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Our guide to the new Business Central licensing
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is fast moving, ever evolving software. It has twice yearly major updates which unveils brand-new functionality and features to help businesses to make manual processes quicker and easier. In this episode we discuss where we want the software to go in the future, our warehousing, development and licencing wish lists and why sometimes ISVs know users better than Microsoft. Listen today!
- Well hi, welcome to our podcast. Today we are gonna be talking about the interesting subject of licencing, 'cause there's been quite a few changes recently.
- There has, yeah. There's been quite a few announcements by Microsoft in relation to perpetual licences, which is your old way. I know you were saying we should probably go through some of the acronyms, so we will do that in a moment. But Microsoft has made some announcements around that and around some of the promotions that get you from a traditional perpetual licence, when you used to buy your licence, to the new subscription model that we're all heading in that direction.
- Yeah, the change has been, old days, used to go and pay a big chunk of money for a licence and then you'd pay every year a maintenance or other names for that.
- Yeah. You might know it as your enhancement plan.
- Enhancement plan.
- Or your EP.
- EP.
- Or BREP used to be another one.
- Yeah.
- Business ready enhancement plan. So that's your annual maintenance, which was a percentage of your licence value.
- And then obviously it's now moved to subscription licencing. Paying per user per month.
- Yep.
- Obviously there's been a change from, there used to be concurrent licencing, so you'd pay for 20 users and you could have up to 20 people log on.
- Any 20 users at one time, yeah.
- You could have 50 users registered on the system, but only 20 can log on. Now it's all named users that, you know, I've got 20 users, I have to buy 20 licences.
- Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So everything's named user, so it's tied to alias, to a named user. So it's a bit more restrictive, but you have the ability to scale up and down if you want to pay for the privilege of doing that monthly or annually, that's your choice. But yes, I think most people are getting used to subscription model. You do it with Office. Dynamics, it's happening probably for the last four years now, three or four years, it's really been on the journey.
- More than that, if anything, yeah.
- Probably. But we've still got a bunch of customers which we'll talk about, that are still on that perpetual licence, that still pay their enhancement plan.
- And in all fairness, paid 16% for many, many years.
- Yep. Big investment in that product.
- Of their original, of their current licence value.
- Protected value, which is what they paid potentially 15 years ago.
- Yep.
- So obviously, you know, inflation.
- Well it was what the list price was, wasn't it? Because it, you know, they may have had a discount at the time.
- That's true.
- But that didn't count for the protected licence.
- Yeah, so your enhancement plan is based on the list price of the software that you've got. So if you've added to it over the years, then your enhancement plan will have increased. For that reason-
- The list price at the time you bought it, not the list price now.
- Yeah, but it's always been 16% for a long time, as long as I can remember. 16%. So last year they put it up to 17%.
- Which was, I mean, that wasn't a 1% increase. It was an increase in 1% from 16 to 17%.
- Yeah.
- But in terms of what you're paying, it was what, 6% or something?
- Yeah. And then again in October, it's gonna go up another percent.
- So it'll now be 18%.
- Which is another 6%.
- And that's the first announcement that Microsoft have made really, that-
- And do you think-
- Well, if we're seeing-
- Next year it'll go again, another percent? Do you think it's gonna, that web licence and software is going to get more expensive?
- We've always spoke about this. How did Microsoft start to leverage people on the perpetual to the subscription? And as you said, it was always stayed at 16%. Very predictable. If that starts to become 17%, 18% and that trend continues, it's a good reason for people to say, "Well, I should look at subscription and see if it works out at-"
- Okay. So why should our customers continue to pay their enhancement plan? What do they get for that?
- Well, that's the question because, you know, you look at a lot of the, and look, we've got hundreds of customers who still pay enhancement plan, haven't we? So that's the normal thing that you know, that the older customers do, the customers from five years plus back, that's what they're doing. But a lot of those are on versions, you know, BC 14 is probably the most prevalent version, but there's a lot of older versions than that.
- Yeah.
- And all of those are no longer supported. So if there was a change to, you know, regulatory requirement.
- Although we've lost customers that were on perpetual licences on versions that are supported.
- Yes.
- So if you're on a supported version and you're paying enhancement plan, then that's giving you access to new versions.
- So if there was a change to the way that was calculated.
- To changes. Yeah.
- Or making tax digital and-
- All the legislative changes, the new versions, you're getting access to that.
- You can still add users, you can still add objects importantly.
- Yeah.
- So if you want to do some customization, you need some tables.
- Well, you can do that to non-supported versions as well.
- Yeah.
- [Matthew] Yes.
- But your enhancement plan is covering all your new releases. And so if you're up to date and you're keeping up to date and you intend to do an update every couple of years, which probably on an on-premise or a perpetual would do, then paying your enhancement plan isn't-
- Every couple of years is probably a little bit of a, most of them are upgraded on a four, five year cycle, aren't they?
- Not once you're on BC and you're on the 22, 23, 24 cycle.
- No, absolutely.
- I'm talking about.
- But the majority of the people paying enhancement plan are probably, you know, that's probably 10, 20% who are on a BC, post BC 14 and on premise. That's an exception.
- There's a big chunk of our customers still on BC 14, which is still in support until 2025.
- Yep.
- So they've still got that covered 'til 2025.
- [James] Okay.
- Is that the right date? Yeah. October 2025.
- Five. Yep.
- Yeah.
- So they've got a year and a half.
- So they've still got, they're still in support.
- A year and a few months left. Two years.
- They need to pay their enhancement plan. But if you're on NAV 2015, 2016, NAV 2017.
- 2018. Anything before BC 14.
- You're out of support, so you won't get any access to any updates, any bug fixes.
- You get security updates though, don't you?
- You might get a security update, but not-
- Very, very rare. We've had one this year.
- We've had one.
- [Matthew] Which was the first time in a long time.
- One in actually a decade.
- If there's any legislative changes, like the making tax digital changes, you won't get any of that and-
- But, stay calm before anybody gets too upset because, you know, and I think we're no different from most of the partners out there, that actually it's the partners who provide 99.9% of the support and the fixes. So if it, you know, what has always worked will continue to always work. As a partner, we can pretty much guarantee that.
- Yeah, but that's paid for by their support fee, not by their enhancement plan.
- Correct. Yes.
- So we had this question, didn't we? As to whether these customers on these older versions, why pay their enhancement plan?
- What do they get for their enhancement plan?
- So I went and got my calculator out and
- Did the maths.
- Tried to work out. And it does vary customer to customer, but essentially if you are planning on upgrading to Business Central, whether it's online or on premise in the future, then paying your enhancement plan will allow you to take advantage of the promotions that are available to do that, which we'll talk about later. So what also, if you don't pay your enhancement plan, you cannot add any users, you cannot any objects, you cannot add anything to your licence. So if something fundamental changes in your business, you do an acquisition, you do a merging, you do-
- You're locked.
- Then you are stuck. You can't buy anymore.
- You're locked to what you have now.
- Yeah. So you can't do further development because you can't buy objects, you can't buy users. So I've done some numbers, which I think we've published into a blog. And I think that if you are planning to upgrade in the future and you are still actively using your system and developing it, you need to continue paying your enhancement plan regardless of the version.
- In the near future.
- In the near, because it's giving you the ability to continue adding objects, adding users, the security that if something changes in your business, your software can adapt to it. But also giving you access to the promotions. You will- The saving on the promotion is the same as kind of not paying the enhancement plan. So I've done all the numbers and we'll publish them so they can be seen. But I think-
- So I think the clear recommendation from us-
- My recommendation, my personal recommendation would most definitely be to continue to pay, unless you are coming off Business Central. Unless you've been acquired and you're gonna come off it anyway. But even then.
- Let's be very clear about this, Liz. So if you think that you are likely to upgrade in the next three years, keep paying your enhancement plan.
- A hundred percent, yeah.
- If four to five years, you're probably better off, because of the flexibility in terms of being able to add objects and all the rest of it.
- Yep.
- And as part of the upgrade process, unless you're planning on scrapping everything and starting again and doing a complete reimplementation, you will probably need some of that flexibility. So probably, if in the next five years, you think you will upgrade to a later version of Business Central, pay your enhancement plan.
- [Liz] Yeah.
- If it's beyond five years and you have no plan to ever upgrade, ever, then probably paying your enhancement plan, you are not going to get anything for it. And that's probably where it should be a situation. Now, if that's the situation you're in and you're saying, I'm not gonna update for the next five years, I would say, well, hmm, that might be your plan, but you know, that might not work out because actually something might change in terms of regulatory changes or so on, that doesn't give you that option. And we could have a debate about that. I don't think that's a very good strategy, given the pace of change and the pace of improvement in the product and I think that-
- Yeah, I think the licence cost is almost irrelevant to that description.
- Yeah, it's like-
- It's about, it's a different thing.
- Is that a good thing for your business to not update over that side.
- The licence cost isn't prohibitive when it comes to upgrading anyway, is it? It's not the cost. The majority of the cost will be the services in that lump anyway. And whether you do that now or in five years, the enhancement plan is almost irrelevant.
- Five years is a long time. 'Cause you know, if you're then restricting yourself from adding users and objects. You know, okay, I may not be upgrading, but you can't say that you don't need-
- Yeah.
- Yep.
- You definitely need a plan B.
- My recommendation to our customers apart from in some very, very specific circumstances will be to continue to pay it. But to bear in mind that it potentially will increase again. And that-
- Well if Microsoft keeps sticking.
- Actually, being on an old version is a risk to your business.
- If Microsoft keep increasing this percentage too much more, then you know, that three to five years is gonna come down to one to two.
- Yeah.
- And then it's very quickly gonna tip into a situation where you go, you know what, just cut it and start again as and when you upgrade. So I think Microsoft have gotta be very careful, you know, and that was my feedback is like, okay, once, twice, I get the fact that that wasn't a price increase for a very long time. But you know, people are doing the maths now, whereas they didn't used to. And that for me is a bit of a, should be a red flag to Microsoft, that you can't keep milking this particular cow forever.
- It was a bit of an insurance policy, wasn't it? People took it out because of the reasons you said and it's still, as you said, it's still for the majority of people the right thing to do. But if you are, have no plans to do anything with-
- Okay, so on the positive, if you have paid your enhancement plan and you're on a older version, there are promotions available.
