Innovate with Ludia: The Dynamics 365 Physical Operations Podcast
Join us on the 'Innovate with Ludia' podcast for discussions on Physical Operations, including D365 Field Service, IoT, Mixed Reality, D365 Project Operations, AI, and more. We'll cover industry challenges, new features, and insights from Microsoft, MVPs, and ISVs.
Innovate with Ludia: The Dynamics 365 Physical Operations Podcast
Mastering Dynamics 365 Projects: Insights from Microsoft's FastTrack Program
Ever wondered how to ensure your Dynamics 365 projects hit the mark every time? Join us as we dive into an enlightening discussion with Jeremy Freid, a Senior Solution Architect from Microsoft's FastTrack team. Jeremy unveils the inner workings of the FastTrack program and its innovative framework, Success by Design, which plays a crucial role in de-risking projects. Learn how early intervention and comprehensive planning can prevent those dreaded last-minute escalations and guarantee a smooth go-live experience.
In this episode, we explore the secret ingredients that contribute to project success, far beyond just the technical aspects. Jeremy and I delve into the significance of user adoption, effective training, and ongoing post-production refinement, emphasizing that a project's true success is multi-faceted. Hear real-life insights and experiences that highlight the importance of early and thorough involvement, comprehensive project design, and governance. We also underscore the necessity of treating each project as unique, considering specific nuances and collaborative efforts to preemptively identify and address potential issues.
We also discuss the practicalities of how the FastTrack program operates and the tangible benefits it offers. From the moment a licensing deal closes, to the nomination of projects through the implementation portal, Jeremy explains how customers receive proactive guidance and telemetry to enhance project management. Discover the importance of transparency and early collaboration, plus practical tips for leveraging FastTrack to its fullest. We'll also look to the future, discussing how methodically addressing changes can lead to successful and accurate project delivery. Don't miss this chance to gain invaluable insights into the dynamics of project success with Microsoft’s FastTrack program!
Links as promised
Microsoft Fast Track: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/fasttrack
Success By Design: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/guidance/implementation-guide/success-by-design
Welcome to Innovate with Ludia, the podcast where host Scott LaFontaine that's a special guest from Microsoft. Mr Jeremy Freed from the Fast Track organization. Jeremy, how are you?
Speaker 2:today. Good, scott, glad to be here. I feel like I've been listening to your podcasts for years now, so glad that you could finally bring me on and hopefully we have some good stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. No, I appreciate the obviously listening to it. You always wonder who who listens to it, because I see all the stats all around the world, which is kind of cool, but I've never actually had someone come out and say, hey, I listen to your podcast, so I appreciate that. So, jeremy, tell me a little bit about yourself for the audience who is Jeremy Fried and what are you all about? And then let's talk a little bit about FastTrack and see where our conversation takes us today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I'm a Senior Solution Architect for the Dynamics 365 for FastTrack team, so there are a couple of different FastTrack teams within Microsoft that all support different suites of applications. Our team specifically focuses on Dynamics 365. So that would be customer engagement and then also finance and operations applications. So where we are situated is we're within the Microsoft engineering team. What we try and do is we engage with customers and partners like Ludia to make sure that we can really provide prescriptive and proactive guidance to customers so that we de-risk projects and make sure that when they are going live, that anything that could be prevented is prevented.
Speaker 2:So I've been part of the dynamic space for almost 15 years now. Space for almost 15 years now uh, that number getting higher every year and, um, I feel like everyone I have conversations with about that says, oh man. I remember yesterday, when I'd only been with the space for five years and that's actually when I first started listening to your podcasts. I remember I used to drive back and forth from the gym and I would literally have your podcast on when you'd be on with a couple different guests and you'd be the guy that would talk about field service, when there'd be field service topics that came up and that was how I first started to get into this space and I really recognized you as an expert in the area and had a lot to pick up on awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, and the time does fly. I just remembered the other day I was like, oh, you know when did I start working in, you know? You know, specifically, just with most of the time, field service, right, and I sat there like holy crap, it's, it's been over a decade of, just you know, really a primary focus on, you know, field service physical operations. And it's like holy cow, like time flies, man. You. And it'd be nice if we just put the pause button on the age part of time flying by the experience part. Yeah, yeah, you know, exactly, you know, kind of like a hot tub time machine, but revamped in a way.
