> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://abcsoferp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why Your ERP Training Isn't Working (And How to Fix It) - URL: https://abcsoferp.com/episodes/s04e06-why-your-erp-training-isn-t-working-and-how-to-fix-it/ - Published: 2026-03-10T13:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-19T21:50:21.000Z - Description: Why does your team forget everything they learned in ERP training? You invested serious time and money. Everyone attended. And three months after go-live, half the team is still confused, making errors, and asking the same questions. The problem isn't your people — it's how the… - Author: ABCs of ERP & Beyond - Tags: Implementation and go-live, People and process, #episode S04E06 · 43 min ## Episode notes [Send us a message about this episode!](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2109197/fan%5Fmail/new?ref=abcsoferp.com) Why does your team forget everything they learned in ERP training? You invested serious time and money. Everyone attended. And three months after go-live, half the team is still confused, making errors, and asking the same questions. The problem isn't your people — it's how the training was structured. The timing's off, the focus is wrong, and nobody's set up to retain what they've learned. In this episode, Pete and Nirav share 5 practical tips (plus a bonus) that can fundamentally change whether your ERP training sticks or fades. Whether you're about to go live or already in the weeds, this one's for you. [Support the show](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2109197/support?ref=abcsoferp.com) ## Watch the episode ## Transcript The speaker labels and timings come from the edited Riverside transcript. Read the full transcript Peter Nicholson (00:33) And welcome back to the ABCs of ERP and beyond the podcast all around enterprise resource planning and how it can help modern businesses thrive. And today, well, we're talking about a pattern that we see constantly. A company invests serious time and money into ERP training. Everyone attends and then three months after go live, half the team is still confused, making errors and still asking the same questions. So what went wrong? Well, the problem isn't that your people are slow. It's that the most ERP training is structured in a way that almost guarantees people will forget it. The timing's off or the focus is wrong and nobody's really set up to retain what they've learned. So today we will be sharing five tips plus a bonus that can fundamentally change whether your training sticks or fades. Whether you're about to go live or you're already in the weeds wondering why your team is struggling, well today's episode is the one for you and joining me as ever. is my fellow co-host, Nirav Shah. Welcome back. Nirav Shah (01:35) Yep, thanks Peter. Happy to be back ⁓ and continuing our momentum here this year and really coming through with some ⁓ important ERP topics that sometimes doesn't get talked enough. ⁓ Although it sounds really fundamental, I think there's a lot of different ways to go through an ERP implementation. But this one, key user training, talking about education and specific tips to make ERP training stick, which is super important. the end of the day, that's really where the ROI of your ERP implementation lies mainly. I would say one of the more important phases of the project, because if you get your users to really catch on the ERP system and learn what they need to learn without having to feel scared or ⁓ that they're forgetting to test the process or anything like that, you're going to get massive ROI because they're going to hit the ground running when you go live. And that's what you want ultimately. ⁓ Or you're spending a lot on go live support and additional ⁓ debugging and all that type of stuff. So if this is done correctly and the emphasis in ⁓ making sure users fully grasp the concepts, The screens and the fields that they're gonna be using day to day ⁓ Is is really important and hoping today that some of the tips that we share and there's probably way more than what we're you know, gonna Delivering I think you know, we we before this episode we talked about kind of you know, which ones we thought were really important we've documented and we'll go through but ⁓ Even outside of this if anybody if anybody out there that's listening to this has some tips shoot us shoot us a comment Put a comment on our YouTube ⁓ video or send us an email, happy to do a part two of this or include it at least just in our documentation on our LinkedIn page or whatnot. yeah, this is an important topic. I think this is a high ROI in any ERP implementation. And I'm hoping that if you're going through an ERP implementation right now, that you could use this right away and really, really get your users to embrace the software and learn the software more. Peter Nicholson (04:02) Yep. All right, let's get straight into it. ⁓ And I'm going to probably set out the problem that we see first of all, and then what the tip is and what and then we can discuss like, why we've decided this is an important one, because even when we going through this, right, we've already got a bonus tip, we could probably easily write out kind of 15-20 tips. So to distill that into five was quite hard. But I guess let's start with the problem that ⁓ can happen. ⁓ And it's that everyone just gets the same training, right? Everyone sits in the room. You got the warehouse manager sitting through AP workflows. You got the accountant or the controller sitting there watching warehouse picking demos and people just tune out. People sit there not paying attention because it doesn't feel relevant to them. It isn't relevant to them. ⁓ And they just zone out and they'll end up zoning out on their own. ⁓ Nirav Shah (04:37) Yep. Right. Right. Peter Nicholson (04:55) you know, directed training that actually affects them, right? So tip one we got here is train based on specific roles and responsibilities, not making it generic content. Nirav Shah (04:58) Yeah. Yeah, this one is huge. know, doing this as many years as I have, I've seen this, although it sounds like fundamental, I've seen ⁓ customers like not really give this a lot of thought. When you say we're ready to start training, they said, you know, we want to cross train everybody. Yeah, we want the warehouse guy to learn the sales order module. Like they're like, we just want everybody to know the system. And then all of a sudden you have a room full of people that you know, most the time the training doesn't pertain to 90 % of the audience, right? Depending on the topic. So immediately what happens as you're going down the road of teaching a topic, you start getting input and