- [Liam] Yep.
- For you to be able to move to the version of cloud, so there's two promotions. So there's the cloud migration programme.
- [Matthew] Yep.
- I'm trying to mind the acronyms. The cloud migration programme is really, really simple. That just gives you 40% discount on online licences for three years. So that's-
- After the three years?
- Then it goes to retail price, whatever that will be at the time. And they're, you know, they're available. Those prices are available. I won't give them now because I might get them wrong, but-
- But that programme is only available for how long?
- Right, that programme is only available 'til the end of June. Actually, it's available 'til June, I'm not sure whether that's the beginning of June or the end of June, so we'll check that.
- [Matthew] Yeah.
- But that programme is coming to an end. But that is the most straightforward. You will also have some flexibility in moving your number of users you've got, although you won't be able to bring it down, I don't think, but you can certainly add users and it is
- At the promotion price as well.
- Yeah, it is a significant discount.
- And can you do that if let's say, I'm thinking of upgrading in 18 months?
- Yeah, you could, because it gives you dual use. So it allows you to still run a perpetual version, sorry, an on-premise version.
- [Matthew] Yep.
- As well. So yes, you could do, you could do, but I would probably only take advantage of that promotion if
- You've got a plan to do it.
- If you plan to do it in the future.
- If you have a serious plan and you're part way through it, I would say, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And that one's been around a while.
- That's been around a while and it comes to an end in June.
- It does come to an end-
- [Liz] At some point in June.
- So it's a 40% discount on what the list price is. And the list price has gone up in the last few months as well, I probably should say that.
- [Liz] Yeah.
- So subscription has increased.
- All Microsoft products.
- [Liam] All Microsoft products, yep.
- Yeah, so it's not a fixed price for three years.
- Any cloud product.
- 'Cause if the subscription price goes up, the retail price, then it will go up, but it's 40% discount. So it's a significant saving and you know, if you're going to do it in the next three years, I would get onto that plan. I think that's gonna save people the most. Whenever I had my calculator out, that was the best promotion and also the least complex.
- And it's simplest to understand. Yes.
- Yes.
- Because wow.
- Which then brings us on to Bridge to the Cloud 2.
- Yep.
- Which is the promotion that is now available, which obviously replaced Bridge to the Cloud 1. So Bridge to the Cloud, the sequel.
- Which was a sequel-
- I'd like to say new and improved, but I'm not convinced.
- We're gonna have more than "Fast and Furious" franchise on this, aren't we? You just know it.
- Yeah, so Bridge to the Cloud 2 is available now and will be available beyond the June deadline for the cloud migration programme. But it is slightly more complex.
- Slightly?
- Slightly more complex and it-
- Your definition of "slightly" and mine are in different places, I have to say.
- And also for us as a partner.
- And for the customer, there is a-
- Yeah, and for the-
- There's some more restrictions.
- Not as straightforward. Yeah.
- Around that. Bridge to the Cloud 1, you could renew it every year up to a maximum of three years. This is a three year fixed. So once you're on it, it does fix your price. Okay. So they do fix that. But you cannot cancel it, you cannot roll back. You end up going to the cloud at the end of it. So there is no flexibility on it in that point of view. You sign up, it's three years.
- There's no going back.
- Even if you want to get rid of BC over that time, you're gonna have to pay it. There's no get out clause on this.
- Does it lock you to the partner?
- It locks you into the partner that you're transacting this with. You could move across the support-
- So unscrupulous partners are gonna try and flog this because they've got guaranteed business.
- Well I think the partner needs to look at it as well. I think most partners that are offering this would have a new agreement for end users to sign because the responsibility is with the partner as well.
- Yeah. I mean, just to be clear to all the end users out there, your partner is gonna have to pay Microsoft, regardless of whether you pay them.
- Absolutely.
- So you can have a legal dispute, you can go bust.
- Yep.
- I mean if you go into receivership, your partner is still gonna have to pay them.
- Yeah.
- And I've spoken, you know, I've seen some of these where the calculation was that the total liability that the partner was taking was close to a million quid and kind of, you know,
- And some partners-
- Potentially some partners are going for the bigger licences, actually we're not prepared to take on that potential liability.
- Yeah. Or you get the customer to pay up front, which is no real benefit to the customer apart from locking the pricing.
- Yeah, I mean- So I think, you know-
- But they get the discount still there?
- They do.
- From a Tecman perspective, we need to credit check our customers to make sure that they're gonna be around in two and a half years time to pay that subscription.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I, you know, I'll be very clear, I've said to Microsoft. Suddenly Microsoft are making the partners do credit insurance on the customers and for the organisation that's got a very large bank balance, that seems not very partner orientated.
- But a three year credit check isn't realistic, 'cause that's a long time.
- Yeah, I was gonna say a lot can change in three years.
- A lot can change in that three years.
- 12 months maybe, but.
- Exactly, yeah. Too right.
- Three years.
- So as a partner, we've still got some work to do as to how we-
- [Liam] Offer that.
- How we offer it. What options we get if-
- Well it also means that, you know, we have to get more lawyers involved than historically we have, because we have to have a watertight legal agreement with the customer that says, you cannot wriggle out of this. And you know, again, being a bit blunt, this is only so that Microsoft can declare to Wall Street, revenue up front to try and make their numbers look better.
- I mean, Microsoft have acknowledged that I think, you know, the NCE programme, which is the New Commerce Experience, which is this area where you lock your pricing in for the customer, which customers love that. That they know what their price is gonna be for either 12 months or 3 years, is good. But it's not very flexible and Microsoft-
- It's written from Microsoft's perspective, hundred percent.
- And all the way down. And it goes for every single Microsoft product. So you don't get that flexibility. And where some of the smaller value products probably wouldn't be such a risk, Dynamics probably being a higher ticket price, it means that, you know, it really accelerates that from a partner's point of view, that it stays.
- Do you have to do it for three years though?
- Yes.
- You can't do a 12 month?
- It's Bridge to Cloud.
- Not with Bridge to Cloud. The promotion is a three year-
- Obviously your NCE, you can do.
- And to be clear, Liam, you know, the partner's margin means that if one customer goes bust, you've gotta sell another five customers just to cover the cost of the one that's gone bust.
- Yeah. All I was gonna say is I agree with you, you know, there's reasons for Microsoft having this, locking people in makes sense. And if it's right for the customers, well it's good. They have acknowledged this and they are looking or they would like to, I think they would like to get this to a 12 month agreement.
- It's 18 month.
- Which would be sensible.
- 18 months we've been having this discussion about NCE now. I'm laughing currently when I'm hearing them talking about "We're partner orientated." I think there's a lot of people at Microsoft who would really sincerely like this to change, including all the Dynamics people that I've spoken to. But somebody way up in Microsoft designed it this way and says it can't be changed. So it's part of their core licencing programme.
- So what we're saying is, 'cause I thought there was a one year version as well.
- Not for Bridge to Cloud.
- Not for the promotion.
- There is for NCE. So if you were gonna buy the software today.
- Wait, wait, hey. Three letter acronym police.
- We've-
- So is NCE-
- With Bridge to Cloud, you can't do for a year, because you'd only get the benefit for a year. You'd only get the 40% discount for a year. So it wouldn't be worth doing.
- So if you're transitioning, then it's a three year sign up. If you were gonna buy the software from new, then you can do a
- 12 month.
- [Liz] An agreement to licence the group for 12 months.
- Yeah, so if let's say, partners don't offer the three year agreement, in effect, come June, there is no promotion?
- [Liz] Yes.
- [James] Correct.
- [Matthew] Wow.
- Yep.
- Unless the customer pays three years up front, which is probably the current answer for-
- Yep.
- Well that's, I mean that's been the answer from some people at Microsoft, that for-
- The tech, yeah.
- And some people at the distributors, about how you offer Bridge to Cloud 2 as a partner, risk free, is get them to pay upfront. But then when, you know, you take some of the multiples. If you're taking 40, 50 users on a Dynamics licence, okay? And even at a 40% off, and you times that by three years, well you take your enhancement plan value. That could quite easily be well into five figures annually. Times that by three, you know, you're suddenly paying that out. It's alright for the cash rich businesses. But actually we don't have a problem giving the credit to the cash rich businesses.
- Yeah, I was gonna say.
- It's the ones that are cash poor.
- Yeah, it's the ones that don't have that amount of cash to splash around.
- Don't forget as well, that doesn't guarantee that the customer wouldn't have to pay more. Because if they increase their user count, their enhancement plan value goes up. And so each year
- Yeah.
- Your Bridge to Cloud amount would increase. They've locked your pricing in per user.
- Yep.
- But if you add more users, then it goes up, so it-
- Yeah. So if you've paid for it three years in advance, then you'll almost have these like supplementary invoices, maybe on top of that.
- Yeah, or if Microsoft-
- Which is very complicated.
- Or if Microsoft keep adding an extra percent here and there to your enhancement plan renewal.
- I thought it was locked in for three years.
- No, no. You have to do it on the value of your enhancement plan. So if your enhancement plan increases.
- But the current, like- So if I sign up to Bridge to the Cloud 2, like now. So for, you know, 2023.
- If you can find a partner who will offer it.
- And then 2024, okay. That Microsoft put the enhancement plan percentage up to 18%.
- Which they've done.
- Then the Bridge to Cloud cost would increase, because of that or?
- No, no.
- Okay.
- No.
- Alright.
- But if you add, no, I don't think it does. No.
- I mean, this is-
- It did on Bridge to Cloud 1.
- Bridge to Cloud 1 was different though. Bridge to Cloud 1 was the-
- But this is where it's, I mean, again, being clear, I think this is insane. They've made it so fiendishly complicated, that every time you talk to somebody, you get a different answer.
- Yeah. I mean, you've got four people in here
- Even the so called experts.
- That have been, yeah. We have four people in here who've been doing it a long time and even we can't agree, so.
