5 Conditions for a 6-Month ERP Implementation

Peter Nicholson (00:24)
welcome back to the ABCs of ERP and beyond podcast all about enterprise resource planning and how it can help and enable businesses to grow. I am Peter Nicholson and joined as always by Emily Browning and Nirav Shah and today's question, one we hear often is usually from leadership teams who've just been handed a deadline that they don't like and they want it done quicker. Can you actually implement an ERP in six months?

Well, we think the short answer is yes, but only if a few things are true. And if any one of them is missing, you're not doing a six month implementation. You're doing a 12 month one and someone slapped a six month deadline on the front of it. We have pulled together some of the conditions that we feel that have to be met. And we're to work through each one and along the way we will uncover some of the uncomfortable truth.

of how most ERP delays have very little to do with the software. without further ado, let's get into it. both of you, welcome.

Emily Browning (01:28)
Hello, hello again.

Nirav Shah (01:29)
Hey

hey!

Peter Nicholson (01:30)
So ERP projects, six months? What? Normally we hear these things, it's, you know, we're here, yeah, well, we're still going, still plugging along with that ERP project. It's been going for 12 months. Here we are with what could be seen as a click-baity title. But the more that we've talked about this together, it's not unreasonable to do a six month ERP implementation. But there's a

few conditions that you'd have to meet to be able to do that. So I guess we should step through these. But first of all, What's your first initial thoughts when you see a six month implementation?

Nirav Shah (02:07)
you know, as a VAR, as a partner, we come in and we size up customers at the end of the day. And not everyone is a six month implementation. You know, we do some sort of kind of, you know, reasonable estimation during the sales cycle on what, you know, it could take to implement

Can it be do a six month or will it take an eight month or nine month? But most implementations in the SMB space fall within the four to six month timeframe, essentially. Now, do they finish in the six month, right? That's the question we're answering here. There's a lot of variables to a lot of implementations. My aspect to whether this is even possible or not, and we'll expand on this a little bit later, is what are we implementing for?

what is phase one, right? Has the customer even done phase zero? that is a whole different conversation, but what are we measuring? What are we doing for phase one, right? To ensure that we have the guardrails around the six month implementation timeframe and everyone agrees to it, right? You don't want scope creep. You don't want other things like that to appear, but if it's tightly managed and you.

You know, the customer has done their work from a phase zero perspective, their business processes, they understand their issues, they understand where their limitations are, where their improvements they want to be. Then phase one is measuring that, getting everybody on board. And that is like the North star of the implementation to get the implementation done in six months. I'm thinking of this kind of starting at this all the way at the beginning here. Have we set the right expectations?

for what a six month implementation is to be able to meet it. In these projects, it's very easy to over promise under deliver. And we want to make sure whoever you're working with, if you're in a current implementation, you're thinking about doing an implementation, that you are being promised only what you want to get delivered And that's going to be possible in six months. That's kind of where I'll start with here.

Is that phase one? You what are we measuring? Do we have that documented? Is everybody on board?

Emily Browning (04:14)
ERP projects, think, are notoriously quite a scary project. They're seen as expensive, take up lots of resource. I think they can be seen by businesses as perhaps unpredictable. You know, we see resource and money kind of going out of control or you hear stories about it anyway.

So I think if you were to say to the business, we can do this in six months, I think they would be quite skeptical and maybe think, you don't know what you're talking about then. You don't know how to prepare. And I think it's very possible to do it in six months under a very specific set of circumstances. And I'll also reference a previous podcast where we talk about really good project planning, that sort of a prerequisite, which I don't think we will touch on.

so much in this one. So in this episode we will focus more on the conditions and the factors that need to be in place to be able to achieve it. Do I think it's very achievable? Yes, under those circumstances. Do I think it could go wrong under those circumstances through bad management, bad decision making, whatever? Yes, definitely. So it's something that you really have to be

in really good control of, kind of at all levels of the project, and if you can do that, yes, I think you can do a project nice and fast.

Nirav Shah (05:24)
I do want to add one thing to that Peter real quick is we're talking about six month implementation project, but I think we, I think we should let the audience know this is from a cut from the context perspective. This is starting implementation going live. There is a whole other piece to stabilization for an ERP project, you know, past Go live here, which I think if you look at that, you're almost looking at a one year project.

Peter Nicholson (05:24)
let's get straightened.

Nirav Shah (05:51)
until starting the implementation to stabilization in your ERP. Everyone always looks at the finish line. Where is the finish line here? Finish line is really not go live I think that is usually the starting point after you go live is where you get most ROI of the project. I think the context of this implementation, just implementing the system, getting it from initial contract sign to your go live, can it take six months? And it can. But stabilization?

Could be, it's going to be beyond that. There's things that are to pop up, there's going to be training, there's going to be things that you're to add on, right? Stuff like that. You know, these are big projects, they're journeys. You know, these systems are going to be in your organization for 20, 30 years. So I think, I think the implementation could be six months, but beyond, you know, stabilization is, you by no means are we saying that you're going to be stabilized from day one. I think that's very rare to find in the ERP space that day one you're alive and you're stable.

I think that just doesn't exist.

Emily Browning (06:49)
even the period before the implementation takes a bunch of work as well. So speaking from the client side, prior to us signing that contract and actually starting the discovery and the implementation of the project, I'm spending months of work on making sure we're

We're prepared, we have a business case in place. We've, you know, spec'd out all of the extra requirements as best we can, going through all of that, you know, understanding of what we have, what we need, perhaps data preparation. So as well as implementation and then stabilisation, as Nirav has mentioned, there's a whole bunch of pre-preparation as well. yes, the six months we refer to is...

signing the contract and starting that project kickoff day through to go live.

