Andrew Bibby's Career
By Andrew Bibby
I am a certified CRM specialist, MCT, and Microsoft MVP with over 16 years of experience in delivering Dynamics 365 / CRM projects. I’ve worked across all stages of the project lifecycle and am now one of the leadership team at Proximo 3. But how did I get here?
Shortly after leaving university in 1996, I landed a job as a developer for a small software company in Oxford. It was my first time in a developer role and I was keen to learn a lot during my first years at the job.
After a few years there, and with some experience of the world of work, I decided it was a good time to travel. This was in 2001, and I took 10 months off to travel across Australia and New Zealand, the US and Canada. Looking back, I am glad that I took this time off when I had the opportunity to do so. I saw some amazing sites and have great memories to look back on.
In 2002, I came back to the UK (and reality) and went back to software development at several software companies around Birmingham. Then, in early 2007, and I had my first encounter with the Dynamics world, at a company in Coventry. At the time, they were using Microsoft CRM V3. After only six months of developing add-ons for Microsoft CRM, I realised that it was an area I really wanted to focus on. I’ve worked solely with Microsoft CRM – which, over time, became Dynamics 365 and Power Platform – ever since.
For the next eight years, I worked at several Microsoft partners on Dynamics 365/CRM projects, learning more about how to develop and configure the products to meet customer’s requirements, mainly for Financial Services clients. I went from developer to functional consultant to senior consultant to solution architect.
In 2015, I decided it was time for a change, and switched from working with Microsoft partners to working with end-user customers implementing Dynamics 365 in their organisations. I worked with those customers to provide project assurance, helping them to understand Dynamics better, and how to collaborate with their Microsoft partner effectively and manage the quality of work they produced. During this time, I worked on several big projects, with the largest having over 100 people working on it at one point. I also worked on projects for many great organisations such as Wesleyan Assurance, WaterAid, and NFU Mutual.
In 2020, I then partnered with three major Microsoft community figures – Mark Christie, Iain Connolly, and Alison Mulligan – and Proximo 3 was founded. Through building a company together, we have worked on some really successful projects with great companies such as Golden Charter (click here for more information on this project).
Through working within the Dynamics and Power Platform community I have been awarded the Microsoft MVP award. I was first awarded in 2017, in recognition of my community work with the CRM User Group, and then founded the UK Dynamics 365 and Power Platform User Group. I have been involved with user groups since 2014 and was announced as the chairperson for the UK user group in November 2019. Gaining my MVP award for community work within the Dynamics community seems very fitting for me as it has given me so much over the years, I’m glad to be able to return this in some way.
I’m also a Microsoft certified trainer, gaining my MCT for the third time recently. Training has been another great experience, allowing me to travel as part of my job and teach new skills to people who are often very new to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
2023 has brought the opportunity for so many amazing community events. I look forward to meeting everyone again DynamicsMinds on the 22nd-24th of May, Scottish Summit On Tour on the 5th of August, and the D365PPUG all-day event on the 8th of June.
To find out more about Andrew Bibby and the team at Proximo 3, visit our ‘Meet the Team’ page here.