- And it's like, so how on earth is an end customer that deals this once in every 12 months, looks at it. How on earth are they supposed to understand what is right for their business when this is so complicated. So, I'm sorry whoever designed this within Microsoft, I know who that is, I won't name them. But I think, you know, and I understand that it's a compromise and they're restricted in terms of what the Microsoft systems will do and so on. But hang on, I've gotta say, uh-uh, fail, because this is just- And I suspect a lot of customers are just gonna go, you know what
- Go to market.
- I'll stick.
- Go to market.
- If I don't really understand the whole kind of, what it is and what the risk is, I'll stick in what I'm doing. And that's gonna be completely counterproductive to what Microsoft wants because they're gonna have customers who will say the risk free, I won't get fired or I won't get told off for doing what we've always done. I'll stay there. And that's, you know, that's what they're gonna do.
- Exactly what we don't want.
- They would, wouldn't they?
- So yeah, just get on the cloud migrate- So the cloud migration programme, which really conserves energy and that's really straightforward.
- They'll take that, 'cause that's straightforward.
- That is really straightforward.
- Understandable.
- It's just 40% discount.
- The Ts and Cs are-
- It's completely then unrelated to any increases in enhancement plan. It doesn't matter, you can add new users. It's just so much more straightforward.
- You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I wish Paul White would go back to Microsoft. Which is a really strange- For those who on the podcast who don't know who Paul White is, he's the guy who used to run Dynamics SMB at Microsoft. And actually for the last few years, he's been chair of our biggest competitor in the UK. So Paul is a guy I know well. But he came to, I think it was, it might have been Posner, I can't remember. But he introduced napkin pricing for NAF at the time, was it? Where there was just, you know, essentials and premium, and there was only four prices. So you could write it on the back of a napkin, as he termed it. And somebody at Microsoft needs to do exactly the same for the cloud migration programme. It needs to be so simple, which is what the one we're about to lose is. Because unless it's that simple, volume is gonna be, we're gonna struggle to get volume. And that's, you know, that's what they want. That's what we want. But we're blocked by silly programmes.
- The other thing they announced about perpetual licencing we should say, and I've checked it, so the dates are right now. You won't be able to buy perpetual licencing on a new sale from October 25.
- [James] Yeah.
- So if you've already got perpetual, you can add users and bits and pieces to it continually. But if somebody wanted perpetual-
- That's interesting, 'cause that's the same, that's-
- But nobody would, I mean-
- That's the same date as end of support for BC 14.
- Oh yeah.
- I'm just a bit like, I wonder if it's-
- I mean, to be fair, when's the last time we sold a perpetual licence?
- Yeah, it's very rare. It's like one in a blue moon and it's normally very specific if someone wants to have that.
- I mean there is-
- It's one in three or four years that I can think of.
- So the one instance I can think of is where, you know, you've got a group of companies and they sell off one of the subsidiaries or there's a management buyout or whatever. And they need to split up the systems. And ineffectively, they want to take one of the companies out of the group and put it on a standalone. And it's gonna be situations like that where that is problematic. I don't see, you know. I don't see that anybody coming to Dynamics from scratch. You know, my advice-
- You just have to buy the new licence.
- My advice for ages would be buy SAS. But if they are on-premise now and their ownership structure changes.
- But they can still have-
- I wonder whether Microsoft are gonna have exceptions for that.
- Yeah, but they can still have on-premise.
- You can still do BC on-premise.
- They can have on-premise, it's just they can only licence it on a subscription.
- Oh, dual use.
- So in that example you've just given-
- Yeah, but that subscription licence, the dual use, you can only get the current version. So if they're on like, NAV 2018 or BC-
- Yeah but we can't cut one of those anyway. So even if we bought a new perpetual licence today, we can only cut it
- Yeah true.
- For the latest versions.
- So you've gotta stay on the cycle.
- So anybody who's got a group, you know, and I saw a stat yesterday that said that 40% of Business Central implementations have some aspect of multi-company international or some, you know, multiple companies in their setup. All of those, any management balance, any change in ownership structure is blocked as of today then.
- Well if they're a big enough company, they should be up to date anyway, so.
- Yes. Nice.
- Well that doesn't follow Matt, because the bigger companies are slower to get up to date than some of the smaller ones.
- If they've already got NAV 2015 and they're out of support, they've got bigger concerns.
- [James] They've got problems.
- Yeah. It's true. So.
- That's one of the reasons you should keep it up to date.
- There's some other-
- There is some good news that might-
- Yeah. Give us some good news, Liam. Yeah, go on.
- So the good news-
- Licencing podcast with good news? Ah, pick your ears up.
- Let's finish on a high.
- So they also allowed for like the Dynamics family. So we predominantly talk about BC in our podcast. We do do another one around CRM I'll call it, with Jason. But what was always a pain if we were looking to sell a complete solution where the customer needed both, was you pay for your BC licences and then you had to pay for your CRM licences. And they were both, you know, quite a high ticket price. They announced probably a couple of years ago now, maybe a little bit longer, that you could have an attached licence. So you could attach a CRM licence, if you already had a BC licence, and they would give you a really nice discount on that.
- But.
- But you could only get the more limited version of CRM.
- Professional.
- Which was sales professional.
- Yep.
- And there's loads of stuff that we showcase, Microsoft showcasing, "Oh, I want that." You need to go to the enterprise version of the software.
- I mean, professional was such a hobbled, because they didn't- There's two ways they can kind of restrict licencing. They can restrict it by restricting the number of users or kind of the number of the size that it grows, the size of the data or whatever. And they can chop the functionality. And they did some chops on functionality for professional, which just meant that nobody could use it for long. I think it was difficult to stick on, it was difficult to implement, you know, even sales enhancement without hitting the boundaries of what professional would cope with.
- So they've obviously acknowledged that and they've now allowed to attach the sales enterprise. I think it was £16, rather than the 80.
- $20 I heard, yeah.
- So 16, 17 pounds.
- Compared to?
- Compared to 80 something dollars.
- It was $15. So that would've been £12 or £13 attachment.
- Yeah, but if you bought enterprise.
- Oh. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yep.
- The list price of buying enterprise. You're around the 70 to 80.
- But that's a huge saving.
- So it's a massive saving.
- It's a big saving.
- Now. So if I've got NAV 2015 on an old perpetual basis and I want to implement sales enterprise.
- You can't. Well you gotta licence it separately, because you can't attach to an old perpetual licence.
- Right. So, but I could go on the cloud migration promo.
- 'Til June.
- As long as I do that before June.
- Yes.
- See, I'm just trying to tie it all together. And then I could have the attached licence.
- You can attach, yeah.
- So you have to be on a-
- You have to be on a Business Central subscription licence.
- On a Business Central subscription licence.
- And it's worse than that.
- Not a perpetual licence.
- [Liam] Correct.
- To be able to take advantage of the attached licence.
- And it's worse than that because-
- We're finishing on good news, James.
- No, no, no, this is good news. But there is a wrinkle here, okay. That you need to understand.
- [Matthew] A wrinkle
- A kink.
- Okay. So you've got, you know, you've got sales enterprise, say. That you pay, which is how much Liam?
- 80 odd pounds.
- Okay. And you've got Business Central essential, which is how much?
- 60 pounds now, roughly.
- Okay. So Microsoft say you attach to the highest price licence. So in that, you'd have to pay 80 odd pounds for sales. And you would then get, for your 16
- BC essentials.
- For your BC essentials licence, you would pay £16.
- £16, yeah.
- As an attach, because the attach has to be to the highest value.
- What about if you're on a promo?
- If you're on premium.
- If you're on premium.
- What if you're on a promo?
- I don't know
- Mind blown!
- If you're on a promo, I think it's the retail price of the biggest one that you're attaching.
- Yeah, I think it would have to be.
- My understanding of it is. So.
- So can you have both?
- You can have both. As in what, essentials?
- So if you're on a promo, if you're on a cloud migration promo or a Bridge to Cloud.
- Yes.
- Can you have the attached licence as well? So basically have multiple-
- Yes you can.
- I don't know about Bridge to Cloud, but we'd have to check, but-
- So, okay. Just, just.
- Because when we place the order onto the NCE, New Commerce Experience system, in effect we have to say, for the attached licence, we have to say what did attaches do? And that has to be on-
- Yeah, it's like a lot of promotions that you, whatever you buy and you're going for the top, the higher price and you get-
- [Liz] Yeah, it's still a good deal.
- So, yeah, if you're on business essentials premium, then at the-
- Can I just clarify? If you've got Business Central premium, then your sales enterprise can be attached to that. Okay. Because premium is higher than sales. It has a higher cost, retail cost, than sales enterprise. If you have Business Central essentials, you pay full price for sales enterprise, and then you can do your essentials as an attached licence to that.
- Right. Okay, I understand. Okay. So.
- I'll get some-
- What happens if you're on a three year agreement with that business essential? Can it bring the price down?
- Yeah, well, pft.
- So my next question-
- I think I'm with James. It's on the list.
- Boom.
- I think it's on the list price, but they haven't actually put- We should caveat this, that they haven't published the actual licence pay agreement details on the website yet.
- Well they announ-
- They announced it at a conference
- [James] A couple of conferences.
- With some headlines. But until you have a read the- As we've just found out, looking at Bridge to Cloud 2,
- I think it comes in-
- Where I've got 12 pages of details.
- From memory.
- So I've got a customer.
- I was at that conference, from memory, it comes in from July the 1st.
- Yeah, so I'm sure something's gonna be published.
- Which is Microsoft's new financial year.
- I guarantee that I'll have at least one customer ask me this. Already got BC licences, already got CRM licences. Their current agreement NCE was on a 12 month, it comes to an end in July.
- Do they, so do-
- Is it new customers only or can they have an attached licence?
- No, I think when you, it probably would be the end of your agreement, just knowing how NCE works.
- So, if you've got existing BC and CRM together.
- Yeah. You'll be able to take advantage of this.
- You can take advantage of this. Which is brilliant for our existing customers. Really, really good. And it might, yes. Yeah, most will be able to upgrade either on the-
- And actually, you know, for some of them-
- [Liam] Sales essential to enterprise.
- I think I need to get my calculator out again, but.
- Wait 'til a PDF comes out with the details.
- I mean, you know, on Bridge to Cloud, if I do the Bridge to Cloud migration, get my 40% off.
- The cloud migration promo.