Peter Nicholson (07:33)
Let's get straight into these conditions. So we've set up five conditions. These are the ones that I think we all agree that you need to meet. So let's get straight into them. Condition one, we have a reliable internal team that can decide quickly. So I think that the timeline of an ERP, it's not usually killed by configuration of the ERP. It tends to be killed or at least delayed through

lack of decision making or decisions sitting in inboxes or if everyone or people on that reliable internal team see it as a side project, right? Where shit needs to be decided and I'll do that later. I'll get to that later on. It's an email in the inbox. I've got other stuff to do instead. So let's break down this condition. What does a reliable team actually look like in practice?

Emily Browning (08:26)
So as someone that puts them together, first off I would say, depending on the size of the team, you can't necessarily expect every single one of them to be a star.

But my experience of ERP projects and other projects is that sometimes these sorts of stars emerge and those are the people that are really the ones that make it happen. So as best you can, you want to identify those people in your business. You might think, I need the department heads. They know the most, so they're going to be the team. But actually, if someone under one of those heads

is really dedicated, really knows their stuff, then they should probably be the person representing that department as well. And what I think is really important is you get these people who will not let the project fail. Some people kind of will. Like you say, they see it as a side project. They're going to shut their computer at 5 p.m. almost no matter where they are and they're going to come back the following day.

I do really advocate for a good work-life balance. So in general, I'm not sort of encouraging people to work all hours, but I think with something like an ERP migration, you just do have to put in the extra hours and the extra time because it's really worth it. So the people who will be dedicated to doing that, and if you need to, some problem happens, they're going to be the ones with you staying up all night working through it. That is the team you need to be able to achieve something like this within six months.

Nirav Shah (09:50)
yeah, absolutely. think everything Emily just said on there makes a world of a difference for an ERP implementation to get that right. On the VAR side, there are some dependencies there. The VAR could only move as fast as the client. When I say that, the beginning parts of the project are probably the most important parts. And where I see where projects get delayed from the initial

understanding of the go live date is right there in the beginning is data migration. Because the client has a hard time getting their data out of the system, or getting the proper people to make decisions to get the data out of the system. And it's also being able to get all the data in the new system. And what I mean by that is getting the data mapped to the new system. So typically, in all ERP projects,

a VAR will ask for the data upfront and they'll make some assumptions on the data just to get the data imported in so we could start the training. The sooner you get users in the system from our perspective, the better because then they're going to start being able to play in the system, make business decisions, come back with more questions. And we could go ahead and get that engagement early on that we need to really get that implementation off the ground. And if the data migration piece of it doesn't take off as quickly,

right out of the gate, that usually severely delays the rest of the implementation, from our opinion. that phase zero, what I was referring to early on, super important part of that should be your data, discuss your data. How does it look? Can we easily take it out into Excel, right? If you're in the SMB space, you're listening to this, you don't even have to talk to a VAR right now. You don't have to go out there and say, what do you need for phase zero? I would just say, go out there and

Can you take your data out in Excel? Question number one. If you can't, try to get your data out in Excel before you approach any VAR so you at least have your data available to give to the VAR right away. So when you talk about Go Live dates, you talk about six month implementation, well, you've already checked off one box, which is to get that data to the VAR's hands so they could get your initial data imported in so you could start getting into the system quickly. Because there's no value for you to wait while the VAR is getting the data into the system. Really zero value for you from a customer perspective. So

Peter Nicholson (11:57)
Mm-hmm.

Nirav Shah (11:58)
the more you could get that data out to them right away, get that data loaded, and start training on it, super important, right? So that's the dependency that I'm talking about between the customer and the VAR. And on the VAR side, right, we have resource restrictions, right? If the customer doesn't make a decision on a goal on a contracts that they're willing to sign, right? Even you could like your vendor, you could like the VAR, you could like the product, whatever, but they're just not signing the contract. Well, we can't guarantee that we're gonna have a consultant ready and able to...

take you live right away now because they're scheduling other goal lives for other clients and customers. So that's another important piece that if you find the VAR and you've already confirmed that goal live date, start looking at signing contracts relatively soon because you're trying to put your place in the project pipeline to get your goal live completed at a certain point in time. Because the VAR's consultants are also looking at other projects going on throughout the rest of the year to get those lives as well.

Peter Nicholson (12:48)
Mm-hmm.

Nirav Shah (12:51)
So, and obviously you want the right people from the VAR side. Goes without saying like, you know, interview who's going to be working on your project from the VAR side. How many years of experience do they have? Right? Have they worked on similar projects? Right? What is their methodology? Right? Interview them even before you sign contracts, you kind of get idea what your project project team looks like. Your VAR is already probably doing that, but you know, it's, important for you to also do your due diligence at the end of the day. So that's kind of where I see, you know,

Peter Nicholson (13:10)
Mm-hmm.

Nirav Shah (13:18)
some some of the work and homework that needs to be done. So you could ensure that you're going to meet that six months. Six months is just not a number you pull out as a pull out of like, you know, thin air, it has to be like prepared for. when you hit start, that start button is selected, you're on the clock, both of our and the customer. you want to do your homework.

Peter Nicholson (13:24)
Yep.

Yeah, I think critical for me is that that whole decision making. I think that's what makes a reliable internal team. There's lots of keywords there, but I guess

team, right? You've got to be all on the same page on this. And a lot of that does break down when decisions need to be made. You could even say that, you know, a six month implementation is actually a six month decision making exercise. And we've spoken about this before, it's all about keeping momentum, just decide, make a decision. Because if you suddenly stumble, and there's a debate about a business process that takes three weeks, 17 internal meetings,

Nirav Shah (14:00)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Nicholson (14:14)
The timeline is already dead. You can't afford to do that. You need to keep the momentum going, make those decisions. Obviously that phase zero is even more critical. haven't got time to go back and map out a load of business processes because someone doesn't know, you know, so phase zero is critical and it will be the foundation for that reliable internal team making decisions quickly in agreement, always in alignment with each other.

