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Companial at Directions EMEA 2023

Monday, November 13, 2023
Reading time: 3 minutes

Companial was once again participating in Directions EMEA 2023 in Lyon as a Platinum Sponsor. We came to Lyon with our Dynamics experts and a lot of great offers. 

Building capacity together! That was our motto for Directions EMEA 2023. It was not only for the event, it is our promise!

Our Dynamics experts discussed the following topics:

  • How to attract, onboard and retain talents
  • How to stay ahead with Microsoft Cloud platform changes
  • How to profit from Companial being an official AIM modernization center

Moreover, there were intriguing insights shared on how you can assert yourself as a Dynamics Partner in a challenging market and a thrilling live vote at our booth, about “What’s your biggest capacity challenge?”

Our Dynamics experts shared their knowledge in 6 compelling sessions on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and more. And of course, exceptional special offers were available at our booth.

Companial Sessions at Directions

Companial | Empowered, a toolstack to cut IP Efforts and Costs

William van Voorthuijsen has over 7 years experience in Microsoft Dynamics. His areas of expertise are selling, implementing, supporting, and migrating towards Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. With the experience of having his own company as a Microsoft Dynamics reseller, he has a good understanding of the challenges Dynamics Partners are facing today regarding the cloud transformation process. Currently, William is a #MSDYN365BC Subject Matter Expert at Companial, make ensuring all Dynamics Partners are able to exceed expectations. Without a question, William is a ‘Dynamics Partner Fanatic’ in heart and soul.

William van Voorthuijsen

Dynamics 365 Business Central Partner Technology Strategist at Companial

About the session:

Too often Partners face development capacity constraints and struggle to keep up with Microsoft’s updates, hindering their ability to deliver exceptional value to customers. In this session we will provide you with practical tools you can deploy in order to improve your efficiency and increase the value you deliver to your customers.

Companial developed Empowered – A value packed set of community-crafted tools and solutions designed to reduce our Partners’ development and operational efforts for generic IP and help them focus on monetizing their distinctive value.

Solutions include Empowered Business Central for Professional Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Wholesale and Distribution. These solutions were crafted together with our Partner community to ensure the right scope and cover basic, generic functionality that has low value-add but is expensive to maintain for our partners. These solutions are exclusively available to Companial Partners with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Tools, which include Empowered Billing and Empowered Insights to start, are designed to help partners with operational efficiency. Empowered Billing simplifies the recurring billing process for partners, while Empowered Insights provides insights into end customers’ behavior using cloud telemetry data.

For an in-depth introduction to Empowered and how you, as a Partner, can make the best of it, we invite you to this session.

Earning growth through remarkable Customer Experience: How to track it and engage your people

Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė, Partner Experience Manager at Companial, co-founder of Towards Customer association, Certified Customer Experience Professional

My purpose is to help companies to grow business through focusing on customer experience, customer loyalty, and employee engagement. I work with leadership teams to support them in building customer listening programs to better understand top priorities (where experience gaps exist and new potential is untapped) and to help establish practices across organizations to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

With 14 years of experience in the Microsoft Dynamics market, I currently work in the role of Partner Experience Lead at Companial.

I’m also a passionate ambassador of the CX management profession. As part of this journey, I co-founded and facilitate the community (Towards Customer) of Customer Experience Management professionals in Lithuania.

Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė

Partner Experience Lead at Companial

About the session:

The importance of delivering great customer experience as a precondition for growth has never been more evident! Happy customers tend to return for repeat business, refer new customers, and are less price sensitive.

Moreover, what your existing customers think and say about you to the market heavily impacts your business’ stability and even your ability to attract new customers:

  • Customers tend to avoid purchasing products or contracting vendors rated below 4 (out of 5) by existing customers (KPMG)
  • 96 percent of customers will leave without warning due to poor customer service (Forbes).
  • Companies optimizing the customer experience typically achieve revenue growth of 5–10% in just two to three years (McKinsey & Co).

But where should you begin to address this area? How can you develop an understanding of the current experience you deliver to your customers? And how do you translate this knowledge into actual improvements that inspires loyalty and referrals from your customers?

Join my session to gain valuable insights along with actionable tips. During this 45-minutes session, I will share my practices for:

  • Implementing an effective customer listening and satisfaction measurement model (including the effective use of NPS program),
  • engaging executives, employees and even your customers to ensure continuous improvement,
  • and the key ingredients to ensure a modern customer experience that differentiates your business from others.

Beyond Firefighting: Proactive Problem-Solving with Error Handling in Power Automate to Prevent Business Disruptions

Tine Starič helps Microsoft Dynamics Partners around the world develop products of the highest quality. He has been a Dynamics NAV developer since 2015, working with end-customers, VARs, and ISVs to deliver support, implementation, localization, and product projects. He leads most developer productivity initiatives at Companial, and is constantly looking for opportunities to eliminate monotonous developer tasks by using modern tools and automation to make room for creative, fun, and high-value development.      

Tine Starič

Senior Developer at Companial

About the session:

Join this highly informative session that delves into the world of error handling. With a focus on proactive problem-solving in Power Automate, this session will equip you with practical strategies and techniques to prevent business disruptions caused by missed errors. You will gain valuable insights on how to implement robust error handling mechanisms, leverage retry and notification mechanisms, and establish proactive monitoring practices to ensure smooth and uninterrupted business processes powered by Power Automate.

MICROSOFT PRESENTS: TIPS AND TRICKS ON THE NEW MICROSOFT SMB PROGRAMS

Kim Enrum. I have been working in the IT industry for +30 years and worked for Microsoft in Denmark for 14 years (2006-2020). Always with and through partners.

