Dynamics 365 Business Central: Take 5 Interview w/ Tom Blaisdell

Dynamics 365 Business Central: Take 5 Interview w/ Tom Blaisdell

Hey everyone, we are here with Tom Blaisdell who is THE costing genius of Business Central and NAV, he works with Microsoft, he is out at the Atlanta office, his formal title is Senior support escalation engineer. AKA, Costing expert.   

Johannes: We just wanted to dig into a little bit, what do you think about Business Central? you know that whole progression from NAV into Business Central, do you think its evolutionary?   

Tom: It’s definitely exciting, I think being in the Division, Now Microsoft world, I’ve always been impressed with the fact that Navision was always in the front end, it’s like, whether it be windows 95, 98, 2000 whatever Microsoft version released, Navision could run on it.  So, I think you are seeing now that same progression 20-some odd years later, that now Microsoft Dynamics NAV becomes Microsoft Business Central because it can go into the cloud.    

Johannes: And the cloud is the operating system perse.   

Tom: And I think the key thing is that you can still run it on-premise or at the cloud, which I think you need the choice, because not every company is ready to go into that world, but I think the flexibility of NAV, now Microsoft Business central is really cool.   

Johannes: So, from a costing perspective, is it always easy=   

Well, nothing has really changed, the financial inventory costing has not changed, at least that is what I’m told. We’ll see. But anyway, it’s the same functions in the cloud or on-prem. But just a different interface and different way to get into it.   

Johannes: So, you’ve been with NAV for how long?  

Tom: I’m coming up on 20 years.  

Johannes: That’s why he is a NAV, costing expert, and you’ve been costing almost exclusively all that time.  

Tom: I define myself as the CPA reject and the computer wannabe, I’m kind of at a mid-point. Because I had the CPA background, they said, Tom, you do the inventory costing so that has been my baby.  

Johannes: Has there been costing question you couldn't have answered?  

Tom: Yes, of course, you know there are always those challenges you go, why did that happen?  

Johannes: What's your protocol go through, Microsoft Denmark  

Tom: Well until I reproduce it, you can’t go to development, so we try to figure out what happened, we try to analyze the data to see if we can get to the point where we can reproduce it, and then if we can we send it out.  

Johannes: You had the idea for a few models for them, right?  

Tom: Well there are some things that we had to do back in the early versions with inventory value particularly in average costing, how we managed received costs versus invoice cost and things like that, but you know Development was very responsive, so we got it dealt with.  

Johannes: That’s the only way they can know right?  

Tom: Right  

Johannes: It makes you more important than you realize.  

Tom: I don’t know if I’m more important, like I said, I ‘ve made a little bit of a career out of inventory costing in NAV just because they are not Business Central, because it’s a complex area, its challenging, people seem to find ways to mess it up a little bit., whether they put it the fat finger, the wrong number for a cost, whatever, they drive inventory negative for several months on the same item and then they try to fix it. You know, so, sometimes it's bad data, sometimes is the system working right. It’s always a little puzzle to try to piece together a solution.   

Intriguing questions  

We have five questions that we ask everyone, but you are the first one to ever answer these questions. Because this is the first real interview that we’ve done.   

Johannes: For orange juice, pulp or no pulp?  

Tom:  Pulp, yeah, I like the real, although I like orange juice anyway, a little bit of pulp is always good.  

Johannes: Las movie you saw, that you couldn’t stand. The worst  

Tom: Well, it has been a long time, mad max beyond Thunderdome, that movie I heard all this hype about how great it was, and it was awful, I had all I could do to sit through the whole movie, that’s one that stands out the most. It's not a recent one, but that was probably the worst movie I've paid whatever the movie price was when I saw it  

Johannes: What's in your pockets right now?  

Tom: I got some glass cleaner, they had glass break cleaner for my glasses at the NAVUG table and that’s it. A cell phone and my wallet on my other pocket.   

Johannes: What is your go-to song, to sing in the shower?   

Tom: I don’t know, I don't have one, I typically don’t sing in the shower, I've got sunshine maybe. That was my song for my wife because she had a smile, she looked like a sunshine, I called her sunshine for a while. So, I got sunshine on a cloudy day.    

Johannes: Beatles or Rolling Stones?  

Tom: I would say the Beatles for me.  They are both good, but I would say the Beatles.  I’ll pick a side, I’m typically the person that if I go to IHOP, I get the slip decision because I can get a little bit of everything. I’ll try to decide here, and I’ll say the Beatles.   

That was all, thanks a lot for being the first one. It’s great to have you over.