can say it's a very big journey. I was born and brought up in India in the year 2017. I moved to Europe. I've been to multiple countries in Europe, like Netherlands, belgium, luxembourg, germany. Last year I moved to Canberra because of my family issues. My sister lives in Canberra. We thought let's do it in Australia so we can stay all each other. Now we all are living in the one place, canberra my sister she lives in the same city. We enjoy the company. We visit every week or once in a month. We visit the family and have fun together. We share the food, our cultures, all those things.

Mark Smith: 2:27
Nice, nice. So what was your journey into IT? Why was that your career plan?

Parag Chapre : 2:34
Okay. So I did my engineering from India. While doing engineering, I learned so many languages, like COBOL, pascal, data structure algorithm, but when I got my first job I was into NET. Then Microsoft ERP is something new for me. So I got the job in SA Global. So with SA Global, I was working with Microsoft Dynamics ERP project. Mostly, I was working with the Microsoft support and the product development. So that's how I started my ERP journey. I started working with AX 2012 version and 2009 previous version from the Microsoft and then later I worked with multiple companies in India, for example, tecura they are like a global company TCS, then T8O, then Eurofins and in the year 2007, I moved to Europe, netherlands. There I worked with the Dicor, tate and 4Vigin. 4vigin, I worked for almost four and a half years With 4Vigin. I was working together with Microsoft for building the human resource functionality. So maybe you are aware about the talent human resource. Back to FinOps all those stories. Throughout my career I work with big customers, small customers, big companies, startup companies, and I built a lot of integration, supporting and different products on Dynamics 365, powerfactform and Microsoft Azure.

Mark Smith: 4:23
And so the pivot point for you, from doing all those languages and what not in university, was it at SA Global that you got your first shot on Dynamics.

Parag Chapre : 4:35
Yeah.

Mark Smith: 4:36
Yeah, okay, so that's where you're introduced to it. Why have you stuck with it? What appeals to you about Dynamics?

Parag Chapre : 4:44
The reason. Dynamics like Microsoft, microsoft they keeps changing the product technologies. So with Dynamics ERP you have a multiple platform to work. For example, you have Visual Studio. In Visual Studio also you have a different kind of projects you can do like a Blazor or maybe ASphereNET or C-ShotNET. And within ERP you have X++ now you have a C-Sharp. And then you have a Power BI, a PowerFactForm now you have a Microsoft Fabric. So within ERP you have a lot of learning curve, so you can learn a lot of languages or, if you want to go to the functional area, that's still possible. So that's why I choose let's continue with Microsoft ERP and with this technology I can also get the knowledge into other technologies like Microsoft ERP also like ERP, crm. So I'm also learning some ERP and CRM applications from Microsoft.

Mark Smith: 5:47
Yeah, okay, so that makes sense. So that's what's made it sticky for you. Yeah, what's been? Has there been any real projects that stand out on your mind, that were career highlights for you that you've worked on? You don't need to give the details of the customer maybe the industry or something like that and what you did and why was it a highlight.

Parag Chapre : 6:06
You can say I work with one of the company called Tato and I was working with one of the big customers from Finland. They were a paper manufacturing industry. So with that project I learned everything from scratch. You can say start up the project like assigning users access, creating the environments, going to the customers, training sessions, pre-sales demo everything, integrations, reporting. So with that customer I learned about 30 different external system, how we can integrate transactions of million data from CRM to Phenobs. So with that customer I got very good scope for the learning.

Mark Smith: 6:56
So, and that's why it's a highlight for you, because the amount you were able to learn on the project- yeah, so with that project I learned maybe like ERP, crm, net integrations, reporting so many things within one project. What do you do? It's interesting that you talk about learning, and that was one of the biggest reasons. It's a highlight for you. What do you do to maintain your skill sets and, as in, to keep them up to date, because Microsoft is always adding new features, functionality, right. Twice a year they do the wave releases. Then there's that rolling wave of releases happening all the time. How do you make sure that you're across what you just mentioned Fabric which, of course, was just announced at Build? How do you make sure that you're across everything? Are you waiting till something comes up on a client project to then go and research it, or do you have a proactive model that you work on to stay up to speed?

Parag Chapre : 7:59
I think that's the good question. A lot of people ask me the same questions. What exactly I do is I never wait for any task or any projects to be done from my side. What I do is there are a lot of events happening in the world like Power communities. There are communities in ANZ region, europe region and the US region. I subscribe to those communities and whenever they have some interesting sessions on Dynamics, the 65-year PowerFat form, I just go and attend the session. Sometimes I can't attend the session, but then I watch the recording. So, like recently, we have a Microsoft build session and now again we are, we will have a session on Microsoft Summit, another conference. So with this conference you just go to your skill set area, like business, application and whatever you want to learn or you want to get, the want to Know something new. So just just go and just see the highlights. Like sometimes you can see the topics Microsoft, fabric, what. So it's very interesting because Microsoft keeps changing, like it was a power BI, now Synapse, now you have a fabric, maybe next year it will be something different. So and all, and also the, the, maybe the another Factories. You can just subscribe Microsoft community sometimes. Yeah, maybe you have experienced person. You are solution architect. You know a lot of things. But when people keep asking questions on the Microsoft community, then you will learn some more new things. Sometimes it's a basic thing for you. Other knows but you don't know. So that's how you can get to know everything about the Microsoft product. You will. We have always let us information.

