The ERPodcast

E31 SuiteWorld 2023 Timestamp Subject 5:36 Sponsored by Acura MDX 15:45 Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer 20:15 NetSuite Keynote Coverage 22:43 The Hype that is AI 26:01:00 Suite Up 31:30:00 NetSuite New Releases 35:08:00 AI Becomes Real 38:00:00 Peak Outliers in ERP Marketing 42:00:00 Importance of ERP Development Links of note Keynote SuiteWorld 2023 Evan Goldberg, CEO Details on New NetSuite offerings, Gary Wiessinger's Keynote Global Smartphone Market Share PFE Open/PFE MFX up and Under October 2023. NetSuite is hosting SuiteWorld, the annual gathering of users, partners, developers, consultants, and anyone else affiliated with the NetSuite universe. It’s been a busy year in ERP in general, NetSuite in particular. There are now over 37,000 companies running on NetSuite – phenomenal growth. Around 2019? They had just broken the 18,000 companies on NetSuite mark – so the user community has doubled in 4 years, or 3 years plus a Covid timeout. Anyway – SuiteWorld attendance is critically important for top performing NetSuite-using Companies. Even more important for companies not yet using NetSuite. Why is that you ask? Why would you go to a users conference if you’re not a user. Here’s the story. New to ERP, clients are looking at ERP, considering which ones to select. User conferences in general are a great idea. I mean, everyone wants references – demos are really great, but not great reality. You want to see real-life examples. Well, there’s about 3,000 users at NetSuite you could talk to. Does NetSuite really work as advertised? You’re going to see lots of companies, who, at one time were exactly where you are. How does this work? And the answer is two-fold – it doesn’t work like you think it would, and two, if you follow the process, just like these 3,000 folks did, you too will get there. Is it worth it? The majority of the folks at SuiteWorld will tell you they wished they’d started sooner. The rest got into NetSuite as a startup – mostly because they’d used it at a former employer already. Another critical thing we’ve learned from past clients. About a third of ERP failures can be attributed to implementation fatigue – and we’re talking the entire system up and running but features they expected and wanted, well, doesn’t really work.  Truth is, It gets hard at the very end of an implementation and it’s been a long haul to get there, and the internal team often quits at the 5 yard line – says something like ‘well, the software really doesn’t work like it did in the demos’. When the issue is, yes, it does work, but not the way YOU’RE trying to do it. So having the opportunity to actually see the intended functionality working for other companies – your internal team will realize that yes, we can do this if they did it – there is a way. And they take the ball from the 5 and push it over the goal line. If you’re already running NetSuite, then it’s even more important to get to SuiteWorld. You’ll find out first-hand all about the new developments being released this year. Even get a chance to see demonstrations and some hands-on labs working with new features. Plus there’s the best-in-class Presentations. Other companies who use NetSuite, who have seen tremendous results, telling you exactly how they did it. You can ask them questions, take notes, get handouts, follow up with the product leaders from NetSuite – why they designed it that way, how it works best. Then there’s everything else. All the affiliated software products, apps, programs, platforms, portals – everything that works with and around NetSuite. Might not be something you’re doing this year, but you learn about it and next year, when Management tells you your department needs to improve by 5%, you know about an app that has bumped productivity by 20% for other users. Tell them if they want 5% internal improvement we need to add this to the capital budget. If you’ve been to SuiteWorld before, you know. If you’ve never been to SuiteWorld , you need to go. Now – you may say, we’re happily using not-NetSuite for our company software. Fine – the underlying ERP best practice theory we’re defining here, is the User Group – why User Groups are important, how and why our research shows the best performing companies participate heavily in User Groups, and we can be talking about any business software user group - you really should be attending the SuperBizProMax ERP annual user conference – if of course, you’re the kind of company using SuperBizProMax for your ERP. Research shows, it’s the easiest way to getting more from your ERP and other business software and based on what we’ve learned, it’s a no brainer every year – Here’s my ERPodcast actual demonstration – switch over to my mobile microphone Mike shuffle SFX Walk out of the Cave Creek Arizona -  Rolling Thunder Studio into the garage Garage Door opens SFX Get in the car Carstart/Rumble SFX And we are ready to pull out… But first we should mention today’s demo travelling episode is being brought to you by the 2011 Acura MDX  - this one has just under 150,000 miles and lots of features you won’t find anywhere else, my favorite being zero down and zero monthly payment at a zero interest rate for zero months because it was paid off years ago. The story starts a few years back, I was flying with my Dad in his 4 seater Piper single engine airplane and I asked him ‘Hey Dad when was this plane manufactured’ – he said 1954 – which was a question I wished I’d waited until after landing to ask– kidding - of course aircraft maintenance is very different than what the average auto owner neglects to do – but it got me thinking…Later on, when we pioneered ERP for  a couple  clients in the aviation maintenance sector, so I thought, why not take a few tips from those guys and just drive this Acura for 20 years – we’re over halfway there so far – which is working out great. A new MDX would be average $750 monthly payment for 5 years or more, and when you’re not dropping $750 every month,  when you do spend money on your vehicle, you get to do it exactly how you want – new high performance front end suspension components better than stock – going all digital/bluetooth instead of the CD stereo – yes that’s an outboard amp driving the subwoofer, even had the seats re-done in fine Corinthian leather – whatever I want – it’s kind of cool – and I realized - -  our consulting practice, ProfitFromERP is based on learning new things from every client project – we’ve had major or minor in over 400 ERP projects both big and small – and along the way, like I said, we work to learn something from all of them. I’m not just talking about applying aircraft maintenance standards to make a car last over a decade and beyond – even though that worked pretty well. Our consulting is derived from learning from every ERP implementation – and the thing is, we’ve found, with the right approach from the internal team, the right group of users can actually make even bad software work well – and even better when improving the software selection process itself – so why not break that methodology down into repeatable actions using great software. – the internal process, how the internal team and users approach the software project and deploy the ERP – that’s what makes the real difference – so we’ve studied the best companies approach and distilled it down to ten different steps or stages that we’ve observed That’s how we came up with the ProfitFromERP methodologies – and one of the things we noticed was our top performing companies would ask early on ‘Is there an active user group for this new software’ – which at first I thought, that is really geeky and sounds pretty lame…software user groups? That was back when I already knew everything, before I learned I didn’t. Watching the internal teams we were consulting with come back from SuiteWorld and our list of active ERP projects would just explode based on new requests – they’d seen new things and new ways to work with existing modules, and we realized we could not continue to let our customers tell us how to consult – so we started going to software conferences. Anyway – the end result is, top performing companies get much greater value out of the software they already have by participating in user conferences – they get payback in no time. So are you finally convinced to head off to SuiteWorld? We’re headed that way now and we’ll be reporting back on this Episode 31 of the ERPodcast, the official podcast of ProfitFromERP – our consulting firm dedicated to helping clients select the best business software, implement using best practices and continue supporting internal teams to drive efficiencies, increase revenues and achieve, Profit From ERP. Got the green light, lay on some highway tunes MFX Doobie Bros And We’re off to Vegas. PFE Open #3 OK, here we are…NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference – we’re out here in the concourse – and things are starting to heat up. Normally there are some 2 to 3 day training classes prior to the  the actual conference starting - - -  but like us, most people start arriving the afternoon before keynotes – and already lots is happening – there are several thousand attendees already checked in. There are hundreds of NetSuite Partners and software vendors from all types of Apps and related programs that work with NetSuite. Outside developers, folks who’ve written a program specifically for their organization using the NetSuite development toolkit  - often, it works so well they take it to market to sell to other NetSuite users - – if enough people buy the app to make it profitable, well,