Emily Browning (14:39)
I think we can highlight for the business leaders as well. If you're a business leader who wants your ERP migration done quickly, then the team either needs to be empowered to make those decisions. You need to make sure they know what they're doing and what's right for the business, understand your strategy, what changes can be made, or you need to be there too, which I think is a good point. If you don't have the team that can make the decisions, or maybe some of them can, some of them can't.

then be there too and engage and make sure the right decisions are being made quickly because you also don't want to get to a point and I have been in this situation before, not with ERP migration, but you get to go live and then someone really important is saying, well, what about, how do we do this now? And I'm there saying, well, you never mentioned that before.

So you have to have the right people there to make those decisions as well. Otherwise you'll have perhaps a sad go live, not even go live day, you might realize a few days later when it's then too late to do something about it. So that good decision making is really key as well.

Peter Nicholson (15:42)
All right, condition number two, a simple business operation. some businesses genuinely aren't candidates for a six month implementation. We know this, right? If you're some kind of huge market, global, multi entity, multi currency, compliance heavy industry.

multiple warehousing solutions in multiple locations, six month is gonna be unrealistic. However, when we talk about a simple business operation, I guess there's two factors that I can immediately see. One is we have an opportunity to simplify our business that shouldn't be as complex as it is. Maybe this links back into this kind of phase zero, Nirav, you were talking about is how can we...

leverage this opportunity to have a bit of a reset on our business, get back to a simplified business that suits or business processes that suit today's business operation. And also, which is an easier conversation for us to have is just calling it out that this can't apply the six month timeline can't apply for every single business out there, you have to kind of be the right business to be able to leverage a six month.

Nirav when you're talking to potential clients and they say, want an ERP and we want it tomorrow, what kind of things are you looking at that might jump out first of all? What kind of probing questions can you pose to that business to work out whether six month is even feasible for them?

Nirav Shah (17:06)
I don't know, Peter, what world you're living in, but I know ChatGPT and Claude could do my implementation in like six months. you know, I just handed it to them and off it goes. no, obviously I'm being, you know, I'm just joking around here, but that is, that is truly the mindset for a lot of, a lot of companies out there like, Hey,

anyone could do a six month implementation. Doesn't matter how complex my business is. Doesn't matter how complex my industry is. Without taking a really look internally, like, do you have quote unquote, your shit in order? are you so far behind on regulations and compliance that you need to get all that stuff understood so you could get into the new ERP system?

Where are you on your journey in digital transformation? is this the first project you're doing, right? Is everything on paper? How many Excel spreadsheets do you have out there? Right? So it's kind of like a kind of look at the mirror type of scenario here is, yeah, know, software in general, I feel like gets this really maybe good or bad, right? That hey, software is easy. think QuickBooks has kind of completely

created this misrepresentation of business management systems. And QuickBooks, you don't have to have a consultant. You just go ahead, plug it in, put in a chart of accounts, doesn't have any validations, Wild Wild West, and you're off and running. And I think a lot of customers come in with that same belief, believe it or not. Like, hey,

Accounting systems like why can't we do the same thing? Right? Why? Why does it taking us so long? We had? Yeah, we just, only have 15 manufacturing locations we do a lot in serial control. We're heavily, we have heavy compliance with the FDA. You know, what do mean we can't implement in six months? Well, you know, guys, yeah, you've stitched together business processes, Excel spreadsheets, Google docs, and QuickBooks in multiple different regions.

and now you're in this position where there's a lot of gaps and blind spots in the business. You don't know your margins. Financials are off. There's no auditability, right? So now you're coming to an ERP system and to do it right, guys, sorry to say it's gonna take longer than six months. It's gonna take a year, right? Could take a year and a half. Your data's all over the place. Special characters, part numbers don't even match across spreadsheets. All right, one spreadsheet has a vendor part number, other spreadsheet has a customer part number, and then you have another spreadsheet that has an internal part number.

Right. So you have to be realistic at the end of the day. And that's where a good VAR will come in. And I wouldn't say set the record straight, but give you their experience on what it will take to be successful. Now, some customers will say, Hey, that makes sense. Thanks for telling us. Other customers say, no, we don't believe it. You know, it took us, it took us two weeks to put in QuickBooks. Why come it doesn't take you two weeks to put in an ERP system? Well, you know, it's your business process aren't that way. Unless now, unless the other side of that is you are

Truly simple. And you do maybe have a kitting operation. You're a pure distributor. You're a manufacturer that sells widgets, right? A left-handed monkey wrench all day long, right? Whatever it is, right? But you have a core business that's not sprawled all over the place, all over the world, all over different languages, all that type of stuff. Well, then I think we're talking, I think it's a little bit reasonable to say, yeah, we could go live in six months at the end of the day, right? I always say

How are your SOPs? Can you have standardized processes? If you could create standardized processes from the chaos that you're living in day in, day out, I think there's a high likelihood you could do a quick implementation, a six month implementation, but that's gonna be up to the partner in the VAR to kind of decide what's actually happening internally in the business.

