ISV Talks
ISV Talks
ReQlogic Breaks Down LogicBlocks + Channel Trends
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On this episode of ISV Talks, Carol Livingston interviews Shawn Dorward, Tasha Anspach and Beth (Brademeyer) Harvey about their ReQlogic end-to-end procurement solution. They also share about their expanding Dynamics-focused solutions, what's new, future LogicBlocks and what they are seeing across the channel. www.reqlogic.com
Meet The RecLogic Team
SPEAKER_02Well, welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Karen Livingston from Dynamics Connections and your host of ISV Talks Podcast. On this episode, we have the team from RecLogic. Welcome everyone. Thanks, Karen. Yeah. So let's go ahead and do a round random. Introduce yourself. Tell us about your role and your time in the Dynamics Channel. So, Tasha, do you want to start?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So my name is Tasha Ansbah, and I have been in the Dynamics Channel since 2018. I started off with Dynamics SL support and saw Business Central in an extension that we had and that they were building at that point in time. And I fell in love with Business Central. I focus heavily on project accounting and project-based organizations, which is my role here currently with RecLogic. I'm helping build a roadmap and we just got done with our Project Logic solution. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02All right. So, Beth, do you want to introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_03Sounds good. Hey, my name is Beth Harvey. I've been in the channel since 1997. I started at Great Plains in Fargo. I still live right outside of Fargo on a farm, so love it. I'm born and raised here in the Midwest. Love Great Plains, love dynamics. I've been working on the ICV side now for many, many years. I've joined the team at Rec Logic in April of last year. Super excited to be able to be a part of Rec Logic. And my role here is really to help partners, enable partners to understand who Rec Logic is, what we do, what our future is, what we're continuing to roll out with the product. And then to be the point of contact for any questions, quotes, anything along that line, I'm their person to go to here at Rec Logic. Perfect. And Sean.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, thanks, Carol. Sean Dorward. Lucky enough to call Tasha and Beth, my colleagues here at Rec Logic. I'm the managing director of Rec Logic. Now for coming up on three years, and I've been in the Dynamics channel for almost 30 years, which is painful to say out loud, but also true at the same time. But that is just a testament to how much I enjoy what we all do, whether it's ERP implementations or solving business problems through solutions like RecLogic.
Origins And Evolution Of RecLogic
SPEAKER_02Great. So very experienced team here is what I'm hearing. So welcome. Sean, tell us a little bit about the company. How did it start? Kind of give a company overview.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would love to. So RecLogic has been around for about 30 years as an ISV solution. Started out many moons ago as filling a void or a gap for dynamics GP in requisition workflow, the approvals, the pre-approvals for purchasing. And it's an interesting story, at least I think it is for myself. I remember being a GP consultant, you know, literally a floppy disk toting consultant. Yes, that's true. And working with RecLogic as a solution for businesses who needed that kind of procurement control for requisitions and requests to purchase. And over the years, using RecLogic, folks would ask me year over year, they'd say, you know, what would you recommend for these controls, these risk mitigation controls for requisitions and the rope with robust workflow? And as a consultant, I would say rec Logic. And usually what would happen next, Carol, is they'd say, why? And I would simply say, because it just works. And as a consultant, that's really hard to kind of say that because you're putting your reputation with your client on the line. But over the years, it just was true every single time. And so I've been fortunate enough years later to be in a position to help take Rec Logic into a more advantageous and modern time and through Business Central. So the journey that the Rec Logic team has been on, it's been with partners over the past. So if you've thought Rec Logic went away, we won't hold that against you, but we certainly didn't. And we're here and we've we've revitalized the team, we've revamped how we do things, and we've even broadened what it is that we do and what we bring to the market and what gaps we fill for folks. And we're excited to talk about that today. The team is just full of experience. We've got, you know, customers all over the globe who have been happy with RecLogic for decades, and we look to continue to do that for the business central community.
Core Features And Configurable Workflows
SPEAKER_02Great. Yeah. And so what are the unique features of RecLogic? And I know you said you're expanding. So what are some of those new features?
