The Catch Up Podcast Titelbild

The Catch Up Podcast

The Catch Up Podcast

Von: Catch Resource Management
Jetzt kostenlos hören, ohne Abo

The Catch Up Podcast brings you candid conversations with industry leaders, consultants, and change-makers from the Microsoft Dynamics and tech ecosystem. Hosted by Phillip Blackmore, Sales Director at Catch Resource Management, each episode dives into the real stories behind business transformation, career pivots, and scaling success. Expect thoughtful interviews, practical insights, and honest reflections. Brought to you by Catch Resource Management, a leading UK recruitment specialist for Microsoft Dynamics and ERP talent, this podcast is your inside track to the people shaping the future of enterprise technology.Catch Resource Management Management & Leadership Ökonomie
Folgen
  • Running an ERP Consultancy in the Age of AI with Matt Cull

    Running an ERP Consultancy in the Age of AI with Matt Cull
    Sep 24 2026
    What if an ERP programme could be delivered in weeks rather than months? In this episode of The Catch Up Podcast, host Philip Blackmore speaks with Matt Cull, founder and chief executive of Vannda, about a career that began with two university dropouts and a factory lab bench, and now spans global Microsoft Dynamics 365 transformation programmes. Matt explains why client-side ownership, executive sponsorship and proper backfill decide whether a project succeeds, and why the partner relationship works best as a tennis match rather than a handover.The conversation then turns to AI. Matt argues the traditional Dynamics consultant role is almost gone, describes standing up working proof of concepts in hours, and makes the case that smaller businesses can now buy enterprise ERP and CRM at a fraction of the usual cost. He also takes the security question head on, at a point when 51% of UK firms fear staff are feeding company secrets into unauthorised AI tools, according to research reported in September 2026.(00:00) - Welcome to The Catch Up Podcast(01:52) - Dropping Out, Factories and a Break in Finance(04:47) - Riding the Baan Wave into Contracting(07:49) - Why Winning a Client's Trust Is the Hardest Part(10:53) - What a Breadth of Industries Teaches a Consultant(14:20) - Who Really Owns an ERP Programme(18:56) - How Vannda Started with a Project Rescue(23:38) - Scaling from Mid-Market to Enterprise Clients(27:05) - Focusing on Media and Agency Transformation(28:30) - Will AI Replace the Dynamics Consultant(37:59) - Cloud Fears Then, AI Fears Now(50:55) - Business Central, Automation and the Next Three YearsMatt Cull: Matt Cull is the founder and chief executive officer of Vannda, the London-headquartered consultancy he co-founded in 2020 with Shaun Balding to design, deliver and rescue complex Microsoft Dynamics 365 programmes. His route into enterprise technology was anything but linear, moving from two abandoned university courses and factory work into bookkeeping, then into Baan ERP in the Netherlands in 1996 and a long run as an independent Dynamics contractor. Before Vannda he held Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations solution architect and consulting roles with organisations including Scania, Pinewood Studios, IBM and LexisNexis, covering multi-country rollouts. Vannda now runs teams across the UK, the United States, Mexico and Singapore, works with multinational and Fortune 100 clients, and is building a specialism in transforming large media and marketing agencies while productising fast, AI-assisted Business Central and Customer Engagement implementations for smaller organisations. Episode Insights:The client-side team is eternally underestimated, and the cost of backfilling the people who make decisions is the line item most sponsors forget to budget for.A good partner relationship behaves like a tennis match, where each side returns the ball and someone is empowered to call it in or out.AI is already compressing implementation timelines, taking simple deployments from months to days and changing what an implementation partner is actually selling.The bigger threat to ERP careers is the disappearance of the entry-level process work where consultants used to learn systems thinking end to end.Building specific AI skills before asking questions gives better answers and burns fewer tokens than open-ended prompting.Action Points:Fund the client side properly: Price the client-side team, not just the partner quote. Work out which roles need backfilling and what that costs before the business case is signed. A programme with no decision-makers available is a programme that will drift.Set your governance ground rules early: Agree who can say yes, no or not good enough, and how quickly. Treat it as a tennis match where both sides must return the ball. Escalation paths should be tested before the first difficult decision arrives, not during it.Ask AI first, then act: Before you approach the market, brief an AI tool on your size, legacy landscape and constraints, and interrogate the problem. Build your own client-side assistant to support requirements, partner selection and planning. Do everything you would normally do, but faster and better informed.Write skills, not just prompts: Matt's Mexican property law example shows the value of building a focused skill before asking the question. A narrow, well-contexted skill reduces token spend and cuts the risk of a wrong answer. Treat skill-building as a core team capability.Close your shadow AI gap: Set clear rules on which tools staff may use and what data can go into them, and consider a gated or self-hosted model for sensitive work. This matters commercially, not just legally, given that 51% of UK firms fear employees are feeding sensitive data into unauthorised AI tools. Pair the policy with training so people stop working around it.The Catch Up Podcast brings you candid conversations with industry leaders, consultants, and change-makers from the Microsoft ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 1 Min.
  • From Mechanical Engineer to D365 Technical Architect with Phil Mackison

