PODCAST 4: Partner Story with Amber Bell, MVP
Amber Bell is the CEO of Training Dynamo, LLC and a long-time leader in the Microsoft Dynamics community. She brings over two decades of hands-on experience with Dynamics GP and now Business Central, helping organizations improve data quality, processes, and user adoption.
Amber is known for her practical, people-first approach. She specializes in GP implementation, GP to Business Central readiness, training, documentation, and guiding teams through change with clarity and confidence. As a Microsoft MVP and frequent speaker at industry events, she’s passionate about knowledge sharing, community building, and helping both consultants and end users succeed.
Her strength lies in bridging the gap between technology and people—making complex systems easier to understand, easier to use, and easier to trust.
Below is a timestamped summary of our podcast interview.
00:00 – Community and Knowledge Sharing
Topic: Why community matters
Amber opens by talking about how much she enjoys seeing familiar faces at events and meeting new people from around the world. She explains that the Dynamics community creates relationships you wouldn’t normally get through day-to-day work. What draws her in most is being around people who genuinely enjoy sharing what they know.
Lesson from Amber: Surround yourself with knowledge sharers. It keeps you learning and gives you support when projects get hard.
00:33 – Amber’s Journey: From GP to Business Central
Topic: How Amber got into GP and later BC
Amber shares that she originally wanted to go into programming and took community college classes at night while working full-time. Her early jobs in purchasing, inventory control, payroll, and clerical accounting gave her real operational context. She joined a Great Plains partner through friends, started as a receptionist, and grew into the role because the company invested in training and certifications. She later moved into consulting, testing, customizations, and long-term partner work before going independent.
Lesson from Amber: Your early roles matter. They become your advantage later because you understand what end users actually deal with.
02:45 – Becoming a Business Central Advocate
Topic: Early BC exposure and stepping into speaking
Amber explains she first heard about Business Central back when it was “Project Madeira.” She got pulled into BC deeper through training classes, events, and even an unexpected speaking opportunity when another presenter didn’t show up. That pushed her to learn faster. Now she focuses on behind-the-scenes work like documentation and tools that help GP users bridge to BC.
Lesson from Amber: Don’t wait for perfect timing. Sometimes you grow because you step in when needed.
03:49 – GP to BC Training Programs
Topic: Structured training for consultants moving from GP
Amber mentions Revolent as a program that worked directly with Microsoft (or with Microsoft support/approval) to offer GP-to-BC consultant training. She highlights hands-on labs, certification focus, and guided learning. She emphasizes BC isn’t just “GP in the cloud,” so a structured program helps people learn the new concepts, navigation, and setup logic.
Lesson from Amber: Training matters because the mindset and design model in BC is different. Hands-on practice is where confidence comes from.
04:40 – Staying Hands-On While Running a Consulting Practice
Topic: How she stays close to implementations
Amber explains she stays hands-on by being selective with client load. She keeps fewer projects so she can focus deeply when clients are in major initiatives. Many engagements she’s doing now are “pre-migration readiness” projects: data cleanup, process review, and getting GP under control so the next system (BC or even another ERP) doesn’t inherit the mess.
Lesson from Amber: A clean starting point reduces cost and stress later—no matter what system you move to.
05:45 – Fix Bad Habits Before Migration
Topic: Stopping bad habits from transferring into BC
Amber describes a common issue: users entering items or data “any way they want,” then using inconsistent fields for reporting (including spelling variations). She gives an example using SmartList Builder to group and summarize item data so the client can see patterns and inconsistency. She stresses the risk of going live in BC without addressing root problems—because users will bring bad habits with them.
Lesson from Amber: Migration doesn’t solve process problems. Cleanup and discipline must happen before go-live.
07:55 – Helping Clients See the Real Problem
Topic: Using summaries to make large data manageable
Amber explains how clients with large datasets (like 20,000 items) can’t manually review records one-by-one. Instead, summarizing by key attributes turns chaos into a smaller set of decisions (like 25 groups). This makes cleanup practical and helps clients understand what needs to be standardized before BC.
Lesson from Amber: People change faster when the problem becomes visible and measurable.
09:08 – Account Structure Shock
Topic: Dimensions vs. GP account segments
Amber explains one of the biggest “mind blocks” is moving from GP’s segmented account structure into BC’s dimension-driven design. She shares an example of a client who used Excel to generate hundreds of accounts for every location/department/project—even for cash accounts—because everything was segmented. She explains BC would handle that with dimensions instead of exploding the COA.
Lesson from Amber: Dimensions reduce COA bloat and give better reporting flexibility without creating thousands of accounts.
Thank you for listening and spending time with us. We hope this conversation gave you clarity, practical ideas, and confidence as you think about your own GP to Business Central journey. If you’re navigating change, remember you’re not alone—there’s a strong community ready to share, support, and learn together. Stay curious, keep asking questions, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
📺 Watch my full conversation with Amber Bell
Share & Stay Connected
Comments
Post a Comment