I have invited Kristen Hosman to the YouTube channel for a new segment right now called BC Talk, where we chat about what’s going on in the world of Business Central. Check out the video:
In this inaugural episode of BC Talk, Erik and Kristen Hoffman sit down to discuss what’s happening in the Business Central community. They cover their predictions for 2023, the state of the base app, the GP-to-BC migration landscape, the growing conference circuit, and what they hope Microsoft will focus on in the coming year. This is a candid conversation between a developer (Erik) and a consultant (Kristen), offering two complementary perspectives on the BC ecosystem.
Welcome to BC Talk
BC Talk is a new series on Erik’s YouTube channel, bringing together Erik (a developer and ISV) and Kristen Hoffman (a consultant based about 35 minutes southwest of Denver, Colorado). The goal is to have regular conversations about the Business Central community, covering topics from the dual perspectives of a developer and a consultant. As Erik puts it, they’re probably the “most mountaineerish Microsoft MVPs” in the Business Central group — Kristen handling the Rockies in Colorado, and Erik up in Vancouver.
2023 Predictions for Business Central
New Versions on the Horizon
A safe bet for 2023: two new versions of Business Central. Version 22 and version 23 are expected to ship during the year, continuing Microsoft’s cadence of two major releases per year. Erik notes that at some point the version numbers will overtake the calendar years.
Financial Reporting Enhancements
Kristen’s top hope is for continued improvements to financial reporting. Microsoft shipped version 21 with significant updates, renaming Account Schedules to Financial Reporting. Kristen hopes they’re not done making that functionality better and that more enhancements are on the way.
The Shopify Connector Effect
One of the biggest pieces of news in the BC world was the built-in Shopify connector. Kristen explains why it was such a big deal: there were many ISV solutions offering Shopify connectors, and the ultimate fear for those vendors was that a built-in solution would undermine their ability to sell their products. However, the open-source movement has been growing, with European MVP developers and others building and sharing code openly, creating new opportunities across the ecosystem.
With over 3,000 apps now on AppSource, Microsoft faces a dilemma — no matter where they step, there’s probably already an app. Kristen notes that nobody really knows what all 3,000 apps do, and when asked how many she personally knows well enough to recommend, she can only name a handful: the Clockify integration built by Stefan Maron, the Statistical Accounts extension (particularly useful for clients coming off Dynamics GP), and Erik’s Toolbox.
The Case for Improving the Base App
Erik makes a passionate case for Microsoft to focus on improving the base application. He argues that while the platform itself is excellent — the database, the AL development environment, all the infrastructure — much of the base app is working exactly the same way it did in NAV 20 years ago. Many features were started but never fully completed. Dimensions, for example, work inconsistently: two global dimensions are available everywhere, but additional dimensions are supported in some places and not others, with behavior varying by module.
Erik suggests that Microsoft has achieved “modern dev” but is still missing a “modern app.” The platform is awesome, but the application layer needs a significant refresh to remain competitive.
Kristen agrees, noting that new clients frequently ask if they can do something that seems reasonable, only to be told they can’t. The reaction is often: “This is Microsoft — I can’t believe I can’t do this.”
The Ideas Portal Dilemma
Both acknowledge the BC Ideas portal but express reservations about its effectiveness. The portal operates on gamification — the more votes an idea gets, the more likely it is to be implemented. But this creates a numbers game rather than a quality game. Forward-thinking ideas may not attract enough votes because not enough people understand what they need until they see it. Erik admits he’s posted a few ideas there and “nobody liked them.”
Kristen wishes Microsoft would be more proactive about engaging with developers who are building innovative solutions. She envisions a model where Microsoft could say, “What have you built? Pitch it to us,” and then decide whether to adopt, buy, or integrate those solutions. This would help move the product forward faster by leveraging the creativity already present in the community.
The Dynamics GP Elephant in the Room
With GP now on a modern lifecycle, Kristen doesn’t expect anything new or exciting — just bug fixes and tax/regulatory updates as confirmed by Microsoft. She characterizes GP customers as falling into three roughly equal camps:
- Those chomping at the bit to move to BC
- Those who are unsure and waiting
- Those who plan to stay on GP as long as possible
Kristen herself hasn’t opened GP in a year and hasn’t done a GP-to-BC implementation in about a year and a half. Her primary focus now is QuickBooks-to-BC migrations, which is where most of her new clients are coming from. As a relatively new Microsoft partner (only a year), she doesn’t have an existing GP customer base to migrate.
An important consideration Kristen raises: the economy will play a big role in migration decisions. Moving from GP to BC is a re-implementation, not a simple migration — you can’t just click a button. There are significant costs involved, and with economic uncertainty, many GP customers will likely hold tight, knowing their roadmap extends to 2028.
Another complicating factor is ISV dependencies. Many GP customers rely on ISV solutions like SalesPad, and some of those ISVs haven’t yet built equivalent solutions for BC. Until the ISV ecosystem catches up, some GP customers simply can’t move even if they want to.
The 2023 Conference Season
The BC conference landscape has become increasingly crowded. Here’s what Erik and Kristen have on their radar:
- BC and Ski — A small, invite-only gathering born out of COVID, where friends in the BC community get together to share knowledge and hit the slopes
- DynamicsCon Live — The third year for this growing conference in Scottsdale, Arizona
- Dynamics Minds — A new user/partner-focused conference in Slovenia, Europe
- Days of Knowledge Nordic — In Denmark
- Directions North America — In Orlando, Florida (partner/ISV focused)
- Community Summit — In the Carolinas (user focused)
- Directions EMEA — In Lyon, France
Can the Community Support This Many Conferences?
This is the big question both Erik and Kristen grapple with. The Directions EMEA organization also announced plans for a Days of Knowledge event in the United States in the fall, adding yet another conference to the calendar.
From a speaker’s perspective, the economics are challenging. Kristen, as a small business owner, can’t afford to attend every conference. Even with some conferences offering free speaker registration, the costs add up — travel, accommodation, and perhaps most significantly, the opportunity cost of a lost week of work.
Erik offers a candid “knowledge bomb”: if he’s speaking at three or four conferences in a season, he’s mostly giving the same talks, or variants thereof. Creating quality content takes significant effort, and speakers simply can’t produce entirely new material for every event.
They also briefly discuss the “Solve My ERP Problems” conference in San Francisco, which by most accounts didn’t attract enough attendees — there were more speakers than audience members in the rooms. It serves as a cautionary tale about the risks of launching new conferences in an already saturated market.
What’s Next for BC Talk
Erik and Kristen plan to make BC Talk a regular series, exploring different topics each episode. Future episodes might feature Kristen teaching Erik about bank reconciliation, Erik teaching Kristen how to code AL, or any number of topics suggested by viewers. The goal is to bridge the gap between the developer and consultant perspectives, offering insights that are useful to the entire Business Central community.
Summary: This debut episode of BC Talk establishes the format and chemistry between Erik and Kristen while touching on several important themes for 2023: the need for Microsoft to modernize the base app, the evolving GP-to-BC migration landscape, the economics of an increasingly crowded conference circuit, and the challenge of making the BC Ideas portal truly effective. It’s a thoughtful, honest conversation that sets the stage for deeper dives in future episodes.