Speaker 2:Let me know when you come up with that one.
Speaker 1:I'll try to invent that one, but you brought up, actually, a couple of key points that I want to kind of focus in on. Is one is, you know, prescriptive uh, advice and guidance and de-risking projects. And I think that's the biggest thing that, in my experience, people don't seem to understand when it comes to FastTrack. They see it as another arm of support and, yes, right, we know that if we have a significant issue and we need a little extra muscle, right, hey, we can contact, you know, our FastTrack architect, or you know contact Jeremy, in our case at Ludia. But in general it's more than that, to your point, it's prescriptive, and so talk to me a little bit about for those listening, like, well, what does he mean by prescriptive and de-risking projects? Like, how do I get my fast track architect or my fast track team, or how do I even you know how do I get them engaged and when?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that we've had an evolution in how our FastTrack program operates. So a lot of us come from the Partner Channel I was in the Partner Channel for almost a decade before I joined FastTrack and I'm certainly not unique among my colleagues and we bring with us a lot of experience of customer implementations, things that went well, things that didn't go well, and over the years, as I'm sure you know, you pick up on patterns that you oftentimes think to yourself well, if only we had done this at the beginning of the project instead of two weeks before going live, we wouldn't have had this issue at all and it would have been an hour long conversation or maybe a single workshop, instead of this big escalation that's causing all sorts of issues and causing the customer to either not be able to go live or having them run into all sorts of problems around for example, their month and close from a finance perspective. But what we tried to do is we tried to take all of that learning and experience that we had and turn it into a way that we could recommend to customers that at the beginning of their projects. These are the things that we, based on our knowledge, that you should do to avoid any problems coming up later in your implementation. We basically branded that.
Speaker 2:We called it Success by Design, which is, to your point, the way in which we try to make sure that, round the beginning of design phase, that we really come to customers with prescriptive recommendations based on the understanding we have for the project, to make sure that we can raise our hands and say, hey, this looks good, or here's some of the. You might need to look a little bit more. Yes, like you mentioned, as we get closer to go live, we also do help with support escalations and product escalations, on all the things that customers do need assistance with around the time. Things are really really critical and time sensitive. Solve this now as opposed to making it a problem later, because it really does help to cut down on implementation time, cuts down on cost and, even if there's a little bit of investment required up front, it reduces the amount of time to go live that we've seen over the whole scope of our customers, from start to finish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a great way to put it right in terms of yes, there is a little bit more. There's a little bit more in time, investment in the customer and the partner right to engage with the FastTrack team. Why not engage someone from Microsoft that is part of the product slash, the engineering suite, and get them engaged early and often to make sure that we're going down the right path? Because, to your point, you get closer to go live and we haven't engaged FastTrack often enough. Or I've seen it in the past where you know maybe like, oh, you know, I don't want to engage FastTrack because it you know it's this, that or the other thing, right, and then something happens and we're getting close to go live or we're at go live and we have an issue. It's too late.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll say that in my experience, the later that we get engaged with a project and a customer, the more to them we will feel like a support, service and limitations, the less we'll feel like that and the more we'll actually feel like, hey, we're standing next to you while you're presenting your solution to the customer and making sure that we're on the same page with regard to where the product is going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I mean I know we've done that on. You know several of the projects that I've been at at Ludia right, where we've reviewed our solution blueprint with you. You've had lots of questions and feedback for the team. Right, because a lot of it is like, well, okay, you can review a document and you're going to have questions like, well, hold on, take me through this. Right, and that's part of the value too is that analysis of looking at it and not just I don't want people to think like it's not a rubber stamp. Right, because at the end of the day, I mean it could be. It could be, in fact, like you could have a great design and there's no holes whatsoever and you look at it, or someone from the fast track team looks at it and says this is the best thing since sliced bread. I don't see, you know, no issues. Probably never the case.