E30 CFO Leadership Conference West 2023  E30 CFO Leadership Conference West 2023 ERPodcast Episode 30.2 Intro MFX This week in ERP….(or at least my week in ERP) Hey Folks – Gene Hammons, Director of ProfitFromERP with Episode 30 of the ERPodcast… Interesting week however you look at it - locally, here in AZ, Tempe to be specific, the CFO Leadership Council held CFO Leadership Conference West 2023 - thanks to my friends at Oracle NetSuite and Avalera (the tax guys) they were able to sneak me into the Networking Event held poolside at one of the local mountainside Marriott Resorts. And fortunately, fall came to the desert three days prior to the event and it was a great evening under the stars. A week earlier and it would have been 103 degrees with the smell of roasted CFO’s wafting across the desert. Got to talk to a lot of different CFO’s from lots of different companies all across the country. I’d say attendance was in the 200-400 range, but that’s a guess on my part. A lot of the sessions were on technology for finance, using automation in driving better data and how data driven organizations had clearer and faster reads on how their specific company was performing in a wildly fluctuating market. It goes without saying that we’re dealing with challenging market conditions these days. Makes me wonder if it goes without saying, why do I keep saying it. We’re beginning to see real functionality with AI in finance software – more on that next week – Many CFO’s report their staff spending more time on accuracy than analysis, and the focus here was using automation to drive the accuracy, AI to report anomalies and staff can concentrate on analysis to provide real service to the rest of the organization. Many of the CFO’s were with companies already using NetSuite - and the new numbers are out, NetSuite is now over 37,000 companies using the Suite. I remember 2019, not that long ago, when they were ecstatic at breaking the 18,000 companies mark. The conventional wisdom at the time was NetSuite had seen 30% growth year after year but driving 30% increases of a 10k customer base is a lot easier to achieve than pulling off 30% growth on a base of 18,000 customers - so surely there was a ceiling coming soon. Execpt it didn’t….and here’s a few reasons why The Oracle Boost – I don’t know if you know the NetSuite history, initially, Larry Ellison Oracle Founder and CEO, provided once Oracle employee now NetSuite Founder CEO Evan Goldberg with initial funding to start a cloud based business software – so Larry owned a good deal of the stock in NetSuite. Oracle, for reasons we’ll cover other places, wasn’t a big player in cloud technology, but as NetSuite grew, Oracle could shortcut it’s way into cloud technology by acquiring NetSuite – which turned out to be really great in many areas. Going Global 2019 I also was at a NetSuite Suite Success Training in Denver . We heard that Oracle, was driving huge development dollars into the NetSuite platform.  I first saw NetSuite really take off in our customer base around 2014, back then, NetSuite was a US market product. As I met my fellow Suite Success team members in Denver, I met other students from Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Ireland, London, Paris, Germany, Thailand-I think, India, Sri Lanka - and that’s the ones I remember. That kind of illustrated the global impact NetSuite was starting to have in foreign ERP providers and global markets with Oracle-backed development rolling out NetSuite versions specific to other countries, localized to tax and legal issues of those particular markets - that was part of the new development Oracle was providing - driving new markets globally, so NetSuite could replicate the tremendous success they’ve had stateside and start serving a worldwide market. And that’s just some of the huge expansion of NetSuite capabilities and functionalites Actually that turned out to be pretty fortuitous on my part The ERPodcast, our fun little slice of technology reporting, since it’s hosted on global platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts - it turns out your never know who’s listening. I’m told we’re considered a top-10 business podcast in the Middle East - actually I was looking for coverage in the midwest US, but ok. In the odd chance I hear from a company in Qatar, Belgium or Indonesia that’s looking for ERP help, I can always go back to my Suite Success classmates and make introductions - which is kind of nice. NetSuite represents a good portion of the cloud business that’s driving Oracle’s stock price these days - so it’s been it’s been in Oracles best interest to drive more development into the platform – We talked about the globalization, but there’s also sizeable new featuresets coming in every update, and those updates happen every 6 months -so it’s huge. And there’s growth in both in development and in acquisition. I’m sure you heard last week that NetSuite had acquired Next Technik - the Next Service field service guys. What that means is Next developed their product as a native NetSuite add on, using the NetSuite toolkit, and a super tight integration. That will be transformed into an actual fully integrated module within the NetSuite Suite of products - in a few months, you won’t be able to tell if you’re in Next Service or NetSuite, it will just be another tab on the homepage. Before that it was Verenia CPQ. That’s Configure Price Quote - let’s you design all the options to a product and create a quote based on the amount of materials and manufacturing costs needed to build it. And the two of these acquisitions lead us into the world of custom manufacturing - or at least the custom manufacturing clients I’ve been working with the last 18 months. Custom manufacturing - companies that make one of a customizable by size, form, function, product and maybe make three, five or six of these custom designed items to sell to a single customer. Often, they’re sending out a crew to install or service the product - which is the field service aspect. So that’s CPQ to help design or a sometimes a cad system (good for product specs and design but sucks at pricing and quotes), Then NetSuite to handle the financial buy and sell, as well as supply chain and manufacturing. Finally, Field Service to manage the teams and days to install the finished product. It just so happens that I’m working with or working on working with about 4 different custom manufacturing companies - keep hearing the same thing, issues with reporting from custom segments, understanding the different cost profiles of a particular custom manufactured product, as well as managing the project, say, if a customer is buying several Items at once - you can lose a little money on the big assembly if you make it up on the four smaller ones - that sort of thing. I did spend some time with NetSuite upper management and install teams of NetSuite at the CFO Conference  - and we got into how these custom manufacturers can manage these particular issues - now don’t get me wrong, these clients already love NetSuite, they’ve been using it a while, they just seem to be asking for a bit of optimization, make reporting smoother, that sort of thing. The conference has all other kinds of related software vendors, so I discussed the issues with FP&A guys, people like Prophix, Anaplan, Planful - and got their take on the best way to approach the matter. Oracle, on their part, is dedicated to this market - which is why they’re acquiring Next and Verenia and I’m not supposed to say what else they’re planning. Like the way I phrased that? 'Not supposed to say' - which could mean I don’t know anything more or it could be  I’ve got some inside scoop that I’m not supposed to reveal, Actually,  means I’ve been around the ERP software industry long enough to figure out if their buying some tires, they probably have a car or truck or are planning to roll one out  soon. Those four clients? The custom manufacturing guys? It will be interesting to see what we come up with to help them out - and given some time to sort through each of the options, as well as looking at core setups and potential configuration solutions or customized application of what’s already there in NetSuite - is it going to be the Projects module, advanced reporting from FP&A, a little Saved Search magic? - hey - never go in thinking you know everything - but go in digging into the questions and work until the answers reveal themselves. But to close out on the CFO Conference – I did get to talk to a dozen or so attendees – CFO’s from all types of companies. Some were NetSuite users, others were considering NetSuite along with the Microsoft Dynamics offerings, Sage and Acumatica. I also met with implementation teams from several enterprise financial software providers – When introducing ourselves as a selection and implementation consulting team, we heard over and over again how having an internal project manager or system admin as part of your internal team can really help make the whole process smoother and more successful – I don’t have actual numbers, but here’s what I do know – with so much growth in the NetSuite user base – as well as other ERP products, when covid really showed the limitations of older, lumbering ERP systems, there are more companies realizing they need to up their technology game – good enough isn’t good enough anymore. And like we said with the growth in NetSuite, 18k companies pre covid to 37k companies today – good implementation talent is stretched very thin. The consulting ranks haven’t kept up with that level of growth.  So if you can source the best people, which ProfitFromERP provides guidance there – these folks are so busy – and they’re going from account to account – what we’re finding is, details get dropped. For example, we had a client who did custom manufacturing. Their customer payment model was 50% deposit to place the order,

