|
Eric is one of the founding partners of iFacto Business Solutions www.ifacto.be
With his 7 years of technical expertise, he is an everyday inspiration to its development team. As development manager he continually acts upon iFacto’s technical readiness and guarantees that he and iFacto are always on top of the latest Microsoft Dynamics NAV developments.
Apart from that, Eric is also very active in Microsoft Dynamics NAV community-life where he tries to solve technical issues and thrives to share his knowledge with other Dynamics NAV enthousiasts. Surely, a lot amongst you will have read some of Eric’s posts on Mibuso.com, Dynamicsusers.net or his own blog www.waldo.be which he invariably signs with “waldo”.
In 2008, he co-founded the Belgian Dynamics Community, a platform for all Belgian Dynamics NAV users, consultants and partners, enabling knowledge sharing and networking.
His proven track record entitled him to be awarded in 2007, 2008 and 2009 as MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional).
What was your first job in Dynamics?
My former passion was VB.NET. I loved OO-programming and .Net was a new upcoming environment which I very much liked. We were a very small programming department in a somewhat bigger company, and my employer sold "Navision". Just like that. Without having the knowledge in-house.
Once sold, he asked me to go and implement it .. not knowing one tiny bit what Navision was or what it could do. So, after following quite a bit of courses, I realized that this wasn't the sexy Object Oriented environment where I was trying to build my career on, but it sure was interesting. You can imagine .. the implementation at the customers was turning out to be a big fiasco. Me, as junior developer had to implement a 20-user environment without any help. :-). After the help of a Navision Belgium based gooroo, all worked out just fine.
Who has been your biggest influence/s in Microsoft Dynamics?
Good question. If I think of one big influencer .. from the top of my head .. I think of Ludo Van den Eynde. He's the guy that thought me the basics of Dynamics NAV .. he turned me in the right direction(s). Spending a day with him was much more valuable then spending a 5-day cours of "Solution Development". He worked at Navision Belgium that time, and he got me really interested in Navision and all it had to offer.
What is your biggest achievement/s in Microsoft Dynamics?
That's simple: iFacto Business Solutions NV. The company that I started together with my business partner "Dirk Covens". The two of us started out on our own, with Cronos NV as our backbone, and now, 7 years later, we're quite an important partner in Belgium .. with 35 employees. My role in the company is "Development Manager". This role puts me into the position to be able to help young developers guiding in the right direction in the NAV development world. A world that changes a lot thanks to Microsoft.
It also puts me into the position that "keeping track of all changes and new developments about the product" is a must. My work is my hobby :-).
What is the best thing Microsoft has brought to the community?
Microsoft has invested a lot into the community ... but for "Navision" (at the time Microsoft bought it) it was quite new. During the last 7-8 years, Microsoft has brought the community to NAV. The evolution was huge.
Now,there are quite a number of blogs from Microsoft employees. On top ofthat, those guys are participating in threads on Mibuso and Dynamicsusers ... and that's great! You can learn a lot from the people that are really "at the source" of the product.
Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics?
Just because it's the best. :-). This is a question you shouldn't be asking to a NAV-addict as myself ;-). But here we go: I like Dynamics NAV because it's a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point, flexible, simple, consistant ERP product .. with an unbelievable devoted development team behind the scenes. It's a product that focuses on simplicity, not only for useability, but also on development standards. So tell me ... why shouldn't an end user go for it?
What are the biggest challenges facing Microsoft Dynamics?
Well, one of the biggest challenges I face are: attracting and motivate new developers to build their career in NAV development. It's good, it's easy, it's simple .. but it's not sexy. And people tend to go for the last....
What would you want to see from Microsoft Dynamics in the future?
Just keep on doing what they're good at .. delivering a good base product for the mid-market. But if they could build some more sexy (but yet useful) development tools, and make it a little bit more scalable .. then we would really be in a treat. I'm sure that the architectural change to a three tier environment, brings a lot of opportunities on which Microsoft will build further in the future.
What is your favourite add-on(s)?
Our own, off course :-): iFacto Integration Framework, iFacto NAS Scheduler, iFacto Collecion+ ... Just go to www.ifacto.be .
On top of this, we will foresee a non-NAS-based NAV2009 scheduler as well in the near future ... so a lot to look forward too.
| 