Speaker 1:Right, because we're all human and we're all going to miss something or just not think of something outside the box or even inside the box, and that's where having that other set of eyes on it becomes critical.
Speaker 2:We hear all the time that we're de-risking the service and I think at the core of it, other set of eyes on it becomes critical. We hear all the time that we're de-risking the service. I think at the core of it that's a fundamental part of what we do is we're just another person that's worked on projects before, that understands how projects work and how the application is supposed to be designed. It's like a double-check A double-check from someone that may have a little bit of information about where the roadmap is headed and what things are coming down in the next six months to a year. So it's always good to just have that partnership and to make sure that we can just get involved as soon as possible to make sure that you're starting to make your design, or as you're starting to finalize your design, as opposed to when things are already built and you basically have to redo or undo a lot of things that have already happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's when it becomes very costly from a time and obviously implementation cost and typically right if mistakes are made and things have to be backed down. That's generally not at the at the expense of the customer, that's at the expense of the implementation partner and so again, that that it becomes an expensive proposition.
Speaker 1:And so I I like what you said and I think people need to focus on right, it is a partnership and it's it's a three-way partnership. Right, it's a partnership with the customer, the partner of record and FastTrack right, so it's all three working together to make sure that, you know, the implementation is as successful as possible. I mean, does it guarantee success? No, but it's another. It's another tool right To to utilize to ensure that we're going to be as successful as possible, cause there's so many, there's so many factors that go into success. You know, it's hard to say like, hey, if we engage fast track, your project is going to be a hundred percent successful. All right, it could be, but there's a whole lot that goes into success. Like, okay, does it mean that you've done your user adoption and your training successfully and all these other things that could. What I think what it means is that the application is functioning and the design is sound, but there's other factors I want customers to realize there's other factors that go into the implementation, such as the user adoption, the training, post-production go live and refinement and all those things, and listening and hearing to your users and getting them involved early and often is also a key factor of success. So just some advice for those listening that are like, well, that's a good idea Once in a while.
Speaker 1:I have one, folks, I have a good idea once in a while. I think you're full of good ideas. I'm full of something, according to my wife, but that's okay. So let me ask you a question. So how you know, what drew you to? Hey, I want to work. Let me ask you a question. I want to work, not just at Microsoft, but I want to be in the FastTrack organization. What drew you? It's been a while, so you might have to dust off the cobwebs on that one. But what said? Hey, this sounds like this is my jam right here.
Speaker 2:When I first joined Microsoft, we were part of the field service team. What I commonly saw across the projects that we worked on was oftentimes we would be dealing with these late-term escalations that really tended to often be centered around performance. I think performance and performance challenges is probably the number one thing that we, over the course of FastTrack's existence, have fielded escalation. It's something that we really try and avoid and frankly, it's one of the things that I think that the earlier we can get involved, the more that we can prevent those, because oftentimes performance escalations are very preventable if they're identified early on. If you have, for example, a specific plugin and you realize that the plugin is going to trigger off something that happens very, very frequently in the system, but that only gets identified when you put together the fact that you have this plugin. It runs on a specific process and that process, because of your user volume or your transaction volume, is happening in time. And if you just look at an FDD where it says the system shall do X and in order to have the system do X, the plugin needs to trigger off this process that happens before it, you don't really get the full scope of why it happens and the downstream effects of it happening. But when you put together that customization that has to occur layered on top of the out of the box platform, it really starts to tell the whole story of why it's important that you understand the full scope of what's going on.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the things that really drew me to the Faster team.
Speaker 2:It's because we are deeply involved with customer implementations from start to finish.
Speaker 2:We understand through the course of our it's called the solution book, as you well know, but it's basically our first prescriptive workshop that we have with customers to really get a lay of the land when it comes to what their design is going to be, what their project rollout structure is going to be, what their governance is or will be in the future.