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. So Rec Logic is requisition management at its core, our flagship product. And what we talk about there is fraud and risk mitigation, budget controls, and all that really is about complex workflows. If Sean wants to order a laptop, who has the authority to approve that? And what is the budget constraint that's attached to it? Those sorts of things, creating the separation of responsibility approval within every organization. That's sort of at its core. You can go beyond that and use things like expense approvals and PO and three-way matchings. And I'll I'll save some of our most recent logic blocks, as we call it, the expansion of our model for Tasha and team to talk about. But what we're really excited about are some of the things that we bring in RecLogic for our customers to use, but now also outside of RecLogic without the dependency of using the requisition platform. And what I'm talking about there is sort of this end-to-end AP document management process with intelligent data capture that we call Doc Logic. More on that later. But it's really an exciting time for RecLogic. If you've known RecLogic to just work, that's what you should expect from our logic blocks down the road. And we bring so many of these things to every organization that we that we work with.
SPEAKER_03And I'd like to add too, you know, as Sean talked about our core product, and realistically, that is your basic requisition to PO, receive, invoice, match. The one awesome thing that we also offer above and beyond is that we're so very configurable. Depending upon who you are and what you do, you could have a completely different configuration of rec logic than somebody sitting next to you in the cube. We also offer unlimited levels of approval and unlimited approval paths. So making us very dynamic and making it very easy for you to get approvals for those budgets and making sure everything is falling under the right controls, as Sean had talked about. And continuing to evolve that product. Sean talked about a few other things, and I know Tasha will go into that a little bit deeper, but we're continuing to evolve Reclogic, our core product, not only for BC, but we're also continuing to support and help customers that are on GP. And so we never want to say, hey, customers, just because you're on GP, we can't work with you. Oh my gosh, no, that's where we started, and we're still going to be here to help you with that as well.
GP To Business Central Without Losing History
SPEAKER_00Excellent point, Beth. I'll I'll throw in some more there. What is super exciting as a former consultant and someone who really likes helping businesses be successful is if you're on GP today, as Beth said, it's a strategy of ours to continue to support that. But if you do make the journey to the cloud, not only do these does the functionality travel with you into Business Central, but, and this is really important, lean in and listen, so does your history of your requisition management from GP. So you will not lose that visibility into the history of what you bought from this vendor, what your punch outs were with this vendor, what your pricing was with this vendor. Very, very critical for folks to be aware of that.
SPEAKER_03And Sean, I'm gonna jump in there again because you brought up something that I miss. I miss Punch Out. So if customers or you know anybody's looking for punch out, punch out is an open industry standard. We didn't develop it, but we connect to vendors that offer it. And what's really nice about it is as you're going through and creating a requisition, you can actually jump out to that vendor's website that they have set up and created for you as the end customer, your products, your pricing. And then when you choose that product, it automatically creates that line item on our requisition. So punch out is a very, very large part of our product. And if it's something that it's a unique identifier as well. And another thing, Sean, you just keep bringing up all the best points. I love this. The other thing is when you when you're moving from GP to BC, gosh, you know, if you already know the product in GP, you're gonna know it in BC. It's so very, very user-friendly. Not a lot is changing. Of course, there are functionality things that are changing, but so super easy.
SPEAKER_02That transition when people are going from one system they're familiar with to another, and then they have to adopt new processes, new and it sounds like that makes it seamless, right? The users aren't gonna be impacted as much, right? The reclogic users.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, very, very small learning curve when you go from the on-premise GP to BC for sure.
Punch Out And Included Support
SPEAKER_00We forgot one very cool thing. See, uh the folks watching and listening here, you could tell we're passionate about it because it just works. But we forgot one other thing. When you're working with Rec Logic, all of the support that you have for Rec Logic is included as you go. It's part of the enhancement fee. There's no extra service dollars attached, which I think is a great and unique offering that we bring to our clients.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. Well, you mentioned logic block. What is that about? I know, Tasha, you mentioned Project Logic. That's a whole new addition to the Rec Logic family. So do you want to tell us about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Sean, did you want to start with the concept of logic blocks as a whole and then we can dive into the different components of them?