- Sorry, cloud migration programme. And get my 40% off and I'm essentials now, can I change to premium?
- I don't know if I wanna say this 'cause we're on a podcast and it feels like we're getting more confused. The transition promo is CSP, not NCE. Now if the new attach is for NCE agreements only, then the promo won't work. It's been going through the back of my mind for the last five minutes.
- Yeah, that's true.
- Yeah, that is true.
- Didn't wanna throw anything else in. So I don't know. Until we see the details, I don't know.
- Okay. But it's worth exploring.
- If you're on normal pricing, then you'll be okay.
- This is where, you know, for each customer, I think, in fact everything we've talked about as well, we can give these broad brushstrokes of advice and say you can take advantage of that, but actually-
- Give us a call.
- Yeah. Talk to your account manager.
- And actually, it's not that-
- And let us work out.
- Actually don't. You know, give us a call and tell us what you want to do, but then have sympathy for us, because if the last half hour has taught any customer it's anything, okay. It's wow, we-
- We don't know what we're talking about.
- I mean, this is why
- Yeah and for those of you-
- Sometimes it can take days or weeks to get clarification. Because going to somebody at Microsoft and getting them to clarify. They don't know.
- Yeah.
- Is my impression.
- That's very true. That's very true.
- And so you can't send it again.
- Also customers, you should know, we do not get mega margins on this.
- No.
- This is not how a business will grow, by-
- It's, I mean- It is getting to the point where it's kind of like, do you really want to do this? Because Microsoft, if anybody at Microsoft's listening to this, you are putting your partners in such a position where some of us are going, "Licencing. Wow." I mean, it's a pain in the arse, to be blunt. And it's so complicated and every customer, you are having to, you're kind of, you're putting the quote out there and you're going, "I really hope that's right." Because it's really not easy to be a hundred percent certain that all the ifs, buts and maybes are covered in every situation. It's really tough. So customers please have some sympathy for partners, because if they're taking a few weeks to get the quotation back to you, it's 'cause probably nobody is being clear to them about exactly what the terms and conditions are. And they're super difficult.
- I've got a question.
- And if you contravene one of the Ts and Cs on this, Microsoft have zero flexibility about what they will do.
- I've got a question. Which one of the four of us goes to prison, if we get all this wrong?
- Well we don't. I mean, you know, it's not criminal, what it is. It just, it can be mega expensive because as Liam said, the margins are super small. Microsoft has zero sympathy for a partner who gets any of this wrong. So, you know, we potentially, we've gotta go out and sell 15, 16 customers to recover the one where we got it wrong and ended up having to foot the bill. And as soon as you hit commit on that web page for the order, you're pretty much in, you have zero chance to undo.
- Yeah, you get a few days. But you wouldn't have uncovered you've got it wrong within a week, which is what they give you to.
- Come on, you tick the "I accept the terms and conditions."
- Yeah, I know.
- Of course, assuming you read them.
- And by the way, you know-
- I think we accept the terms and conditions.
- Microsoft's got so many lawyers that in effect, your chances of getting out of it are zero. So.
- I'd love to get someone from Microsoft on. You know, one of the licence specialists. I know you know some of the team, whether-
- [James] They won't.
- Do you think they'll dare?
- Well if they wanna come on and explain how they've done that, it would be great. I think that would be useful to get from their side.
- I mean, they don't turn up to the conferences, Liam. They don't meet the partners in private behind closed doors anymore, because I think they know that. Somebody, you know, Satcher needs to be brave enough to rip this up and say, start again. He did that with NCE. That was the whole idea with NCE. But the problem is they involved more lawyers and less partner focused people from the beginning. And the lawyers just wrote it, "Oh, well close this loop, close this loop, this will be good for our numbers for Wall Street." And it was all focused. So the idea that the licencing programme is partner focused now is for the birds.
- Well we were gonna finish on good news.
- The attached licence, if you qualify for it, the attached licence and being able to have enterprise is great news. And that's the first, you know, a lot of customers will take. Even some people who have both products right now, should be able to take advantage of that. And you know, it's another reason for you're up to date. 'Cause if you're on SAS, chances are you're on some programme that ought to sooner or later, by the time your term ends and all of this, will be able to get you and potentially you're gonna save quite a bit of money. For the first time, Microsoft are truly giving something where they reward loyalty to Dynamics in one area, with cheaper licencing costs in another.
- Yeah.
- I think the underlying message, I would say, it has been, you know, difficult, if anyone's made it through this long.
- Yeah, I was gonna say, well done.
- But I think, you know, Liz and James said this a couple of times. Get in contact. We have to look at each individual case to work out what we can take advantage of, where we can benefit from Microsoft, where we can put you on the right promotion. But each one is individual and you know, once we do the financials and get Liz's calculator out, that's when we can tell you, this is the best way to go.
- I think so.
- It's hard to have a general answer.
- And some pesky work, so actually if you're thinking of going to the cloud, do it in the next three weeks.
- Yeah. Think of the June deadline.
- And also, it's a real shame, you know, the cloud version now is so great.
- The products are so good.
- The product is so good. It is getting better and better, that this should not be a barrier for people to be able to go there.
- Yeah.
- And to be able to
- Well you you were telling me about that customer yesterday that migrated to the cloud last weekend. And like, how smoothly has that gone?
- The migration process is straightforward, you know, the update process is manageable now. You know, you are getting constant improvements. It isn't-
- The performance is there.
- It's a great piece of work. Do not let this be a barrier. Talk to us. Let's work out the best way to move the licence.
- 'Cause actually the simplest licencing is for SAS, once you're on, I would say.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- You know, it is. If anybody who's only ever been SAS is listening to this, forget all of it, because actually-
- Apart from the attach, apart from the attached licence.
- Attached.
- The attached, yes. It's all good news.
- But everything else has been the transition to get you from perpetual to stuff.
- It's all the legacy customers.
- Yeah. Microsoft have not made a great job.
- Who've got the complication.
- You get some power platform licences thrown in as well.
- Yeah, and like, you know-
- Just thinking about it, if you've got-
- 8 is getting more and more powerful.
- If you've got CRM enterprise licences already.
- [Liam] Yep.
- And you'll be on cloud.
- If you're a CRM user.
- And you've got, hang on. And you're on an older version of NAV, you might be better off not-
- Migrating.
- Not using a promo
- Just taking the attach.
- And just buying an attach. So again, that's another option that we need to bring in. So yeah. Just, each individual customer is going to be different, but, I think-
- And actually if you-
- I will make it my mission to make sure that each customer has the best deal that they can have
- But that-
- With the flexibility that they need. What we don't wanna be doing is tying people into something that they're going to regret.
- [Liam] Yeah.
- In 12 months time. So we need to ensure a certain level of flexibility, and there's a trade off then, isn't there? Between- It's like anything, it's like buying an airfare, isn't it? If you want it flexible, you're gonna pay probably a little bit more for it. So we need to assess that and work through that with each individual customer.
- I mean, there's a whole new market, isn't there? You know, customers out there who are using DoneEx, CRM, sales engagement, call it service management and so on. You can attach Business Central now for £16 a month.
- Which is significantly cheaper than any promotion.
- Is it per user?
- Yeah.
- So do you have to match the number of users?
- If they've got on their user account, on as your AD, if they've got a CRM profes-, no, CRM enterprise licence, then to attach a BC licence is £16 a month.
- And what's the user level?
- Do you have to match the CRM users, match the amount of users you got on BC?
- No, I don't believe you do.
- So don't you just go and buy one enterprise licence and then you get BC?
- No, because you could only attach one BC licence.
- Well why are you always looking for a loophole, Matthew Woodhouse?
- [Matthew] Well, that was the question.
- No, no, no. You can only to an attached licence where the users, the named user, already has the premium licence.
- So to be clear on that though, so if you've only got 10 CRM enterprise licences, and you've got 30 BC, only 10 groups?
- No, you-
- Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it does depend.
- Only 10 of those can be at that price.
- It depends on the balance, doesn't it?
- Well, and it has to be the same 10 as have CRM.
- The same 10 people.
- Yeah. But you can have then another 20, just normal BC licence.
- 'Cause you go and pay the full price.
- Which you pay the higher price.
- Which is why each customer will be different, so I think-
- So licencing optimization, you know, that's where partners really have a massive opportunity to add value, don't they? Because anybody who's listened to the last 45 minutes, understands that actually partners really need to know their stuff and stay current with this because every month there's another announcement, another licencing guide comes out. And it's almost partners need to have somebody dedicated just to understanding the kind of complexity of this and kind of, and that's where, you know, they should be reviewing every customer's arrangements, at least every 12 months to say, is this still right for this customer?
- You don't wanna be on like a 12 month NCE agreement, which is what we hopefully covered already, and then find you've suddenly rolled into another 12 month and you've missed out.
- Yeah.
- On a better option, so you should have that in your calendar to review, you know, probably 90 days before, just in case again-
- In the same way as, you know, your insurance agent gives you kind of, well this is the insurance you need now. And you know, that evolves on, and your accountant comes and says, well the tax rules have changed and this is what you should be doing. In effect, your systems partner should be looking at your licencing and going, right, this is, you know, I think that given what you you need, you know, what changes do you want? But also, and foresee, and advising you correctly around your licencing. You know, I think that's a big part of where partners add value these days. The difficulty is that the complexity of it makes it really difficult to do. And you know, I've already made the point several times, the margins make it all so difficult to justify having that dedicated person. But if you don't have them, you're very unlikely to stay on top of it.
- So, I think we're about done.
- [Liz] Yes.
- It's been an intense one.
- I need a drink after that, I've gotta be honest.
- Yes.
- Yeah, it's a shame it's 10 o'clock in the morning, Liam.
- Can we have a shot of whiskey now please? It's like-
- Thank you for staying, if you've stayed all the way. You might need to go and watch it again to understand it fully.
- We should have a special word now and if anyone can send us that special word.
- You know where, you know-
- It means they've gone through and we'll send them a prize.
- Sometimes you get the documentaries on the telly and they come up with the end with a helpline of if you've been affected by this podcasting.
- Traumatised.
- Ring this number. You know, the reason why out of this.
- I'll be the first one to ring I think.