ERPodcast Episode 29 The Perfect Time for ERP MFX/Intro Welcome to the ERPodcast Episode #29 – The Perfect Time for ERP – that’s the title and theme of today’s examination of just that - when should a growing company undertake an ERP project? And it’s not a simple question. Any ERP project is massive, whether you’re a $12m annual revenue company going from Quickbooks to Sage Intacct or a $200m company replacing DynamicsGP with a new cloud-based ERP. ERP is an intensive project, needs a ‘all hands on deck’ approach and the stakes are high. There’s legendary stories of Hershey’s Chocolate almost losing the company when a failed SAP effort meant they couldn’t ship product in the middle of the peak Halloween to Christmas season – not good – and there’s also scores of those types of stories from lesser known and more private companies. So when is, The Perfect Time for ERP? We’ll talk about 3 real world examples of recent ProfitFromERP clients and the drivers behind those examples. There’s also a world of opinion in the world of startups – do you do the ERP project Pre-IPO to show potential investors solid financial controls and operational efficiency? Do you wait until the next round of funding to be able to afford the higher end ERP’s with related SEC reporting tools to make sure of compliance needed by a public company? Then there’s the staffing balance – we’ll have more people on board next year so we can spread the ERP implementation workload across more resources….but if we had ERP already installed we’d need to hire fewer people for the same size operation. Here’s the conundrum – most of us don’t hire for excess capacity. It’s more like we’re not really sure of the data, it’s coming from disparate spreadsheets, running late, last minute– but the staff is working overtime and Saturdays – if we just had one more person to chase down the data… which is a good solution, but by definition, a growing company continues to grow and we keep adding one more person just to keep up, pretty soon there’s 22 desks in the business office and we’re looking for more space because everyone’s working overtime and Saturdays. Putting things off til some magical ‘some day’ only gets us from complexity to mass complexity. Then one day we wake up and we realize ‘WOW - it would have been a lot easier to implement ERP when the business was simpler and we could have managed growth in a lot more systematic method’. Plus, instead of rolling out training to 50 people all at once, we comprehensively train the first 10 and teach each onboarding employee the exact steps using the new software specifically for their job duties. And maybe even start hiring people who’ve already been using the same ERP we just implemented. So what’s The Perfect Time for ERP?  Let’s look at some real-world examples. Stories of companies that took a leap at different stages and how that all turned out. I’m your host, Gene Hammons, Director of ProfitFromERP,  our business consulting firm helping clients actually create Profit, From their ERP projects. Right back after this! Stinger out. Hey – a word about sponsors. Putting together the ERPodcast is a labor of love, it’s often our first introduction to new clients, we also think it’s about giving back to the community, sharing stories of real world ERP projects, how the market works, things we’ve experienced over the years and so on. . As long as there are still ERP projects that fail or have huge cost overruns or don’t do what the demo looked like it did – as long as there’s a bad project out there, we’ll keep pushing out the know-how to avoid those situations But – running a growing company ProfitFromERP – just like any other emerging company, there’s a lot to do. Time is critical. And if we’re going to allocate the time to the ERPodcast – well, we need to do it as more than a net loss leader – so we have sponsors. The easiest way to get podcast sponsors for a podcast is through placement brokers – you can tell the brokers where your breaks are, say at 2:17 into the podcast – and they’ll pop some ad in there. Next thing you know, the podcast has a My Pillow ad or it’s Toyotathon again right in the middle of an ERP implementation discussion. But you, the listener, your time is valuable too. So we’re not doing that. What we are doing is spotlighting some of the very many related products in and around the world of ERP and business, software and technology. In other words, give you something of value – knowledge about a product or service that could be vital to the ongoing success of your business. Just like the ERPodcast topics, not every ad is going to be of direct interest to you. But as we create the ads, we’re focusing on what our listeners would find advantageous. and you might pick up some ideas on how to integrate something else that is a direct advantage for your company. Like I say, your time is valuable. And that’s todays sponsor message about sponsors on the ERPodcast. You can also help us out by mentioning how you found out about a particular sponsor – or – get in touch with us at Info @ ProfitFromERP and we’ll make a formal introduction to get you to the right place with any of our sponsoring firms. Of course if the My Pillow Guy calls, all bets are off. Welcome back to the ERPodcast – today we’re going to look at three companies – an emerging pharma manufacturer who’s promising compound just finished the research and development phase and got fastracked FDA approval to go to market. The company is moving from 4 people to a staff of 125, and replacing QuickBooks – all within the first 6 months. A growing Audio Visual dealer, installer of auditorium, stadium, and amphitheater systems. And we’ll look at a Oilfield support firm, who can’t track where their million dollar equipment is, even with QuickBooks and a staff of 13. Before we get into today’s stories – It’s the ERP Planning Calendar update. If you’re looking for the Perfect Time to Implement ERP – the ERP Planning Calendar helps you get an overall estimate of average project timing. Our mainline client base is companies who are evaluating and implementing ERP.  The release date for this podcast is late August of ’23.  For smaller companies replacing QuickBooks, if you were to call ProfitFromERP today, count on putting the project together and the time to evaluate and compare different software – give yourself about 4 months til a purchasing decision, but with the holidays, making a decision and going to contract by 12/31/23 from a late August start is a pretty tight schedule. Then comes the implementation - If you select one of the made-for-cloud options it's possible to get financials live by Q2 next year and related modules operational in the April/May time period – but that’s aggressive. For midsized corporate projects, 6 months minimum for selection and 6 months for implementation, so you could see a Q4 of ‘24 launch – more likely Jan 1 2025. So if you’re looking to move faster than Jan 2025, we’d recommend some urgency on the front end – contact us tomorrow at Info@ProfitFromERP.com Of course, there are untold millions of elements that could either accelerate or delay these estimates, but averages being what they are – just something to keep in mind as we talk about the Perfect Time for ERP. Stinger Story #1. The Pharma company. As you probably know, getting a new drug to market takes years of research, testing, clinical trials, FDA approval – and it’s not just the huge pharma companies. Sometimes it’s a small, independent R&D team, even sometimes a single research scientist comes up with a promising compound. They can then hire Contract Research companies to run the clinical trials, testing and FDA submissions. In many cases, the entire early stage company consists of a scientist or two, a money guy slash angel stage investor, and usually a part time bookkeeper to pay the bills and keep the books in order. Super small staff. The FDA recently created a fast-track approval process which was designed to get promising drugs to market in a shortened timeframe. What this meant for our Pharma startup is that after years of limited activity, they suddenly have approval to go to commercial and the company needs to expand from 4 people to a business plan estimate of 125 people. New CEO’s and CFO’s Supply chain, national sales, Quality, packaging and labelling, general staffing, on and on. In this case, the former part-time QuickBooks Bookkeeper was tasked to select and implement ERP.  But this wasn’t the only software project – the FP&A that’s Financial Planning and Analysis department was implementing advanced financial planning and SEC Reporting software.  There was a stock option software managing project. A quality system, a lab management package,  HR software, expense management and AP, as well as a medical CRM package. Millions of dollars of software investments none of which were coordinated with one another – often, the person who would eventually be in charge of some of these systems wasn’t even hired or identified yet. We were leading the ERP evaluation only and from the start it was mayhem. We’d narrowed the field down to two products that were being used at our other Pharma manufacturing clients, Microsoft Dynamics AX and NetSuite. Almost weekly, the QuickBooks Bookkeeper would call and say ‘what about Super Biz Pro – she’d say ‘we just hired a new supply chain manager and his former company used Super Biz Pro and he loves it.’ Not having heard of Super Biz Pro, we’d do some checking and find a fledging ERP publisher with 25 East Coast companies – not really a competitor of Dynamics AX’s 20-year international record in pharma manufacturing with thousands of industry references. Nor anywhere near NetSuite’s cutting edge made for cloud technology. But if the guy in supply chain likes it…. And remember, the company is going from 4 people to 125,

