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Are you using what you’ve purchased?

Today’s #TipTuesday isn’t a technical tip, it’s more of a business tip. I’ve written this to be specific to Dynamics GP, although what I describe may apply to other applications and software licensing. I have not worked with licensing on any other ERP packages to know if this might be a general rule of thumb or not.

If you’ve been using Dynamics GP for any length of time, it might be worth revisiting what you’re registered for and have paid for, module/functionality-wise. It’s probably worth taking a look at this every couple of years post-implementation, particularly if you paid for things up-front with the intention of phased implementations later. Every year is probably too frequent, but every couple of years allows you time to evaluate if your master plans have changed, if you still plan to implement what you thought you would at the time of purchase.

The math works out that, on average, every 5 years you are re-purchasing your Dynamics GP software (based on a rough average of 20% annual enhancement from ISVs). This doesn’t apply to subscription-based licensing, which is paid by the month, but the vast majority of users of Dynamics GP are not on subscription licensing (or that would be my guess).

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In search of the perfect credit card

A few months ago, I started re-evaluating the credit cards I was using, and checking into the benefits they offer. I was planning a big trip and have never really paid attention too much to the benefits other than the basic rewards they offer (cash back or travel points in various programs etc.). I knew friends who had used some of the warranty extension kinds of benefits, but that’s about it. It seemed like most cards advertise the same stuff – extending the warranty on certain purchases, concierge services, car rental insurance coverage, some insurances on trip cancellations and things like that. It all sounded the same to me.

I decided to make some changes, cancelling a basic card I had and looking for something with better rewards. Who knew that months later I would have gone through 3 different “new” credit cards to find the “right” one for me? I realize now how many things I never took into consideration that can make or break your experience with a credit card. Here is my story and some lessons learned that may help you too.

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Prepaid Visa Card rip-off

Recently, I was given a Visa gift card from a friend, which ultimately was given to her from someone else. She’d been holding onto it for over a year, with no particular need to use it and owed me for something so offered it up since she had no cash with her at the time. I was fine with it because I would find a use for it somewhere but quite honestly, had planned to hold onto it and use it with some other things as I have a birthday coming up.

We had no idea that she was being ripped off by ridiculous fees and that the value of the card (originally $25) was now down to $16. I tried to check the balance when the card didn’t work on 3 separate attempts to use it, and found out there were $3 charges on the card each of the last 3 months. I called the number on the back of the card to ask about what the charges were, one of which was dated last week, when I had the card already but had never used it. I thought it might have been compromised, but no, that wasn’t it at all.

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Changing Password Managers

Back in October last year, I posted a couple of articles around my recommendations and use of Two-Factor authentication. (Here’s part 1 and part 2 for those articles, if you’re interested in reading them.)

In my part 2 post, I indicated that I was also using a password manager and was using LastPass at the time. I have recently switched to 1Password and after posting a couple of things about that on Twitter, a few friends and followers expressed interest in knowing more about why I switched and how I would compare the two of them.

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GP Tech 2018 – Day 1+

I’m back in Fargo, ND for the annual Dynamics GP Tech Conference. Today was the first day of the conference (Monday August 20th).

I arrived on Saturday morning, with very little trouble, except some minor stress of believing I might have been bumped from the 2nd leg of my flights to Fargo. It turns out, if you book in a low enough class of ticket, you aren’t assigned a seat until you are at the gate in the airport. No choice of seats, you get what you get and you’re technically on standby until then and could get bumped. Fortunately, I did not, but next time I may not be going for the absolute cheapest fare I can find.

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And then there were 10…

This post was somewhat hard to write, to find the right tone, to express my feelings succinctly enough without seeming ungrateful for what I’ve just been awarded.

Yesterday, I received the official news from Microsoft that I had been awarded with an MVP Award for the 2018/2019 period, my first “renewal”. Leading up to yesterday, there were a tremendous amount of messages, emails and social media threads among the various channels that MVPs communicate in (some official, some not) where people were announcing they weren’t getting renewed. Included in this were several within my own award category, Business Solutions, within my own peer group of those focusing on Dynamics GP.

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MVP emails gone mad!

At the end of April, I thought I would do an experiment. I kept track of nearly every email that I received as a part of the MVP program for the entire month of May. I deleted nothing. However, some emails such as calendar invites are auto-deleted in Outlook once you accept or decline the invitation, so I may be missing a few. (I know you can change that behaviour in Outlook but I didn’t want to change my normal settings for the sake of an experiment!)

As a Microsoft MVP, depending on how many Distribution Lists (DLs) you subscribe you, you may get a LOT of emails. I was curious to keep track of exactly how many on a random month. May was that month!

There is no “one” reference point since every MVP will customize what DLs they subscribe to, if any, and what other forms of communications their product group prefers to use. For this post, my reference point, I subscribe to 2 DL’s in Business Solutions, which for the sake of NDA I will call “the primary one” we are all told we should follow and one for my own product group, Dynamics GP. Those in Business Solutions will know what I mean.

There are 7 different DLs in Business Solutions, not including ones marked as “Retired”. I also subscribe to 1 Data Platform DL, out of 16 in that award category. There is absolutely no way to effectively keep up with the information if I chose to subscribe to more, let alone what I already subscribe to, so, I must limit myself to a handful of DLs to keep sane!

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What the MVP NDA means to me

When we receive the Microsoft MVP Award, the first thing after “accepting” the award officially is signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Each time our award is renewed, we must acknowledge, accept and sign it again.

That NDA is an individual agreement between Microsoft and ourselves as an individual, not our company or employer, not our family, but us, individually. Additionally, even though all MVPs have signed the NDA agreement, we are not to share NDA information with other MVPs without pre-approval or through authorized NDA channels. I’m getting this part verbatim from the MVP site, by the way, to avoid mistakenly describing something in my own words that aren’t precisely true.

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