you start getting diverted in other conversations that is no longer pertinent to that topic anymore. So everybody in that room kind of gets ⁓ sidetracked and there are no zero decisions made. on that specific training topic that you're doing in the ERP. And it just becomes a big kind of business venting session at the end of the day, for the most part. Like, ⁓ you know, this was, know, I had to always, you know, check sales orders if they're accurate on the warehouse when I'm doing my shipment, because Sue in the front would forget to put the unit price in and I always had to check it and there would be no customer PO and we would get returns all the time. Like, it just becomes this big, you know, kind of that wasn't necessary at that time. Right. First, that should have been discussed in the discovery and uncovered. Number two is now we have to get people going. We have to get people in the system. That is the focus. We're not going to get your specific processes nailed down on day one of ERP training. It's not going to happen. It's going to happen over time because trainings themselves end up not just learning the software, but becomes kind of a light discovery as well. things that were not uncovered in the full discovery that we will then fine tune and tweak in that specific module and training process. So having it very specific to roles and responsibilities and you get only those type of users there that make decisions on that module and that department is very important because you're going to get the most out of that session that's going to be the most productive. So that information for that group will stick at the end of the day. Peter Nicholson (07:07) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would also say that it's not only just the specific things that they do day to day. I'd also prioritize this on, okay, what does this person need to know on day one? What do they need to know on week one? What about month one? Right, so if you're thinking about ⁓ say a picker in the warehouse, fine, it's obvious that they don't need to understand GL postings and the chart of accounts, right? But day one, they're gonna need to know how do I receive in stock? Nirav Shah (08:00) Yeah. Peter Nicholson (08:06) How do I pick and ship? How do I confirm a shipment? Right? On day one, maybe in week one, month one, then you're gonna be down to, okay, how do I do, you know, how do I complete a cycle count? Or I've just had a return come in, what do I do? Because now, you know, this would need to go into quarantine. Something that's not day one, I would say, just get the fundamentals. ⁓ Nirav Shah (08:11) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (08:32) I'm with my ITW background. I'd probably say 80-20 this stuff, right? If that person only remembers 20 % of the training, make sure it's the 80 % of the importance or the 80 % of the value that they bring, right? What is the top, you know, most important thing of all the things they're gonna remember? You know, if they've got five things they need to remember, what's number one? You know, really focus on that. Nirav Shah (08:37) Hey, they're turning. Yep, yep, Yeah, exactly. And you'll be amazed with the type of productive conversation you get when you just have a very specific group in that training session. There will be more than, you you have people following your agenda. Number one, number two, ⁓ as you go through that training, you're going to get additional ideas on how you maybe want to propose an alternate solution. ⁓ And it just becomes a big, ⁓ know, team building exercise for that group ⁓ that is going to be responsible to be in that screen day in and day out to improve processes instead of getting a lot of influence from other departments that are not putting in sales orders, right? Yeah, okay, they need to know this information. That's all we need to know. And hopefully we've uncovered, like I said, discovery, but ⁓ you you'll get some really positive forward progress when it's very specific. Peter Nicholson (09:43) Yep. Nirav Shah (09:56) on the roles and responsibilities to specific user base at the end of the day. That's super important, I think. ⁓ And not worry about training everybody. You don't have to train everybody, right? Everyone's going to get trained. That's fact number one. Everyone will be trained, right? This is an ERP system. It's a company-wide initiative. It's a business management system. Everyone's going to be in it. Everyone's going to be using it. But let's train the right people at the right time to get the most bang for our buck ROI. Peter Nicholson (10:00) Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. And that brings us straight on to tip number two, closely linked here. Problem you see is just general timing, right? Train too early, people just forget everything by go live. Train too late and people panicking, worried that they won't be able to remember. ⁓ It's only just thrust upon them and go live is next week. They just can't absorb anything at all. So tip number two is get that timing right. There's a sweet spot. training too early versus training too late. So ⁓ get the timing right. So let's break this one down what actually works when we ⁓ think about timing of the training. Nirav Shah (10:55) dearest. Yeah, so this one you have to as an ERP consultant or even as an end user, it's maybe kind of hard to separate some topics because you're like, I'm doing finance, right? If I'm teaching finance, chart of accounts usually one of the first training sessions because that's necessary to set up the system right out of the gate, right? But the finance team may also say, well, we also want to know ⁓ what our P&L looks like, want to know what our month end close looks like, we want to know how to reconcile inventory, we want to know how to, you what our year end looks like. like, okay, perfect, yes. You need to know all that information, but you don't need to know that in day two of training, right? We haven't even done a sales order yet in the system. We haven't done a purchase order. We haven't received anything. Hell, we haven't shipped anything yet. So it's like, if we train you too early on month end close, year end close, reconciling inventory, Peter Nicholson (11:53) you Nirav Shah (12:06) You're going to forget all of that by the time you get closer to Go-Live. So there is a sweet spot in certain topics and when you train them and the approach for that is so you get the setups out of the way, you do dynamic training of the data, right? And your general day-to-day processes. And then some of that month end year end reconciliation stuff happens closer to the end of training. Yeah, you meet with the finance team multiple times in the implementation, you have