Introducing Logic Blocks
SPEAKER_00Yeah, happy to. So we we recognize that Rec Logic is our flagship product, tried and true for nearly 30 years. As I said, it just works. And as an organization, we wanted to look and see what we could serve the community and how we could serve the community. And we came up with this idea called logic blocks. So we have rec logic and we have project logic and doc logic, and we'll continue to have other types of logic blocks filling those certain needs for our customers. Basically, some of those will be part of rec logic as its core or standalones for folks who don't use requisitions as well. And we're really excited about this for many reasons. One, because these are asks that our customers consistently bring to us. They want to know can you do this? I only need this small niche thing fixed. I don't need to buy a giant robust product that maybe other ISVs are solving because I don't need 80% of that product. And that's the concept of logic blocks.
SPEAKER_03And from there, we then turned into project logic, in which Tasha has been our champion on, and we just absolutely love that. So, Tasha.
Project Logic: Filling Project Gaps
SPEAKER_01So, Project Logic, like I said, I project accounting is what I'm obsessed with. That's where I've lived, that's been my happy place. So, Business Central, while it is making multiple enhancements to the projects, there's still gaps. And filling those gaps, there's only extremely large ISV solutions that take a lot of configuring when a customer or an organization may only need a small chunk. So that's really how Project Logic was born. And the idea behind it is because I wanted something where people could pick and choose what they needed, what gaps they needed to fill within the solution. So Project Logic, it's inside a business central, it just extends the tables and extends the functionality inside a business central, but there's three different offerings. So they all can work independently, but they can all work together as well, which is also going to be extremely helpful because as you know, there's sometimes ISV solutions don't work together, or multiple solutions may not work together. And that's where project logic is going to be beneficial because we're filling gaps that you can use either independently or use all together. So within the projects module, those three solutions, these are the three biggest ones that I found right off the bat is percentage of completion billing. So almost like that progress billing based off of a contract value inside of a project. So we added in that functionality. We also added in the ability for a project location shipping. So right now in Business Central, you had to select a ship to. And it was a little bit cumbersome because if you're a project organization, you're not always going to go back to that location. So it shouldn't have to be set up as a ship to. So we created just project locations and you can have your items drop shipped. They can ship to that location automatically. And then the other big gap that I noticed was project retainage. So on the accounts receivable side of things, having that retainage and being able to hold that back from customer invoices, that was a big gap. And it was very manual before and keeping track of it. So we've added in the ability for that project retainage as well.
SPEAKER_02Okay. That's great. And it sounds like it fills some critical gaps. And you don't have to really like Sean said, you don't need a whole new project system. Just need to fill a couple of little gaps in business central. And that's great. I I love that. And I'm kind of excited to hear about those doc logic. Is that released yet? Or is that something on the roadmap?
DocLogic Sneak Peek
SPEAKER_00I think Beth was hoping I wouldn't have said it today because we're not, we're not, we're not officially making the splash yet, but doc logic is something I'm just over the top excited about. Doc Logic is uh end-to-end intelligent data capture for your payment and procurement process. So think of AP in Business Central without Rec Logic as your foundation platform, or N GP with RecLogic as your foundation platform, or NBC with RecLogic as well. So three options there. We actually have it deployed many customers already today, and we're pretty excited to bring it to market and share in that new logic block called DocLogic.
SPEAKER_02Nice. So we got a sneak peek today, it sounds like on something on the roadmap. That's exciting. So, what are the things that your customers value about your solutions? You know, how do they use it? You know, how does it improve their lives, their business operations?
Customer Value And Change Management
SPEAKER_03I love the fact that you you talk about improving life improving their business and the lives and and because that was you know, if we think back to the way back to Great Plains, that was actually our mission statement to improve the business. So that was great. I'm glad you brought that up. That got a warm and fuzzy there. It just had to go there for a second. So really, you know, any customer that has a need for just being able to control what they're purchasing, you know, I need something, but I don't want to do that sneaker approval while I have to walk over to somebody's cube and ask for it or actually really seriously call somebody, nobody does that anymore. So being able to have everything automated by just anything that you need and the fit, we're gosh, you know, anybody that needs something again. So it could be a smaller shop, retail shop, or we could go away to incorporating project logic with a construction company. So we can fill many different industries, being able to just really pull it all together and now being able to roll in the other logic modics to come to it, we can fill all those gaps.
