Podcast Transcript: Microsoft MVP Kuldeep Gupta on Project Operations advances

The following transcript is taken from our recent podcast episode with Microsoft MVP Kuldeep Gupta of proMX India on the latest advances in Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

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JASON GUMPERT  00:00

Welcome to the MSDW Podcast. I'm Jason Gumpert, Editor at MSDynamicsWorld.com. On this episode, we are catching up with Microsoft MVP Kuldeep Gupta. He's been looking carefully at the latest advances in Dynamics 365 Project Operations and he's written some popular articles about it in the recent weeks. Not only does Microsoft continue to roll out updates for the current release wave, but there are also plans for the 2022 release wave one, which means a whole new lineup of updates coming. And we look at a few of those, including the first Project Service Automation to Project Operations upgrade support capabilities that Microsoft is planning to make available. Kuldeep also shares more about the articles he's been writing, and more generally, how he sees product use evolving for his clients.

JASON GUMPERT  00:46

All right. Hi Kuldeep. Welcome back to the podcast. Great to have you back here.

KULDEEP GUPTA  00:50

Same here.

JASON GUMPERT  00:52

I thought this was a great time to catch up again, with so much happening in the Dynamics 365 Project Operations space And some of the great recent articles you've written updating our readers on what’s some of the most important new features are. So, that made it a great time to perhaps catch up again. As we start, maybe we could just get a little bit of an update from you about your role. You have a new role, I think, since we've last talked. And what are you currently working on?

KULDEEP GUPTA  01:21

Right, Jason. Before we start, it's always been a pleasure to talk to you, Jason. And thanks again for having me on this podcast. I have also been missing these chats between us. So, thanks for inviting again. Well, if I talk about my new role, I'm actually the Managing Director and CEO of proMX India, the entire division proMX, the mother company being in proMX Germany, we have another office in Miami, and the third one in India and upcoming more offices. I'm pleasure to take this role up to manage the proMX India Division, where the intention of this division is to provide the resourcing abilities as well as to capture India market and the other APAC region, which has not been touched by Project Operations yet. As you know, we are Project Operations experts globally. So, I want to capture this market, wire this entity that we have taken up here, and I have taken up on the responsibility. So, we're very quite excited to pull on with this journey.

JASON GUMPERT  02:30

Yeah, that sounds like a great move for you and that's pretty interesting place to be, as you said, with the product Project Operations still having plenty of open space or green space, I guess you'd call it, just to continue to expand. And yeah, I did really want to focus on getting your input on Project Operations and what you've been seeing with the product recently, both in terms of its new features and a little bit more about trends overall. Maybe we could just start with some general trends. As you've seen, obviously, specific improvements, specific features that are much needed, as you've written about, are there any general trends you would mention to set the context here?

KULDEEP GUPTA  03:14

Of course. Yeah, it's actually been a long journey I have been associated with this product. You cannot call PO as new now, it has already established itself in the market. And what I mean to say is that people have accepted it big time and are looking at it with an eye of expectation with many new features, which were missing and not to my surprise, Microsoft is continuously bringing updates every month to this platform, which is making me and everyone on this Dynamics market attracted to this product. So, I would say not a specific improvement, but yes, a lot of improvements that Microsoft has brought in the store for us. What I had been looking out for improvements was, I faced a lot of issues when I was approving Time Entry. Microsoft brought in with a new trend called as Modern Approvals. They have now task based billing. So, what I mean by task based billing is earlier, we used to have specific projects, either they used to be called as a Fixed Price project or a Time and Material project, so now, they have in one project a clear bifurcation that some tasks can be fixed price and some can be time and material. So, that's a superb advantage that they brought in with this feature in here. And again, one more beautiful update that they brought with one more feature is One Contract. I mean, earlier, what used to happen is you can have in one entire quotation one fixed price and one time and material contract, but now, they are entertaining n number of contracts with fixed price, n number of contracts with time and material in just one quotation header. So, this is one beautiful feature. And what this enables to our customers, let's say, MS Dynamics World is my customer and says, "I want to do five projects, and five of them would be fixed price." Earlier, this used to be a blocker for Project Operations, but now with this feature, I can do five projects that are fixed price in one single contract, and invoice all of them to you in one go. So, these are the features that have been brought in. So, they are very inspiring.

JASON GUMPERT  05:36

And this is an example of a type of feature that customers or perhaps even partners like yourself, were saying to Microsoft, "We need to be able to support these kinds of scenarios if we want this product to be successful," as a sort of a foundational capability?