Speaker 2:And it allows us to understand at a very detailed level and a very comprehensive level, not only what you're doing but how the things that are affecting that run and how many people are running it, and what it's going to look like six months to a year from now. So you're rolling out with, let's say, a hundred users, but in a year and a half from now you're going to have 5,000. So something that looks fine when you do your testing originally might not look fine when you fully roll out. And that's really what drew me to the Faster Team is being able to be involved from start to finish and really try and drive success right from the beginning of a project, almost like a consultant would do, but as part of the Microsoft team.
Speaker 1:No, that's great, yeah, and I think that's helpful to understand and you can sense your passion for it. I mean being in the, the partner space now, for for the better part of uh, I hate to say it 20 quarter of a century can we just say 25 years sounds less, um, I think that's important because we all lose sight of it right after a while. Yeah, it almost becomes routine. Okay, I got another project here's, here's, you know, here's the different phases of the project, here's the different things I need to do, right, so on and so forth, and, and a lot of times it's very easy to think get into the mode of I'm checking boxes and each project is different, each customer is different and there's complexities all around. It could be I'm implementing the same functionality and field service that I did for two customers ago, but there's nuances, right. There's nuances in the process. There's nuances on how they're going to utilize it. There's nuances on just everything, right. There's nuances in the process. There's nuances on how they're going to utilize it. There's nuances on just everything right.
Speaker 1:Logic integration, you name it, and so I think, engaging someone like yourself assuming right one you and we'll talk about you know how to engage FastTrack here, but I think that's important and to have that sort of other arm. It's almost like you're sitting side by side with, in our case, lutia Consulting, saying, okay, hey, bring it to me, give me your design, let's have those discussions, let's see where you are, let's poke holes in it, and that's you are. Let's poke holes in it, right, and that's the thing is, let's poke holes in it. Now, right, and it's not personal, it's not personal. I poke a hole in my design. I love when people poke a hole in my design, because then it's like oh yeah, I didn't think of that. No, that's a good one. I think that's important to keep that open mind and make sure that consultants in general don't get defensive over it, because I've seen it where I've worked other places, I've seen people get defensive. I'm like why are we getting defensive? I don't understand.
Speaker 2:Our leadership calls us sparring partners when we engage with our customers and partners. No-transcript. So it's really meant to be a collaboration where we go back and forth and it's just an open exchange of information, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And you brought up another good point, right? I mean, the product has evolved, right, dynamics 365 has evolved, the platform has evolved to so to be so expansive. That, right, you could be a generalist and know a little bit here and there, but if you're truly going to be an expert in in something in dynamics, you have to pick and choose.
Speaker 1:There's no way you can't say, hey, I'm going to be an expert in all of D365, cd. It's impossible. I'd love to find that person. And if they are, I'd love to understand do they sleep at night, you know? Do they work all weekend long? Because it's just impossible, right, to keep on top of everything within the platform and within CE and say, okay, I'm an expert in sales, customer service, marketing, field service, project ops, all the insight tool. There's no way. There's no way.
Speaker 1:So to your point, right, I like the fact that, okay, I have a question or, right, maybe I have a design issue potential, I'm not sure. Right, I've done my research, I've done my homework, still have some questions. There's fast track. Hey, struggling on this design here a little bit, can you help us out? Can we have a meeting kind of poke holes through it, talk through it get some ideas going To your point. It's that partnership and that collaboration and if you look at it that way, it's just another extension of your consulting team and an expert on your consulting team. Everyone's outlook is going to be vastly improved.
Speaker 2:If I were a customer executive and I was told, hey, we're going to have to spend a couple of hours at the outset of the project, but as a result, we're going to reduce by 80 to 90% risk around these major areas, I think that it would be a no-brainer for me, and one of our hopes is that as we continue to grow our program, more and more customers and partners will see us that way, as opposed to just overhead. That kind of is something that we have to go through and hoops that we have to drum through in order to, later in the project, get the support that we need. We're far more than that and hopefully that's something that, through this and all the other areas in which we're trying to publicize our program, will become more evident and all the other areas in which we're trying to publicize our program will become more evident.
Speaker 1:Well, and that raises another good point, right, in terms of when you're project planning and we know, okay, we're going to have FastTrack engaged, right, it's the plan for that, plan for that time. Put it into the plan and realize that that is part of the overall journey, from start to you know, from initiate to operate.