Digital Transformation What don't you know about ERP? Industry secrets, mis-aligned incentives and drivers of behavior all impact your final result - Today's ERPodcast let's you get a handle on some of the largest pitfalls threatening your project before you start.  LinkSources   ERPodcast E27 CEO/CFO Report 2021 Links   Links mentioned in today’s Episode 26 of the ERPodcast SaaS Success Series - an online seminar series brought to you by Sage Intacct. Register for this week's sessions and find links to previous panel appearances by Gene Hammons Here ERPodcast Episode 24 and Episode 25 Is a case study on one company, Nice Link Home Furnishings, who implemented the Cloud ERP Acumatica in the middle of the pandemic – here’s the link to the ERPodcast ERP News Page.   About today's ERPodcast MIsaligned incentives - budget shortfalls - tight implementation timelines - How do you conquer the most common pitfalls leading to a failed ERP implementation? The ProfitFromERP methodology bakes in best practices so you end up watching company goals exceeded and, like we say, ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP PAY!   E27 – What They Don’t Tell You About ERP (but you soon find out anyway)   MFX up and under   It’s Episode 27 of the ERPodcast, What They Don’t Tell You About ERP (but you’ll soon find out anyway).  I’m your host, Gene Hammons the Director of ProfitFromERP - a business consultancy revolving around software, it’s uses and misuses – and as we like to say, Our Clients Make ERP Pay – pay for itself, pay off, pay back, break even and we even have the cash flow analysis to prove it. But all that aside. What’s this about what they don’t tell you about ERP? Who are they? And Why are they so hush-mouthed about important ERP situations?  We’ll get to that in today’s episode, what they don’t tell you, but more importantly, what’s their motivation, what’s their incentive and how are we going to shift incentives both for the software vendor, but also shift incentives for your internal team - all so that your company comes out on top in your next ERP project.   But here’s the Number One Thing they don’t tell you – most ERP projects fail. Some are small fails, like, the software wasn’t live on time. Some are big fails like, we went over budget. By double. And some are epic fails, like, this doesn’t really do what we saw in the demo. But we’re stuck. And some fails are Ed’s fault. Ed ran the selection committee that got us into this mess in the first place – he’s not here anymore so we pretty much blame it on Ed-ware instead of software. So today we’ll even tell you how to keep your job if someone walks into your office and says, “We need a new ERP system and we want you to run the project…say, your middle name isn’t Ed is it”? – all that and more – right after this word from our sponsor – It’s Episode 27 of the ERPodcast What they don’t tell you about ERP.   (break)           Endorsement – SaaS Success Series Sage Intacct   Much has changed in the Business world over the last year - - don’t need to tell you that. While we don’t  gather in large groups, conventions, presentations, business meetings – have moved online and I have to say the webinar content has improved dramatically. I know for myself,  instead of my normal speeches at various conventions, I’ve avoiding airlines, hotels, overserved networking parties and have still appeared on a few panel discussions over months past – most recently, the SaaS Success Series by Sage Intacct – which is still ongoing the week we release this podcast -  but even better, you can catch the on-demand links of the sessions just passed as well as registering for next week’s sessions. We link the registration on the website ProfitFromERP.com – just look for the News & ERPodcast page and it’s under Episode 27. Here. So the Saas Success Series is all about SaaS B2B companies and issues that concern them.  I spoke on a panel with Ben Murray of the SaaSCFO.com and Sam Jacobs who runs the Revenue Collective – these guys are great sources when it comes to technology for today’s businesses. Other than that panel theres’ Best Practices for Forecasting for raising funds, ASC 606 Rev Req, and a lot more - some leaders of great businesses letting you in on what’s really happening for SaaS B2B companies. Now, I hear you saying, well, I’m not a SaaS B2B but let me stop you right there.  As regular listeners to the podcast know, I’ve been in over 400 ERP projects over the last couple of decades and seen quite a bit. But when I walk into a young startup SaaS company, yes, I still present my proven methodology and help them ProfitFromERP – but the reality is, I learn more, quicker on how these amazing tech-oriented startups are approaching markets like never before – and isn’t that what we’re all pivoting toward in the post covidian economy? The SaaS Success Series – it’s brought to you by Sage Intacct, no slouches in the SaaS area themselves – it’s great content, leading company presenters and you’ll get a lot out of it. Like I said, www.ProfitFromERP.com click on the News and ERPodcast tab and look for the registration link under Episode 27. Link   Back to the ERPodcast – What they don’t Tell you about ERP. And who are ‘they’ exactly and who are these nefarious truth-twisters? Well, let’s not get all judgmental right out of the gate, there’s plenty of time for that later.   Heres’ a thing – was watching Netflix last night, Gemini Man – it’s a Will Smith action adventure as he plays a 50 year old assassin who unbeknownst to him, was cloned and now has to face a 22 year old version of himself – and action adventure highjinx ensue.  Towards the resolution of the movie, the older Will Smith is telling the younger, same Will Smith a few life truths. I thought, this is just like the ERPodcast – well, without the major motion picture budget of course. But here I am, the 25 year veteran of hundreds of ERP projects talking to you, giving you a few life truths about ERP – and we’re the same person – sort of – I mean, just like Will Smith and his clone, both are just as smart, just as talented, given all the same tools – only I’ve watched ERP go right, and go wrong for all these years – and meanwhile you’ve built a successful business that you’re trying to take to the next level with ERP.   So what don’t they tell you about ERP?   The truth is, different people have different incentives. An ERP sales guy is incentivized to sell you some software. An ERP software consultant is incentivized to give you the standard safe proven implementation that most often avoids big problems – but should big problems erupt, well, it ends up he bills more hours, makes more money, he goes to President’s Club Annual celebration for top performers in Aruba for all the billable revenue he generates.   Now on some level, the software vendors, the software resellers want to have happy customers but you know what’s the biggest impediment to customer satisfaction? You are. Well, maybe not YOU personally, but your people…Henry, Dan, Marcy – the names change but the stories live on - I mean you have Henry down in purchasing who’s been against this ERP thing from the beginning – he’s the company expert in your current system UltraBizPro, and everyone in the company goes to him when they have questions – and they have questions since UltraBizPro was written in 1989 by some guys who were past their sale date before the first line of code was written. There’s also Dan. Dan remembers you moved his cheese some time ago. He remembers walking a lot during management by walking around. He wrote his own mission statement. Developed 7 Habits of Success. Then was before you tried activity-based costing, then lean, then Kanban, Dan is sure this ERP thing will be another passing fancy. And Marcy. Don’t tell her your moving the invoicing to 100% digital with AP Automation. Marcy’s job is data entry. Sure, she has an accounting degree and has worked for some pretty big firms back in the day – but this ERP thing looks like the end to her and her heads down data entry. You see, Dan, Henry, Marcy – the ERP software vendors have absolutely no control over their incentives, what makes them tick, heck, they don’t even know if Dan, Henry or Marcy is a project asset or a project roadblock – so how can the ERP vendors promise you success when it’s really up to Dan Henry and Marcy? So what they don’t tell you about ERP? Well as you can see, you need a team to make it work. So think about what makes a team succeed – they need achievable goals, measurable progress, practice, learning, motivation – it’s kind of like football, you have your Pittsburg Steelers, pretty great every year and then you have, well, everyone else – one guy is playing for stats because he’s a free agent next year, the next is playing just good enough to sit on the bench a couple of more years, some guys don’t know why they’re there. And you may be in Pittsburg but Dan, Henry, Marcy – Dan’s incentive is to roll with the latest management fad doubtful it will last. Henry’s incentive is to keep being the one guy everyone depends on – and if you take away UltiBizPro – Yikes. Marcy’s incentive is to keep her head down and don’t make waves. Can we get this team on the same page? So another thing  they don’t tell you about ERP is the ProfitFromERP approach. You need a commitment from Dan that with this new system saving him time and effort, he can drive sales up by 10%.

