Scrum Dynamics, Chris Kendrick

If you're thinking about reviewing your technology stack and are concerned about the impact and the challenges a migration might bring, have a listen to our CEO Chris Kendrick talking about the implementation we went through with RED - The Global SAP Solutions Provider.Chris Kendrick joins Neil Benson on his LAST EPISODE of the Scrum Dynamics podcast. Here they discuss Mercury's Microsoft Partner of the Year for Power Apps finalist award, developing an ISV product, parsing resumes, remote go-lives, and incentivising user adoption.

Mercury with Chris Kendrick

Chris Kendrick is the founder and CEO of Mercury, who develop recruitment software on Dynamics 365 Sales, and was a finalist in the Power Apps category at the 2019 Microsoft Partner of the Year awards. We discuss parsing resumes (and fine-tuning your own resume), as well as entity model designs, ISV product development, implementation approaches, remote training, and user adoption incentives.Entity model design for handling candidate and client contacts. Different entities or a single entity depending on the type of person?

• Integrating with LinkedIn and accessing its API.
• Parsing resumes and enabling sophisticated text search in model Power Apps.
• What phrases Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement professionals should include in your CV.
• Mercury's Microsoft Partner of the Year finalist award for Power Apps for their implementation at Red SAP Solutions.
• In PotY awards, solutions that involve multiple products (Power Apps, Dynamics 365, Power Automate, Power BI, SharePoint and Azure) are highly rated by Microsoft.
• Scaling your ISV product and upgrading multiple customers simultaneously.
• WalkMe, Whatfix, and ClickLearn are emerging as viable alternatives to Dynamics 365 learning paths and custom help panes features.
• Using Kingswaysoft for data migration is a huge part of every Mercury project.
• It the importance of focusing on the client’s primary business outcome to guide your project.
• Rewarding the best users with input into the application backlog and roadmap.
• Mercury has its own implementation approach and uses an online project management tool to bring transparency to the project.
• Prior to coronavirus restrictions, Mercury was already making use of remote working tools, so the recent adaptations have been working well.
• Challenges remain with remote go-lives. Chris recommends training users two weeks beforehand and then evaluating their learning with some gamified techniques.
• One client rewarded top users with prize-filled balloons.
• Leaderboards of the best users and providing voucher incentives also work.
• Improvements Microsoft could make to grow the ISV community lie around commercial topics rather than enhancements to AppSource.
• Mercury handles timesheets, expenses, and contractor documents; it integrates with Dynamics 365 Business Central or Dynamics 365 Finance.
• The impact of IR35 legislation in the UK on the freelance contract industry, and its postponement until 2021.
• We’re both missing in-person conferences, especially Microsoft Inspire, that bring Microsoft partners together.