The Accidental Economist

Chances are you're familiar with the phrase "the stock market is not the economy". Economics as an academic discipline, is the study of why humans make decisions, which happens to boil down to the concept of value. It turns out that the most robust historical datasets we have that measure value and decision making over time is the stock market.

The S&P 500 is a pretty good indicator of how the biggest companies are doing, the Russell 2000 is an alright indicator of how small businesses are doing, and of course the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the de facto go to for a quick glimpse into the health of the economy overall. However, the missing piece of the equation that we don't have vastly available public information for is the output and profitability of mid-sized privately held companies. Fortunately enough, this is the sweet spot for the Microsoft Dynamics suite of solutions. So what would the "Microsoft Dynamics Index" look like?

There's no secret that Microsoft itself and it's premier Dynamics resellers have been aligning themselves more and more to a few key verticals. Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retail / CPG. The last number I received for companies that are running at least the Finance modules of Dynamics 365 for Finance & Supply Chain Management is around 26,000 globally. Imagine an index comprised of 26,000 solidly mid-sized, and in some cases enterprise companies that occupy the 4 aforementioned verticals. What sort of insights would that give us into the overall health and trends of the global world economy? Where would we get that data?

All the financial data of the 26,000 Dynamics 365 Finance end users worldwide exist in the cloud. Computers owned and operated by Microsoft and more or less leased by it's customers. So could Microsoft somehow access that consistently updated, nearly real time financial data, anonymize it, and then aggregate it in a meaningful way to give us real time data as to the output and profitability of it's end users as a whole? Theoretically, yes they could.

As far as I'm aware, there is no Microsoft Dynamics index or industrial average. Could there be a team buried deep in a bunker in Redmond working on this? Maybe. But in the world of business we don't deal in theory or hypotheticals. We work with the data we have, and speculate from there. So how close can we come, at least from a qualitative standpoint, to a Microsoft Dynamics index?

People, processes, technology. People are at the forefront of all digital solutions (for how long we don't know, but for now they still are). There's truly only one role in the Dynamics ecosystem that's consistently speaking with each and every other player in the ecosystem that's constantly gathering both qualitative and quantitative data about what's going on in the market. That person is the recruiter. Furthermore, because of the space they occupy between firm and household the recruiter has 360 degree view of the circular flow model of household, firm, and even government. No other role holds the keys to unlocking the most powerful economic insights as the recruiter. It's a noble role to occupy, and a heavy cross to bear.

This work is brutal and taxing, yet joyous and fun. It intrigues the intellect, it frustrates the mind, it keeps you up at night, it tires you to the point of mental exhaustion. One thing recruitment is not, is boring.

It's easy to get bogged down in the day to day operations, army crawling through the reeds laser focused on one small mission at a time. But when I free up to think critically and analyze the work I'm doing, then synthesize your my own thoughts on it, that's what keeps me tethered to this little sliver of tech industry. Some might simply call it passion, but "passion" doesn't capture it all. I struggle everyday to truly admit if I'm passionate about the Dynamics space as a whole, or am I passionate about being an accidental economist that happens to solve some recruitment challenges for our clients here and there?

So this article begs the question. Is your preferred Microsoft Dynamics recruiter an accidental economist? The answer is always yes, they just might not realize it yet.