Peter Jakobsen. 20+ years experience working with NAV and Business Central from the partner channel, Microsoft as well as with large customers. 7+ years with Microsoft working in different roles all with Business Central as main focus area.

Kim Enrum

Companial, Companial Nordic, Nordic Lead

Peter Jakobsen

Partner Technology Strategist, Business Applications, Microsoft

About the session:

Join this session to get tips and trick on how you as an SMB partner can benefit from the newly released SMB presales and cloud partner programs.

We will cover topics like what’s new on the Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) Platform, we will give you an update on MCPP and AIM, and we will share some tips and partner best practices on relevant activities you can drive to improve your bottom line and your customer satisfaction.

Come join our session at Directions 4 Partners, if you want to learn best practices from partners and how you utilize the programs within the following:

  • Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) Platform
  • MAICPP – Microsoft Cloud Partner Program
  • AIM – Accelerate, Innovate, Move – AIM for the future with Microsoft: Future-proof your business in the Cloud
  • Microsoft supported Partner Activities – to enhance bottom line and customer satisfaction

D365/Power Platform & Business Central Licensing, a Review of What's Possible and Where Multiplexing is Applicable

William van Voorthuijsen

Dynamics 365 Business Central Partner Technology Strategist at Companial

About the session:

We’ll go over D365/Power Platform & Business Central licensing, providing a review of what’s possible and where multiplexing is applicable. We’re going to dive into the technicalities of licensing Power Platform, including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages, and cover what is included via seeded licensing from Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Business Central and where it’s applicable. We’ll also walk through a few scenarios and debate grey areas which fall outside the scope of the documentation and the impact that has when developing apps, workflows and portals.

GDAP and Recent and Upcoming Changes to NCE

Steffi joined Companial in 2019. With her previous experience within the Microsoft GetHelp Team, she is an all-rounder when it comes to licensing.

Stefanie is part of the Partner Care team and with that, a key person when it comes to advising Partners on licensing and operations.

Stefanie Wortel

Partner Care Consultant, PSO at Companial

About the session:

In this session, we will discuss GDAP and the most recent changes and best approaches for the new commerce experience (NCE) , such as how and when to switch and the easiest way to carry out the process, both from a Direct and CSP Reseller perspective. GDAP has been available for a year now, but as of July it is mandatory, and you cannot request DAP Rights anymore. We will provide a brief recap on how to set it up if the roles that are set automatically by MS are not enough for what Partners intend to do on the customer’s tenant. We will dive into the most common roles to give an overview of what can be done with which role.

You Need to Implement AI Now! ...But What Even is AI?

Tine Starič

Senior Developer at Companial

About the session:

In the past year, so many different Copilots were launched. We constantly hear about ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing as the new tools of the future. Big terms like LLM, GPT, and AI are being thrown around daily, and everyone is yelling “We need to start implementing them now!”.
But what do these terms actually mean? How do they work? Do we truly require them?

In this session, we’re going to take a step back. Instead of diving into all the different ways AI can be applied, we’ll focus on understanding what AI is, how it works, and how you can use it to your advantage within your own organizations. By the end, you’ll have a better grasp of the technology and be able to assess the opportunities it brings to the table.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Companial Learning Journeys

Companial Learning Journey helps you to attract, onboard and retain talent with our award winning trainings and dedicated support for students. Our user-friendly approach to learning equips your team with the tools and knowledge they need to excel in their roles, contribute to the growth of your business and stay ahead of the competition. Come and talk to us about our Learning Journeys at booth P3 and let us share what we have in store for you.

Benchmark Live Voting

See how to stay ahead in a challenging market as Dynamics Partner! Recently we conducted a survey to learn about the challenges and solutions our partners face every day.
  • 74% of partners lack implementation and maintenance capacity.
  • 40% identified it’s challenging to stay up to date with Microsoft’s developments.
Do you want to benchmark versus your peers? Join us at the Companial booth for a live vote! You will immediately discover what the biggest capacity challenges are and how you perform versus your peers. The live results are shown on the screen, and you can organize a meeting on the spot with the Companial experts to discuss how to overcome these hurdles. In return, you get the full survey with remarkable insights for free!
Sneak Preview of Companial Services

Want to attract, onboard and retain talents?

Enable your workforce and achieve long-term business success. We help you attract, onboard and retain talent with the Companial Academy and Learning Journeys.

Need to stay ahead with Microsoft Cloud platform changes?

With input from our community, we developed Empowered, a suite of software and cloud tools that save Companial Partners time, effort, and money. Also, our offerings are an integral part of the CSP licensing program for Partners.

Curious how you can profit from Companial being an official AIM modernization center?

AIM offers Partners a set of means and incentives to move their customers to the cloud. We are an official AIM modernization center, empowering Partners to move their customers to the cloud through a unique P2P approach.

Sign-up for Our Directions Report

At Companial, one thing stands at the center of our efforts – keeping our Dynamics Partners informed with the relevant information they need to make the right strategic decisions. That’s why we strive every single day to make “Companial Partners the best-informed Microsoft Partners.”

The Directions EMEA Business Report is unique as it features a broad but insightful and independent business reporting on the accomplishments at DIRECTIONS EMEA 2023. If you are interested in the Report to look back at the Directions 2023 simply reach out to marketing@companial.com for a free copy.

Women in Dynamics

Companial stands for diversity, that’s why we are proud sponsor of Women in Dynamics initiative.

Ursula Koller

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