- So I think in summary, if you want to understand it more, how it affects you, just give us a call. Speak to your accountant, make sure the money's there.
- [Liz] Yep.
- See what we can do. Thank you for listening.
- Thanks guys.
- Thank you.
- There has, yeah. There's been quite a few announcements by Microsoft in relation to perpetual licences, which is your old way. I know you were saying we should probably go through some of the acronyms, so we will do that in a moment. But Microsoft has made some announcements around that and around some of the promotions that get you from a traditional perpetual licence, when you used to buy your licence, to the new subscription model that we're all heading in that direction.
- Yeah, the change has been, old days, used to go and pay a big chunk of money for a licence and then you'd pay every year a maintenance or other names for that.
- Yeah. You might know it as your enhancement plan.
- Enhancement plan.
- Or your EP.
- EP.
- Or BREP used to be another one.
- Yeah.
- Business ready enhancement plan. So that's your annual maintenance, which was a percentage of your licence value.
- And then obviously it's now moved to subscription licencing. Paying per user per month.
- Yep.
- Obviously there's been a change from, there used to be concurrent licencing, so you'd pay for 20 users and you could have up to 20 people log on.
- Any 20 users at one time, yeah.
- You could have 50 users registered on the system, but only 20 can log on. Now it's all named users that, you know, I've got 20 users, I have to buy 20 licences.
- Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So everything's named user, so it's tied to alias, to a named user. So it's a bit more restrictive, but you have the ability to scale up and down if you want to pay for the privilege of doing that monthly or annually, that's your choice. But yes, I think most people are getting used to subscription model. You do it with Office. Dynamics, it's happening probably for the last four years now, three or four years, it's really been on the journey.
- More than that, if anything, yeah.
- Probably. But we've still got a bunch of customers which we'll talk about, that are still on that perpetual licence, that still pay their enhancement plan.
- And in all fairness, paid 16% for many, many years.
- Yep. Big investment in that product.
- Of their original, of their current licence value.
- Protected value, which is what they paid potentially 15 years ago.
- Yep.
- So obviously, you know, inflation.
- Well it was what the list price was, wasn't it? Because it, you know, they may have had a discount at the time.
- That's true.
- But that didn't count for the protected licence.
- Yeah, so your enhancement plan is based on the list price of the software that you've got. So if you've added to it over the years, then your enhancement plan will have increased. For that reason-
- The list price at the time you bought it, not the list price now.
- Yeah, but it's always been 16% for a long time, as long as I can remember. 16%. So last year they put it up to 17%.
- Which was, I mean, that wasn't a 1% increase. It was an increase in 1% from 16 to 17%.
- Yeah.
- But in terms of what you're paying, it was what, 6% or something?
- Yeah. And then again in October, it's gonna go up another percent.
- So it'll now be 18%.
- Which is another 6%.
- And that's the first announcement that Microsoft have made really, that-
- And do you think-
- Well, if we're seeing-
- Next year it'll go again, another percent? Do you think it's gonna, that web licence and software is going to get more expensive?
- We've always spoke about this. How did Microsoft start to leverage people on the perpetual to the subscription? And as you said, it was always stayed at 16%. Very predictable. If that starts to become 17%, 18% and that trend continues, it's a good reason for people to say, "Well, I should look at subscription and see if it works out at-"
- Okay. So why should our customers continue to pay their enhancement plan? What do they get for that?
- Well, that's the question because, you know, you look at a lot of the, and look, we've got hundreds of customers who still pay enhancement plan, haven't we? So that's the normal thing that you know, that the older customers do, the customers from five years plus back, that's what they're doing. But a lot of those are on versions, you know, BC 14 is probably the most prevalent version, but there's a lot of older versions than that.
- Yeah.
- And all of those are no longer supported. So if there was a change to, you know, regulatory requirement.
- Although we've lost customers that were on perpetual licences on versions that are supported.
- Yes.
- So if you're on a supported version and you're paying enhancement plan, then that's giving you access to new versions.
- So if there was a change to the way that was calculated.
- To changes. Yeah.
- Or making tax digital and-
- All the legislative changes, the new versions, you're getting access to that.
- You can still add users, you can still add objects importantly.
- Yeah.
- So if you want to do some customization, you need some tables.
- Well, you can do that to non-supported versions as well.
- Yeah.
- [Matthew] Yes.
- But your enhancement plan is covering all your new releases. And so if you're up to date and you're keeping up to date and you intend to do an update every couple of years, which probably on an on-premise or a perpetual would do, then paying your enhancement plan isn't-
- Every couple of years is probably a little bit of a, most of them are upgraded on a four, five year cycle, aren't they?
- Not once you're on BC and you're on the 22, 23, 24 cycle.
- No, absolutely.
- I'm talking about.
- But the majority of the people paying enhancement plan are probably, you know, that's probably 10, 20% who are on a BC, post BC 14 and on premise. That's an exception.
- There's a big chunk of our customers still on BC 14, which is still in support until 2025.
- Yep.
- So they've still got that covered 'til 2025.
- [James] Okay.
- Is that the right date? Yeah. October 2025.
- Five. Yep.
- Yeah.
- So they've got a year and a half.
- So they've still got, they're still in support.
- A year and a few months left. Two years.
- They need to pay their enhancement plan. But if you're on NAV 2015, 2016, NAV 2017.
- 2018. Anything before BC 14.
- You're out of support, so you won't get any access to any updates, any bug fixes.
- You get security updates though, don't you?
- You might get a security update, but not-
- Very, very rare. We've had one this year.
- We've had one.
- [Matthew] Which was the first time in a long time.
- One in actually a decade.
- If there's any legislative changes, like the making tax digital changes, you won't get any of that and-
- But, stay calm before anybody gets too upset because, you know, and I think we're no different from most of the partners out there, that actually it's the partners who provide 99.9% of the support and the fixes. So if it, you know, what has always worked will continue to always work. As a partner, we can pretty much guarantee that.
- Yeah, but that's paid for by their support fee, not by their enhancement plan.
- Correct. Yes.
- So we had this question, didn't we? As to whether these customers on these older versions, why pay their enhancement plan?
- What do they get for their enhancement plan?
- So I went and got my calculator out and
- Did the maths.
- Tried to work out. And it does vary customer to customer, but essentially if you are planning on upgrading to Business Central, whether it's online or on premise in the future, then paying your enhancement plan will allow you to take advantage of the promotions that are available to do that, which we'll talk about later. So what also, if you don't pay your enhancement plan, you cannot add any users, you cannot any objects, you cannot add anything to your licence. So if something fundamental changes in your business, you do an acquisition, you do a merging, you do-
- You're locked.
- Then you are stuck. You can't buy anymore.
- You're locked to what you have now.
- Yeah. So you can't do further development because you can't buy objects, you can't buy users. So I've done some numbers, which I think we've published into a blog. And I think that if you are planning to upgrade in the future and you are still actively using your system and developing it, you need to continue paying your enhancement plan regardless of the version.
- In the near future.
- In the near, because it's giving you the ability to continue adding objects, adding users, the security that if something changes in your business, your software can adapt to it. But also giving you access to the promotions. You will- The saving on the promotion is the same as kind of not paying the enhancement plan. So I've done all the numbers and we'll publish them so they can be seen. But I think-
- So I think the clear recommendation from us-
- My recommendation, my personal recommendation would most definitely be to continue to pay, unless you are coming off Business Central. Unless you've been acquired and you're gonna come off it anyway. But even then.
- Let's be very clear about this, Liz. So if you think that you are likely to upgrade in the next three years, keep paying your enhancement plan.
- A hundred percent, yeah.
- If four to five years, you're probably better off, because of the flexibility in terms of being able to add objects and all the rest of it.
- Yep.
- And as part of the upgrade process, unless you're planning on scrapping everything and starting again and doing a complete reimplementation, you will probably need some of that flexibility. So probably, if in the next five years, you think you will upgrade to a later version of Business Central, pay your enhancement plan.
- [Liz] Yeah.
- If it's beyond five years and you have no plan to ever upgrade, ever, then probably paying your enhancement plan, you are not going to get anything for it. And that's probably where it should be a situation. Now, if that's the situation you're in and you're saying, I'm not gonna update for the next five years, I would say, well, hmm, that might be your plan, but you know, that might not work out because actually something might change in terms of regulatory changes or so on, that doesn't give you that option. And we could have a debate about that. I don't think that's a very good strategy, given the pace of change and the pace of improvement in the product and I think that-
- Yeah, I think the licence cost is almost irrelevant to that description.
- Yeah, it's like-
- It's about, it's a different thing.
- Is that a good thing for your business to not update over that side.
- The licence cost isn't prohibitive when it comes to upgrading anyway, is it? It's not the cost. The majority of the cost will be the services in that lump anyway. And whether you do that now or in five years, the enhancement plan is almost irrelevant.
- Five years is a long time. 'Cause you know, if you're then restricting yourself from adding users and objects. You know, okay, I may not be upgrading, but you can't say that you don't need-
- Yeah.
- Yep.
- You definitely need a plan B.
- My recommendation to our customers apart from in some very, very specific circumstances will be to continue to pay it. But to bear in mind that it potentially will increase again. And that-
- Well if Microsoft keeps sticking.
- Actually, being on an old version is a risk to your business.
- If Microsoft keep increasing this percentage too much more, then you know, that three to five years is gonna come down to one to two.
- Yeah.
- And then it's very quickly gonna tip into a situation where you go, you know what, just cut it and start again as and when you upgrade. So I think Microsoft have gotta be very careful, you know, and that was my feedback is like, okay, once, twice, I get the fact that that wasn't a price increase for a very long time. But you know, people are doing the maths now, whereas they didn't used to. And that for me is a bit of a, should be a red flag to Microsoft, that you can't keep milking this particular cow forever.
- It was a bit of an insurance policy, wasn't it? People took it out because of the reasons you said and it's still, as you said, it's still for the majority of people the right thing to do. But if you are, have no plans to do anything with-
- Okay, so on the positive, if you have paid your enhancement plan and you're on a older version, there are promotions available.
- [Liam] Yep.
- For you to be able to move to the version of cloud, so there's two promotions. So there's the cloud migration programme.