SPEAKER_00One thing we're trying to do very intentionally, Carol, is we're trying to streamline the impact end users feel between going from the ground to the cloud. So I mentioned doc logic and I talked about our included support. Not many ISVs bring that to the foreground. But with doc logic, for example, if someone were to use doc logic in Dynamics GP, when they move to business central, they will not even use a different platform. It will literally be the same exact platform when they move to business central. Completely removing the learning curve, not even just minimizing it, removing it altogether. Not just that, but when they do make that transition, it will be seamless to them because, like I said earlier, all that history will be there for them to view in their vendor analysis when they're in the purchasing. I don't know of many ISVs that can bring that power to change management adoption to end users, quite like we're doing with DocLogic and RecLogic.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Yeah, so it kind of solves that black hole of spending, is what I used to call it. Right. People are like, hey, boss, can I buy that laptop? Well, you know, you don't know, you might be over budget already.
Why Configurability Beats Customization
SPEAKER_00Correct. One of the other things I wanted to mention about why businesses like to use RecLogic is how highly configurable our product is. No longer will there be a need to come to us and say, I have this complex workflow, and we have to do a customization to accommodate. The configurability of this tool is so robust that we have literally in 30 years never met a workflow requirement we could not solve.
SPEAKER_03We've actually been able to, Sean, and you can contest to this as well, is been able to take somebody who's got like 40 to 50 workflows, right? And they're just it's crazy, completely complex. They come to us, they install RecLogic, and our team looks at it and says, you know what? With our very, very robust workflow, we can get that down to just a couple. We don't need to have where it's going to go through 65 different things. We can achieve the same darn goal, but using it with our actual workflow and making it quicker and easier, figurable for that user.
SPEAKER_00Right. Because a lot of times those workflows for requisitions and procurement aren't just simply attached to GL accounts or departments. They're attached to who I report to or what my budget authority is or what my purchasing power is, and maybe even what it is by quarter or period. So to that point, to Beth's point, we take all that and we simplify it behind the scenes so that the approval process is not only simplified, even though it's complex in the background, but it's auditable and verifiable through our audit trails.
SPEAKER_02Nice. I love that. You mentioned a few new things, but are there any other new things kind of out there in the future that you're looking to introduce?
Channel Shifts And The AI Push
SPEAKER_00Well, Carol, I think I think I'm going to get in trouble if I say any more. So we'll I will just have to invite folks to continue to check out our website, reclogic.com. And if you're a partner in channel, please reach out or come see us at Directions North America. We definitely plan on releasing some information there as well.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. So just I wanted to kind of change gears a little bit here and talk about what are you seeing in the channel? You know, kind of what challenges are you seeing with partners and customers? How are they trying to solve some of those operational challenges in their work life?
SPEAKER_03Well, we can take a look at that in a couple of different ways. One way I'd like to look at if we talked about partners, you know, being in the channel all of us for as many years as we have, we've seen so much change within the channel, whether that's a company that's now merged with another company or people just moving to different companies. We've seen a lot of that change. But one thing that we've always seen that's tried and true is the passion and the support for dynamics. And that's where our core heart is too, right? Is staying within dynamics, creating and continuing to grow the products that we have for dynamics. So that's what I see there on the partner side. I'll let Sean jump in to see if he's got any thoughts on that as well.
Focus, Verticalization, And Trends
SPEAKER_00So challenge is twofold. I think we talked about it already. One is how we get our customers comfortable with a move to the cloud if you're a dynamics GP. Certainly, grounded cloud initiatives have been something people have been saying for years. And we saw that as an opportunity with our strong RecLogic Foundation uh customer base to make that as minimal, minimally impacted as possible. So that combined with everyone is talking AI. Have you heard about this AI thing? And all kidding aside, with the speed and pace that AI is being released into mainstream, it's important to recognize how powerful and important it needs to be to our business. So that challenge is also being presented to partners in our space, where how do we incorporate more and more of the success that AI brings to the ecosystem to our clients? And at RecLogic, we're doing just that with the DocLogic tool to help make sure that intelligent data capture is something that we can easily give to our customers without having to reinvent a whole nother string of products.