to be open to that, right? It's just going to make, you're going to get a lot more value out of that approach than, than trying to figure it all out and have a set process defined for your month. And then you're in right there from day two of ERP training at the end of the day. So it's important to find that right balance. It's important to find the right priority of when you're going to train things and maybe. Peter Nicholson (12:56) Yeah. Nirav Shah (13:02) Maybe even sales order entries, maybe not even a topic you do early on. Like for example, we're doing an implementation for a medical device company right now, medical device manufacturer actually. They do a lot of work with distributors out there. So they will manufacture this medical device, they'll send it to the distributors in a kit. The distributors will hold the kit until a hospital or a surgeon picks the kit up and uses it in the OR, right? So think about that. kit, the manufacturing and planning process comes first for that company. So they manufacture a plan and they do a transfer order to the distributor because the manufacturer still owns it. But only when the surgeon picks up a kit and uses it in the OR, they get a PO on that kit. So that happens all the way at the end. And then the PO comes in almost like the final stages of the process. And then they put in the sales order. And then they basically ship and invoice out of that distribution center. So it all depends. Timing is everything here. We're trying to do it in the proper workflow to make sure training is done accurately and in the right sequence at the end of the day. That makes logical sense for everyone's business, business goals. Peter Nicholson (14:17) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would also say we know that these ERP implementations or even just a migration, it's a long multi-month project and that gives you the opportunity to break the training down into, should I say, be more strategic with your training. So early on in the project, that's where you should be doing kind of awareness sessions. I know we should probably refer to the episode we did about setting up a core team, having ⁓ work stream owners, you know, then they pass the training on to end users and all that kind of stuff. But I think ⁓ for those people, those core team people, it's the awareness sessions. Here's what's coming and why it's important. ⁓ Give them that what and the why so they're aware of what's coming up. They know the cadence of everything. ⁓ Nirav Shah (14:57) Yeah. Peter Nicholson (15:14) because early on you're gonna be doing some configuration sessions where you're just stepping through the various preferences screens of your new ERP. Your partner's gonna be explaining what this checkbox enables or disables. ⁓ So that kind of nicely transitions to that kind of mid-project area where you're talking about business processes and therefore then ⁓ the workflow training, as we're gonna mention about workflows in the next tip coming up. Nirav Shah (15:44) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (15:45) And you think about that training from the mid project, you're ending up kind of 75 % of the way through, 80 % of the way through the project now, you're going to soon be doing user acceptance testing. So they need some form of competency in the new system to know what they're supposed to test and what doesn't look right and what good does look like. You know, that real kind of hands on system training, you know, in the months leading up to go live. But also Go-Live should say probably this stage, I guess, on too late, too early and too late is it also is important to consider that training post Go-Live. Reinforcement training, hopefully by now it's just reinforcing, closing up those gaps, those bits. People are going to forget certain aspects of it. So it's important to kind of go over that in reinforcement training and any remediation, you know, Nirav Shah (16:26) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (16:43) Who's to say, you're probably not gonna have 100 % correct configuration. There's gonna be a checkbox that you missed, or there's gonna be a module you've left in migration mode and nothing's working correctly, right? It's important that, no, I was throwing that out there to see if I could see some kind of sign in your eyes that you're harking back to some experience. Nirav Shah (16:57) Are you talking from experience there, Peter? Just wondering. You Peter Nicholson (17:11) But you know, whole idea of remediation is important because you'll probably find that there are not only gaps in that configuration that might have slipped the net, but also the gaps in the training. So it's just as important after go live as well to think about how you're to continue that ⁓ reinforcement of what's learned. So, it's human nature. People lose most of what they've learned without a week, ⁓ without any reinforcement training. Nirav Shah (17:29) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (17:41) So, you know, it's important to train the specifics closer to when they're actually gonna use the system in the real world to try and improve that retention rate. it's, yeah, it's trying to find that Goldilocks period, isn't it? Nirav Shah (17:54) Mm-hmm. It is, it really is. ⁓ But if done right, the decisions leading up to that particular session that's timed perfectly is going to be the most valuable standpoint that you've learned so much on how you want to change your process to that point. ⁓ we've learned, consultants have learned a lot about your business to make sure that that session is framed correctly ⁓ and effective for you. that is super, super important. And here, this is where a good set up project plan is ideal. ⁓ So let me take that back. So project plan is one thing. There should be a training plan. I feel like project plans are too high level. ⁓ Training plans, which is more granular, should go through each individual training topic. and subtopics under that particular training plan. I think that is more appropriate for an ERP implementation than just working off of a project plan. So if you're out there right now going through doing ERP implementation, put together a training plan. You'll find a lot more clarity in that at end of the day. Peter Nicholson (19:18) Yep, All right, moving on to tip number three we have here. This kind of links onto what we're saying about kind of setting up the expectation and talking about, know, here's how we're gonna do it, here's what's coming up in your training. ⁓ This is a real one. that we've seen before as well. The problem being that people just get shown the buttons and the screens and that's it. It's like, here's the sales order entry screen. ⁓ And they get shown