Emily Browning (20:33)
I completely agree in terms of the opportunity to, can you create standardized SOPs? Because you mentioned, can you take the opportunity to simplify? And yes, you could, but I think you still need to ultimately at heart be a simple operation without tons of integrations or lots of different specialized pricing or

you know, based on all these specific little rules. I would say an ERP migration is definitely an opportunity to start standardizing this thing, but then I think we're, you know, we'd be back to speaking about phase zero, and I'd start to question our credibility and saying you can do it in six months, but by the way, you need to do 12 to 18 months of business simplification first. There's a limit to what I would be comfortable calling a quick ERP. So if you're

Peter Nicholson (21:19)
Thank

Nirav Shah (21:20)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Emily Browning (21:26)
If your operation, you know, just in words is simple, it's okay if your processes are overly complex because of your old ERP or all of your excels or whatever, I think that can be moved over standardized nicely into a new ERP and it can still be quick. But for me, that's the factor. you have, do you have lots of special weird rules? Do you have integrations? Do you need EDI, WMS, MES, whatever? Do have to, you know, add on a bunch of stuff?

to the ERP, you know, then probably no, because then not only is it you and your VAR, it's also a bunch of other suppliers of integrations that you need to buy as well. So that would factor in for me as defining what makes your business simple.

Peter Nicholson (22:08)
For me, integrations is one of those ones that's like the silent killer, because every integration could be a mini project in of itself. And if it's not a phase one, shouldn't even be discussed about. If it is a phase one,

then there might be an opportunity, I hate to say this, but there might be an opportunity to push it into some kind of standardized spreadsheet, right? Just for 60 days or something, 30 to 60 days or something, just to get going so you're live and then you can figure out the integration later on. when we're talking about being a simple business, there's a few things that can quietly kill the six month deadline and make it now.

eight, nine months instead. That's one of them. The other one, Emily, you said about standard reports or standardizing reports, reporting requirements can also be the quite killer because every single department, probably you've got to fight because they want their old dashboard. Plus they want the three new ones that they've got excited about that they've seen demoed by the VAR as well.

And nobody really thinks about, well, let's just pause and just use what's out of the box and work towards that instead. And I would say this, I'm a data guy. You both know that I'm a data BI guy. I would push back on anyone saying that we need BI in phase one at all. I don't think that's just needed. think when we talk about an ERP, we know ERP is...

Nirav Shah (23:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Nicholson (23:30)
transactional heavy, right? It's where everything goes through as an integrated system. You want to make sure that every transaction is hitting the right GL buckets. It's all transactional based. You need to stabilize that environment first, and then you kind of earn the right to start building, rebuilding your reporting world, your business intelligence suite. That comes later on, right? I think that phase one BI shouldn't exist at all.

Nirav Shah (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Nicholson (23:58)
You don't need

it to run your business. You need to be transactionally stable.

Emily Browning (24:02)
Does this bring us smoothly into what I think is the next point?

Peter Nicholson (24:06)
Yes. Condition number three. Condition number three is willingness to go standard with a clear minimum viable product. And I would say also when we say willingness to go standard, I always love to say this. Every single company seems to think that they're special or they're unique or they're different. well, that wouldn't work.

Emily Browning (24:07)
What is it?

Nirav Shah (24:09)
Yeah.

Peter Nicholson (24:29)
We're slightly different, we're not like the others. You're not that special. So let's open this up. Willingness to go standard and identifying the MVP.

Emily Browning (24:37)
So what I wanted to tack on to what you were saying just now about phase one is one way I like to assess what should be in phase one or what should not be in phase one. And by that we mean on go live day. Do you already have it? Because if you don't, if you're currently doing it in Excel, maybe you're doing all of your raw material planning in Excel. Maybe you're doing your production scheduling in Excel.

You could keep doing it in Excel on Go Live Day. You don't need to implement all of that, spend the time configuring and making sure those automations in your fancy new ERP all work. You could do that after going live. There, I would say it's then for you to weigh up, do we need to go live that quickly? Do we need to do it in six months? Do we have some other reason? Good reason would be, you know, it's really

admin heavy, lack of visibility of data, whatever that kind of thing. So it could really benefit you from just getting into something new, or maybe you don't have an ERP yet. So you just, you're at the point in your business where you really need one. So you weigh it up. But yeah, if you don't, if you don't already have something in your ERP and you could continue doing it as you were, then I would take it out of phase one if I was trying to go live quickly.

then it's a little bit less change for your business and your users as well, which can go down well.

Nirav Shah (25:57)
Yeah, I would say from our experience, every project starts off as, Nirav, we don't want to customize, we're gonna say generic and we want to go live as quickly as possible. And that's always a great thought. And that's always, you know, I would, I would embrace that. But I don't think I've seen one project maybe no two, I do, I did see two projects, they're really small. But you start getting into the details.

I think Peter, you said it as well, like you started reporting change. And they want this change and that change. it's like, it starts adding up, right? And now an issue was going to be a six month goal live, ends up being an eighth month goal live at the end of the day. But to stick on topic with this point, if you're able to standardize, change, be willing to change. This is a big change point, change management point here. Willing to change your processes to do what's available out of the box in the ERP system.

you have a higher likelihood to be able to go live in six months. The problem happens that people get so emotionally tied with their own processes and their own reports and their own way of doing things where it becomes very challenging to break through that barrier. The company's intention is to go live in six months, but you're going to find users in your organization that are having a hard time letting go.

I haven't found too many processes in my experience that an ERP system could not have handled out of the box instead of us having to do a customization or do a report change or do something else. It was always because the user just refused to adapt or to change to the process.

Peter Nicholson (27:37)
Mm-hmm.

Nirav Shah (27:38)
If you could stick to what's available out of the box, keep it on MVP, minimal viable product, right? Go live to go live without losing some efficiency, without creating late customer orders, without losing your financial feasibilities, right? Your profit margin, all that stuff. Go live to go live within six months, and then you can always change and update. These are evolving projects past the go live date.

This is a big one that I think is super hard from our experience for any user to, or for users to get past, because everyone just gets emotionally attached to what they've been doing for such a very long time. And you can't blame them. They could be doing their job, and they're doing their job correctly, and they're doing it right, and customers are not mad, right? So it's a fine line. It's a balance here. Like super, super tight balance. You're on a balancing rope, but.