SPEAKER_01I want to add one more thing. I think one of the biggest things that I've seen from customer facing is customers don't want to customize as often anymore. So that's where having these ISV solutions and having something that people can pick and choose from what their requirements are, that's really where this all comes from. People don't want to customize because they know what it takes and they want a system that's all inclusive. They want everything just to be there without having to build custom workflows and without having to build customizations. And that's one of the biggest things that I've seen, at least from end users specifically.
Why Partners Choose RecLogic
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so just want it out of the box. And then you gotta tweak it for their business process so they can do that themselves. That's really good. I love that. So, any new trends that you see on the horizon, you know, they're like, are you seeing some new things being developed in the future?
SPEAKER_00Well, for years, I don't know if this is a new trend or not, but for years we've heard the message of focus is critically important for the partner channel, you know, verticalization, find your industry focus. And although I think partners always took that, you know, sort of seriously, with the push of AI, we recognize that that's gonna have to be something that partners definitely do. And for us at RecLogic, we're prepared for that for all of the partner channel because we're diverse and we're sort of agnostic to industry, but we do solve niche needs for each one of. Them. And I think as partners find that focus and continue down that path, we'll be there to continue to support them.
SPEAKER_02Great. All right. So just in conclusion, what's one trend that's you are seeing that's really driving partners or customers to come talk to you? Sean, do you want to start?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, we just work. It just works. It's one. I'll say that forever. That's that was a true non-connected thought that I had as a consultant before I was part of RecLogic. I think that's a great story. The other is if you have a concern about fraud or risk mitigation, RecLogic and requisition workflow is definitely a critical component of that separation responsibilities. If you've got a lot of buyers or a lot of buyers in your organization, our price point outside of BC, because we integrate into BC, is going to be more affordable than a full-blown user in Business Central.
SPEAKER_02Right. So they don't need a BC license too, or only if they want to go into Business Central.
SPEAKER_00But no, they don't.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Okay. Great. Any other thoughts?
Closing And How To Connect
SPEAKER_03How about you? So, you know, I just think that the reason they want to come talk to us is just to piggyback again to what Sean says, you know, our reputation, how many years we've been in the channel, and then to see how that we're like that Phoenix, you know, we're coming, we're growing, we're continuing to build, and we're gonna be bigger and stronger every year. It's super exciting. And any of the partners that we've worked with previously are super excited to see us, and they're continuing to bring new partners our way as well. So every day is a learning curve for us in regards to just making sure we know all the new BC partners. You know, we have a huge footprint in the GP space, but just making sure that we know everybody in the BC side. As Sean mentioned, we're gonna be at directions. We'd love to meet any of you there as well. So reach out to any of us.
SPEAKER_02You know, Natasha, what's the one trend you're seeing that's driving customers or partners to talk to RecLogic or Project Logic?
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't really know because Beth is my driving force. That's how I talk to people. So I'm typical one that sits behind the computer screen. I only I only talk to them when we need to show the product or solve problems. So that's why they come talk to me. I solve their problems. Well, that's great.
SPEAKER_02And it just works. I love that thought, Sean, because that is really important and needs to work. Well, thank you for joining me today on this episode of ISV Talks. The Rec Logic team, you did a great job. A lot of exciting things happening with logic and logic blocks. That's a new term I hadn't heard before.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, Carol. We appreciate your time. And if anybody'd like to reach out to reclogic, our website is reclogic.com. That's R-E-Q, L-O-G-I-C.com. My name again is Beth Harvey. I'd be your point of contact at Rec Logic. And my email is Beth H at Reclogic. So B-E-T-H-H at R E Q L O G I C dot C O M. Thank you, and you guys all have a great day. And just remember, it works. All right, bye, friends.