Boost Business Central developers with online learning programs
How do you make sure your business central developers are comfortable and stay on track with their competence development at any time? That is the question many companies with experienced and new developers onboard have, when implementing Business Central.
Luckily, we provide different programs to boost developers in Business Central like we did for GMI group. They decided to boost their developers through our Core Development program, and it provided them with solid foundational knowledge and the confidence to start real implementation assignments as Business Central developers. Read more on their experience with Business Central Booster below.
Are you looking for a reference case about our functional program to boost functional consultants? Read more on our case about Cegeka-dsa here.
Ilse Daems is the HR Manager at GMI group. GMI group is a Belgian based Microsoft Gold partner. They offer a total approach in the automation of business processes for the midmarket with outstanding solutions within ERP, CRM, BI & ECM. GMI is specialized in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central implementations.
“As a HR manager, I want our employees to find confidence through competence development.“
Our 100 employees make our value; their expertise and knowledge are extremely important to us and our customers. We want our employees to be comfortable and on track with their competence development at any time, says Ilse Daems. Quite a challenge when technology is changing very quickly. The Business Central technical architecture and development environment is continuously evolving to be the most up to date modern cloud-based business solution in the ERP space.
Challenges for both new and experienced Business Central developers
This technological evolutive context challenges both new and experienced Business Central developers.
Experienced Microsoft Dynamics Business Central (former NAV) developers not only need to adopt to a new development environment and the new technical cloud architecture, but they also need to find and built-up new solution heuristics within that new technical architecture. And if this were not enough, they need to keep up with the continuous technical improvements in the Business Central platform.
New hires need to be ramped up efficiently in the technical Business Central platform and best practices with respect for the legacy and with open eyes for the new capabilities and possibilities. They need to build up technical competence quite quickly and find enough confidence to start working on real engagements. We onboard new hires at different times during the year and we cannot afford much waiting for training sessions. They need to start with their training as soon as possible.
Boosting Business Central developers with online developer learning programs
Every GMI employee gets the most suitable and effective training. New hires need to be onboarded effectively and fast in their new job role, says Ilse Daems. We recently onboarded a new group of Business Central developers. They all were just graduated starters, they needed to be trained in the new technical and functional environment.
Plataan is our main partner to develop Business Central competencies within our organization. In the last year we discovered their online Business Central Booster functional program to train functional consultants. So, we already experienced the advantages of this case-based learning program. When the new development programs within BusinessCentralBooster became available, we knew that the Business Central Booster Core Development program was the right training for our new developers.
Self-paced monitored learning progression and engagement
And so, we rolled them all into this program. They could start immediately and learn at their own pace. Both our organization and the Booster program itself imposed learning objectives for the participants, so they had real goals on a weekly basis. We organized a follow-up meeting on the learning progress supported by a weekly progress report of all our students provided by the Business Central Booster team. We saw that they were progressing well and that they were really engaged by this learning program.
They all very were positive towards the program. They enjoyed and appreciated their learning experience. It provided them with solid foundational knowledge and confidence to start real implementation assignments as a Business Central Developer. This training program really boosted them in the real world of Business Central. They always felt supported in their learning journey by the Plataan instructors.
Everything was well explained, and we did find a lot of information and guidance in this learning program. I really liked the step-by-step approach, the sprints, and the fact that we also learned about AzureDevOps, GIT and Docker in this course, says Kim Wouters who was one of the new starters.
A holistic vision on learning for Business Central Developers
Steven Renders, the lead technical content developer in the Business Central team affirms. The Business Central Booster Core Development program includes a holistic vision on the learning content for Business Central developers. We not only included straight forward technical subjects and challenges that every developer needs to know when starting with Business Central but we also included the DevOps practice in each of our labs. In this way, students really learn how to customize the real way, like in a real project.
Five benefits of this learning program for developers
The participants listed five benefits they experienced in a feedback session with the BusinessCentralBooster team:
• Learn at our own own pace, with objectives and a time constraint
• A good mix of theory and practice with step-by-step exercises
• Although the training contains different tracks and offers a large amount of content, the variety of teaching methods and content always keeps the students sharp
• The live interaction with the Plataan instructors to answer questions or help with issues. We always felt supported in our learning journey by the Plataan instructors
• We were really engaged by the case based assignments
For the GMI group the BusinessCentralBooster programs are a real asset to build up the skills level of their employees. We will surely use it again soon, confirms Ilse Daems.