As soon as you start going, as soon as you start doing one thing that's not standard and you did a customization, you did a report, it's like all of a sudden there's like this announcement that happens in the whole organization. Customizations are wide open guys, go ahead and do whatever you want. And next thing you know, you get flooded with like a bunch of stuff that comes in like, no, no, no, you can't do this. So yeah, that's my take on it.

Peter Nicholson (28:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

For me, customizations, the tolerance should be near zero. It's as simple as that. you know, you have to, the ones that survive should be regulatory, or if you've genuinely got some kind of competitive advantage and that no one else has, then everything else is a no.

Nirav Shah (28:54)
Yeah, exactly.

Yep,

Peter Nicholson (29:09)
for me. And I think sometimes

Nirav Shah (29:10)
exactly.

Peter Nicholson (29:10)
with these customizations, people get a bit fatigued, get, know, the pace is on to do this six months. Sometimes I wonder whether companies are using customization as a way to buy themselves out of having difficult conversations that I should customize it. Like, no, if you want that ERP in a six month timeframe, I think that that ERP projects should

Nirav Shah (29:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Nicholson (29:33)
ultimately change your business more than the business changes the ERP. This should be the other way around for us.

Nirav Shah (29:38)
Yeah.

I feel like unless you're if your current system is being sunsetted, your current system is not being supported anymore. You know, that's publishers went under right, whatever the cases, you should try to adhere to the new system processes. Because I hear it all the time all day every day. This is how we were doing it. And this is the way I want to do it. And it's like, why go into a new system then? Right? Why? Why are we implementing a brand new software? You want to do the same way you want to do it before. So

Emily Browning (30:04)
So I very commonly see a lack of understanding of what it takes to do a customization. So I think my experience is usually, know, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can definitely go standard. We can do that. And then you get into the project and they say, oh, but for just this one customer or for just this part, can we do this? And we'll say, well,

Yeah, that would be a customization. And they're like, yeah, but it's just for one part. So is it OK? And if we're building a customization, it doesn't matter if it's one part or 3,000 parts. It'll probably work on any of them. So there's, you know, and I don't think that would be a surprise from anyone with any sort of development or software background in any way. when you're

Nirav Shah (30:35)
you

Emily Browning (30:46)
When you're working with business users, can completely understand why it feels like, just for this one small thing, can we make it work in this way? So there's an element on sort of the technical side of the project team, whether that's internal or with a third party, the VAR, kind of to make sure that's communicated as well and really check at the beginning that your business users understand what we mean when we say we are taking standard and we're not customizing.

Nirav Shah (31:12)
Yeah, that's the piece I wish that people brought with them from using QuickBooks, because you couldn't customize QuickBooks. You rarely find customized QuickBooks environment. So it's like, why do you want to customize your ERP? Like, you didn't go down that road when you had QuickBooks. You didn't customize it. So why can't we just use ERP out of the box? Exactly. And that's like, sometimes I'm like, wait.

Peter Nicholson (31:18)
You

Emily Browning (31:18)
Hmm

Peter Nicholson (31:27)
because we want to fulfill everything.

Emily Browning (31:28)
We want to make it...

it more like QuickBooks.

Peter Nicholson (31:33)
Yes.

Nirav Shah (31:36)
You didn't customize QuickBooks though. Why are we customized here? Why are we customizing the ERP? But I think partners sometimes do probably not the greatest job to be honest of ours. Don't do a great job of fighting back. I think that's some of the next points that we're going to talk about is the challenge. Because ERP is so flexible, and we know that, right? And it's easy to do developments. It's easy to make it your own. That's quite frankly, one of the main reasons why you get onto an ERP a little bit, Like Navision for example, Peter.

Right? You know, Navision their install base was 99 % customized. 99 % of their install base had a customized environment. Right? And that's why people like Navision. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cal. Cal. Yeah. I'll do it. I do miss the classic. Yeah. Yeah. I do miss the classic client though. It easy. It was easy to do. It was fun to do find and replace.

Peter Nicholson (32:05)
Unfortunately, I do.

Yeah.

Yep. And it was in the best, it was in the best coding language ever invented. Like, ⁓ it was so simple to use. was clear. Yeah. No one ever struggled to write in Cal.

Nirav Shah (32:30)
unlike the whole item master. But like, you know, that like says one dollar, they go, now we're gonna, create our own like core competency, our own like software together. But like, if we're doing a six month implementation, that is not the goal. The goal is not let's, let's go ahead and create that something so unique for us. The goal should be, let's get into the system to do what it's supposed to do out of the box.

Peter Nicholson (32:30)
Hahaha.

Emily Browning (32:32)
You

Nirav Shah (32:52)
And then we'll try to make it our own or customize it as we get into the system down the road. Because the fact of the matter is you're reducing your time to value, right, the longer you're delaying to go live. You're paying license cost with the publisher, and you're not getting any ROI out

So why spend all that time to keep customizing, customizing, customizing? Instead, spend the time, go live on the system, get live data on the system, use a subscription now to do live transactions, and then start looking at how you're gonna customize it, right? The longer this goes on, your time to value is going down to zero. You're not getting anything out of it. You're just paying subscription and it's kinda going out the door.

Emily Browning (33:30)
Something I've said definitely more than once, more than a handful of times is you're not unique and you're not special. And what you've just described to me is a situation that many businesses face and already deal with inside ERP. So we can take the standard. Pete, you said it as well. We always hear this kind of argument that, but we're so special because of

know, because of this thing and then they go to describe a very standard business situation that loads of businesses are in. So I think kind of having that understanding as well in your, you know, super team of star people really helps to move things along as well.

