OneCore team at Directions 4 Partners EMEA 2023: What new learnings did our team bring back?

A world-class solution requires a world-class approach, and that's why a team of our OneCore colleagues went to the prestigious Directions 4 Partners EMEA 2023 partner conference in Lyon in the first days of November. What new things did they learn and what were their impressions? We asked Eva Zaoralová in a mini-interview.

OneCore in Lyon

The 16th edition of the prestigious Directions 4 Partner - EMEA conference took place in Lyon, France, on 1-3 November 2023.

The OneCore team takes their commitment to staying informed seriously. To ensure that they remain at the forefront of industry development, David Pecivál, Adam Hermann, Roman Slovák, and Eva Zaoralová, made it a priority to attend the important event held in Lyon. By doing so, they not only gained valuable insights from the conference but also had the opportunity to network and collaborate with other industry leaders.

First-hand impressions

We spoke with Eva Zaoralová briefly to get her perspective on the event as one of the participants.

Eva, could you tell us what the lectures were about?

There were generally two types of lectures. In the first one, people from Microsoft presented new product features from recent releases, including hands-on demonstrations. As a result, we often discover the advantages of new products that are not immediately visible at first glance. The lectures of the second type were solely presented by the partners themselves. They either shared their solutions or conveyed their vast knowledge and experience in the industry.

What knowledge and experience were involved?

For people from the sales and marketing teams, it was mainly about tips and tricks for presenting a product to customers online, new marketing opportunities in different sectors or the impact of culture on the development and results of sales teams. Consultants and developers focused on code detail, new integration options and AI development tools.

What new things did you learn about Business Central?

A big topic was the Copilot virtual assistant - Microsoft has been testing this AI tool for a long time, but so far, the use case has been more for the retail sector (e.g.: generating text from descriptions of products displayed online). This time we saw Copilot in other industries as well. For example, it can help our customers in matching bank payments and alerting them to questionable payments. We also covered Microsoft 365 product integrations, where Business Central belongs, and Power Platform. These tools give us and the customers themselves the ability to grasp customizations differently and extend functionalities in new ways.

I cannot forget the interesting statistics on Business Central's user base and usage level.

Can you please provide me with some of that data?

The Business Central community is expanding rapidly, with over 30,000 customers now using it in 155 countries. To put its efficiency into perspective, in an SMB client environment, Business Central can process nearly 53,000 invoices containing 2.6 million lines in just 24 hours. That's a whole lot of numbers to crunch!

The primary focus of the event was the meeting between partners. How many partners did you meet?

That's right. We currently work with 22 partners for our international operations and in Lyon we met our regular partners from Sweden, the USA, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, South Africa, and the Philippines. In addition to that, our goal for the conference was to establish new partnerships, so we had around 30 meetings between the programmes. And then countless discussions during lectures, lunch or over wine at the evening party.

Have you formed any new collaborations recently?

The process took some time after the event, but we are pleased to announce that we are about to sign new contracts with specific partners.