Shannon Mullins on The MVP Show

[mark]: 2:50
today's guest is from nashville in the united states she's the chief of a new officer and partner she is her current year sorry her second year as an m v p she said over twenty years of experience with microsoph dynamics and she's been evolved in over a hundred implementation that's pretty phenomenal you can find her on twitter at one sharing mullin one and her log sharon mullen m s f t dot com welcome to the show sharon

[shannon_mullins]: 3:20
thank you thanks for having me i appreciate it

[mark]: 3:24
good to have you on and and you make the third person now that i have interviewed around your great podcast tell us a bit about that podcast from your point of view

[shannon_mullins]: 3:36
yeah we started mary christina and i started a women in tech series live series gosh a year ago in december and really started that because steve endow who is also a macrislos n v p business applications had made a mention that at vp summit there just wasn't a lot of women and so we had you know a big disparity of women versus men and he felt like he needed to fill that void so when all three of us who are actually really good friends got nominated you know we thought how do we more women to do this how do we inspire them to do this and it's not an easy tour being a girl and being an m v p because it's a lot of free work which you know we're not being paid to do this podcast and so when you're not paid you know and and you already have a family it's very hard so we started tackling just very difficult topics that you know women m p would run into and they're also just kind of inspiring people to blog and work through workplace issues and you know we've done some some women rites we've done some things like how to create social media how to blog topics like that so it's been really good we've had a lot of really good feed back from girls who want to be m p ps and then just people around the world that are in tact that are like this is a really good topic at hit so it's been good

[mark]: 5:01
i love it so good so good so tell us a bit about you tell us a bit about what you do your family and when i say what you do what you do when you're not doing teck

[shannon_mullins]: 5:13
oh

[mark]: 5:13
you know what's going on in your world

[shannon_mullins]: 5:16
yeah so last year in may i joined accelerate as a partner and started a dynamic practice so the last almost three hundred and sixty five days have been a lot of work on this that's one thing to be an m v p and to be in the conference circuit and teaching for free and then also i'm doing this during the day running a team running project and uh yeah it's it's pretty busy but outside of that i love to travel many people follow me and they're always like you're somewhere you're always somewhere a lot of the trips are for work but also i just love to try for fun so i'm taking my two boys two teenage boys to europe for almost three weeks this summer and we're going to go travel around and you know if i'm not traveling i'm hangin with my kids usually and and then ben watching you know dumb t v because that helps me helps me feel better about my life but these days i'm honestly working extent ours a week so there's not a lot of fun time but i'm hoping you know one day i'll be able to enjoy that and have some fun time down time

[mark]: 6:25
that's so good tell me about the favorite country you've visited so far

[shannon_mullins]: 6:30
oh no i think it's a toss right now between prog and spain um prog because the people are just so friendly and it's so cheap in spain because the people of spain are my spirit animal they don't wake up early they parted late at night and life is just

[mark]: 6:49
they

[shannon_mullins]: 6:49
casual

[mark]: 6:49
have sisters

[shannon_mullins]: 6:50
and sestansyes and i went to spain for the first time last year and i just

[mark]: 6:55
he

[shannon_mullins]: 6:55
fell in love that i thought i could definitely move back here so when my kids are done with school i plan on taking off a couple of years and traveling europe and just kind of living over

[mark]: 7:04
nice

[shannon_mullins]: 7:04
there and yeah it's it's great people the europeans are they know how to have fun

[mark]: 7:10
yeah so so true

[shannon_mullins]: 7:12
right

[mark]: 7:13
tell us about how you got into tech

[shannon_mullins]: 7:16
oh jees

[mark]: 7:18
yeah

[shannon_mullins]: 7:18
i started off i actually have two degrees in accounting i have the master's degree in accounting and i really got into check i would say seventh eighth year of doing accounting where i was tasked with automating manufacturing processes for the company i was working

[mark]: 7:34
well

[shannon_mullins]: 7:35
with i was their c f o and just it was a very manual process and so in order to automate it i had to learn crystal reports which led me to take a crystal reports class and i learned sequel data base while i was doing that oh that led into building reports for g p at that time i was doing dynamic g p and

[mark]: 7:56
okay

[shannon_mullins]: 7:57
led into creating sequel reports and crystal reports and when i actually left florida i had choice of between going back to private accounting which you know i've been doing for a while or going into consulting i had two different job offers that i was really considering and at that point i decided to get into consulting ing and i started off with enerdinartists and charlotte and worked with an incredible group of people at that time at artists and lot of people helped train me a lot of it with self teaching and i know look back now i look at accounting jobs and i'm like i could never do gain and i have two degrees in it but the good part about doing business applications is we got to use our accounting knowledge a lot so been helpful

[mark]: 8:40
so so true how did you then I take business central is your focus nowadays how did that journey come because you said g g p great planes before how has that journey been woven for you

[shannon_mullins]: 8:53
yeah that's a that's a great question i started with g p back in two thousand and one and and wrote that for a very long time as a user and then also as a consultant and then started ling it um but i would say gosh i spend five years now at that point that's when microsoft

[mark]: 9:12
no

[shannon_mullins]: 9:13
is starting to say we're going a take nap up to the cloud we're going to start this clouds off where and of course everyone in the g p world was like no way they can't do it i don't think it's possible and they had a struggle it was it was quite a struggle but the reality came to light really when g he just wasn't selling any more you know everybody was starting to look at net swede in the cloud and and microsoft really came out with a bang with business central i mean it's it's a fantastic product and i actually self taught myself business central um i went to directions that that all and came back and just was like okay here's everything i needed demo i'm going to teach myself how to do it a very rough and then then when i became good enough to sell it and demo it then i hired an expert who have been doing that for about eighteen years and he really helped teach me and kind of get me over that hurtle and now i've been doing it for four years and definitely not an expert compared to the people who have been doing it for eighteen twenty years um i think you can never be an expert at the software because it continually cha just it's been fun yeah it's a fun product