- [Matthew] Yep.
- I'm trying to mind the acronyms. The cloud migration programme is really, really simple. That just gives you 40% discount on online licences for three years. So that's-
- After the three years?
- Then it goes to retail price, whatever that will be at the time. And they're, you know, they're available. Those prices are available. I won't give them now because I might get them wrong, but-
- But that programme is only available for how long?
- Right, that programme is only available 'til the end of June. Actually, it's available 'til June, I'm not sure whether that's the beginning of June or the end of June, so we'll check that.
- [Matthew] Yeah.
- But that programme is coming to an end. But that is the most straightforward. You will also have some flexibility in moving your number of users you've got, although you won't be able to bring it down, I don't think, but you can certainly add users and it is
- At the promotion price as well.
- Yeah, it is a significant discount.
- And can you do that if let's say, I'm thinking of upgrading in 18 months?
- Yeah, you could, because it gives you dual use. So it allows you to still run a perpetual version, sorry, an on-premise version.
- [Matthew] Yep.
- As well. So yes, you could do, you could do, but I would probably only take advantage of that promotion if
- You've got a plan to do it.
- If you plan to do it in the future.
- If you have a serious plan and you're part way through it, I would say, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And that one's been around a while.
- That's been around a while and it comes to an end in June.
- It does come to an end-
- [Liz] At some point in June.
- So it's a 40% discount on what the list price is. And the list price has gone up in the last few months as well, I probably should say that.
- [Liz] Yeah.
- So subscription has increased.
- All Microsoft products.
- [Liam] All Microsoft products, yep.
- Yeah, so it's not a fixed price for three years.
- Any cloud product.
- 'Cause if the subscription price goes up, the retail price, then it will go up, but it's 40% discount. So it's a significant saving and you know, if you're going to do it in the next three years, I would get onto that plan. I think that's gonna save people the most. Whenever I had my calculator out, that was the best promotion and also the least complex.
- And it's simplest to understand. Yes.
- Yes.
- Because wow.
- Which then brings us on to Bridge to the Cloud 2.
- Yep.
- Which is the promotion that is now available, which obviously replaced Bridge to the Cloud 1. So Bridge to the Cloud, the sequel.
- Which was a sequel-
- I'd like to say new and improved, but I'm not convinced.
- We're gonna have more than "Fast and Furious" franchise on this, aren't we? You just know it.
- Yeah, so Bridge to the Cloud 2 is available now and will be available beyond the June deadline for the cloud migration programme. But it is slightly more complex.
- Slightly?
- Slightly more complex and it-
- Your definition of "slightly" and mine are in different places, I have to say.
- And also for us as a partner.
- And for the customer, there is a-
- Yeah, and for the-
- There's some more restrictions.
- Not as straightforward. Yeah.
- Around that. Bridge to the Cloud 1, you could renew it every year up to a maximum of three years. This is a three year fixed. So once you're on it, it does fix your price. Okay. So they do fix that. But you cannot cancel it, you cannot roll back. You end up going to the cloud at the end of it. So there is no flexibility on it in that point of view. You sign up, it's three years.
- There's no going back.
- Even if you want to get rid of BC over that time, you're gonna have to pay it. There's no get out clause on this.
- Does it lock you to the partner?
- It locks you into the partner that you're transacting this with. You could move across the support-
- So unscrupulous partners are gonna try and flog this because they've got guaranteed business.
- Well I think the partner needs to look at it as well. I think most partners that are offering this would have a new agreement for end users to sign because the responsibility is with the partner as well.
- Yeah. I mean, just to be clear to all the end users out there, your partner is gonna have to pay Microsoft, regardless of whether you pay them.
- Absolutely.
- So you can have a legal dispute, you can go bust.
- Yep.
- I mean if you go into receivership, your partner is still gonna have to pay them.
- Yeah.
- And I've spoken, you know, I've seen some of these where the calculation was that the total liability that the partner was taking was close to a million quid and kind of, you know,
- And some partners-
- Potentially some partners are going for the bigger licences, actually we're not prepared to take on that potential liability.
- Yeah. Or you get the customer to pay up front, which is no real benefit to the customer apart from locking the pricing.
- Yeah, I mean- So I think, you know-
- But they get the discount still there?
- They do.
- From a Tecman perspective, we need to credit check our customers to make sure that they're gonna be around in two and a half years time to pay that subscription.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I, you know, I'll be very clear, I've said to Microsoft. Suddenly Microsoft are making the partners do credit insurance on the customers and for the organisation that's got a very large bank balance, that seems not very partner orientated.
- But a three year credit check isn't realistic, 'cause that's a long time.
- Yeah, I was gonna say a lot can change in three years.
- A lot can change in that three years.
- 12 months maybe, but.
- Exactly, yeah. Too right.
- Three years.
- So as a partner, we've still got some work to do as to how we-
- [Liam] Offer that.
- How we offer it. What options we get if-
- Well it also means that, you know, we have to get more lawyers involved than historically we have, because we have to have a watertight legal agreement with the customer that says, you cannot wriggle out of this. And you know, again, being a bit blunt, this is only so that Microsoft can declare to Wall Street, revenue up front to try and make their numbers look better.
- I mean, Microsoft have acknowledged that I think, you know, the NCE programme, which is the New Commerce Experience, which is this area where you lock your pricing in for the customer, which customers love that. That they know what their price is gonna be for either 12 months or 3 years, is good. But it's not very flexible and Microsoft-
- It's written from Microsoft's perspective, hundred percent.
- And all the way down. And it goes for every single Microsoft product. So you don't get that flexibility. And where some of the smaller value products probably wouldn't be such a risk, Dynamics probably being a higher ticket price, it means that, you know, it really accelerates that from a partner's point of view, that it stays.
- Do you have to do it for three years though?
- Yes.
- You can't do a 12 month?
- It's Bridge to Cloud.
- Not with Bridge to Cloud. The promotion is a three year-
- Obviously your NCE, you can do.
- And to be clear, Liam, you know, the partner's margin means that if one customer goes bust, you've gotta sell another five customers just to cover the cost of the one that's gone bust.
- Yeah. All I was gonna say is I agree with you, you know, there's reasons for Microsoft having this, locking people in makes sense. And if it's right for the customers, well it's good. They have acknowledged this and they are looking or they would like to, I think they would like to get this to a 12 month agreement.
- It's 18 month.
- Which would be sensible.
- 18 months we've been having this discussion about NCE now. I'm laughing currently when I'm hearing them talking about "We're partner orientated." I think there's a lot of people at Microsoft who would really sincerely like this to change, including all the Dynamics people that I've spoken to. But somebody way up in Microsoft designed it this way and says it can't be changed. So it's part of their core licencing programme.
- So what we're saying is, 'cause I thought there was a one year version as well.
- Not for Bridge to Cloud.
- Not for the promotion.
- There is for NCE. So if you were gonna buy the software today.
- Wait, wait, hey. Three letter acronym police.
- We've-
- So is NCE-
- With Bridge to Cloud, you can't do for a year, because you'd only get the benefit for a year. You'd only get the 40% discount for a year. So it wouldn't be worth doing.
- So if you're transitioning, then it's a three year sign up. If you were gonna buy the software from new, then you can do a
- 12 month.
- [Liz] An agreement to licence the group for 12 months.
- Yeah, so if let's say, partners don't offer the three year agreement, in effect, come June, there is no promotion?
- [Liz] Yes.
- [James] Correct.
- [Matthew] Wow.
- Yep.
- Unless the customer pays three years up front, which is probably the current answer for-
- Yep.
- Well that's, I mean that's been the answer from some people at Microsoft, that for-
- The tech, yeah.
- And some people at the distributors, about how you offer Bridge to Cloud 2 as a partner, risk free, is get them to pay upfront. But then when, you know, you take some of the multiples. If you're taking 40, 50 users on a Dynamics licence, okay? And even at a 40% off, and you times that by three years, well you take your enhancement plan value. That could quite easily be well into five figures annually. Times that by three, you know, you're suddenly paying that out. It's alright for the cash rich businesses. But actually we don't have a problem giving the credit to the cash rich businesses.
- Yeah, I was gonna say.
- It's the ones that are cash poor.
- Yeah, it's the ones that don't have that amount of cash to splash around.
- Don't forget as well, that doesn't guarantee that the customer wouldn't have to pay more. Because if they increase their user count, their enhancement plan value goes up. And so each year
- Yeah.
- Your Bridge to Cloud amount would increase. They've locked your pricing in per user.
- Yep.
- But if you add more users, then it goes up, so it-
- Yeah. So if you've paid for it three years in advance, then you'll almost have these like supplementary invoices, maybe on top of that.
- Yeah, or if Microsoft-
- Which is very complicated.
- Or if Microsoft keep adding an extra percent here and there to your enhancement plan renewal.
- I thought it was locked in for three years.
- No, no. You have to do it on the value of your enhancement plan. So if your enhancement plan increases.
- But the current, like- So if I sign up to Bridge to the Cloud 2, like now. So for, you know, 2023.
- If you can find a partner who will offer it.
- And then 2024, okay. That Microsoft put the enhancement plan percentage up to 18%.
- Which they've done.
- Then the Bridge to Cloud cost would increase, because of that or?
- No, no.
- Okay.
- No.
- Alright.
- But if you add, no, I don't think it does. No.
- I mean, this is-
- It did on Bridge to Cloud 1.
- Bridge to Cloud 1 was different though. Bridge to Cloud 1 was the-
- But this is where it's, I mean, again, being clear, I think this is insane. They've made it so fiendishly complicated, that every time you talk to somebody, you get a different answer.
- Yeah. I mean, you've got four people in here
- Even the so called experts.
- That have been, yeah. We have four people in here who've been doing it a long time and even we can't agree, so.
- And it's like, so how on earth is an end customer that deals this once in every 12 months, looks at it. How on earth are they supposed to understand what is right for their business when this is so complicated. So, I'm sorry whoever designed this within Microsoft, I know who that is, I won't name them. But I think, you know, and I understand that it's a compromise and they're restricted in terms of what the Microsoft systems will do and so on. But hang on, I've gotta say, uh-uh, fail, because this is just- And I suspect a lot of customers are just gonna go, you know what
- Go to market.