Speaker 2:I alluded to this at the beginning, but we've found, based on our projects, that engagements that have FastTrack go live quicker than engagements that do not. So one of the questions that we often get is how do we put FastTrack in our statement of work? How do we account for FastTrack in the sense that it's going to take more time to accommodate what they're asking for? And what we found is that, to your to what you said earlier, while we do need to account for it in in the project plan, as in specific activities that need to be done at specific times, it's not something that's going to. We hope that won't add to the amount of time until value is realized. It reduces that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's a great call out. Right, Because there are things that we want to put into that project plan to make sure that we're engaging at a minimum these appropriate times, right? Hey, here's our solution blueprint. We give you time to review a Q&A session, then a review session and then other things that occur throughout the lifecycle of a project. So we want to make hours that we're investing in shouldn't be massive. It shouldn't be this let's just say you have this project that's 2,000 hours. It shouldn't be hundreds and hundreds of hours. If it is, then you're doing something wrong. If it is, then you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2:Right and to your point. Even if there is more time involved than expected or planned for, it's probably because we've essentially identified a specific area, either application or programmatic, that needs more scrutiny and if we're having those follow-up workshops, it means that we've identified an area that's really important and I can't think of something in a project that's more important to talk about than something that you've identified as a critical design decision or a critical governmental decision that needs to be identified to prevent or needs to be resolved to prevent an issue around O-Live.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a fair point, Absolutely. So everyone, hopefully everyone that's listening is taking note and taking stock of what you're saying, because there's a lot of good nuggets I'm going to call them information nuggets in everything that you're saying and so hopefully the folks that are listening or watching are really picking up on all these key pieces throughout Partnership collaboration you know, investing the time there's so many different things and different offerings, right, the different services that that you all provide. Now, out of curiosity for those listening, how does a I'm a customer, you know I have a partner engaged. How does one go about engaging FastTrack to say, hey, I have this customer, I have this pretty big, this pretty important and sizable project? How do I get a customer nominated for FastTrack? Or what is the process to say, hey, I've got this project and I know there's different components of FastTrack you know like, such as what Ludi is. But how does an overall you know, partner and you know, really get engaged and get FastTrack involved?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So, from a very high level, the way that we operate is when a licensing deal is closed. A licensing deal is closed so a partner or, excuse me, a customer, purchases licenses from Microsoft. That qualifies them to nominate a project for FastTrack, and we have our implementation portal, which you've seen and are intimately familiar with, which is basically an external view into a critical Microsoft system that essentially organizes all of our projects and allows us to conduct the reviews that we've been discussing throughout the course of this meeting or this podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm in a meeting mindset. I know I get it, trust me. I see teams and I think meeting. But basically what happens is you're able to, through the use of that portal, onboard your project to our application and what that does is that gives us insight into hey, what applications are you using and how can we provide proactive guidance to you and telemetry to you and to your customer tenant on what looks good and what things you might want to be aware of.
Speaker 2:And as a result of that, once you've onboarded your project to our portal, there's an option to nominate the project for FastTrack. Once you do that, there's an evaluation process that myself and my other team members go through to basically play the project into a specific FastTrack program. Now, in the case of Ludia, we have a strong partnership where what we've basically done is we've created a model for all of Ludia's projects, where Ludia doesn't need to nominate their projects to FastTrack. When a customer signs with Ludia, they know that all of their projects will automatically be serviced by Microsoft FastTrack and, in this case, myself, because because I own the relationship, so, for example, you get to deal with me all the time.
Speaker 1:I feel bad for you. I apologize in advance.