Peter Nicholson (34:11)
Yeah. Or the other one is, well, that won't work for us because

shut up. and that also leads us on the just shut up keywords that leads us on to condition number four, a VAR or partner who will challenge and steer you towards the minimum viable product. So I, we've worked with partners before and seen this in action where

Nirav Shah (34:15)
Yep.

Peter Nicholson (34:35)
they do challenge and you can see across their face when they're hearing a business process that sounds ridiculous. They're like, seriously, you're doing that? Having that open and frank discussion is so much better than just thinking that a good partner is someone that agrees with you. Like, oh yeah, we need to do this. And the partner goes, yes, okay, we'll go away and do that then. You don't want that at all. You want that partner to be challenging, asking, into something that doesn't seem right.

Emily Browning (34:57)
Mm-mm.

Peter Nicholson (35:05)
And you as the company that's going through the implementation, you have got to be willing to lose some of these arguments and let the VAR win. Cause they've seen a bunch of businesses go through this. have more experience than you at the ERP implementation. So Nirav. Maybe you can talk through some of the conversations that you have with clients when you are already feeling that this is going to be a no Mr. Customer kind of conversation.

Emily Browning (35:30)
or miss as customer.

Nirav Shah (35:31)
Yeah,

yeah, or no, Mrs. Customer Absolutely. I don't hesitate. We tell them right from the get go when we start engaging with them, start the requirements analysis is that we first listen, we'll do the discovery, we'll listen to you, what you're doing. And then after that, we'll go back and we'll strategize on what your implementation will be. And then we'll start kind of dissecting that.

Like you're doing this because of so-and-so reasons, that's adding three, four extra steps. Instead, you could do it in one step here in Acumatica or wherever, right? Business Central. Or you're running this report when there could already be an email that's automatically sent from the system. Or right, sometimes they just have to know that the system does do it and supports it, but makes it easier for them.

instead of, you know, in their head, like, want to click two buttons, like, I need the three buttons, where are the three buttons, give me those three buttons, right. But instead, you could just say, No, no, you don't need those three buttons, here's like one button. And here's Mr. customer, here's what you need, this, is exactly what you're looking for, right. So you got to break through with it, you got to gain the confidence. I tell our team, like we're people, we know people better, you know, for people first, instead of software, we happen to know ERP software really, really well. So you kind of need to know how they think you got to kind of know

how you could get them to learn, right? Because we're teachers, right? We're teaching them ERP. We're teaching them supply chain. Some people don't understand what happens after their job responsibility, right? They don't know, know, after I create an order, what exactly happens in the warehouse, right? Where does a forklift go to go do the pick? I have no idea. I just got the order out there, but here's a specific way I need to do my picks. Well, there's a more efficient picking way for the picking people, which maybe may require you to do a different way to put in a sales order, right?

They're learning, these users are learning like the full business. They're basically going through a master's class in supply chain management when they're doing an ERP system, right? So it's a lot for them to take in. So we try to first teach them what we're trying to achieve and how it's helping not only them, but also other people in the business, right? So we try to do a full comprehensive giving them that feedback while they may think they need a customization. Now I will say,

Seven out of 10 times, the customer comes back and OK, yeah, we don't need the customization. I exactly know what you mean now. I just didn't know that Henry here was doing that after me. And now automatically the system is sending him the information, so I don't need that extra stuff anymore. Yeah, absolutely correct. And 30 % of the time is, hey, yeah, they need it because the ERP doesn't have that industry-specific report or the compliance-specific function.

Peter Nicholson (37:58)
Mm-hmm.

Nirav Shah (38:00)
that they need to report for, let's say AS 9100, ISO standards, right? Stuff like that where, okay, well, the ERP maybe doesn't have that out of the box, so they have to go through an audit. But here's a third party solution that's still considered out of the box. The third party vendor has to maintain their code. It's not a customization. So I'd rather go down the route of that third party vendor than customizing it specifically for them, right? So you kind of have to like...

pick and choose what is actually a true customization versus does the customer just not know, the user not know the full process or can we introduce a third party solution here? So you have to bring all these different points to the table to create a minimal viable product at the end of the day. And if they fight hard enough and I've been in this situation one time where the decision maker was a guy who also cut the checks. He's like, I want it this way, that's it. And that didn't work out too well for him, but.

Peter Nicholson (38:41)
Mm.

Nirav Shah (38:51)
You ended up doing all these customizations you didn't need afterwards, you realized. So, you always need a VAR to give you another set of eyes of your business and tell you whether you're going down the right path or you're just spending money unnecessarily.

Peter Nicholson (39:03)
I think that's really interesting. One more question for you kind of on that point then, because there might be some people listening out there going, well, I don't know what to expect from my VAR. what's, what's the one thing that you see customers consistently get wrong about their partner's role or something, you know, in hindsight, they go, okay, they've learned this from a partner because it's gonna be people out there that have never even spoken to a partner. So

What's the one thing that you see people get wrong and they actually learn? That's why what I should expect from my partner.

Nirav Shah (39:35)
I think one thing they get wrong is patience with the partner. And the reason why I say that is they're expecting an answer that makes the complete sense to them right from the first conversation. Instead of taking time and trying to put it together because an ERP system is a puzzle. And the partner is putting together this puzzle as much as you're putting together this puzzle, right? And the breakthrough, the aha moment doesn't come from day one.

it may come into your seventh training session like, oh, this is why the partner is leading us down this road. I get it now. Now it makes sense. So the patience part of it is what we struggle with. It's like the customer is like, OK, well, if you think that's going to work, how do know it's going to work for us? Are you it's going to work for us? And why can't we just customize it? Because I don't know if we talked to another partner and they said it's not going to work for us. Well, let's go through the process. Let us go through and show you the system.

the more you're educated, the more you see what the system could do. You may come back and say, hey, whoa, all right, we're getting something way better than we had before even. So if you were to jump the gun just to do that customization, we're not doing our job as of our at the end of the day. So I think patience is the number one thing that I see is sometimes they're just so excited and eager and the person just like, want to know what I need to know now and this is what I do. So just give me that same exact process.

the conversation and the communication, the training and education, right, it has to catch up to what we're trying to explain to them.

