Business Central talent is starting to look less like a staffing problem and more like a delivery problem. For Microsoft Partners that want to grow in the SMB market, the constraint is no longer only pipeline. It is whether they can bring new consultants up to speed fast enough to implement, support and extend customer environments without exhausting the people who already know the work.
That pressure is showing up in public signals across the channel. The official Directions North America 2026 site says the event is where Business Central partners go for professional development and explicitly tells firms they can “Develop your team to support the future of Business Central.” On the 2026 speaker roster, Microsoft-led sessions include “Business Central for new partners” and “The future of talent!”
Shawn Dorward, vice president of SMB at sa.global, framed the issue in direct terms: “It’s important to attract and develop new talent in order for all of our partner, organizations to survive.” He also said the “New to BC” track began with a simpler idea: “there might be some GP consultants out there who are learning Business central now. Let’s create some content, not assume everyone is an expert.”
Why Business Central talent is getting harder to build
The shape of the work has changed. A modern Business Central practice does not stop at implementation. Partners are expected to sell, support, market, integrate, advise and now add AI-driven capabilities around the ERP core. Directions’ own recap of its 2025 event captured that breadth, saying the agenda covered how to “sell, support, implement, market, integrate with or add AI agents to Dynamics 365 Business Central.” The event also hosted 258 sessions across nine tracks.
That matters because Business Central talent is rarely born fully formed. A firm can hire smart people, but it still has to teach the product, the delivery model, the customer context and the unwritten habits of the channel. Dorward said the “New to BC” track later evolved beyond GP switchers and toward “brand new consultants.” In his description, the goal became to give newcomers “sort of like this mini kickstart into the important things that you need to know from MVPs, All Stars and tenured folks.”
That is a more specific problem than generic hiring. The channel is trying to shorten the time between recruiting someone and making that person useful on real projects. It also suggests that the old model, where new people learned slowly through osmosis and occasional mentoring, is under more strain than before.
The conference agenda is starting to reflect it
Directions North America is not presenting itself only as a networking stop or a product-update event. The event’s own language leans toward team development, practical education and professional growth. That aligns with what Dorward described: a channel trying to build a more deliberate on-ramp for new people rather than assuming they will simply pick it up along the way.
The same pattern is visible on Microsoft’s side. In a Partner blog post about Reskill, Microsoft described the program as a way to attract people from outside the “traditional” Business Central ecosystem and turn them into consultants and developers through training and coaching. That is not a conference tactic. It is a signal that the talent gap has become visible enough to justify formal intervention.
Business Central talent, then, is moving closer to practice design. The question is no longer just whether a Partner can hire. It is whether the firm has a repeatable path from new hire to productive consultant.
A track helps, but it does not solve the whole problem
A conference track can compress exposure. It can introduce new consultants to product experts, implementation patterns and the people they may later call when something breaks. That has value. Dorward said organizers also wanted attendees to meet “those new faces and get to those new contacts” so they have somewhere to turn when questions come up.
Still, no three-day event can replace an internal system for building Business Central talent. Partners still need shadowing, solution reviews, post-go-live debriefs, documentation habits and room for newer staff to work beside experienced people before they are expected to lead. Otherwise, the event becomes a useful burst of information that fades once delivery pressure returns.
That is where the article’s real tension sits. The channel appears to understand the problem. The official event messaging shows it. Microsoft’s own talent program shows it. Experienced leaders in the ecosystem are saying it out loud. What remains uneven is execution inside Partner firms themselves.
What this means for Partners
For Business Central leaders, the practical question is straightforward: is talent development treated as overhead, or as part of the growth model? A firm that says it wants more services revenue, more AI work, more vertical depth or more customer acquisition still has to answer a simpler operational question first. Who is going to do the work two quarters from now, and how are they being prepared now?
Business Central talent has become a channel issue because the work now spans too many disciplines to leave training to chance. The Partner that builds a clear runway for new consultants, and treats that runway as core infrastructure rather than side work, should be in a better position to grow without hollowing out its senior bench. That looks less like a conference talking point and more like a business requirement.