Speaker 2:No, it's not at all. We have some great collaboration. So yeah, exactly. So if you have a project that you have onboarded to the portal and then you nominate for fast drink, it will depend on the nature of the relationship your implementation partner has with microsoft and it will also depend on the the type and amount of licensing that you have purchased. So there's some more details that I'd be happy to share. Uh, scott, I'm sure you can probably put him in a link somewhere about our program and eligibility criteria and all that stuff that I won't detail. But the long and the short of it is that you basically you sign a license deal with Microsoft and then you'll nominate your project through our implementation portal and then we'll pick it up and then we'll get started with all those activities that we talked about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome yeah, and I'll definitely. For those listening that want to know more, I'll put a link in the podcast description or put it out on LinkedIn, where we'll go ahead and make sure that that link is out there if you want to learn more about FastTrack and how to nominate a project for FastTrack consideration. So don't worry, you don't have to go searching for it. I promise I will remember. I know I'm getting old, but I will remember. I actually wrote it down and I do actually use paper. I'm sorry, I'm not one, I'm not one of those that can type in a meeting. I can write faster than I can type. I can type pretty fast, but I just I can't do it. You just I need paper. I don't know, I don't know. Maybe it's a comfort thing, maybe it's I'm old, I, I use one note, I do, I, but I still need my, my paper and pen that's impressive.
Speaker 2:These days, I feel like I write less and less, to the point where it used to be. When I was in school, my hands would cramp if I wrote too much, and the more I wrote, the less that would happen. But I was writing something the other day and my hands started to cramp again like I was a kid again, because I guess I need to write more, like you do.
Speaker 1:Maybe I don't know, I'm not sure. I think what I really need is I really should just start using, you know, software that basically will take everything I'm saying and it's out there right to just kind of transcribe everything. I mean I could use, obviously, copilot in in our meeting, assuming it captures everything appropriately, or I could just get like a chip planted in my brain and just it goes to paper. That'd be even better. I'm sure that's coming in the next 10, 15 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be very interesting. Just got signed up for the brain surgery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll pass on that one, but yeah, so I'll make sure that that link gets out there for everybody. And so, jerry, real quick. I mean, what are some things that you know? We've talked about getting FastTrack engaged early often in the partnership and looking at it as collaboration and not that sparring partner mentality. I mean, what are some important things that you know. You feel like, hey, you know partners and customers really need to remember whether it's about fast track or just, you know, engaging fast track or just going down the path of a project that's important. I mean, what, what are some of those things that like, hey, you know what. This is what I always tell people in customers and partners to to remember yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:I think that, like you mentioned, close collaboration is super important. You get out of it what you put into it, and that's really true for everything. But we can only help solve problems that we know about, um, and, and to that point, we we really want to make sure that we get a full look into anything that could become a problem or already is a potential problem brewing. But you, as Scott, the implementation partner, and also you, the customer, are very, very familiar with all the challenges that your organization faces and are trying to overcome. We are not as familiar with that just because we're not. You so so, making us aware and engaging us whenever you need to feel to get some validation of whatever design decisions you're making, or if there are problems that are right now not a big deal but are going to be a big deal six months, 12 months down the road if they're not taken care of, it's really important that we kind of just immediately start to sink on them, because we we've seen a lot of different projects and we've seen a lot of common patterns.
Speaker 2:It's very, very rare that I will get faced with an escalation or a solution blueprint review that has a bunch of risks and issues that come out of it where I've never seen it before.
Speaker 2:There's always some similarity in what comes up and even if we're not able to solve the whole problem, what we can do is we can have a conversation and say, hey, the 15 other customers that I've seen that have encountered the same similar issue.
Speaker 2:Most of them did this. Now I'm not saying you need to do that, but here is what I would recommend you at least start to consider. I mean, that really just goes back to the fact that we are, to some extent, just a de-distancing service where we use our shared experiences to come up with what we think is the best path forward, and then, of course, that can be adjusted as things change. It these days is no longer these waterfall monolithic engagements where you have one set of requirements that never changes and too late if you start development and the requirements change, that gate's already been passed. We all have changes to scope and to requirements and CRs and stuff all the time, so we are able to adjust that as time goes on, but it's important to understand that, even as we are starting with that understanding, things will change. We have a baseline of what our recommendations are and how we can prevent things from happening before they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's another good nugget right, change, right, changes are going to happen on projects. They always do Customers forget things, or new requirements come in from a specific group or leadership or whatever it may be, and so these changes are going to constantly come into a project. And the question becomes right, yes, we as a project team have to account for that and have to understand has this fit in, does it increase the timeline, does it increase the scope, budget, whatever that may be. But the other thing is those changes assuming that they're not trivial like, hey, I'll add a field here, okay, add some fields, or whatever. We forgot some data points, okay, great. But if they're process-oriented or integration, whatever it may be is to then take a step back, understand what all those changes are and then re-engage with FastTrack in terms of the additional design considerations and downstream impact. Because, right, just because you've checked that box, that you did that solution, blueprint or whatever, or whatever other steps, right now you have a change. What else does that change? What else haven't we thought about?