Mark Smith: 9:49
Yeah, so true. How? How did you become an MVP? What was it you were doing that got identified as A Value to the community? What was the MVP journey for you?

Parag Chapre : 10:02
Okay, so I'll start with the company for vision. For vision, I joined in in the year 2018, so before before for vision, I was not much active on the dynamics community. I was helping dynamics community, but after joining for vision, mostly I was working on the human resource product together with Microsoft. So what I did? I started writing a blog on the human resource, so I was writing a unique content. So before writing any any blog post, first I was searching on the internet. If there is no article, then I was doing a lot of research creating the articles. Sometimes in the Microsoft learn community you will see only the details, not the screenshot or not much Are descriptions like in the description. So I was trying to create some something like that so that this will be useful for the HR people. So I write almost 100 blocks. On the Dynamics HR and the PowerFed form community, I was mostly active on the Yammer Microsoft community and I am active member of Dynamics HR community and from last three years I am a Dynamics 365 HR community star.

Mark Smith: 11:23

Okay, that's really interesting. It's a lot of blog posts to write. Tell us a bit about that community. How big is it? Because HR is not a product that I've come across or needed to use very much at all across my career. How big is the community surrounding Dynamics 365, hr, and is it all over the world, or is there groups of people more? Is some countries selling it more than others? What's your observation?

Parag Chapre : 11:55
See, I spent my observation Dynamics HR mostly. I found in Europe and US, not in ANZ region, so in Australia and New Zealand, mostly the companies or partners. They are using Workday SAP or any other technologies, not the Microsoft Dynamics HR product. And if you say about the Yammer community for Dynamics HR, I think there are around more than 1000 users in the Yammer community.

Mark Smith: 12:26
Wow, wow, that's interesting, and I'm not aware of the Yammer community, is it? How do people find that community to get involved in it?

Parag Chapre : 12:38
I think there are two communities. I think one is private community and I think one is public community. I think you can just search for the human resource on the Dynamics community. So I think you will get that particular group. And for the MVP, I got this nomination from Microsoft only.

Mark Smith: 12:57
Ah, so Microsoft nominated you to become a MVP. Was that in Australia? Microsoft Australia or Microsoft in the US?

Parag Chapre : 13:08
It was from the Microsoft US product team. So I was working with a product team almost for more than two years building the HR products on Live and Obsense, because Microsoft bought the IP from 4Vision and from the 4Vision I and one of the person called Edward we were the point of contact for delivering the application.

Mark Smith: 13:32
Right, okay, I didn't realize that acquisition had happened. How many MVPs are MVPs and BizzApps because of HR, as in their specialty, as HR? As per my information, there are only two more people.

Parag Chapre : 13:47
One is Kamal, who is based in Europe, and the second is the Ana. Interesting, interesting.

Mark Smith: 13:56
That's not many.

Parag Chapre : 14:00
No, only three people. I think, yeah, only three people, including me for the HR. Well, what recommendations do you have to others that if they want to become an MVP.

Mark Smith: 14:08
What do you recommend they do?

Parag Chapre : 14:12
I think first they start learning from the dynamics community, just research, like I know that there are a lot of people who want to be MVP, but they should first understand as MVP you have to contribute a lot Apart from your work. Like mostly people have 9 to 5 mentality. But apart from your work you have to help community. Maybe let's say I'm not asking to work 24 by 6, or asking to work 24 by 7, but 30 minutes or one hour you can just go to the dynamics community see what people are doing. So in the same way you can help community, start giving some presentations on the power communities or whatever the topic you understand better, you can try to explain others in a better way. So this is how you can start to become an MVP. It's not like in one day or one year. Sometimes this takes years of time of your hard work.

Mark Smith: 15:08
Yeah, yeah, so true. Tell me, are you doing anything in the area of AI, any research, or using it?

Parag Chapre : 15:17
Oh yes, so for, like, how I'm using AI at this moment is I'm writing the blocks. So previously, before AI, I was just writing the blocks as it is and I was posting into my website, but now, with the power of AI, so I'm using the chat GPT to write my content in more descriptive way.

Mark Smith: 15:39
So you're using it to assist you in bringing your blogs to life, type thing.

Parag Chapre : 15:44
Yeah.

Mark Smith: 15:44
Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. That's a great use case. Well, parag, it's been great to have you on the show. Maybe I'll get to meet you sometime at upcoming events, and maybe even when I'm in Canberra, because I get there from time to time for work. It'd be good to catch up. Okay, thanks for having me on the show. 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.