- I'll stick.
- Go to market.
- If I don't really understand the whole kind of, what it is and what the risk is, I'll stick in what I'm doing. And that's gonna be completely counterproductive to what Microsoft wants because they're gonna have customers who will say the risk free, I won't get fired or I won't get told off for doing what we've always done. I'll stay there. And that's, you know, that's what they're gonna do.
- Exactly what we don't want.
- They would, wouldn't they?
- So yeah, just get on the cloud migrate- So the cloud migration programme, which really conserves energy and that's really straightforward.
- They'll take that, 'cause that's straightforward.
- That is really straightforward.
- Understandable.
- It's just 40% discount.
- The Ts and Cs are-
- It's completely then unrelated to any increases in enhancement plan. It doesn't matter, you can add new users. It's just so much more straightforward.
- You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I wish Paul White would go back to Microsoft. Which is a really strange- For those who on the podcast who don't know who Paul White is, he's the guy who used to run Dynamics SMB at Microsoft. And actually for the last few years, he's been chair of our biggest competitor in the UK. So Paul is a guy I know well. But he came to, I think it was, it might have been Posner, I can't remember. But he introduced napkin pricing for NAF at the time, was it? Where there was just, you know, essentials and premium, and there was only four prices. So you could write it on the back of a napkin, as he termed it. And somebody at Microsoft needs to do exactly the same for the cloud migration programme. It needs to be so simple, which is what the one we're about to lose is. Because unless it's that simple, volume is gonna be, we're gonna struggle to get volume. And that's, you know, that's what they want. That's what we want. But we're blocked by silly programmes.
- The other thing they announced about perpetual licencing we should say, and I've checked it, so the dates are right now. You won't be able to buy perpetual licencing on a new sale from October 25.
- [James] Yeah.
- So if you've already got perpetual, you can add users and bits and pieces to it continually. But if somebody wanted perpetual-
- That's interesting, 'cause that's the same, that's-
- But nobody would, I mean-
- That's the same date as end of support for BC 14.
- Oh yeah.
- I'm just a bit like, I wonder if it's-
- I mean, to be fair, when's the last time we sold a perpetual licence?
- Yeah, it's very rare. It's like one in a blue moon and it's normally very specific if someone wants to have that.
- I mean there is-
- It's one in three or four years that I can think of.
- So the one instance I can think of is where, you know, you've got a group of companies and they sell off one of the subsidiaries or there's a management buyout or whatever. And they need to split up the systems. And ineffectively, they want to take one of the companies out of the group and put it on a standalone. And it's gonna be situations like that where that is problematic. I don't see, you know. I don't see that anybody coming to Dynamics from scratch. You know, my advice-
- You just have to buy the new licence.
- My advice for ages would be buy SAS. But if they are on-premise now and their ownership structure changes.
- But they can still have-
- I wonder whether Microsoft are gonna have exceptions for that.
- Yeah, but they can still have on-premise.
- You can still do BC on-premise.
- They can have on-premise, it's just they can only licence it on a subscription.
- Oh, dual use.
- So in that example you've just given-
- Yeah, but that subscription licence, the dual use, you can only get the current version. So if they're on like, NAV 2018 or BC-
- Yeah but we can't cut one of those anyway. So even if we bought a new perpetual licence today, we can only cut it
- Yeah true.
- For the latest versions.
- So you've gotta stay on the cycle.
- So anybody who's got a group, you know, and I saw a stat yesterday that said that 40% of Business Central implementations have some aspect of multi-company international or some, you know, multiple companies in their setup. All of those, any management balance, any change in ownership structure is blocked as of today then.
- Well if they're a big enough company, they should be up to date anyway, so.
- Yes. Nice.
- Well that doesn't follow Matt, because the bigger companies are slower to get up to date than some of the smaller ones.
- If they've already got NAV 2015 and they're out of support, they've got bigger concerns.
- [James] They've got problems.
- Yeah. It's true. So.
- That's one of the reasons you should keep it up to date.
- There's some other-
- There is some good news that might-
- Yeah. Give us some good news, Liam. Yeah, go on.
- So the good news-
- Licencing podcast with good news? Ah, pick your ears up.
- Let's finish on a high.
- So they also allowed for like the Dynamics family. So we predominantly talk about BC in our podcast. We do do another one around CRM I'll call it, with Jason. But what was always a pain if we were looking to sell a complete solution where the customer needed both, was you pay for your BC licences and then you had to pay for your CRM licences. And they were both, you know, quite a high ticket price. They announced probably a couple of years ago now, maybe a little bit longer, that you could have an attached licence. So you could attach a CRM licence, if you already had a BC licence, and they would give you a really nice discount on that.
- But.
- But you could only get the more limited version of CRM.
- Professional.
- Which was sales professional.
- Yep.
- And there's loads of stuff that we showcase, Microsoft showcasing, "Oh, I want that." You need to go to the enterprise version of the software.
- I mean, professional was such a hobbled, because they didn't- There's two ways they can kind of restrict licencing. They can restrict it by restricting the number of users or kind of the number of the size that it grows, the size of the data or whatever. And they can chop the functionality. And they did some chops on functionality for professional, which just meant that nobody could use it for long. I think it was difficult to stick on, it was difficult to implement, you know, even sales enhancement without hitting the boundaries of what professional would cope with.
- So they've obviously acknowledged that and they've now allowed to attach the sales enterprise. I think it was £16, rather than the 80.
- $20 I heard, yeah.
- So 16, 17 pounds.
- Compared to?
- Compared to 80 something dollars.
- It was $15. So that would've been £12 or £13 attachment.
- Yeah, but if you bought enterprise.
- Oh. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yep.
- The list price of buying enterprise. You're around the 70 to 80.
- But that's a huge saving.
- So it's a massive saving.
- It's a big saving.
- Now. So if I've got NAV 2015 on an old perpetual basis and I want to implement sales enterprise.
- You can't. Well you gotta licence it separately, because you can't attach to an old perpetual licence.
- Right. So, but I could go on the cloud migration promo.
- 'Til June.
- As long as I do that before June.
- Yes.
- See, I'm just trying to tie it all together. And then I could have the attached licence.
- You can attach, yeah.
- So you have to be on a-
- You have to be on a Business Central subscription licence.
- On a Business Central subscription licence.
- And it's worse than that.
- Not a perpetual licence.
- [Liam] Correct.
- To be able to take advantage of the attached licence.
- And it's worse than that because-
- We're finishing on good news, James.
- No, no, no, this is good news. But there is a wrinkle here, okay. That you need to understand.
- [Matthew] A wrinkle
- A kink.
- Okay. So you've got, you know, you've got sales enterprise, say. That you pay, which is how much Liam?
- 80 odd pounds.
- Okay. And you've got Business Central essential, which is how much?
- 60 pounds now, roughly.
- Okay. So Microsoft say you attach to the highest price licence. So in that, you'd have to pay 80 odd pounds for sales. And you would then get, for your 16
- BC essentials.
- For your BC essentials licence, you would pay £16.
- £16, yeah.
- As an attach, because the attach has to be to the highest value.
- What about if you're on a promo?
- If you're on premium.
- If you're on premium.
- What if you're on a promo?
- I don't know
- Mind blown!
- If you're on a promo, I think it's the retail price of the biggest one that you're attaching.
- Yeah, I think it would have to be.
- My understanding of it is. So.
- So can you have both?
- You can have both. As in what, essentials?
- So if you're on a promo, if you're on a cloud migration promo or a Bridge to Cloud.
- Yes.
- Can you have the attached licence as well? So basically have multiple-
- Yes you can.
- I don't know about Bridge to Cloud, but we'd have to check, but-
- So, okay. Just, just.
- Because when we place the order onto the NCE, New Commerce Experience system, in effect we have to say, for the attached licence, we have to say what did attaches do? And that has to be on-
- Yeah, it's like a lot of promotions that you, whatever you buy and you're going for the top, the higher price and you get-
- [Liz] Yeah, it's still a good deal.
- So, yeah, if you're on business essentials premium, then at the-
- Can I just clarify? If you've got Business Central premium, then your sales enterprise can be attached to that. Okay. Because premium is higher than sales. It has a higher cost, retail cost, than sales enterprise. If you have Business Central essentials, you pay full price for sales enterprise, and then you can do your essentials as an attached licence to that.
- Right. Okay, I understand. Okay. So.
- I'll get some-
- What happens if you're on a three year agreement with that business essential? Can it bring the price down?
- Yeah, well, pft.
- So my next question-
- I think I'm with James. It's on the list.
- Boom.
- I think it's on the list price, but they haven't actually put- We should caveat this, that they haven't published the actual licence pay agreement details on the website yet.
- Well they announ-
- They announced it at a conference
- [James] A couple of conferences.
- With some headlines. But until you have a read the- As we've just found out, looking at Bridge to Cloud 2,
- I think it comes in-
- Where I've got 12 pages of details.
- From memory.
- So I've got a customer.
- I was at that conference, from memory, it comes in from July the 1st.
- Yeah, so I'm sure something's gonna be published.
- Which is Microsoft's new financial year.
- I guarantee that I'll have at least one customer ask me this. Already got BC licences, already got CRM licences. Their current agreement NCE was on a 12 month, it comes to an end in July.
- Do they, so do-
- Is it new customers only or can they have an attached licence?
- No, I think when you, it probably would be the end of your agreement, just knowing how NCE works.
- So, if you've got existing BC and CRM together.
- Yeah. You'll be able to take advantage of this.
- You can take advantage of this. Which is brilliant for our existing customers. Really, really good. And it might, yes. Yeah, most will be able to upgrade either on the-
- And actually, you know, for some of them-
- [Liam] Sales essential to enterprise.
- I think I need to get my calculator out again, but.
- Wait 'til a PDF comes out with the details.
- I mean, you know, on Bridge to Cloud, if I do the Bridge to Cloud migration, get my 40% off.
- The cloud migration promo.
- Sorry, cloud migration programme. And get my 40% off and I'm essentials now, can I change to premium?
- I don't know if I wanna say this 'cause we're on a podcast and it feels like we're getting more confused. The transition promo is CSP, not NCE. Now if the new attach is for NCE agreements only, then the promo won't work. It's been going through the back of my mind for the last five minutes.