that before they actually understand how the system supports the business process as it is. How does the system, the new ERP system handle the order to cash flow? You know, they learn how to click without understanding actually what they're doing and how this links to other teams. So tip number three here is train the workflows end to end prior to just purely system training. ⁓ This is huge. This was really beneficial, especially in our ERP implementation of Acumatica in the UK is that we sat down and we thought about, okay, what's the most important workflows to get right? What is 80 % of our business doing every day? Nirav Shah (20:18) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (20:42) So it's your order to cash flow. It's your procure to pay flow. Think of these big things that incorporate all different teams and build that training around that business process flow, not just here's this screen, here's this screen. ⁓ And I think this also allows you to have the right people in the room. So when you're doing that order to cash flow, you've got the Nirav Shah (20:48) Yep. Peter Nicholson (21:10) the order entry person, say, you know, the customer service person. We know that when that order goes on the system, it's gonna generate demand to your procurement person. That person should be in the room. So actually build your training around an actual business process and go, right, we're gonna start from here, you're gonna put on this dummy order. Okay, it's on the system. Now Mr. Purchaser, how do you see that demand? Where do you go in the new system to pick up that demand and build that through because that's what they're gonna be doing. Nirav Shah (21:33) Yep. Right. Peter Nicholson (21:39) They're going to be sitting there on an isolated screen in an environment, in a sandbox environment. It's a real life, as you said, business system that's integrating lots of different departments. So build your training around that. Don't have these siloed ⁓ training sessions. Thoughts? That was a lot to distill. Nirav Shah (21:49) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's great points. No, that was great because this step kind of gets overlooked often. A lot of people just jump into training without seeing what the big picture is. We'll talk about this little bit later on. What are we doing? Why are we doing this training? What comes first? What comes after that? Do we have just at least the architecture? Peter Nicholson (22:23) Mm-hmm. Nirav Shah (22:28) of your workflows defined to a point where we could make good decisions in the training. We know how the baton is passing from one department to another. So I think this is critical to go through and put together your workflow for sales entry, ⁓ your purchasing, your planning, ⁓ receiving, shipping. Right? Finance, put together a workflow. I'm literally talking about a diagram. Put together a diagram that's going to make that represent your business end to end. And then later on, as you go into the sessions, individual sessions, create like more granular diagrams for each individual process. Right? And you build that out, you know, maybe before or after training for that particular topic. So now you're, you know, I like this a lot because for me personally, I'm a visual learner. And if I could get something that's more of a diagram approach out of the gate or I'm understanding, you know, what I'm being taught and how that's impacting somebody else or what the next step is, right? To me, I'll get that quicker than an instructor sitting in the front of the classroom and telling me, hey, you need to create an order and to go this field, this field, this field, this, and this. And there's going to be some of that. But being a visual learner and you see it on a workflow, you'll retain that kind of training a little better at the end of the day. And everybody learns differently. And I think that's another key point here is don't assume that there's only one style of teaching. I mean, let's go back to school. Let's go back to grade school, right? Everyone learns differently here. There's no difference just because we're adults and we're learning a new system here. It's the same thing. And if you're a user out there, a key user, listening to this, don't be afraid to put your hand up and say, or pull your manager to the side and say, hey, I'm not getting it because this is not my learning style. This is the way I learned better. And I want to make sure this is successful, not only for me, for the business at the end of the day. And if that trust is not instilled early on the project, you're going to see a lot of this information is going to go right over someone's head. they're always going to be behind. So it's important that we understand the type of users that we're training at the end of the But I feel like most users really like workflows and diagrams. And if you put those and you present those, you'll get a higher adoption in key user training and the success of that training topic at the Peter Nicholson (25:19) Yeah, I think it's when someone understands that workflow, the system training kicks into place, right? They need to understand how that, how their business workflow is seen or replicated in the ERP. ⁓ And then like, without that kind of context and business foundation, all they're doing is memorizing buttons. And you know, as soon as something goes wrong, day one, it's gonna be like, it's done something I didn't expect. What the hell do I do? They're not even thinking in terms of the business workflow. They're thinking in terms of the training, which was all centered around button clicking, do this, then click this, then click this. ⁓ It's just gonna fall apart very, very quickly. I think it's important to kind of frame it in the real world. So... Nirav Shah (25:45) Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Nicholson (26:13) you know, if you are doing an order to cash and you know, you've generated a demand, I think before just going straight onto showing the production order screen, make sure that people understand, okay, what's triggered this was triggered this requirement. What is a production order in the new system? What now happens downstream? What has happened upstream to get us to this point? Yeah, so you know, you're going You're going onto a unified system. If you're not coming from an ERp already, you're coming onto a unified system and it's unifying your real world departments. It's not just unifying the technical stack. It's actually bringing together that business process into one system. So it's really important that everyone understands how has this been triggered? And then ⁓ what's, what's going to happen? What am I going to influence? What's going to happen downstream? ⁓ when we raise the sales order. Nirav Shah (27:13) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (27:13) what happens when we release this production order, what happens on the shop floor. So it's really important to kind of frame that around the real world, not the screen in front of you. We did this, I was trying to find it on my other screen when you were talking, I haven't been able to find it. We did training over three days with everyone involved, all of the work stream owners. Nirav Shah (27:25) Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Peter Nicholson (27:39) Every single day we got pizzas in or take out of some description, right? But we brought the team together and I put up some, we had like one or two order to cashflow scenarios, a couple of others procure to pay. And you put a bit of fun in there, you ⁓ you pick a small customer and you know, go, you know, the ABCs of ERP and beyond limited have just placed an order, you know. ⁓ Nirav Shah (28:06) Hahaha Peter Nicholson (28:08) But also don't make it obviously too fictitious. Make it typical kind of order that you might see. ⁓ And put it on there. And try and drop in a couple of things that do actually happen in the real world. Don't create a test scenario that's picture perfect. So it's shame I can't find it. But we had one where we said, customer has given us a purchase order. ⁓ There's no price in the system for this product. and this other product we have no stock of. That's the scenario. So we already know, okay, there's gonna be a demand that we can't fulfill. It's not gonna be a perfect order to cash and everything's in stock and it just goes and gets picked and shipped. Like there's gonna be an issue. There's gonna be a pricing issue. So we can talk about that and train around sales pricing. There's gonna be a stock out. Okay, production, you're gonna be involved with replenishing the stock. Nirav Shah (28:49) Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (29:04) Which now means training is going to affect warehouse in two ways. How are you going to receipt in these goods? How you going to then, how does that then go back to sales that they know it's going to be shipped? So try and build these workflows around a real world thing because no business out there is perfect with everything on the shelf. No business out there has customers that give some POs that exactly match the right price or the right MOQ. ⁓ So it's important that you Nirav Shah (29:24) Yep. Right. Peter Nicholson (29:34) think about these things when you're building those real world workflows that you're training on. Because it's gonna happen day one, guaranteed day one, you're gonna have a PO from someone that's expecting it next day, you haven't got the stock, they put a price on that was last year's price. There's gonna be these things that are gonna happen very, very quickly. So it's important to train on that kind of stuff. Obviously, try not to make them Nirav Shah (29:40) Yep, it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Peter Nicholson (29:58) far too complex where the customer doesn't even exist. know, the product still in R &D. You don't want to make it crazy, but try and not make it as if like it's perfect and all of the traffic lights are green because it just isn't the real world. Nirav Shah (30:04) Yeah, yeah. Right? Right? No, it's not the real world. It's not the real world. Peter Nicholson (30:19) which leads us on to our fourth one here, ⁓ which is, well, here's the problem. Then training, ⁓ gets compressed into a few days last minute. ⁓ you and people wind up thinking that they're to walk out or expected to walk out fully competent and they're going to struggle and panic, go live leadership wonders what's wrong. thought you did a bunch of training. Why is everyone panicking, not doing anything right? Nirav Shah (30:46) Yeah. ⁓ Peter Nicholson (30:49) So ⁓ tip number four here is to build knowledge gradually and do not expect overnight experts in your ERP. There's a difference between being trained and being fully competent. Do not make your teams think that they are supposed to be fully competent day one. Nirav Shah (30:59) 100%. Mm-hmm. Right, right. Yeah. This, this, this one I struggle with and we still struggle with in our implementations, but we try to tell customers all the time that, you know, you may need to revisit some training sessions, you know, just because we go through creating a purchase order doesn't mean we don't have to go through it again. Okay. And I say that because you, the more, I guess, you're not going to get it right out of the gate. That's human nature. Humans, I think in general, don't remember something the first time they see it. It takes two or three times. ⁓ Most people, unless you're Peter, then maybe you remember everything right away. if you go through it one time, be patient about that. Don't be hard on yourself. You're building your knowledge base in the system. Sometimes it's just overwhelming. just to see a new interface. And then all of a sudden you're seeing a new interface and then you need to know how to get to creating a purchase order. And then you forget what fields you have to fill in, right? What the fields mean. That takes time. Peter Nicholson (32:22) Yeah. And people are going to panic. They're coming from a system that they are experts in. They're very, very used to, and they panic and think the new system, just because the UI is different, suddenly they don't know anything. It's like years and years of skiing on an artificial dry slope. And then suddenly you're on a real mountainside. People panic, I can't do this. Nirav Shah (32:23) Don't, yeah, people are gonna panic. Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Peter Nicholson (32:46) But you know the fundamentals, you know the core framework around how to ski. Like it's not everything is different. people catastrophize quite quickly when they have a different system in front of them. Nirav Shah (32:52) Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. you know, with this, you're going to go through it the first time. You're not going to have all the questions to even ask because you're just overwhelmed, right? That there's just so much information you're absorbing. So, ⁓ you know, this one, you know, like I said, we struggle with this even as consultants to this day because what's budgeted is maybe just one training session and everyone's expected to know it all. but. Peter Nicholson (33:12) Yeah. Nirav Shah (33:33) This is where our bonus tip comes in. We'll talk more about that later. You're going to want to have good documentation, good training recordings, try to institute maybe some sort of ⁓ solution on top of the ERP that helps walk somebody through