In this edition of the book club, I thought that I would focus on a book called “The Big Switch”. This is an interesting book because it talks about how all technology moves through the same phases where they are introduced, someone makes a lot of money off them because they own the market space, and then the technology becomes more of a commodity that is commonplace. The examples that he uses in the book range from water wheels, to electricity, and then to software, and that companies like Google are the leading wave because they are commoditizing technologies for the masses through services.

Why is this important to us? Because it implies that the business software is heading much the same way. And every now and then we see this mentality in the market place when customers and prospects have the impression that all ERP systems are comparable. This means that they are then making decisions based on price rather than on functionality, service, fit and quality.

If you get a chance, take a look at this book – and also Nicolas Carr’s other book – “Does IT Matter”. It’s interesting – even though I don’t agree with where he ends up.

The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas CarrPublication Date: Jan 19, 2009 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393333949

For all of you that are waiting for a book on Dynamics AX 2012 that is useful, and that isn’t written by Scott Campbell, then put on your clubbing clothes, because it’s time to celebrate.

Last week, Microsoft released a new book for Dynamics AX.

This book won’t help you with registering picking lists within AX, but it does have 738 pages of information around programming, architecture, portal & workflow development, business intelligence, and even ERD’s, and is a great fallback option when you can’t get hold of Chris Hoer or Chris Dragon.

Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 by The Microsoft Dynamics AX TeamPublication Date: November 2012 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735667101

It’s already given me a number of ideas on new extensions to make for demonstrations. I’m sure that it will inspire some of you all to create something cool as well.

In our line of business, people skills are essential. It’s a cruel fact that sometimes, you may have the best product or service for the customer, but if they don’t like you, it’s a hard road to travel to get them to let you help them.

So this week’s book club post is focused on the first ever bestselling self-help book in history. How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in 1936, it has sold 15 million copies. It just shows that people skills never go out of date. Read More

I don’t know about you all, but I have a common affliction called TCOK (The Curse Of Knowledge – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge). I expect everyone to know as much about something as I know, so I am always trying to make myself remember that a lot of the things that I show in demonstrations may be completely new to my audience, and I need to ratchet the explanations back a little so that customers and prospects can follow me. Read More

Although this may not be true, I’m sure that Edward Tufte does think about it, because he is the Strunk & White for information design and visual literacy.

When you boil ERP down to the bare bones, it is just a way to gather information, and all our customers really want from an ERP system is to present the information back to them so that they can understand how they are doing. If you can do that in an elegant, and informative way then the ERP system is a success. Read More

On March 16, 2007, something terrible happened. Kathy Sierra stopped publishing her blog because of abusive tweets and threats. Thankfully she didn’t take down her TypePad account, and we can still all read the posts that she made, because they are great, and are the suggested reading for this week’s book club. Read More

Not all great reading comes with an ISBN number. There are a lot of great bloggers out there that you can subscribe to and get ideas from. So I thought that I would share a handful of the better AX blogging sites that I scour every morning to see what ideas I can steal for demonstrations. They all have RSS feeds so it’s easy to send them through to your favorite feed reader, or to send them to Google Reader like I do. Read More