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP  Cloud ERP creates incredible opportunities for integration - with internal apps but more importantly with outside vendors and customers - Through EDI and digital connection, Nice Link was able to open sales channels with Wayfair, Costco, Overstock.com, Macy's and many others - Find out how interconnected sales channels can work for you. Net at Work is not only an Acumatica reseller,  but with experience in multi-channel distribution, warehousing, and the accounting behind it all, it's more than simply implementing software - it's implementing best practices, lean staffing functionality and cost effective operational integration, with the end result, Nice Link Business Performance - Unleashed! About today's ERPodcast As Covid hit the US in February, Nice Link, a furniture distributor saw order cancellations flood into the business office. Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link had projects underway to upgrade the backend software of his US based business. Quickbooks couldn’t handle the inventory, warehouses or manage the volume of digital sales orders Nice Link was anticipating. Yet, despite the uncertainty they pressed on. Acumatica, the Cloud ERP was well underway being implemented and would go live in June. Simultaneously, as the American workforce shifted from office based to home based, online furniture sales exploded. Today, we see the success that was Nice Link’s forward-thinking strategy and Acumatica’s tactical application – creating connections with retail furniture outlets, smoothing the bumps in eCommerce and handling a workload that would have necessitated an expensive staffing upsurge to manage in a manual business software setting. It’s a story of enduring Entrepreneurship. It’s a story of cloud ERP functionality. It’s a story of Net at Work’s distribution experience. It’s an American Success Story of Profit From ERP – this week on the ERPodcast E25 – Nice Link Part Two Jay Carlson   Believe it or not, it’s Episode 25 of the ERPodcast   MFX up and under   Today’s episode is Part Two of our conversation with Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link Home Furnishings – if you caught Episode 24 you’ll remember Nice Link implemented and launched Acumatica, the Cloud ERP in June, right in the middle of a certain pandemic you may have heard something about – and as is with all ERP, especially critical during times of market disruption, Nice Link automated, so they didn’t need so much labor and so many spreadsheets. The connected digitally with their customers, so they’re taking sales orders that someone else is paying to input instead of hiring more folks internally. They got control over 7 national warehouses with a pretty complex sales model. They expanded eCommerce, with items appearing on other eTailers websites opening new channels and new market shares. Did all this just happen by ERP magic, No – it’s hard work and you need help from implementation partners such as Nice Link’s go-to, a firm called Net At Work – who if you know ERP you’ve heard of Net At Work over the years as a leading ERP implementation partner – of course ERP is something most companies pay attention to once or maybe twice every decade – but take my word for it, Net At Work is a major player – Jay will speak about them on today’s Episode. Nice Link Home Furnishings was at the right place at the right time when home furnishings kind of took off.  Home offices needed refurbs when home suddenly became a full-time locale during the initial lockdown.  Kids needed a space to connect to remote learning.  Increased time at home, no one could spend money on travel or in some cases restaurants – so for many, disposable income went up, time at home went up – and the furniture stores were locked down too – so online they went. Wayfair had record months. We all know about Amazon. But Nice Link found themselves in Overstock.com, Macy’s, Costco and others.     Is this just a story of right-place right-time in the Home Furnishings space? Answer, Yes and No. But it’s more than just home furnishings It’s a story of ERP technology cutting overhead internal costs It’s a story of distribution efficiencies It’s a story of being able to instantly understand inventory across 7 US warehouses It’s a story of becoming easier to work with for your customers It’s a story of digital transformation It’s a story of decreased cost and increased revenues It’s a story for the new covidian economy. It’s a great story – so let’s join Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link Home Furnishings for Part Two of the interview – Coming up right after the break, here on the ERPodcast   Insert Net At Work sponsorship 2.0   Intro to Interview in process. Ad Lib - Insert Part Two, Jay Carlson Interview Interview Notes 10:00 - When to make the move to ERP   11:30 -   11:50 - Capacity to Promise - Still learning that -  growing capacity -   15:26 - one of the last things to come up - growth -   16:20 Lean Staffing not having to  have  10 people in the department   16:41 - live inventory information always - needed in eCom   17:31 Two future accountant hires avoided   17:39 Net at Work - CPA level help   20:19 You can only get so far with what you had   21:36 - Selling to new retailers in new channels - value is created oppportunities not available previously   22:40 - Macy’s  - line extension   24:06 - limitations of traditional software - even when future of business is up in the air   25:16 - Net at Work - flexibility and relationship good partners - ready for Costco   Excellent story – and specifically how ERP, in this case Acumatica ERP really helped a company thrive in challenging times. Here’s the thing, it’s not a one-off. If you undertake ERP correctly – build the business case, choose the right software, work with the right implementation partner – if you follow the methodology we’ve developed at Profit From ERP, developed from observation of best case methodology and seeing the pitfalls companies sometimes step in – when you do it right, you too can achieve the goals you set out to attain.     We’ve tracked stories of dozens of companies and how they’ve used technology to survive the past few months. What do we see in the next few months?  Listening to the news, it looks like we’re headed for more lockdowns in one form or another. SFX: Covid Close Montage But there’s beginning to be a lot of resistance to further lockdowns – and some actual science showing lockdowns aren’t the answer – but regardless the days of the downtown office are very likely over.  A combination of the incredible waste of time for people spending an hour commuting both ways.  Combined with,  whether we really like Zoom or not, the fact is, digital connection means I can be face to face with a co-worker in a web meeting quicker than when I worked down the hall.  And on top of it all, companies are realizing the cost efficiencies of not leasing class A office space. So where does this leave you, the mid-sized business? Well for one, cloud ERP connects your workers better, regardless of where they’re located. Two, cloud ERP, being built for the internet era, offers better interconnectivity with staff, vendors and customers. Three, cloud ERP gives you flexibility and resilience – because while we’re seeing a stabilization in the pre-vaccine covidian economy – the world is rapidly changing and there’s probably a couple of generations of market change to anticipate over the next 3-5 years. In any case, we need to sit down and discuss the specifics of your situation. Info@ProfitFromERP.com  - drop us a line and we’ll set up time with the right consultant – these days there’s a lot of companies moving to cloud ERP -  I’m doing a lot of Zoom meetings myself – but regardless of what industry or situation, we can help you find the right consulting team to help you put together that business case, shortlist the right vendors with key software to approach your business. ERP, which by the way, is an umbrella term containing BI, AI, WMS, Supply Chain, HR, FP&A - all were at one time, modules of ERP - so whatever enterprise software – we’ll connect you with the right people, products and process to Profit, From ERP. For the ERPodcast and ProfitFromERP, I’m your host, Gene Hammons, reminding you, at ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP Pay. . Gene Hammons, MBA Director ERP projects are both a software project and a business consulting project. Profit From ERP brings the experience of over 400 ERP implementations into a methodology of best practices - the practices that high adapting companies employed to really drive success with technology projects. We marry that with a network of Affiliated Partners in every ERP technology and a breadth of different industry expertise to create the ultimate ERP selection, implementation and optimization team.The end result is lower risk, lower cost, no surprises ERP projects with defined payback, attainable corporate goals and avoiding cost overruns.  It's why we say, Profit From ERP, our clients make ERP PAY! Companies Without ProfitFromERP Jan 13,

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP  Cloud ERP creates incredible opportunities for integration - with internal apps but more importantly with outside vendors and customers - Through EDI and digital connection, Nice Link was able to open sales channels with Wayfair, Costco, Overstock.com, Macy's and many others - Find out how interconnected sales channels can work for you. Net at Work is not only an Acumatica reseller,  but with experience in multi-channel distribution, warehousing, and the accounting behind it all, it's more than simply implementing software - it's implementing best practices, lean staffing functionality and cost effective operational integration, with the end result, Nice Link Business Performance - Unleashed! About today's ERPodcast As Covid hit the US in February, Nice Link, a furniture distributor saw order cancellations flood into the business office. Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link had projects underway to upgrade the backend software of his US based business. Quickbooks couldn’t handle the inventory, warehouses or manage the volume of digital sales orders Nice Link was anticipating. Yet, despite the uncertainty they pressed on. Acumatica, the Cloud ERP was well underway being implemented and would go live in June. Simultaneously, as the American workforce shifted from office based to home based, online furniture sales exploded. Today, we see the success that was Nice Link’s forward-thinking strategy and Acumatica’s tactical application – creating connections with retail furniture outlets, smoothing the bumps in eCommerce and handling a workload that would have necessitated an expensive staffing upsurge to manage in a manual business software setting. It’s a story of enduring Entrepreneurship. It’s a story of cloud ERP functionality. It’s a story of Net at Work’s distribution experience. It’s an American Success Story of Profit From ERP – this week on the ERPodcast E24 – Nice Link Jay Calrson MFX up and under lEpisode 24 of the ERPodcast – Nice Link Home Furnishings – a distribution story of Digital Transformation in the Age of Covid… if you’ve been listening to the ERPodcast for any time, we’ve been telling stories of how resilient companies are using cloud software and digital transformation to survive, and in some cases even thrive in the covidian economy – this week, It’s Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link talking about how their business turned to Acumatica, the Cloud ERP, as well as Acumatica Partner Net At Work, - - - initially to save money - - as Jay will put it, ‘he couldn’t keep throwing labor and spreadsheets at the problem’. Later Nice Link would find entire new lines of business made possible by simple digital integrations – so it’s a real life story of taking on an ERP project at the height of covid, and having the project succeed wildly – allowing Nice Link to actually Profit From ERP – see how I slipped that one in there. This podcast is not wild claims of how ERP is an end all - but how a growing company can use ERP to better connect, to extend sales options, to process orders electronically – and go from QuickBooks and spreadsheet inventory to 7 shared warehouses nationwide with complex cross selling all integrated into the system. Then getting closer to their customers with electronic integration into Wayfair, Costco, Macy’s and others – and how when the pandemic had everyone working from home, and everyone shopping from home – Nice Link was the right products at the right time and business exploded. Will your business be able to do the same? The answer is, with some creativity, flexibility, working with the right consulting team and the right software – the sky’s the limit. And as Jay says, you can’t keep throwing labor and spreadsheets at the problem – ProfitFromERP is a more effective and efficient answer – We’ll be right back with Jay Carlson - all in today’s episode of the ERPodcast Endorsement Spot – Net@ Work v2.0 Welcome back to the ERPodcast. Let’s get started – let’s kick off as it were, with Notre Dame football. I’m not a particular Irish fan, but they’re always on TV – every Saturday in the fall whether they’re playing Michigan or an all-girls high school football team – it’s on TV – I think it’s either a FCC must carry regulation or maybe has something to do with ratings, but the other day I’m watching and the halftime show comes on – and this is the part where universities show everything non-football related that goes on on campus, because we all know there’s really nothing football fans like better than non-football topics, but anyway, it turns out there’s some professors at Notre Dame helping to design and create space suits for astronauts and they made the following statement – ‘Making a new spacesuit is not measured in months or years but decades’ meaning it takes more than 10 years to come up with a new design. Now we’ve talked about Willamson’s law, ‘Everything’s simple if you don’t know a damn thing about it’ – and I would list space suits pretty low on my chart of areas of knowledge – but a decade for a new space suit? That seems like a lot. But if that’s the expectation…well you know, they’re probably right. It probably does take them 10 years. Now to change the subject – let’s talk about vaccines and drugs getting to market – at Profit From ERP we’ve worked with many pharmaceutical manufacturers as software clients – going back to the 90’s and we know clinical trials can easily stretch on for 5 years or longer before they release a new drug or vaccine – that’s been the normal expectation – again for decades. But last week we had recent announcements that actually two covid vaccines were entering final approval, only 8 months after Covid reared it’s viral head. How did we go from 5 years to 8 months, well for one, the expectations had been changed – and of course as well as a few of the standard protocols – as long as safety wasn’t compromised. And what formerly took 5 years is now coming out within months. So what does Notre Dame’s spacesuits and Pfiser’s covid vaccine have to do with ERP? Traditionally, a mid-sized ERP implementation took 9-12 months. Over the years, cloud ERP project dropped down to 3-6 months. And when the pandemic hit, there were basically two camps of business management – one said, ‘Preserve capital at all costs – and wait to see what will happen’ the other camp said ‘Preserve revenue at all costs – find new ways to reach our customers where they are in a post covid world’ – Again, these are generalizations, and different industries are affected in different manners. But here’s the deal – if your expectations are that ERP takes so long to implement that it stops you from moving forward? You’re probably right. Just like the spacesuit guys at Notre Dame And what many wait and see businesses will see after they wait, is that they’re customers have moved on to other providers that shifted market strategy to meet the customer where they were. Well, today’s episode talks to Jay Carlson President of Nice Link - and they launched Acumatica, the Cloud ERP in June – yes – they’d been in the planning stages, evaluations and such, but how easy would it have been to put the whole project on hold in Februrary when covid fueled uncertainties were exceeded only by the false predictions of the coming covid impact. And had they taken the quote cautious unquote path and said, let’s put this ERP thing on hold til we see how the market shakes out, Nice Link would have missed out on one of the hottest home furnishings market in recent history. It’s true, as people started working from home, well, the home office took on a new meaning and instead of a one-person desk in an dingy corner where Dad or Mom could catch up on email after work, now we needed two fulltime workspaces as well as somewhere for the kids to connect online. Besides that, Looking at the same threadbare couch all day long had people starting to look online for home furnishing replacements. So time is of the essence One of the pure advantages of using ProfitFromERP’s software selection and consulting is cutting down the time spent in evaluations – which to tell you the truth, software evaluations can go from 6-9 months because it’s such a big decision– we’ve done hundreds with nearly every major ERP software brand – so we can short list you to the right few ERP’s to evaluate – and we can put you with implementation partners like Net At Work who have the teams and the experience to get you live in a decent amount of time – it’s not about skipping steps, but moving forward efficiently. And you can either take the Notre Dame Spacesuit approach or the Pfiser vaccine approach – and say we need to get this done fast to become resilient and digitally transform how we approach our customers – and even look for new ways and new channels to make those sales – the choice is up to you. So let’s take a real world look at how Nice Link approached it. And join our interview with Nice Link’s President, Jay Carlson Interview Part One here. Episode One Close - Jay Carlson Interview Nice Link So that wraps up Part One of our interview with Nice Link’s Jay Carlson. Some really good points there, besides running cloud based Acumatica without an onsite IT department, you heard how Jay said they ‘couldn’t keep throwing spreadsheets and labor at the problem – which is so key. So often,

The Truth of ERP  Cutting through Conventional Wisdom isn't hard for experienced ERP Selection Consultants - using tried and true methods instead of what 'everybody knows' can save time, money, even the project manager's job - How to reach the goal for companies looking for Profit from ERP.  ERP software comes with many different features and modules. It also comes with huge expectations, false understandings, simplifications, over-promised results and undersold concepts --- But the Truth of ERP is.... About today's ERPodcast   Episode 23 The Truth of ERP – Post Election Edition     MFX Up and Under   Welcome to the ERPodcast Episode 23 – the Truth of ERP and a Newsbreak – the Post-election Edition – I’m the Director of Profit From ERP Gene Hammons and your host for the ERPodcast. So – what’s up in the ERP world, well, like so much else, 2020 has changed a lot of things  – Item – Cloud Software is booming as the pressure cage of the pandemic accelerates change Item – Some things never change – listening to customers is key – even if it’s digitally collected data delivered to the managers via iPhone – companies that listen and react are booming Item – A lot of the conventional wisdom of ERP has been shown to be a lie – truth is, we’ve always run ProfitFromERP based on proven truth rather than nebulous marketing spin So we’re going to talk about the Truth of ERP – over the past few months,  I kept getting reminded about an old Winston Churchill quote – a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get it’s pants on.  I thought a lot about that as it relates to the ERP world – and realized half of our ERP Consulting work is swimming upstream with the truth on our backs – truths learned the hard way – truths proven time and time again – but implementing these truths is sometimes the hardest part of a software implementation – all that and more after the break on the ERPodcast…     Alliance of Excellence Software Coalition Today’s ERPodcast is brought to you by ProfitFromERP’s Alliance of Excellence Software Coalition – here’s the thing – you can’t be all things to all people so at ProfitFromERP we’ve put together an alliance of some of everyone. When it comes to ERP, you may need help going through the selection and evaluation process. Millions of dollars in profit can be on the line – even with ERP platforms costing a fraction of that – the profitability of your business for the next several years can be dramatically affected. And you may say, Gene Hammons, you’re the expert here, we want you to run this project. Great. You also may say, Gene Hammons, we need 7 people to cover 28 national locations and three countries – OK, we can do that too. We have Alliance of Excellence Partners who are some of the best, independent, non-affiliated selection consultants on the planet. Then you may decide you need NetSuite – which is fine, we have 6 different NetSuite Partner companies who handle implementations – each has a very specialized approach – so one ERP software, 6 different focuses -which if you’re in a very specialized industry can really be critical. But it’s not just NetSuite. There’s three Acumatica partners, 2 Intacct Partners, a Microsoft shop with 14 offices, Infor partners, QAD resources, Zoho, US, Canada, onshore, offshore – teams that do development – and right now, about 20 trusted third party providers when those services are needed. Folks, it all adds up to a small army of highly specialized, extremely experienced teams that we’ve worked with in the past and continue to focus on in the future. Ahh, but I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘one throat to choke’  - meaning one go to source should any issues arise – and issues do tend to arise – just ask the year 2020. ProfitFromERP is the business consulting side of a software project – we manage the teams and bring in the best which keeps the need for throat choking to a minimum – we’ve worked with our Alliance partners before and we know you can trust them to step up when issues arise – that’s our proposition. And it’s why we can say, if you’re looking at ERP, look at ProfitFromERP and the Alliance of Excellence Software Coalition.       