what the specific process is. ⁓ Things like that that you could document outside that session so that user could take that. and really quickly do a recap or go through it on their own and come up with more questions. And it's like when you're in, you know. Peter Nicholson (34:06) Yeah, I think. I was gonna say, think you should take that explicitly. I think it's worth scheduling follow-ups. Put it in, right, okay. In two weeks time, we're gonna have another debrief together. It's a simple case of, let's just put this in the diary. It might help people stop panicking, like. Nirav Shah (34:16) Mm-hmm. Yep. Peter Nicholson (34:30) They know at least like next week, I know we've got the team coming together. You know, I know there's something on the horizon where I can kind of come to someone and discuss about this. So I would definitely do that schedule those follow ups ahead of time. Put one in two weeks post go live, six weeks post go live three months post go live. Set them up for that kind of those follow up sessions because they're going to be needed. Nirav Shah (34:50) Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're going to be needed. Absolutely. But the main takeaway on this one is I think the ERP implementation project plan does not set the correct expectation for training. The expectation is you're going to be an expert of your processes right away. That's not going to happen. That's not possible. Don't expect to be an expert. It's a building block, right? And it comes down to more that you're in the system as the end user, the more comfortable you're going to be, right? That alone, nobody's going to be able to help you with that. No one's going to help you, you know, walk your hand and say, Hey, yeah, Mr. User, Mr. Purchasing Manager, let's sit down for an hour. And this is going through this again. Let's sit down for, it's not practically possible. Business is moving fast, right? Maybe it is where you maybe have a group that gets together once a week, but really it comes down to the user. Get in the system, you know, Take the initiative to learn the system. Take the initiative to kind of struggle a little bit, right? Come up with questions. That's the only way you're gonna build your knowledge base of that process over time, right? And feel comfortable. So, yeah. Peter Nicholson (36:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. The training is not a one time event. And you make you need to make sure then that goal after the initial training is people just need to be functional, not the expert. And I would say that any expert in their field will tell you that, you know, it comes from doing the work and learning from the mistakes. You speak to any kind of hope, high profile sports person. they will tell you that they're only kind of competent because they fucked it up so many times beforehand and they've learned from what not to do to be able to say to someone, yes, I'm an expert in my field. I'm an expert at this or I'm fully competent because I've learned hundreds of ways that you can fuck it up and I'm only left with the right way of doing things. Yeah. Nirav Shah (36:47) Right. Right. Hahaha But wait, there might be one more. We just haven't discovered it because we're so good at it now, right? Yeah, exactly right. And at the end of the day, once you're done with the implementation, you look back five years from now, it's like the back of your hand. I always tell users when I'm training them like, remember when Windows 95 came out? Nobody knew how to use the damn thing, but it got sold out within an hour. You couldn't find Windows 95 anywhere and any business, but everyone still bought it. And within five years, Windows was like the main platform in the world, right? Which it already was, but that became more mainstream and everybody knew how to use it. Just like that, because it becomes natural. Don't be scared, right? Embrace a new technology, but you have to be in it. And then it gets easier. Peter Nicholson (37:52) Yep. Okay, follow closely by tip number five here. Here's the problem that we see. Training does just jump straight into those clicks and screens, as we say, and people end up learning the mechanics without that context. And of course, the problem will happen when something unexpected in your business happens, and they are stuck. They do not know what to do. So our last tip here is start with the what and the why before or instead of the how so ⁓ Nirav, break this down what do we mean by starting with the what and the why Nirav Shah (38:34) I think poor implementation starts with poor planning. And what I mean by that is that the right questions aren't being asked. Right out of the gate, a customer will see a problem. And instead of understanding the problem, the consultant will just solution right away and start throwing out solutions, like 50 different solutions. you can do it this way, this this way. But we really haven't heard and understood what the problem is or asked it in the right way that the customer is able to explain it. Okay, and the reason why I bring that up is because good training starts with the what. What are we solving? And why are we solving this? When that conversation takes place with the end user for that specific topic, the end user has already in their mind put together a filing cabinet, opened up a filing cabinet. Now, whatever you're about to tell me, I'm going to store because these are the problems that I'm going to solve. I'm already prepared to take in that information to learn to solve the what and the why of why I need to learn this problem. Right? You're already mentally prepared them to show them what you're going to show them. And they're more, they're going to be more approachable. They're going to be more open to learn. They're going to ask better questions, right? And they're going to be more hands on. So this is the part I think it's missed often. Immediately, it just goes from my problem I can't generate a, let's say, a sales order acknowledgement for my customer. And then we just say, OK, well, you go into the system, you go for a sales order, you print a button, here comes the acknowledgement, blah, blah. What we fail to ask is why do you need to do a sales or acknowledgement, right? And what is the purpose? What is this achieving? Because it could be completely different than what you're actually about to initially thought that you're going to show. Maybe they need the sales or acknowledgement for a compliance reason that they need it in an electronic format that they need to upload into a database to essentially, you know, send over to customs to prepare for. you know, a shipment on the other side. Where if we just took that at face value, we would have thought it is a printed