    From Mechanical Engineer to D365 Technical Architect with Phil Mackison
    Sep 3 2026
    What has to be true before AI is any use inside an ERP system? In this episode of The Catch Up Podcast, host Philip Blackmore speaks with Phil Mackison, D365 F&O Technical Capability Director at HCLTech, about a technical career that started by accident on the Isle of Man and ended up in enterprise Dynamics architecture. Phil explains how he moved from mechanical engineering into report writing, why he backed Damgaard Axapta over SAP against his father's advice, and how the technical architect role changed when Dynamics moved from on-premise to the cloud. He is direct about what AI can and cannot do: applying best practice and checking documents, yes; automating processes on top of poor data, no. Gartner expects AI-enabled tools to account for 62% of cloud ERP spending by 2027, up from 14% in 2024, with data quality still one of the main blockers. There is practical advice too: know why you are replacing the system, get your data catalogue in order first, and take your most respected internal person out of their day job to own it.(00:00) - Welcome to The Catch Up Podcast (03:01) - Falling into IT as a Mechanical Engineer (05:26) - Crystal Reports and the First Real Skill (08:46) - Choosing Axapta over SAP (11:57) - Joining a Partner as a Junior Consultant (14:53) - Why Knowledge Sharing Shaped a Career (19:03) - Bridging the Functional and Technical Gap (22:19) - The Workshop That Went Wrong (29:06) - Navision, Microsoft and Better Documentation (33:12) - Cloud, Data Security and the Architect's Role (42:35) - AI, Data Quality and Best Practice (47:42) - Advice before Starting an ERP ProgrammePhil Mackison: Phil Mackison is D365 F&O Technical Capability Director at HCLTech, where he owns the technical methodologies used on enterprise Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations implementations and handles recruitment and resourcing across the D365 Finance practice. He has more than 20 years in ERP, starting as a junior engineer on the Isle of Man before moving into report writing, then functional consulting in trade and logistics, then technical architecture. His delivery record spans Damgaard Axapta 2.1 through to Dynamics 365, including enterprise programmes at Capgemini and Hitachi Solutions, and his own specialism has been security and infrastructure. Phil is based in Worcestershire. Episode Insights:Phil never did the engineering job he was hired for. Three weeks of typing in bills of materials turned into a report-writing role, and he never went back.The best consultants come from industry first, because they have stood on a factory floor doing stock takes and know how the business actually runs.Clients pay a lot of money for consultants on site, so the least those consultants can do is drop the acronyms and take the client with them.A workshop that collapses is not always about you. Phil was cleared out of a room over an invoice dispute, and now speaks to senior stakeholders before he presents anything.The move to cloud removed skills from the architect role, such as SQL clustering and disaster recovery, and replaced them with questions about data security and performance.Action Points:Start with why you are moving: Write down the actual reason for replacing the system, whether that is a burning platform, expansion or better use of data. Test every requirement against it. Reacting to pressure without a stated reason is how programmes drift into replacing what you already had.Get your data catalogue in order first: Map what data you hold, what condition it is in, and what you want to keep. Decide early what happens to historic records and who owns the clean-up. Gartner expects only about 30% of organisations to have data good enough for advanced AI by 2027, so this is the work that decides whether AI helps you later.Protect reporting in phase one: Reporting is routinely promised in pre-sales and then cut from delivery. Name the reports the business cannot run without, price them, and hold them in scope. If they slip to phase two, agree in writing what people will use in the meantime.Appoint an independent advisor: Bring in someone who understands the implementation cycle and sits between you and the partner. Their job is to tell you when the recommended answer suits the partner more than the business. Every programme Phil has seen go really well had one.Backfill your best internal person: Take the most respected person in the operation out of their day job, cover their role, and make them the subject matter expert. Keep them owning the system after go-live. People trust a colleague they have worked alongside for years more than an external consultant.The Catch Up Podcast brings you candid conversations with industry leaders, consultants, and change-makers from the Microsoft Dynamics and tech ecosystem. Hosted by Phillip Blackmore, Sales Director at Catch Resource Management, each episode dives into the real stories behind business transformation, career pivots, and scaling success. Expect ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    54 Min.
  • Life at Microsoft: Trust, AI and ERP with Claire Purdue