- Yeah, that's true.
- Yeah, that is true.
- Didn't wanna throw anything else in. So I don't know. Until we see the details, I don't know.
- Okay. But it's worth exploring.
- If you're on normal pricing, then you'll be okay.
- This is where, you know, for each customer, I think, in fact everything we've talked about as well, we can give these broad brushstrokes of advice and say you can take advantage of that, but actually-
- Give us a call.
- Yeah. Talk to your account manager.
- And actually, it's not that-
- And let us work out.
- Actually don't. You know, give us a call and tell us what you want to do, but then have sympathy for us, because if the last half hour has taught any customer it's anything, okay. It's wow, we-
- We don't know what we're talking about.
- I mean, this is why
- Yeah and for those of you-
- Sometimes it can take days or weeks to get clarification. Because going to somebody at Microsoft and getting them to clarify. They don't know.
- Yeah.
- Is my impression.
- That's very true. That's very true.
- And so you can't send it again.
- Also customers, you should know, we do not get mega margins on this.
- No.
- This is not how a business will grow, by-
- It's, I mean- It is getting to the point where it's kind of like, do you really want to do this? Because Microsoft, if anybody at Microsoft's listening to this, you are putting your partners in such a position where some of us are going, "Licencing. Wow." I mean, it's a pain in the arse, to be blunt. And it's so complicated and every customer, you are having to, you're kind of, you're putting the quote out there and you're going, "I really hope that's right." Because it's really not easy to be a hundred percent certain that all the ifs, buts and maybes are covered in every situation. It's really tough. So customers please have some sympathy for partners, because if they're taking a few weeks to get the quotation back to you, it's 'cause probably nobody is being clear to them about exactly what the terms and conditions are. And they're super difficult.
- I've got a question.
- And if you contravene one of the Ts and Cs on this, Microsoft have zero flexibility about what they will do.
- I've got a question. Which one of the four of us goes to prison, if we get all this wrong?
- Well we don't. I mean, you know, it's not criminal, what it is. It just, it can be mega expensive because as Liam said, the margins are super small. Microsoft has zero sympathy for a partner who gets any of this wrong. So, you know, we potentially, we've gotta go out and sell 15, 16 customers to recover the one where we got it wrong and ended up having to foot the bill. And as soon as you hit commit on that web page for the order, you're pretty much in, you have zero chance to undo.
- Yeah, you get a few days. But you wouldn't have uncovered you've got it wrong within a week, which is what they give you to.
- Come on, you tick the "I accept the terms and conditions."
- Yeah, I know.
- Of course, assuming you read them.
- And by the way, you know-
- I think we accept the terms and conditions.
- Microsoft's got so many lawyers that in effect, your chances of getting out of it are zero. So.
- I'd love to get someone from Microsoft on. You know, one of the licence specialists. I know you know some of the team, whether-
- [James] They won't.
- Do you think they'll dare?
- Well if they wanna come on and explain how they've done that, it would be great. I think that would be useful to get from their side.
- I mean, they don't turn up to the conferences, Liam. They don't meet the partners in private behind closed doors anymore, because I think they know that. Somebody, you know, Satcher needs to be brave enough to rip this up and say, start again. He did that with NCE. That was the whole idea with NCE. But the problem is they involved more lawyers and less partner focused people from the beginning. And the lawyers just wrote it, "Oh, well close this loop, close this loop, this will be good for our numbers for Wall Street." And it was all focused. So the idea that the licencing programme is partner focused now is for the birds.
- Well we were gonna finish on good news.
- The attached licence, if you qualify for it, the attached licence and being able to have enterprise is great news. And that's the first, you know, a lot of customers will take. Even some people who have both products right now, should be able to take advantage of that. And you know, it's another reason for you're up to date. 'Cause if you're on SAS, chances are you're on some programme that ought to sooner or later, by the time your term ends and all of this, will be able to get you and potentially you're gonna save quite a bit of money. For the first time, Microsoft are truly giving something where they reward loyalty to Dynamics in one area, with cheaper licencing costs in another.
- Yeah.
- I think the underlying message, I would say, it has been, you know, difficult, if anyone's made it through this long.
- Yeah, I was gonna say, well done.
- But I think, you know, Liz and James said this a couple of times. Get in contact. We have to look at each individual case to work out what we can take advantage of, where we can benefit from Microsoft, where we can put you on the right promotion. But each one is individual and you know, once we do the financials and get Liz's calculator out, that's when we can tell you, this is the best way to go.
- I think so.
- It's hard to have a general answer.
- And some pesky work, so actually if you're thinking of going to the cloud, do it in the next three weeks.
- Yeah. Think of the June deadline.
- And also, it's a real shame, you know, the cloud version now is so great.
- The products are so good.
- The product is so good. It is getting better and better, that this should not be a barrier for people to be able to go there.
- Yeah.
- And to be able to
- Well you you were telling me about that customer yesterday that migrated to the cloud last weekend. And like, how smoothly has that gone?
- The migration process is straightforward, you know, the update process is manageable now. You know, you are getting constant improvements. It isn't-
- The performance is there.
- It's a great piece of work. Do not let this be a barrier. Talk to us. Let's work out the best way to move the licence.
- 'Cause actually the simplest licencing is for SAS, once you're on, I would say.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- You know, it is. If anybody who's only ever been SAS is listening to this, forget all of it, because actually-
- Apart from the attach, apart from the attached licence.
- Attached.
- The attached, yes. It's all good news.
- But everything else has been the transition to get you from perpetual to stuff.
- It's all the legacy customers.
- Yeah. Microsoft have not made a great job.
- Who've got the complication.
- You get some power platform licences thrown in as well.
- Yeah, and like, you know-
- Just thinking about it, if you've got-
- 8 is getting more and more powerful.
- If you've got CRM enterprise licences already.
- [Liam] Yep.
- And you'll be on cloud.
- If you're a CRM user.
- And you've got, hang on. And you're on an older version of NAV, you might be better off not-
- Migrating.
- Not using a promo
- Just taking the attach.
- And just buying an attach. So again, that's another option that we need to bring in. So yeah. Just, each individual customer is going to be different, but, I think-
- And actually if you-
- I will make it my mission to make sure that each customer has the best deal that they can have
- But that-
- With the flexibility that they need. What we don't wanna be doing is tying people into something that they're going to regret.
- [Liam] Yeah.
- In 12 months time. So we need to ensure a certain level of flexibility, and there's a trade off then, isn't there? Between- It's like anything, it's like buying an airfare, isn't it? If you want it flexible, you're gonna pay probably a little bit more for it. So we need to assess that and work through that with each individual customer.
- I mean, there's a whole new market, isn't there? You know, customers out there who are using DoneEx, CRM, sales engagement, call it service management and so on. You can attach Business Central now for £16 a month.
- Which is significantly cheaper than any promotion.
- Is it per user?
- Yeah.
- So do you have to match the number of users?
- If they've got on their user account, on as your AD, if they've got a CRM profes-, no, CRM enterprise licence, then to attach a BC licence is £16 a month.
- And what's the user level?
- Do you have to match the CRM users, match the amount of users you got on BC?
- No, I don't believe you do.
- So don't you just go and buy one enterprise licence and then you get BC?
- No, because you could only attach one BC licence.
- Well why are you always looking for a loophole, Matthew Woodhouse?
- [Matthew] Well, that was the question.
- No, no, no. You can only to an attached licence where the users, the named user, already has the premium licence.
- So to be clear on that though, so if you've only got 10 CRM enterprise licences, and you've got 30 BC, only 10 groups?
- No, you-
- Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it does depend.
- Only 10 of those can be at that price.
- It depends on the balance, doesn't it?
- Well, and it has to be the same 10 as have CRM.
- The same 10 people.
- Yeah. But you can have then another 20, just normal BC licence.
- 'Cause you go and pay the full price.
- Which you pay the higher price.
- Which is why each customer will be different, so I think-
- So licencing optimization, you know, that's where partners really have a massive opportunity to add value, don't they? Because anybody who's listened to the last 45 minutes, understands that actually partners really need to know their stuff and stay current with this because every month there's another announcement, another licencing guide comes out. And it's almost partners need to have somebody dedicated just to understanding the kind of complexity of this and kind of, and that's where, you know, they should be reviewing every customer's arrangements, at least every 12 months to say, is this still right for this customer?
- You don't wanna be on like a 12 month NCE agreement, which is what we hopefully covered already, and then find you've suddenly rolled into another 12 month and you've missed out.
- Yeah.
- On a better option, so you should have that in your calendar to review, you know, probably 90 days before, just in case again-
- In the same way as, you know, your insurance agent gives you kind of, well this is the insurance you need now. And you know, that evolves on, and your accountant comes and says, well the tax rules have changed and this is what you should be doing. In effect, your systems partner should be looking at your licencing and going, right, this is, you know, I think that given what you you need, you know, what changes do you want? But also, and foresee, and advising you correctly around your licencing. You know, I think that's a big part of where partners add value these days. The difficulty is that the complexity of it makes it really difficult to do. And you know, I've already made the point several times, the margins make it all so difficult to justify having that dedicated person. But if you don't have them, you're very unlikely to stay on top of it.
- So, I think we're about done.
- [Liz] Yes.
- It's been an intense one.
- I need a drink after that, I've gotta be honest.
- Yes.
- Yeah, it's a shame it's 10 o'clock in the morning, Liam.
- Can we have a shot of whiskey now please? It's like-
- Thank you for staying, if you've stayed all the way. You might need to go and watch it again to understand it fully.
- We should have a special word now and if anyone can send us that special word.
- You know where, you know-
- It means they've gone through and we'll send them a prize.
- Sometimes you get the documentaries on the telly and they come up with the end with a helpline of if you've been affected by this podcasting.
- Traumatised.
- Ring this number. You know, the reason why out of this.
- I'll be the first one to ring I think.
- So I think in summary, if you want to understand it more, how it affects you, just give us a call. Speak to your accountant, make sure the money's there.
- [Liz] Yep.
- See what we can do. Thank you for listening.
- Thanks guys.
- Thank you.
