Why you need one page resume?

I am a big fan of one page communications whether it is one page project report, one page project plan or one page job resumes.
In my career of 15 years, I have interviewed hundreds of people from trainees to executives. As per my experience, 95% of the resumes are not effective and either very lengthy or very vague in the messaging. With the passage of time, our attention span gets shorter and shorter and we tend to avoid the things which takes more than 5 minutes to read or dig the important information out of it. A recruiter hardly goes to 2nd or 3rd page of a resume. According to a survey, your chances of getting shortlisted are 80% higher if you can say your message in first 5 lines of your resume.

It is very much like google search, hardly anyone goes to second page of google search results. If you don’t find your desired results on 1st page, you will most likely change your key words and search again. So if you cannot tell key information about yourself in one page, there is really something wrong.

Dexter Digitals, a digital marketing company interviewed me recently and asked what I focus most when I interview people. I gave them 7 points and asked if it is really possible to crunch all these in one page and make it more visual instead of descriptive. (A picture paints a thousand words).  I was inspired by a recently viral resume of  Elon Musk.  But I wanted to go one level further and make it more attractive.

Dexter Digitals noted down all these points and took this ‘One Page Resume challenge’ . I was amazed to see the result, let’s check out these points-

1. How many companies you have worked with and for how long  
   Loyalty for the employer and stability matters a lot to me. It is debatable how long you should stay in an organization at the least but it really depends on the industry as well. Nevertheless, minimum 3 years is a good span. Giving a timeline view in the CV for your past experience makes it very easy to convey this message to the interviewer.
2. What is your exposure to other nationalities, cultures, religion, languages?      As more and more businesses are working on offshore model and more people choosing to work outside their ow countries, maintaining a good communication between individuals and teams is very crucial. If the candidate has worked in such environment, generally I assume that the candidate knows how to respect different religions, cultures and diverse view-points. Showing a visual (e.g. map view) for your multi location project is a smart way. 
3. What are the latest technologies you have worked with?                                              Most of the candidates start in a technology and never move from there since they get into comfort zone with that. It is important to assess the candidates how often they sharpen their axe (Aka skill set)? So, I recommend to highlight the latest and greatest technologies you have worked on.
4. How do you define your skill set in 1-2 lines?                                                                    Even LinkedIn asks for a summary for your profile since the recruiters goes through thousands of resumes every day and they should be able to see the desired skill in that summary. Secondly, it also brings out the capability of the candidate to be ‘precise’ and ‘to the point’ instead of beating around the bush.
5. What are the top 5 things in career you are proud of?                                                  It is my favorite question and most of the candidates find it hard to answer if they have not already thought through it. So, always highlight your achievement and success moments from your career. It is also an opportunity to show your passion and love for your work. Secondly, it also helps to drive the interview around your favorite things.
6. What is your strength area technically?
   I generally interview people on the things they know instead of asking them to fail. Nobody knows everything but you should be good in what you have done in your previous jobs. So, don’t forget to rank your strengths and there is no harm in rating yourself low on the areas where you are not comfortable.
7. Where are you busy after 6 pm or during weekends?
   What you do during weekend tells a lot about your personality, you cannot fake it. Generally, it does not impact the interview result directly but it helps to strike a chord with the interviewer. I believe people who have some interesting things to do after office can handle stress beautifully and are less complaining.

So, here is the resume created by Dexter Digitals .  Click on the below link to open with PDF. Satya Kejriwal-D365 Functional-Aug 2019

So, this is my version of resume and I believe we can have another optional page for details of the project but my most critical information is contained on the first page.  Give you opinion and feedback on this. Like this if you really liked this

 

Master Data Management in D365 Finance & Operations (FinOps)

In all of my implementation projects, master data management has always been a big discussion.

There are several Master Data Management tools in the market which are quite popular to maintain a single source of truth in the whole IT eco system of an organization. Microsoft also has a MDM (you can read more about this herehttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamicsax-2012/appuser-itpro/master-data-management-in-microsoft-dynamics-ax )

After reading the above article you see the scenario when this tool should be used and this effort might not be worth spending in small to medium level of projects. For such organizations, the base ERP can itself play the role of master data management and feed data into other systems if required.

Chart of Accounts, Customer, Vendors, Fixed Assets, product data, project master are mainly the master data which is also known as reference data. Dynamics 365 FinOps like any other ERP has all of these masters in various modules. But  all of the clients have following concerns around master data management-

 

1. Completeness of master data– Since master data is a manual exercise, it is highly likely that some of the important field might be missed out while creating a record.
2. Workflow on master data– There is no workflow on masters in D365 which makes people nervous since they have to rely on the data entry clerk for accuracy. There are some tools in the market now (e.g. MS flow, Xflow etc.) which can be configured somehow to support workflow on any data but again it is a lot of effort and there will be customization required to make it fully functional.