Emily Browning (41:02)
So in my day job, I have to find vendors for projects and sign contracts with them. So as a hard rule, I will not sign a contract with someone who isn't taking exactly the approach that Nirav has just shared with us. If they don't dig into the why of what...

I'm asking for what my team is asking for. If they don't try to really understand what it is we're trying to achieve and why, and then come up with their own suggestions, don't use them. Don't really entertain it past that. And also, if you're a business leader,

If the person leading your project doesn't want to hear it as well, doesn't want to be challenged, get them off of your project because they're just going to take you down a path of something overly customized, a bunch of unnecessary stuff. It will go over budget. It will go over time. For me, it's a hard rule. There's no scenario in which...

I would ever kind of have either of those things in place, a VAR or consultant who doesn't challenge me and a project leader who can't be challenged. And I guess finding a VAR that, how do know the VAR is going to be like that before you sign the contract? So I was thinking, Pete, you might have some thoughts on this as well, but I think you can tell a little bit, well, you can definitely tell from that initial sales process based on

the questions they're asking you, how much are they probing down into what you're saying? also, are they outright saying that they're going to challenge you and help you get a simplified, standardized product? Because some people will just say, yes, yes, yes, we can do that, we can do that, and we can do this, and look at all these great special things we did for our special, unique customers. No.

Your customers aren't special and unique. I'm not special and unique. And if you tell that to me, I will not sign anything with you.

Peter Nicholson (42:51)
Yep, I agree. think on those on those pitches, I know demos are hard. They're hard enough anyway. You're having to demo an ERP that the customer's never seen before on data that's not theirs. That's tough. But I think one of the telltale signs for me is just applying 80 20 to this. If you if you're talking to that vendor and they're doing 80 % of the talking and they're not actually probing you for some of the questions of your business, how you operate, then how is that going to

work in the rest of the projects because they need to be listening. Like Nirav said, the VAR needs to be listening to take that back to their team, to strategize, to consider what options are available and therefore present them to the business and kind of decide with them, help them put the jigsaw pieces together. you should get a sniff of this pretty early.

if that partner is throwing up those kind of presentation slides, right? That's like, look at this wonderful customer we did. Look at all of these names of these big companies we've worked for before. I don't care about any of that. You should be asking me questions about my business. What do we do? How do we run? You should hopefully get a sense from that whether or not this is going to be a relationship that's going to work. Because you're not buying a consultant. A consultant will come in and go, yep, I'll build you whatever you want.

I'll just do my billable hours and I'll be off again. You're not buying that. You're looking for a VAR that's gonna work with you through this implementation rather than just be the yes man and just do whatever you want. It's just not gonna work.

Condition number five, the final one, the right ERP. So we said this, I think before we hit the record button, there are some ERPs that just aren't designed for rapid deployment. F&SCM one those big ones. There are some that are designed for rapid deployment. So it depends really which one you're...

picking, I guess this works both ways, right? You can see all the bells and whistles of this huge ERP and like, yeah, we want that one because there's a load of stuff that it can do and it's designed for deep customization. You can also end up picking the wrong ERP. But I think also it works the other way around. There are already a short list of right ERP options for you out there. the whole choosing the right ERP in the first place.

will say to you whether or not six months is on or not.

Nirav Shah (45:13)
Yeah, some stories. I had a customer that got sold and they implement, not our customer, but got sold and implemented Dynamics F&O SCM So nobody out there who was listening that doesn't know what those acronym means.

Dynamics, if anyone knows AX, Exapta. So FNO, Finance and Operations, and Supply Chain Management, SCM, is Microsoft's tier one ERP solution that competes directly with SAP, SAP 4HANA bigger ERP products, IFS, those type of solutions. These are almost, you know.

I don't know, like $100 million implementations type of deal. These are huge multinational, multi-language, different taxations across the world. It's just huge, huge projects. So one customer got sold a F&OSCM project that actually implemented in, I think, what was it, four to six months, something like that. But then they realized they got oversold and they could have easily went with a Dynamics

business central product instead, which is much smaller in footprint, cheaper from a subscription standpoint. But they got sold this F and O project, because the partner didn't really qualify them, they sold them a solution, the customer bought it, they didn't do their homework or research, like, is this the right solution for me for my size? And then realize we got way more software than we actually need yeah, those are stories are out there, they float around there.

and the ERP space happens all the time. But finding the right solution for you, there's a lot of things that go into this. One is vertical, industry vertical, number of users, number of orders you process per day. What are your core business processes? Like, do you want third party solutions? Do you not want third party solutions? Right, so there is no one size fits all. When you go kind of go down this SMB route,

A lot of these solutions are generic out of the box solutions unless like you go and build your own custom homegrown ERP system. But you got to be willing to find a solution that's maybe a good 60 % fit, 70 % fit, 80 % fit. You're not going to find 100 % fit. And then, you know, that other 30 % is where the partner brings in their experience and tells you, you know, how you can use the system to meet your business needs and requirements or whatever that looks like even without a customization and you implement successfully. So

Yeah, finding that could be super important to make sure you can implement within six months.

Emily Browning (47:43)
For me, this is a short point really. It's like Pete, you said at the start of this one, some are made for it, some are not. Use your favorite search engine or AI tool and do your research. Is it one that fits that kind of model or not? Neither option is bad. But if one that can be implemented in six months fits you and your business and your needs, then don't accidentally choose SAP.