    Life at Microsoft: Trust, AI and ERP with Claire Purdue
    Aug 4 2026
    What does it actually take to move into AI with confidence?In this episode of The Catch Up Podcast, host Phillip Blackmore speaks with Claire Purdue, Senior Solutions Engineer at Microsoft, about her non-linear route into technology and how the pre-sales role has changed in the era of Dynamics 365 and Copilot. Claire explains why customers no longer ask what a system can do, but how they can work differently, safely and responsibly, and why the answer starts with data foundations rather than a bolt-on.With AI adoption among UK small and medium sized businesses rising from 35 per cent in 2025 to 54 per cent in 2026, according to the British Chambers of Commerce, the pressure to act is real, and so is the risk of acting without governance.From reading body language on a Teams call to setting guardrails, auditability and ownership around AI, this conversation makes the case that as technology absorbs the repetitive work, the human side of the job matters more, not less.(00:00) - Welcome to The Catch Up Podcast (02:16) - A Non-Linear Route into Technology (06:06) - Canada, CRM and Joining Microsoft (08:16) - The Skills Behind Great Pre-Sales (12:10) - Why It Is Okay to Say I Do Not Know (14:56) - Relatability as the Core Pre-Sales Trait (24:23) - Discovery, Boundaries and Reading the Room (30:14) - How AI Has Reshaped the Solutions Role (34:42) - Handling Sceptical Executives on AI (41:13) - Trust, Guardrails and AI Governance (45:06) - Data Foundations Before AI (52:48) - Bring Your Team with YouClaire Purdue: Claire Purdue is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Microsoft in the UK, working with customers across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the wider Copilot and AI portfolio. Her route into technology was deliberately non-linear: a degree in maths, statistics and computing, a first job in software support, a move into consultancy, self-taught PRINCE2 study that took her into project management, and then a step into account management as the first account manager her software vendor ever hired. She moved into pre-sales, spent two years working on a construction CRM system in Canada, and joined Microsoft as a technical specialist on her return to the UK. She holds the MB-310 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance certification along with Microsoft Business Value Management Practitioner and Mentor recognitions, and has featured in Microsoft's My #MicrosoftLife series talking about life inside the Business Applications team. Her focus today is helping organisations move to AI with clear guardrails, strong data foundations and confident, human led change. Episode Insights:Careers in the Microsoft ecosystem are rarely linear, and experience in support, consultancy and project management is exactly what makes a strong pre-sales professional.Saying you do not know, then following up, builds more trust than an answer invented on the spot, and credibility is the whole product in a pre-sales conversation.Relatability is the one trait every effective pre-sales professional shares, because customers remember the person who presented long after they forget the feature list.The buying question has shifted from show me what your system can do to how can we work differently, safely and responsibly, which makes AI readiness a strategy conversation rather than a demo.AI still needs ownership, usage boundaries and auditability, and it cannot compensate for poor data, so governance and data foundations come before capability.Action Points:Audit your data before you buy anything: Ask your team to review duplicates, structure and reporting quality in your current system of record. Treat a migration or AI project as the moment to clean house rather than a reason to lift and shift. Poor inputs will produce poor outputs no matter how capable the technology is.Name the tasks you want to remove: Ask each team to identify the repetitive, manual work they dislike most. Use those tasks as the first AI use cases so value is visible quickly and scepticism has somewhere concrete to land. This turns an abstract AI strategy into a short list of measurable wins.Set your guardrails early: Define usage boundaries, approval steps and auditability before you widen AI access across the business. Seventy-eight per cent of executives lack strong confidence they could pass an independent AI governance audit within 90 days, according to Grant Thornton's 2026 AI Impact Survey. Write the rules down while the estate is still small.Treat output validation as a skill: Build the habit of checking AI output rather than accepting it. Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index found that 86 per cent of AI users treat output as a starting point rather than a final answer. Make that expectation explicit in your team's ways of working.Bring your whole team with you: Do not confine a transformation programme to the C-suite or the project team. Put change management in place early, involve the people who will use the system daily and give them a say in decisions. Nobody likes being told ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    56 Min.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Noch keine Rezensionen vorhanden