While the above concerns will always be there without adopting the 3rd party tools, there are some out of the box features in D365 F&O which are barely leveraged by the partners and the customers.

Master Data Template

Master data templates is a very useful feature in D365 FinOps. It is almost same as AX 2012 but not many people know about this since it is not quite intuitive  to enable this feature.

Let’s cover all the master data in Dynamics 365 FinOps and how can be templatize those masters.

(A) Using the ‘User Template’ from record info screen

This option works for all the master data in D365 except project master. Following master data supports this feature:-

• Chart of Accounts
• Customer
• Vendor
• Bank
• Fixed Assets
• Item

We will take Chart of Account to understand this concept and it applies to all of the above master data

Step-1

Select the main account from this path-

General Ledger–> Chart of Accounts–>Accounts–>Main Accounts

Step-2

Click on the Record Info under option tab.

It opens a pop up window in the right side where you will see ‘User template’ option.

Step-3 Click on the User template button to create a template using the main account selected in the screenshot.

Step-4

How to use the template

Now, let’s see how this template plays when you create a new main account. Click on the new button to create a new main account which will give you a new pop up window to ask if you want to use the template to create a new account. Ideally you must create a template for each type of account (Asset, Liability, Expense, Revenue, Statistics etc.).

(NOTE- this pop up window was not there if you don’t create a template)

Select the template you want to use to create your account

 

If you click on OK button to accept the template and you will see all of the fields are copied over from the template except the main account number. Now, you can enter the main account as per your requirement and proceed.

Please note that there is an option to turn off this template if you don’t want to use the template anymore.

Alternate way (only for Main Accounts)

Chart of accounts has another way of creating template which is available on the following path in D365. Here you have to create the template from scratch instead of taking any existing account as a template.  Similar to the previous way, you can create multiple templates here which will be visible and available to use when you start creating new account

There is an option ‘new from template’ on the main account form which will work only if you have created templates with this 2nd method.

Project Wizard

Project module has a wizard to create a project master data from a template. Project creation is the most complex and strenuous process in D365 but the existence of this wizard makes it easier at least by 70%-80%.

Following is the process to set up the template and using a template in the wizard

Step-1

How to create a template

There is toggle button on the project master data which can be enabled to make any project as a template. Ideally, you should create one template for each type of project. (e.g. Fixed price, time & material, internal, cost etc.)

Step-2

How to use the template

Always use ‘copy project’ option if you want to create it from a template.

You will see the following wizard which will guide you through all the steps and fields required for project creation.

On the 2nd stage of the wizard, you will be asked to give project ID and name.

It will default all the information from the template and you have option to modify it.  On 3rd stage, there is an option to create a new contract which enables you to create contract from the same window.

On this stage, there are options to copy several different set up from the template or create your own.

At the last step, you will be notified for the number of records created as a result of this exercise.  Click on finish and you will see your projects and other information in D365

Hope you liked this post and it gives you some insight on making master data management more manageable without using any 3rd party tool.

What people miss in Stock Count in D365FinOps

Generally, all the organizations have stock take periodically (generally at year end) and during this time, they lock the warehouses for any movement of inventory till the time they count and post the counting journal.  Dynamics 365 has a parameter which supports this requirement of the business.

But most of the people miss a set up on the released product form which creates a lot of problem during product count.

There is a set up form ‘warehouse item’ on the released product form where you can define warehouses which will hold that particular item. If you don’t define warehouses there, there is a default record in this form. When you run the cycle count journal, that particular item is blocked for all the warehouse even if you run it for one warehouse (e.g. 121)

But generally, all warehouses don’t go in counting at the same time to have the minimum impact on the business, so the above configuration will be a show stopper for the business. I have seen several client who face following issue when one warehouse is counting and they try to run counting for other warehouse OR they try to perform some transaction on that item.

Error “Cannot edit a record in Current Counting status for items (InventItemLocationCountingStatus). An update conflict occurred due to another user process deleting the record or changing one or more fields in the record.”

Ideal configuration for Stock Count

See the following item and I have configured 3 warehouses for this.  I try to run counting for this item for all three warehouses together

Now, it blocks this item for doing any further transactions that involves its movement . See the following records again after running the counting journal. All records are stamped with the journal number and ‘counted started’ flag.

 

Now, when you try to pick any item, you will get following error.

So based on the same logic, if you run it for one warehouse, it will block only that warehouse, not everything.