Boyer’s thriving ERP consulting practice continues to grow. The Minnesota-based partner recently hired 20-year expert Avril LaPorte as their newest Business Central consultant.
Midway through a pre-law internship in the early 2000s, LaPorte volunteered to help her employer with some accounting tasks. That’s when she discovered her love for numbers. A knack for recognizing patterns and seeing where something was off piqued her interest — and made her an asset to her employer.
She quit law school and started taking classes in accounting. Not interested in getting a CPA, she still wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with her new skills.
Then, in 2008, something clicked. LaPorte landed a job as a controller at a sauce plant in Ohio and was tasked with helping them migrate to a newer version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. She’s been working in the world of ERPs ever since.
“They were moving from version 5.0 to 2013 R2, and nobody knew the system. I decided I would learn the system and lo and behold, the rest is history. I’ve been doing NAV and BC implementations ever since,” she said.
LaPorte taught herself everything about the solution and at one point had 13 active certifications.
“You can never learn anything and everything about it,” she said.
When Microsoft introduced Dynamics 365 Business Central, a cloud counterpart to NAV, LaPorte followed. She recently got her Functional Consultant certificate for Business Central.
While noting that the early versions of Business Central were rough, LaPorte says the system is now much better than the alternatives she’s seen. She dabbled a bit in Quickbooks, Sage and Netsuite but never really liked those systems much. Her true love is Microsoft ERP, with its intuitive layouts and user-friendly interface.
Moving to Boyer
LaPorte heard about Boyer’s Business Central consultant position through a former coworker. At the time, she was the director of client support services for a company that sold a Microsoft-based software specifically for the wine industry. The job required a lot of hours but offered minimal face time with clients — a piece LaPorte greatly missed.
“I wasn’t involved with the clients as much as I wanted to be,” she said. “I was more of an overseer, and that didn’t sit well with me. … I just missed doing implementations.”
She’s excited to get back into a more hands-on role where she can assist customers directly. LaPorte loves solving problems and especially enjoys helping customers learn their new system.
“I think my favorite thing about consulting is teaching someone how to use the system,” she said. There’s always that lightbulb moment when something clicks for a customer, and she loves seeing their eyes light up when they get it.
LaPorte lives just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, with her 14-year-old daughter. When she’s not busy with work, she likes to write, sing and hike.
She wrote a memoir about the unconditional love of humanity and is currently trying to get it published.
After growing up in the church, LaPorte has a soft spot for hymns and old spirituals but also likes anything Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin or general R&B.
Plagued with severe stage fright despite being in choir and talent competitions, she determined during covid to get over her fears. Her solution? She signed up for everything she could including The Voice. She auditioned three times, eventually receiving a call back.
“I did get over my stage fright,” she added. “I sing a lot to anyone that will listen.”
The experience also gave her the confidence to take the stage at Dynamics Communities, where she led a speaking session last year on “Leading your team remotely.”