Nirav Shah (48:09)
Or F and

Peter Nicholson (48:10)
that's why

Emily Browning (48:11)
I'm

Peter Nicholson (48:11)
we're saying that this condition is the right ERP. The question isn't what's the best ERP. It's really what is the best ERP for the timeline and complexity of our business. The timeline that we have and the complexity of our business. That will lead you to the right ERP. Not the best one. There is no such thing as the best one.

Nirav Shah (48:29)
I don't think yeah,

I don't think there's a such thing. Yeah, I don't think there's a perfect ERP out there for anyone, unless you build it for yourself, but then you're stuck kind of, you know, maintaining it yourself, update yourself, and then whoever's doing it leaves a company and then you're kind of SOL because you have to find somebody else to maintain a homegrown ERP system. yeah, I think I think as long as you could, you could get a good 70 80 % fit what's available out of the box and the other 20 % is a partner, the partner you work with.

that's going to guide you and help you implement the right way and give you the most value long term, right? And that could be some customization that could be new reports that could be third party solutions, whatever that looks like. But at least you're not having to change the core, the guts of the ERP system because that guts are the most important things to architecture.

Peter Nicholson (49:11)
on the five conditions that we've spoken about, none of these are out of reach for the majority of businesses out there. It's not unattainable. I think actually it should be something you target. I would argue that an 18 month project is potentially riskier than a six month one because

ERP risks compound with time, right? If you give a, what should be a six month project, an 18 month timeframe, you've just given that company three times as long to lose its nerve, three times as long to start going, well, what about this? Could we add this? You've increased the chance of fatigue. You've increased the chance of turnover, as you said, Nirav, someone leaves.

I think it's risky. 18 month one is not safer. Some people think it is. And I think we spoke about this before. I think Emily made this point once about, you know, having extra time. can't remember exactly what it was. We were talking about risk management though. And I think, I think this should be something you should think about if you're out there and you're going, no, we'll play it safe. We'll give it 12 months. No, look at these conditions and see if six months is viable for you. Cause absolutely it's safer.

Emily Browning (50:18)
Great point.

Nirav Shah (50:18)
Yeah, and

I would say, you you go on past six, seven months, you've already spent all that money on your license. Right? I think, you know, if like, if anything else, in sales, for example, time kills all deals. Well, the longer an ERP implementation gets delayed, it just reduces morale. It makes users realize like, okay, maybe management doesn't really care about this. I could keep pushing this out. Maybe I don't want to make it high priority. I'm good with where I'm at right now.

Right? Like you don't get that kind of spark to move this implementation along and go live quickly on it. yeah. And one thing that I never got, and I'm still trying to figure this out, is when people implement QuickBooks, they're like, let's get it going because there's immediate need. They need to get their accounting done. They need invoices out. Right? There's an immediate need. they've implemented the day they bought the subscription, literally. But why?

Peter Nicholson (51:06)
Thank

Nirav Shah (51:08)
Does ERP implementation just drag on? Why not have the mindset like, let's go. Yeah, let's go. Let's go and get this thing implemented. Obviously, a lot of factors. But yeah, you're exactly right, Emily Approach this kind of like it's a necessity now. There's a reason why you went down this road. Don't delay it.

Emily Browning (51:11)
and reliable teams.

Peter Nicholson (51:14)
Yeah.

And if you ever thought that this podcast was ever going to be sponsored by QuickBooks, we've well and truly killed that off today and in multiple other episodes where we slated your product and we stand by that.

Nirav Shah (51:32)
Hahaha

you

Emily Browning (51:37)
you

Nirav Shah (51:40)
I'll say closing thoughts wise, if you're in the market for an ERP system, we have a bunch of other episodes that we've done that help guide you through this ERP process. But I think this was a fantastic episode in terms of helping customers realize success as possible in six months. It is completely possible.

You have to be the right customer, obviously, but don't make it as complicated as it, more complicated than it needs to be. That's kind of what I'll say.

Emily Browning (52:13)
Totally agree.

Peter Nicholson (52:14)
Yep, and it's nuanced, right? It's not just a compressed rate faster version of a 12 month one. It's a different operating model, right? These five conditions, they either exist before you start or they don't. You cannot just manufacture them halfway through the project.

Nirav Shah (52:20)
Right.

Peter Nicholson (52:31)
So, know, even if you're in a project right now and it's sliding, the question isn't, do we need to chuck more resource at it? It's which of these five conditions did we not have, right? If it's sliding, it isn't just chuck more bodies at it, it's because you haven't got a reliable team that's like this on decision making. It's those kind of things. So these five conditions is a checklist. And we're gonna make this into an encrypted, passworded PDF that you can purchase from us.

For $50.

Nirav Shah (52:57)
Yeah.

Emily Browning (52:58)
Hahaha

Peter Nicholson (53:01)
I think that's it, another successful episode. So if you found this insightful or useful, share it with someone that's about to sign off on the two year ERP implementation project. They might thank you in six months time when it's all gone live. So make sure you like and subscribe us. We come out with a new episode every two weeks. We throw it up onto every podcast platform.

And we also shoot video so it also goes on to our YouTube channel But if you are listening to this a lot of our listeners listen via Apple podcasts Apple podcasts now support video podcasts as well So we're gonna throw up the video version of this onto our podcasts. This will be up there on smiling faces on Apple as well. So Listen to us wherever you want

Emily Browning (53:36)
Wow.

Peter Nicholson (53:44)
If you are on LinkedIn, You'll find our LinkedIn page as well. And all three of us just search our names and you'll find us. So with that, thank you both of you. This is a wonderful episode to do. I think there's a ton of content in here and I'll catch you on the next episode.

Emily Browning (54:00)
Good chat, thank you.

Nirav Shah (54:01)
All right.