Mircrosoft Bizz Apps Market Update

It's been awhile since I've found a little bit of time to write about what's going on in the market for Microsof Business Applicaitons talent. It's also no surprise that when I do find the time to write about what the view from my desk looks like, it's generally not the best of times. Hence, me having the time to report on the labor market in our little sliver of tech. However, I always want to pivot to the positives too, which there are still an abundance of. So let's jump into the market.

Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement

Perhaps the hardest hit by reductions in force in the partner channel right now. Net new Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service projects aren't happening at the speed and velocity that they used to. Field service is also suffering a post covid hangover after an explosion of growth due to the meteoric rise of mobile services in virtually every sector of the economy. In my opinion, not enough firms are investing in this technology that should be, whether it's Microsoft's solution, Saleforce, or others. We're hardly scratching the surface of the wide scale adoption of what IoT can do for Manufacturing, Agriculture, and many other verticals. I have good faith that demand will end up rising again for Field Service. And while this sounds negative, I haven't seen wide spread lay offs of people with Field Service expertise. I still say that if you're a CE Consultant that hasn't gained experience with Field Service yet, it's worth rising to the occasion to learn and add to your arsenal, and even entertain the idea of specializing in it entirely.

Generally speaking, we live in such a large and robust economy that it would seem the only way to rise up, is to niche down. This is not the case for CE. The contractors and FTE employers that seem to be thriving the most right now are the ones that kept expanding their skill sets into other areas of the CE suite beyond Sales and Customer Service, and even more so into Azure and Power Platform.

It's sort of unfair that virtually all the new business technologies Microsoft has been releasing have de facto ended up the responsibility of CE Consultants to learn. Should F & SCM functional consultants and developers gain more chops with Power Apps? Absolutely. It could only be beneficial, but the market isn't forcing that as hard as it is on the CE world. Truth is, there is a whole lot more value in understanding accounting and supply chain / manufacturing operations combined with platform knowledge than there is with learning the ins and outs of Power Platform.

There are a metric ton of huge, messy federal government and large enterprise company projects happening right now that are entirely Power Platform based, and completely divorced from Dynamics 365. This would seem like an overall positive, but here in lies the rub... Microsoft themselves wants and needs to have a locus of control on such large high profile projects in the tens of millions budget wise. It can be very difficult to navigate your way into even tier 1 vendors to these projects, not to mention the heavy reliance on offshore labor for these projects. The delivery model is what it is, and MCS and the other alphabet soup practices under the Microsoft logo don't seem to be hiring in droves for delivery resources the last couple of years. When they do, and usually around end of and beginning of their fiscal year, it creates a churn in the market, whereby there are more opportunities that arise with the VARs they poach from. This hasn't happened in the last 2 to 3 years. We'll have to see what May and June look like this year.

Next thing to point out, is when I check the job boards to see what's going on recruitment wise, it's generally your same run of the mill fake recruitment firm ads meant to fish candidates and pull leads, then next up lately is government contracting firms. Firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed, Raytheon ect. that seem to always have adverstisements for Power Platform developers. Which at first glance one would think, great, I'll just go work for them! But places that big with consistent ads porbably get 1000 applicants a day off those adverstisements, and vast majority aren't qualified in the least bit. So their ATS system becomes a graveyard for good talent that gets swallowed up in a sea of bad talent. Meanwhile they just end up relying on their internal recruiters, and large agencies they work with to actually deliver candidates and control processes. Not to mention, a lot of those roles involve clearance, which adds another layer of sophistication to thier searches. It's an increasingly frustating development in the market, that seems diametrically opposed to what the promise of the Power Platform can do for mid-market end users. But I digress...

The final verdit for D 365 CE, is that from the seat I'm sitting in, the days of staying safely and gainfully employed just on your ability to gather requirements, write FDDs, and congfigure D 365 Sales and Customer Service solutions are numbered. We're seeing a dramatic shift into what we use to coloquially call a Dynamcis CRM Consultant, into more of a role as an overall Microsoft Technologist that can stretch their tentacles into a little bit of everything. This development has also been accelerated as AI is evolving alongside workers, and allowing them to accomplish more tasks in shorter amounts of time.

Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management

Chugging along. There will never be enough knowledgable and hard working Sr. Functional Consultants in this arena. But what truly dictates a Senior Consultant now has evolved. Knowing core Finance modules doesn't seem to be enough anymore. We're in a climate where expertise in either Project Management & Accounting, or costing is a must to truly stay fully utilized as a Finance Consultant. On the supply chain side Advanced Warehouse, and / or expertise with MRP or Planning Optimization have become a must haves. And as far as I know, anyone who claims to have scuccesfully pulled off a Planning Optimization implementation without some work arounds is lying. It seems to me that Microsoft has gotten a little too cavalier with selling this solution to end users recently, and it's a re-occuring issue for many manufacturing end users. The worst part is the sunk cost fallacy surrounding the solution in which they keep shelling out time, money, and energy to make the dream a reality, but creating nightmares for themselves while lighting a wheelbarrel full of money on fire.