Welcome back to Episode 23 of the ERPodcast it’s the  Truth of ERP - so forget what you’ve been told and let’s focus on what’s proved true yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Truth of ERP … Just a little backstory – prior to an MBA, my undergrad degree was Journalism - I don’t know if you’re aware, but one of the all-time leading business consultants, Peter Drucker started his career as a journalist and his idea of business consulting was you approach each company to write the story of what’s there, and then you determine what’s next. But you have to be unbiased going in. You can’t presuppose to know what you’ll find – every company is at least just a little bit different and many companies in the same industry can be totally opposite in their approach to business. So naturally, in my consulting career I’ve always looked to his example. And today, in our post-election state, what’s the takeaway. Well, I was fascinated by the journalism of the thing. I’d have discussions with people on one side or another, and realize they were both dealing with a different set of facts. Now how could that be? We saw scandals ignored by entire swatches of the press. We saw scandals invented by the press. We had multimillion dollar investigations stretching out over the years that found no Russia Russia Russia connection, then new scandals explained away as some sort of Russian hoax –with zero evidence, but repeated so often it polled that 51% of the electorate thought it was true. And then, well, someone counted and found 10,000 candidate lies – of course not all of those were truthfully reported – but no matter. In any case – it got me thinking about truth – what is the truth in the matter and how is it being hidden/massaged/spun – partial truths leading to outright fabrications. And over the last few months, throw in some odd covid pandemic coverage, shovel on some media downplaying the effects of ‘peaceful protests’ it’s sometimes seems actual truth hasn’t really shown up much. And I realized truth is in short supply – so I started thinking about my world, ERP consulting – clients adopting ERP software and I was thinking, well, we deal purely with truth when it comes to business. But see, here’s the thing, if you go around thinking you know everything, your quote experience unquote consists of looking for more evidence to support that which you already know – it means you already know everything you’re ever going to know, because you can’t teach a know-it-all anything. In fact, the shortest route to dumb runs through thinking you’re an expert. So I examined the truths in ERP – and you know what?  At Profit from ERP, we’ve been long proponents of re-examining conventional wisdom when it comes to ERP but over the years, that conventional wisdom keeps growing even though it’s not following true conventions nor is it particularly wise – so how is it conventional wisdom? well, it was a Ronald Reagan quote that said ‘It’s not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that what they do know isn’t true.’   So what’s the Truth of ERP Conventional Wisdom says ‘buy ERP software and your business will be see huge improvements’. Truth is it’s a lot more than simply buying software. Truth is 80% of the attempts at ERP will fail. Truth is you’re not buying a solution with ERP, you’re buying a toolkit.   The clients and prospects I talk to are really smart people. They run great businesses and the most common problems they really have revolve around dealing with rapid growth and phenomenal success. Conventional Wisdom says, ‘how hard can ERP be – we can figure this out in house’ Truth is, ERP is far more complex and the ERP industry survives by making it look simple, when it rarely is. Truth is every, and I mean every client in the last 20 years has underestimated how difficult an ERP project is measured by both effort and people needed to get the project to go live. Did I say every? – there was one who was exactly right a few months ago – but that’s one in 25 years, 1 in 400.   Conventional Wisdom says ERP can improve your business. Truth is, 9 of 10 companies have no idea HOW MUCH ERP has the potential to impact the business and Truth is, without setting those goals, most companies will never reach the goal. You know that about goal setting in your own life, you don’t set a goal, you don’t measure progress to the goal, you don’t reach the goal - the life of your business is no different. And people will say, Gene, with your ProfitFromERP methodology…when the truth is, it’s not MY methodology. Our platform, our process is created from viewing the top adopting companies who implement ERP – an improvement in selection, a new approach to implementation, - we take what has been proven to be true, what works. And we apply it again and again, further proving it to be true. And you know what? Some of the truths we’ve worked with for years are being challenged by made for cloud software – so we continue to evolve, it happens once, it’s an outlier, twice it’s a fad, three times it’s a trend and you better start finding out what’s driving that trend – and underlying drivers are the most powerful and least recognized factors in business software – so it’s management, psychology, economics,

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP  One of the early made-for-cloud ERP offerings - Acumatica -  has long been included in Profit From ERP client software evaluations. A favorite of consultants from it's initial release, Acumatica has matured into a more feature rich offering and is winning more and more client selection processes. The ERPodcast welcomes a new sponsor, Net at Work, an ERP and Technology leader with over 6,000 clients since 1996. Net at Work has been a go-to resource in Profit From ERP evaluations for their leading Sage x3 practice for several years, besides Sage, they offer NetSuite, Acumatica, HRMS, CRM and eCommerce   - all geared toward their tagline - Business Performance Unleashed. About today's ERPodcast On today’s episode, we’re get to go behind the scenes with Net at Work – one of the nations’ leading ERP and technology firms and we’ll talk to Stuart Blumenthal, a friend of the program for 20+ years, although we didn’t actually start the ERPodcast until 24 months ago – but we’ve known Stuart since the turn of the century – back then he was a leader in the Sage channel of accounting and ERP software and he’s not slowed down since. Net at Work has HQ in New York as well as other locations all over the country – we’ll catch up with Stuart in Dallas today. Net at work has ERP practices in the Sage channel, NetSuite and now Acumatica. Of course we covered a great deal about Acumatica, the Cloud ERP in last week’s ERPodcast  - so you might want to go back and listen to that one first if you missed it – but today, Stuart will talk about what it takes to make a great implementation partner for getting started with Acumatica and what it takes, and how it works when ‘you do it right.’  Stay tuned after the interview we’ll get into how Profit From ERP and Stuart’s Net at Work Acumatica Practice works together to make sure you get everything you pay for out of your next ERP Project – it’s all here, on today’s episode of the ERPodcast Stuart Blumenthal Acumatica Practice Director Companies Without ProfitFromERP Jan 13, 2026What happens when companies don’t engage with ProfitFromERP – well, here’s three stories. One spent half a million dollars on a $200,000 project. One spent all their budget and completely failed and one Project Leader lost his job betting on a big name. Episode 33 QuickBooks Costs the State Department $657-thousand dollars, thereby avoiding expensive ERP options. May 12, 2025. BREAKING NEWS - In this week’s episode of the ERPodcast, we examine a QuickBooks system that ultimately cost the State Department $657-thousand dollars. We’re reporting on a source document -  a May 1 Department Of Justice Press Release, and additional reporting -... Episode 32 – What’s the Best ERP Apr 15, 2024It's not another Top Ten ERP list, not a Top Five, not a shootout or comparison, but the Best ERP for Your Business. Episode 31 – SuiteWorld 2023 Dec 18, 2023E31 SuiteWorld 2023 Timestamp Subject 5:36 Sponsored by Acura MDX 15:45 Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer 20:15 NetSuite Keynote Coverage 22:43 The Hype that is AI 26:01:00 Suite Up 31:30:00 NetSuite New Releases 35:08:00 AI Becomes Real 38:00:00 Peak Outliers... « Older Entries Subscribe for the Latest Content Don't miss an episode or blogpost - stay up to date on the latest in ERP and business technology Success! Email Subscribe

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP  One of the early made-for-cloud ERP offerings - Acumatica -  has long been included in Profit From ERP client software evaluations. A favorite of consultants from it's initial release, Acumatica has matured into a more feature rich offering and is winning more and more client selection processes. The ERPodcast welcomes a new sponsor, Net at Work, an ERP and Technology leader with over 6,000 clients since 1996. Net at Work has been a go-to resource in Profit From ERP evaluations for their leading Sage x3 practice for several years, besides Sage, they offer NetSuite, Acumatica, HRMS, CRM and eCommerce   - all geared toward their tagline - Business Performance Unleashed. About today's ERPodcast There are hundreds of ERP software companies - nearly every one of them has some type of cloud-like ERP offering. That's an effort to compete with 3 or 4 made for cloud ERP products that have revolutionized the ERP industry. among them Acumatica, Sage Intacct and NetSuite.  Our new sponsor, Net at Work has practices in two of the three cloud ERP leaders, Acumatica and NetSuite. Today we look at the advantages Acumatica brings to the table as a second generation cloud ERP offering. Companies Without ProfitFromERP Jan 13, 2026What happens when companies don’t engage with ProfitFromERP – well, here’s three stories. One spent half a million dollars on a $200,000 project. One spent all their budget and completely failed and one Project Leader lost his job betting on a big name. Episode 33 QuickBooks Costs the State Department $657-thousand dollars, thereby avoiding expensive ERP options. May 12, 2025. BREAKING NEWS - In this week’s episode of the ERPodcast, we examine a QuickBooks system that ultimately cost the State Department $657-thousand dollars. We’re reporting on a source document -  a May 1 Department Of Justice Press Release, and additional reporting -... Episode 32 – What’s the Best ERP Apr 15, 2024It's not another Top Ten ERP list, not a Top Five, not a shootout or comparison, but the Best ERP for Your Business. Episode 31 – SuiteWorld 2023 Dec 18, 2023E31 SuiteWorld 2023 Timestamp Subject 5:36 Sponsored by Acura MDX 15:45 Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer 20:15 NetSuite Keynote Coverage 22:43 The Hype that is AI 26:01:00 Suite Up 31:30:00 NetSuite New Releases 35:08:00 AI Becomes Real 38:00:00 Peak Outliers... « Older Entries Subscribe for the Latest Content Don't miss an episode or blogpost - stay up to date on the latest in ERP and business technology Success! Email Subscribe

Evaluating ERP is more than grids and diagrams. You need a bit more depth to create the right results.