document email to the customer. And it wasn't even going to the customer. It was going to a whole third party entity. So that's why it's really important to understand the what and the why before you start training. So now that customer is prepared and they've given you the information to prepare for the result and to prepare to take on and be interactive in the training. Peter Nicholson (41:29) Yeah. Nirav Shah (41:29) Right? And that is such a, I think that's such a critical point in learning. If you begin with that and learn anything in life outside of ERP and you begin with the what and the why, you're to be able to make better decisions on what you're about to take in and whether this is right for you or not right Peter Nicholson (41:46) Yeah, yeah, completely agree. I was nodding along my head almost fell off, I completely agree. This is absolutely so important to give the what and the why. ⁓ In terms of training for a new ERP, you have to explain the business reason before the system steps. ⁓ Nirav Shah (41:57) Yeah. Peter Nicholson (42:11) Connect the actions to outcomes. So when you confirm this receipt, here's what happens in inventory module and the finance module. And why does this matter? Well, people who understand the why can troubleshoot when things go wrong. It's the people that only know how things happen and what screen to do it on. They just get stuck the very moment that something does not match that script. Nirav Shah (42:29) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (42:42) You know, so don't start with click this button to create a purchase order. Think about why do we create a purchase order? What flows from this? What breaks if it's wrong? How do I see that I need to create purchase order? What happens once I've created that purchase order? Nirav Shah (43:06) Exactly, exactly. And you're going to get a lot better response and acknowledgement of that training for that user. ⁓ And you may have to spend less time even down the road to do retraining because you've taken the time to understand the one and the Peter Nicholson (43:23) Yeah. And I would also say, I'm to make a massive assumption because I'm not any ERP partner, you are. So I'm going to just make a massive assumption. But this is why the heavy lifting is on your partner during those discovery sessions. It's absolutely key that your partner isn't just sitting there nodding along and not suggesting anything. Your partner should be there in the discovery to go and nitpick and ask and scrutinize and say, well, why do you do that? Nirav Shah (43:44) So key. Exactly. Peter Nicholson (43:57) What happens there? Hang on, hang on, back up, back up. You're glossing over something here. Why do you do that and send that to that guy? They have to nitpick at all of these things. They're not trying to be difficult. And sometimes it will come across as probing and scrutinizing your job. But they need to do that because the payoff of the discovery week for the... Nirav Shah (44:04) Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah, you need to do that. Peter Nicholson (44:24) ERP partner is when you get to this training, they're going to be going, you need to do this. And why? Because it's important in your business process that we all mapped out during discovery week. You can start to see why these projects, everything's linked, right? So it's really, really important that you maintain that same approach throughout the whole thing. It all gets connected to everything gets connected back to that business process. You don't want to be in a position where you're doing training on a bad, either on a bad business process or a misunderstood business process on both sides of that, whether that's on the ERP partner or whether that's on you as the customer. It's really, really important that everything is understood. And you might find during this process, and hopefully you will find during this. Nirav Shah (45:05) you Peter Nicholson (45:22) ERP process that there's an opportunity here to do. In fact, I would advocate this is a perfect opportunity to do some, you know, internal diagnosis of processes, have a bit of a reset, have a bit of a ⁓ look at what you're doing and how we can optimize now can we strip out some of the legacy stuff that we've done, because that's the way that we've always done it. You know, it's important. opportunity that you should really kind of pounce upon to have a bit of a cleanup as well. And so, okay. And you might find in discovery, hopefully you've got a partner that's seen enough businesses to go, hang on, you guys are crazy. Like, have you thought about doing it this way instead? And you as the customer should hopefully be receptive and go, actually, yeah, that would still work. Nirav Shah (45:59) Yeah. Peter Nicholson (46:18) don't be so rigid and go, no, we do it this way. Your partner has probably seen 50 other businesses similar to you in your vertical. If you're in there and you're a plastic injection molding company, hopefully they've seen 50 other plastic injection molding companies. They kind of know what's important. And if you're explaining your business process in detail, hopefully your partner will sit there and scrutinize and go, you're crazy. Why are you doing? Nirav Shah (46:18) Yeah. Right. yeah. yeah. Yep. Exactly. Right. Peter Nicholson (46:46) Why you doing this? How about this? And you should be flexible. You should go, yeah, actually, it's probably worth us changing our process. It's gonna make your training so much easier if there's a little bit of leniency on both sides. I went off on a mic drop. I almost went on to venting, but I within the boundaries. What'd you think about that? That was a lot to throw at you, Nirav. Nirav Shah (46:49) Yeah. Yeah, that's right. sure. It did get borderline there. There you go. Peter Nicholson (47:16) Any takeaways from that? Nirav Shah (47:18) No, think you hit a lot of great points there on making sure that the training is sufficient, making sure that you're following the right model. So no, I thought it was really, really well put. Peter Nicholson (47:36) All right, so top five done, but ⁓ we did say we enticed people to keep listening because we have a bonus tip that we've thrown in at the end. ⁓ Nirav Shah (47:44) Bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus. ⁓ Peter Nicholson (47:48) That's staying in the mix. I'm not gonna cut that out Actually, I might make a short of that that can be our first tick-tock video ⁓ Nirav Shah (47:59) Yay! Yay! ⁓ Peter Nicholson (47:59) That's staying in. The ABCs of ERP and beyond TikTok will be, that will be our first TikTok dance. There we go. Bonus, bonus, bonus. Nirav Shah (48:07) There's the first TikTok, there you go. Peter Nicholson (48:13) All