Speaker 1:All right, a lot of times when change comes in, we're like, oh, okay, change, great, we got to do this, this and this, and we don't think, okay, hold on time out. What's the impact? Right? What's the impact to downstream or upstream systems or processes or security? Right, there's so many different things to look at. Have we thought of them all? The answer probably is no. We probably missed something, right, because you're moving fast and furious. I've seen it so many times in my career. It's like, okay, you've thought about 90% of the items, but you missed these two, and then you find them during UAT sometimes. Or sometimes you find them and it's like, oh crap, right, but it impacts over here too, and we didn't think of that because we didn't have fast track engaged. And so those are things I think that are important to remember is that, if there are changes, right, pause, timeout, take it, don't rush through it, step back, understand what that change is and the impact, and what do you have to do to redesign whatever it may be, and engage your fast track team to understand.
Speaker 1:Okay, have I captured everything with this change? Is there any other considerations? Anything that we haven't thought about that could introduce risk, and I think that's an important step, because so many times, right, we're trying to hit that deadline. Right, we're trying to hit that go live date, and that go live date is yes, it is important, but it's not as important, in my opinion, as getting it right. Obviously we want to be on time, we want to be on budget, but if changes are introduced or there's additional complexities that are found, to me it's important to make sure that we get those right, because, at the end of the day, we could go live then and we could be on time and on budget. But is it correct? Is it accurate? Is it going to be accepted by the user community? Is the data right? Maybe it's an integration and it has financial implications has to be right. There's no room for error.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. One of the things to that point that I think that our partnership has really helped your customers be successful as a result of is that the guidance that we provide through our Blueprint review is something that Ludia has managed to really integrate well into your existing design documentation. So one of the common questions we get is well, we already have our methodology. How do we incorporate the solution blueprint review and the go-live review into what we're already doing? It may seem like a lot of duplicative effort that needs to be undertaken. What we found is that a lot of it is similar types of questions Most organizations will ask what is your security strategy?
Speaker 2:Do you have a bunch of complex regulatory requirements that need to be addressed really quickly at the beginning of a project? Because if you find out that you need, for example, an Azure gateway to connect with some specific on-prem server that you can't go without, then it's really important that you design with that in mind, because it's something that needs to be taken care of. Those are all questions that successful organizations like Ludia have already built into their own methodology, which sits alongside Success by Design and the solution blueprint. I would say that for partner organizations that are really looking to align themselves with Microsoft best practices. Taking a look at the success by design guidance in our documentation sites and our implementation guidance really will help you to make sure that when you do engage with FastTrack that it's already streamlined and it doesn't seem like overhead to you but instead immediately seems like a value add.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is great advice and I know it's one where we in our SOWs, you know we follow that success by design and we call out, you know our solution blueprint as that design documentation. You know sort of following hand in hand with that. You know that fast track, you know implementation methodology. So I think that is that is written to your point. Then it doesn't seem like it's overhead. It's not additional work, it's not Whatever it may be right, it's just it's built into everything you're doing already. It's just again, it's just another set of eyes. That, to me, it's just. It's like having another architect 's just another set of eyes. To me, it's just it's like having another architect look at everything and just say, all right, yeah, we missed this. Have you thought about this? What about this? Or hey, what does this mean here? Whatever it may be, it's just again another, it's another layer of protection on a project to make sure that it goes as smoothly as it can.