Times are tough for Dynamics 365 F & SCM developers right now. AI, automation, offshoring, and also a lot of acquisition of ISVs has had a tremendous effect on the demand for F & SCM Developer labor. There was an uptick in demand for end users to bring this talent in house, but lately that's slowed down a little bit too.

Business Central

I've seen more start up consulting firms in the BC space than any other product. It's flying off the shelves from multiple different angles. GP users migrating, but also SMBs that are growing into managing more and more inventory that Quickbooks, or similar competitors just can't handle anymore. There also seems to be a really neat trend happening with Business Central that started happening with NetSuite a few years ago where there is always work to be done integrating eCommerce solutions like Magento, or Shopify. The pandemic sky rocketed online shopping that was already on the rise. Millenials and Gen Z are gaining momentum in purchasing power and already acustomed to digital experiences for everything, so naturally eCommerce direct to consumer business are popping up and growing into the need for a product like BC, and it's a natural fit if you're already on Microsoft 365.

We admittedly don't spend enough time actively looking to recruit in the Business Central space. While it's adoption has skyrocketed and grown, the added expense of recruitment fees isn't as pallatable for many SMBs. Catching them at the right stage of growth isn't impossible for full-time hires, and sure there are ways to place contractors as a hedge against bill rates of consulting firms, but the projects are shorter, and need less resources. So timing wise it's difficult to pull of for a small firm like ours that would need to be constantly scouring the market business development wise to strike at the right time. But I can confidently say that I haven't had a single Business Central consultant land in my inbox seeking employment. Something I can't say for any other platform in the MSFT Biz Apps suite.

AI

I'm not here to deliver the same tropes that the media is about AI. If you're reading this article, you're probably reading all the other articles that I am too. It's no surprise at this point that firms are running leaner on human labor because of the tremendous increase in output AI has on the average worker. If you're not using AI everyday to streamline processes as a tech worker right now, you're in trouble. My LinkedIn feed lately seems like it's one big advertisement for CoPilot. Webinars galore, and a non-stop barage of claims to competencies in CoPilot Studio. A couple of months ago I connected with someone who had the title "CoPilot Studio Consultant". This is one of the most fascinating developments to me. At face value setting up entities, topics, and channels for chat bots can be learned pretty quickly by a Dynamics or Power Platform Consultant. Into the future I believe firms will start seeing the value in the expensive licensing for it, as it will undoubtedly help streamline processes for multiple departments. We have an entire generation of workers that are coming up that are going to be familiar and comfortable enough with prompting AI to get the results they want, and they'd much rather ask questions to a chatbot about their health insurance plan and get an immediate response rather than waiting for someone in HR to get back to them.

ERP & CRM

A larger trend right now, is that ERP and CRM aren't the sexy buzz words they used to be on the minds of CIOs and CTOs like they were from 2010 to 2020. The business world is in arms race with their competitors to harness the power of AI. But the scariest thing, is that so many long in the tooth C-suites are completely lost in what that means. Microsoft seems to have a solid strategy in play right now propping up and marketing CoPilot. But when tech professionals are thinking about AI in general, the first brand they're thinking of isn't Microsoft. There's so much noise from a bunch of start ups right now that are controlling the narative on what their AI platforms can do, and the new shiny jewels are the ones executives seem to be drawn too. However, so many companies can start harnessing the power of AI and automation with the Microsoft infrastructure they already have by simply giving a few employees a Power Platform Premium license for $20 / month. But the reports I'm hearing from consultants working day in and out in this space is that even trying to explain Dataverse to 50, 60 something year old CIO that just signs SOWs all day is falling on deaf ears. They just don't understand how easy it can be to build meaningful tech with tools most of their employees are already familiar with. They just want to go buy prepackaged solutions and get raked over the coals once the hand off from sales to delivery happens.

The Final Verdict

Things aren't as bad as they were in the start of 2023. Microsoft is and will continue to be a leader in the business applications space. But, to be a valuable expert in said space, its going to take continuing education, an embrace of AI, and a little more work to find the right place at the right time that values what you're doing. The period of 2020 to 2022 where you could turn on "Open to Work" on LinkedIn and find yourself with multiple offers in the matter of a couple weeks are over for the foreseable future for many, but not all.