right, bonus tip then. In fact, I'm gonna throw this over to you. What's our bonus tip, Nirav Nirav Shah (48:13) you Yeah, a six pack. No, I'm just joking. Just joking, don't have alcohol during your ERP trainings. Not recommended. But I will say, have a super user. That goes without saying, I think just in general in the project, have a super user that knows more about the system than anybody else. And have that person in there that could be like your internal resident expert of the system. They will then be the champion to ⁓ help others in the business to make sure that they're catching on on how they're doing their jobs and their process. ⁓ And they could help the consultants, your VAR, your ERP VAR, your partner to ⁓ catch something that was missed and to prepare for that. So I think that will go a long way in adoption when you have someone in turn that understand this is that's on their side. on the customer side, the client side to enforce the training and get users to get into the system and learn and be there for support, right? When the partner is not able to, eight hours in a work day essentially. So I think that's huge. If you go to the sign one, some customers can, some customers can't depending on the size, but if you can, I think that's going to be really beneficial. That's going to help you in the long run to have that one kind of source of. Peter Nicholson (49:34) Yeah. Nirav Shah (49:45) knowledge to help with everybody going through their business process and system. Peter Nicholson (49:48) Yeah. think for you as a business, you should try and identify potential super users early. ⁓ I mean, yeah, not everybody's this can but if you can try and find someone who's one respected by others, ⁓ who is patient, who's good at explaining, who has who shows, you know, potential of being competent very, very quickly, who can actually help. Nirav Shah (50:01) Yeah. yeah, that's true. Right. Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (50:20) Um, but I would also say, right, don't just nominate this person. You know, if you have got someone that's respected by others, who's patient, who's good at explaining, don't go to them and go, right, you're the super user because, know, they, it's a heavy lift on them. They're going to be in, I would say every training session. So you're going to have extra training and they're ultimately going to have to do their own day to day job and support everyone else. Nirav Shah (50:32) You It is. Peter Nicholson (50:50) So it is quite a lot. I know it's easy to say on paper, do this, but hopefully you've got someone that is eager already, who's excited about the project, who wants to be like the master of the new ERP. You should absolutely encourage that with maybe trying to make them, you know, that super user. And it's really important, right? You know, it's gonna happen. Someone's gonna get stuck in the new system at four o'clock on a Friday. Nirav Shah (51:17) Yep. Peter Nicholson (51:19) you know, they're not calling the vendor. They're going to be asking the person next to them. They're going to be asking that that super user. So you kind of want to make sure that that person's excited to do so who wants to and make sure that person can actually help. So yeah, it's going to be, it's going to help. It's going to increase ROI. It's going to reduce potential costs into your vendor. Sorry Nirav Nirav Shah (51:22) Right. Hahaha Hahaha. Peter Nicholson (51:49) But if you can be internally self-sufficient at these kind of levels, obviously if there's an actual break or something completely goes wrong, fine. Actually, that will probably be super user then going to the RP vendor or the project manager or whatever. If you can avoid it, you don't want end users getting your company billed for $200, $300 an hour on questions like, Nirav Shah (52:10) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (52:19) I can't remember how to take an order off hold. It's just a really expensive way. Yeah, so if you can have that super user that's internal in your company that can handle that kind of stuff and incentivize it. We spoke about this before recording as well incentivize this stuff, know, you've got a super user that's helping out and stuff by them a you know, Amazon gift voucher or, you know, some kind of restaurant voucher they can Nirav Shah (52:24) That would be a bit expensive. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Nothing's wrong with that. Peter Nicholson (52:48) they can use as something, know, kind of make it worthwhile. They're probably going to be putting in extra hours in. Nirav Shah (52:55) Yeah, I agree. And there's nothing wrong with that. think reward systems are great, but they have to be started early on, right? And has to be fair for everybody that is in the project itself. Peter Nicholson (53:11) Okay, very good. Thank you. Wrapping up then. Well, as we discussed, ERP training isn't just checking a box. It's about building a team that actually knows how the business runs in the new system. And that definitely takes more than just a few sessions here and there. So if any of this resonated or if you've lived through training that didn't land, we'd like to hear from you. Drop us a comment, send us a message, and let us know what worked or what didn't. What's your experience of this? Or is there any other tips that we might have missed today that you want the world to know about? And of course, if you are finding value in what we're putting out, we're now into season 4 of the ABCs of ERP and Beyond, please subscribe wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. It genuinely helps us reach more people ⁓ in the manufacturing and distribution world who are trying to get ERP. Nirav Shah (53:47) Mm-hmm. Peter Nicholson (54:10) so you can find us on LinkedIn you'll also find us at the Akumatica Summit so rather than I will be ⁓ in Seattle by the time this airs we would have already done that so hopefully we will get the the bonus bonus bonus TikTok dance recorded at Summit ⁓ so yes we we need that yeah Nirav Shah (54:22) Yeah, yes. Hahaha! Why do I feel that's going to go viral? I don't know why. That's that's going to go viral. I don't know why. Peter Nicholson (54:43) Let's push for it. Thank you as ever, Nirav. Every two weeks we publish. So Nirav, I will see you in two weeks time. In the real world as well. I will see you physically in two weeks time. But I will catch you in the 2D world ⁓ two weeks time on our next episode of the ABCs of ERP and beyond. Nirav Shah (54:49) Thank You got it. You are, you're gonna see it. Yeah, you're gonna see me physically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peter Nicholson (55:13) Catch you on the next one. Bye. Nirav Shah (55:16) Later, bye.