[mark]: 12:21
so are you seeing or have you seen a move in the market from those traditional business central sorry not the the g p customers are you seeing them now either move to bus a central or are they going net sweet way or are they just sitting on the what they have i i know i'm pretty sure microsoffis still maintaining they're just not releasing new new tek right in that i

[shannon_mullins]: 12:46
yeah it's that's a it's a great question because i'm actually writing a blog series on this this year on you know the comparison to g p and b c and why b c is a better product i love g p but the fact is is that the versions of sequel that some of the customirzations can't run on now the limitations of v p n and working in a remote and cloud world i think that's really kind driven a lot of it people to kind of evaluate i will say that there's partners who were doing g p before that aren't necessarily doing just peace i know some partners are doing netsek some are doing intact and we're doing you know accumatica i do see a lot more it guys who have g p that are wanting to do like an r f k or an r f p process to kind of do an evaluation to make sure it's a good product we else have the die hard g p folks who are just like g p is never going away including the consultants but is fine you know i have people running on very very old versions of ax as well enough products it happens but but the reality comes that you know we're in a security company and one of the big concerns that we have with people staying on prim is that as your sequel server version becomes date um and you don't want to pay for an upgrade unto you're on outdated software all of a sudden you're not getting your security patches

[mark]: 14:11
correct

[shannon_mullins]: 14:11
um your your servers become more vulnerable and actually microsoph cloud is you know double triple the security level of any v p n r d p server that you can put out there so i think a lot of un prem folks you know the i t folks especially maybe not the and are starting to look back and say is is the most secure thing is that the most productive thing and maybe we need to make that switch so um it's a good time to get in because microsophis offering so many promotions from people to get from g p or a x or nag on to the cloud so it's probably the best time for you to make it before they just get rid of those promotions

[mark]: 14:49
so true

[shannon_mullins]: 14:50
it's the crisis

[mark]: 14:51
so true one of the questions i get a lot from folks are you know they're thinking of switching careers and they and they are going is dynamics three six five going to be here for a while and that's the whole suite of products or is the power platform going to be around for while like if i committed to a career now could i at least do ten years in the space now you know you've talked about being twenty odd years in the space i've been eighteen years in the space but for fresh p we're coming in what would you tell them in that situation

[shannon_mullins]: 15:23
osh if i was in my twenties and i could get in on this wave of growth and honestly it is a huge growth i mean microsophs you know two hundred percent you're over your growth it's just crazy you know i wrote a block about this like there's no software that's grown that fast especially in the europe world lack of people right now is a huge challenge um and i think if you can get in right now and you can learn before the market get saturated and before people get trained up you've got work it's funny i do demos for dynamics know cr m and r p and i'll say what well say well how long will this last or be supported i'm like well if you know what's beyond the cloud maybe now we know it's the verse i don't see it's doing accounting in the metaverso'll just be honest with you but what's beyond the cloud right mark i mean you look at it and you're like is it i don't see microsoff taking twenty thousand customers ever off this product i don't see it slowing down and i don't see the lack of people ever slowing down either because you know the pope the products amazing it's popular and we need more people to earn it so

[mark]: 16:33
totally totally

[shannon_mullins]: 16:35
yeah it's interesting

[mark]: 16:37
last year i think i saw an analyst report saying was four billion dollars in revenue to microsopt a year and that was kind of at the well that was from based on data kind of the start of the pandemic and of course you and i know markoff share price over the pandemic has gone through the roof and adoption et cetera i wonder what that number is now you know whether it's leap frogged again it could be six play billion i know there's some much higher numbers that have been targeted to achieve in the space by microstoff so yeah i'm totally in agreement to get on in now is that you've got a long journey ahead you could commit to and and any training certification any kind of on the hand on the job type skills that you developed will set you in goodstead for years right

[shannon_mullins]: 17:22
microsoft know we were at directions and they last week for business central in sr and they said they can't even get t give the customer numbers anymore because now it's become a material dollar amount um as far as you know profit goes and what they have to record and so they're like it's so big we can't say it any more and you're like okay well now it's now it's making a dent so

[mark]: 17:44
yeah yeah it's exciting it's exciting recommendations to people around the v p program you know what's been your experience ming into the v p program and is there any recommendation you d have for others

[shannon_mullins]: 17:57
oh gosh i think find your tribe within the b p community you know i have such a close group of friends and business applications that i can go to for anything i mean if have an issue with the soft player if i need help professionally if i need a speaker if i need a technical person whatever the case may be my group within the v p channel really has just ange my life because they're all professionals they're all amazing people but if you're like trying to become an m v p then i recommend following all the mvps on twitter follow their blogs get to know them you know that was a part of what i did as i got to know who's doing this what are they doing following their pattern and there's some people have been doing this a lot longer than i have that are amazing and they're very good and i just say you know reach out to the community get as much as followers as you can and just enjoy teaching because really that's what this result about it's about community and teaching and um you know the outreach of the products i think a lot of people do it because on a title or they think this is some kind of paid promotion or it's because i did this job it's really just you have to have a passion or else you know there's no there's no point in doing it and i think everyone i know that's in my group we're just very passionate about it we love the product we love the platform so it's very cool