Experlogix founders reflect on 20 years in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem

Experlogix launched in 2004 as a Microsoft-focused ISV, offering configurator technology to augment early versions of Microsoft’s CRM solution. Two decades later, the company still offers configuration price quote (CPQ) solutions for the Dynamics 365 market. And in recent years they have expanded their solution suite into document automation and commerce. The company’s co-founders, Christian Stepien, Jeff Holway, and Aaron Zupancic, spoke with MSDW and reflected on lessons learned from honing their technology and solution lineup, navigating the Microsoft channel, selling the company, and pivoting to new frontiers.

MSDW: Experlogix started in 2004 and you offered an integration to Microsoft CRM 1.2. Do you recall the thinking back then that that led you to explore that as a starting place for getting into Microsoft business application space?

Christian Stepien: Yes, I had actually started a company back in the mid-1990s and developed configurator technology that we licensed to Hyster Yale forklifts. We also had a contract with Lilly Software to integrate our solution with a manufacturing package that they had called VISUAL Manufacturing.

When Microsoft started getting into the CRM world, Aaron and I had actually been in a prior company with Jeff that had built a CRM system, and we had sold that to Lilly Software. So we already had a way of integrating our configurator technology with a CRM system all figured out. We knew that with Microsoft, when they get into something, it's going to be huge. So we saw a golden opportunity to be first out of the gate with a product configurator for Dynamics. We went to one of the first [Convergence conferences] with a laptop, showed around prototypes of the first versions of the software we had, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Do you remember what some of the responses were from customers back then?

Christian: I'd say the primary response we got from customers back then was, “Boy, that's really cool, we can use some of that.” I remember our first customer was a small company that went out and did striping of parking lots. They were called KG Striping,  and they needed to basically price these things out based on the size of the parking lot and how many lines they would have to draw. That's the perfect application actually for a configurator, where you can put in all those rules, all the parts, all the logic that goes behind producing a quote. They bought it and it was very successful, and from there on in, we got bigger and bigger. We sold very early on to [a firm that] made high end scanning electron microscopes.

Of course, there's a certain percentage of deals where Microsoft is selling CRM where a configurator is going to be a requirement. It’s something that the [customer] can't really live without. So we were able to really help Microsoft out by providing that.

Jeff: To add to that point, back in those days the name Dynamics didn't even exist. The acronym CPQ didn't even exist. It was just Microsoft CRM and product configurators. And at that time, with that early release of Microsoft CRM, you really needed several different ISVs together in order to make the CRM system functional.

You might recall companies like C360, which filled a bunch of white space within the CRM application that somebody would need from a contact management perspective. If somebody had to do any type of quoting whatsoever, they would need a solution like ours, whether it's simplistic quotes to very sophisticated quotes, they would need an ISV, like Experlogix to come in and fill that gap. We had the benefit of being first to market, so we were able to forge relationships with all the major Dynamics partners.

Being a bootstrapped startup, the other benefit of pitching our [tent] with Microsoft is we were able to then latch onto the fantastic partner network that Microsoft had, which ended up being our extended sales arm. We owe a lot of our success to being able to prove ourselves in that partner community, build relationships, and build mutual customers together.

So we elected to be specialists rather than generalists. Rather than trying to be a configurator for 10 CRMs and 15 different ERPs we elected to specialize in Microsoft. We started [with an] integration with Dynamics CRM, and then partners said, “Wow, that's awesome. If we could have something for our GP practice and our GP customers, that would be great.” So we said, okay, there were a ton of GP customers back then, so we built an integration. And then that evolved to NAV and then to AX. And of course, where we are today in the cloud with BC and Finance and Operations.

Aaron Zupancic: From the technology standpoint, I think that we hit the sweet spot coming into the market when web applications of this caliber were not a thing yet. In the early days of theY2K era, business applications online were very rare, much less a real enterprise application running within the browser. And that's something that we brought immediately into the Dynamic space. I think that was a key differentiator as well. Something that made us stand apart from others that were trying to come into the space.

What did you learn about the Microsoft channel that allowed you to relate to it well?

Jeff: I think one that comes to mind right away is that we really treat every opportunity that a partner brings us as gold. We give them white glove treatment. We know that every opportunity they bring to us is not going to necessarily result in a sale. But we're looking at the relationship as a long-term partnership. And so we always put our best foot forward with every opportunity that a partner brings us. As a result, they saw the time and effort that we put into that demo, to that sales cycle. They may not have won it for some reason, but we forged that relationship and that trust, and they would bring us into the next deal and the next deal and the next deal because we did such a great job representing them in the sales cycle. That was something early on that we learned …we're not gonna win 'em all, but that's okay because this is a marathon with this partner.

I think [that enabled us to] withstand competitors coming into the Microsoft space. Because these competitors, well-funded competitors, like BigMachines, like Apttus that had tremendous resources, came into this space but didn't understand the Microsoft partner ecosystem. And they didn't really respect it or want to take the time to really learn it and build those relationships and trust like we did. So over that short period of time, those competitors came in and then eventually got depressed and left because they couldn't break into the channel. They've since gone, so a small guy like us was able to withstand these big competitors coming into the space.

Across Microsoft’s cloud business applications architecture with Power Platform, F&O, and BC, how carefully do you have to watch them evolving, and what does it really mean for your planning?