Speaker 2:We have the same goal as you do, and we have the same goal that customers do. We want them to be successful and we all have limited amounts of time. So, just like you, we're not usually in the business of trying to ask superfluous questions that provide no value to anyone. There's usually a reason why, just like you, when you ask a question to me or to the customer, that we're asking you a question and it's because we want and we think that this is the best way to be successful. So hopefully that comes across in some of our engagements. If not, I apologize personally and we'll try and make it better, but that's why we're all here, right To successful customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a method to our madness. So there's times I'll ask questions and people are like what are you trying to get there? I'm getting there, but in my head there's a process, there's a step that I'm going through so that I can sit there and say, all right, mr Customer, now I see the big picture. Let me go back now and let's go walk through your process. Or let me explain to you why I was asking these questions to get from point A to point B, to point C, all right, and so, Again, it's just, it's just a process.
Speaker 1:It's we all have different ways of approaching things, and so Right ways of approaching things. And so right, if there is right and I guess, jeremy, to your point, right, hey, if there's ways that, in general, that FastTrack can, or things that you suggest FastTrack can do differently or better, right. Again it's like what can we do better, right? No one's perfect, no process is perfect. So I don't think people should be afraid to say, hey, jeremy, your fast track team, have you guys thought about X, y and Z? You know, we're doing these engagements, or maybe there's another, another review, step or process or whatever. Whatever people are seeing that would be helpful, suggest it. You know it can't hurt to have that conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we take a lot of input and advice from our partners and our customers about ways to improve our program. We have basically been changing it every year since its inception and that's how we improve how we work, because our purpose is to provide guidance and assistance to you all, and we can only make it better when you tell us what's working and what isn't.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's again another important piece, because we're all look at it as continuous learning and improvement and development. We all need to to to follow that sort of advice and guidance and say, okay, nothing's perfect, things evolve, things change, so does FastTrack. The product evolves and changes as well, so we all need to evolve and change with it, awesome. Well, I know we're running low on time here and I'm sure people are like, wow, this is a really good podcast. I can listen to this for hours. Well, maybe not me, probably you, jeremy, and I don't think anyone wants to keep hearing me.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to listen to this on repeat once it comes out over and over.
Speaker 1:That's right. We'll make sure our marketing team does some really good soundbites. But kind of closing points. I mean, if you could say to listeners out there what is one thing they should know about FastTrack, or remember about FastTrack, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Our goal is to make you successful. And if you're a customer, talk to your partners about FastTrack. If they're already a FastTrack partner, they'll probably tell you, and they'll tell you about how we provide value and when we like to get involved in all the things we've discussed during the course of this episode. If they're not, then have them talk to us, and we'd love to start our engagement with them, like we have with Ludia, so that we can all collaborate together. Likewise, if you're an implementation partner or a member of one talking and listening to this, then we definitely recommend reaching out to us and discussing with us the ways in which you can get involved, because we like to be able to support all of our partners so that we can make all of your projects successful and give guidance to them. And if you're a Microsoft employee, hello.
Speaker 1:Please talk to me on Teams and I promise that Jeremy and the FastTrack team do not bite. Please reach out to them. If you're not sure how to reach out to them, again, I'm going to put on the notes the different links for FastTrack, fast Track and Success by Design, so that'll all be out there. Worst case scenario you're not sure who to contact, feel free to reach out to me and I'll put you in touch with the right folks as well. So more than happy to help out our happy listeners. Well, jeremy, I know we're just about out of time. Really been great talking to you. I know we've been collaborating on a bunch of things. It was great to talk to you about your role in FastTrack in general and get the word out to the greater community.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate your time this morning. I know it is kind of early. I haven't had my coffee yet, but that's my fault. Last time I said we talked about coffee. Last time I can't talk about coffee again, but I haven't had my coffee. But anyway, I do appreciate your time today. It's been great. I'm sure our listeners enjoyed hearing everything that you had to say as well. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me on, scott. All right, everyone that's listening. Until next time, I'm Scott LaFonte. Thank you for listening to innovate with Ludia. Thank you for listening to the innovate with Ludia podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast app or follow us on LinkedIn. Until next time, I'm your host, scott LaFontaine. Thank you.