Stories From the Jungle Digital Transformation - the Case Studies - how, what and why the pandemic reset to Digital is saving companies and doubling revenue increases. Here's concrete examples of companies who's Digital approach is yielding early results. Along with who, how and what Digital Transformation can mean for your company.     Success! Email Subscribe Digital Transformation NetSuite Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Life Sciences Replacing QuickBooks Proven Methodologies Your Road to Success The ERPodcast e18 Digital Transformation Part Three - Case Studies FollowFollow Digital Transformation – while once an aspirational IT goal, COVID 19 created an environment in many companies where Digital Transformation is survival itself ABOUT THIS EPISODE Digital Transformation Part Three sees us highlighting some of the first responders to the pandemic lockdown - the companies that sprang into action day two and determined 'we're not taking this laying down'. It's mid-August and the results are rolling in.  Last week, a LinkedIn study showed companies that attempted a digital response to the Covid Lockdown showed revenue growth of 2x that of the companies who adopted a 'wait and see' stance.  An amazing statistic unless you rephrase it. What that really says is that companies who invested in innovation and business process improvement saw results. It says companies who adapted their approach to the new reality did better in the new reality than those who didn't attempt to adapt. It says companies who replaced outdated systems with the latest cloud-based digital software and refocused on customer interactions fared better than those who stuck to their 'good enough' systems.   So this '2x revenue growth' shouldn't surprise anyone - it just makes sense. And with the baseline of companies hesitant to respond to the new marketplace we now find ourselves in, well, that's a pretty low bar numerator to double. But these are still early returns.   And here's the stories of actual clients, restaurants, distributors, manufacturers, B2B and B2C businesses - all who adopted a Digital Transformation framework to innovate and prosper.  While Profit From ERP’s selection consulting and moving to cloud based ERP is part of Digital Transformation and included within, Get Digital Velocity specializes in C-level strategic consulting on a digital approach to transform companies along with fractional CIO services to help companies elevate IT and technology approaches to meet the requirements of a changed world. Today's Interview We go to the ends of the earth to bring you the stories to avoid in your journey through the world of ERP.  Bhushan Parikh Bhushan is Principal and Co-founder of Get Digital Velocity.  His specialty is delivering extraordinary business success on global platforms through digital transformation. With over 30 years of experience with large Enterprises in multiple Industries, Bhushan has worked in a variety of roles including SVP IT, Operations, Supply Chain and Digital Transformation.  His previous employers include: Avnet, Johnson Controls, Johnson & Johnson, and Nike. Companies Without ProfitFromERP Jan 13, 2026What happens when companies don’t engage with ProfitFromERP – well, here’s three stories. One spent half a million dollars on a $200,000 project. One spent all their budget and completely failed and one Project Leader lost his job betting on a big name. Episode 33 QuickBooks Costs the State Department $657-thousand dollars, thereby avoiding expensive ERP options. May 12, 2025. BREAKING NEWS - In this week’s episode of the ERPodcast, we examine a QuickBooks system that ultimately cost the State Department $657-thousand dollars. We’re reporting on a source document -  a May 1 Department Of Justice Press Release, and additional reporting -... Episode 32 – What’s the Best ERP Apr 15, 2024It's not another Top Ten ERP list, not a Top Five, not a shootout or comparison, but the Best ERP for Your Business. Episode 31 – SuiteWorld 2023 Dec 18, 2023E31 SuiteWorld 2023 Timestamp Subject 5:36 Sponsored by Acura MDX 15:45 Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer 20:15 NetSuite Keynote Coverage 22:43 The Hype that is AI 26:01:00 Suite Up 31:30:00 NetSuite New Releases 35:08:00 AI Becomes Real 38:00:00 Peak Outliers... « Older Entries Subscribe for the Latest Content From the ERPodcast. Subscribe to get the latest content, podcasts and information about Enterprise Resource Planning systems and what's right for you and your business. Success! Email Subscribe FollowFollow

It's Crazy Out There! We can't control the outside world, but as Uncertainty reigns externally, Business Equilibrium results when we create better data certainty within our businesses. See how other leading companies have managed the raging seas of uncertainty in the boat of Cloud ERP  ERPodcast - Ranked #3 in Top 15 ERP Podcasts!   Recently - Feedspot.com a digital content aggregator assymbled a Top 15 ERP podcasts list - and the ERPodcast came in at #3 - Unfortunately, we dropped in the recent rankings and today's episode contains the original recording we posted on LinkedIn when the original rankings came out - apologies for any confusion! About today's ERPodcast MIsaligned incentives - budget shortfalls - tight implementation timelines - How do you conquer the most common pitfalls leading to a failed ERP implementation? The ProfitFromERP methodology bakes in best practices so you end up watching company goals and, like we say, ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP PAY! E28c ERPodcast - Certainty in an Uncertain World   MFX up and under (but louder than last time)     It’s the ERPodcast Episode 28 – The official podcast of ProfitFromERP.com and I’m the Director, Gene Hammons, Over the past 18 months, we’ve helped about a dozen companies get through challenges we never thought any of us would face.   If you’ve listened to earlier ERPodcast Episodes, you know what a huge advantage digital companies had dealing with a world gone virtual. The #1 Issue? Uncertainty. The country, the workforce, supply chains, inflation, is covid up or down? Opening up or locking down? - - There’s a world of uncertainty out there  - - - if we’re going to maintain the right business equilibrium we need to create more certainty within the four walls of our businesses.  We can’t control outside uncertainties but we can surely affect the internal workings That’s Our ability to respond. That’s response – ability – and here’s how some of our clients define business responsibility today.   One big uncertainty is in today’s workforce. How do we deal with the changes, what are the technology issues that can even stop top talent from joining your firm? So let’s talk about how can technology help us get more done with the fewer people we actually do have on staff We’ll examine that.   Supply Chain issues? Overseas shipments are bringing back the old phrase Slow Boat from China – which many of you didn’t even know was a phrase – tech can’t help get your boat unloaded. But we can use demand planning to anticipate shortages long before your ship is just offshore with the parts, raw materials and goods your customers are already waiting for – never mind the trucking     Creating certainty in an uncertain world comes down to the Information in Information Technology – just in case you forgot what IT stood for.  Is your information good enough, timely enough, informative enough? You may be running a traditional ERP system that wasn’t ever giving you the reports you need. Or you may have a great baseline ERP but operationally, there’s no accurate way to gather data. Or FP&A modeling – can you project your profit margins when gas goes to $5 a gallon? Sometimes it’s modular additions to your technology stack – Sometimes it’s a complete Digital Transformation – a total software overhaul of your company.   Here’s what real world ProfitFromERP clients are doing to create certainty for savvy CFO’s and operational teams.   Item One – having a hard time finding enough people?  Maybe your old technology is keeping today’s workforce away  - - Item Two It’s the end of JIT, as Supply Chain complexity looms - manufacturers react, and Item Three using ERP to add Certainty to an Uncertain world. Any one of those topics can torpedo your business – let’s find out who’s doing what and how you can make the smart decisions going forward.     And that’s what we’re talking about today – on Episode 28 of the ERPodcast. Right back after this:       Endorsement – Feedspot   So there’s this website called Feedspot, it’s an aggregator of sorts, actually a super-aggregator that becomes a custom Content Reader. You click on Feedspot and select all of your favorite websites, podcasts, news feeds, RSS subscriptions – imagine all the websites you check out on a regular basis, now imagine them combined and presented from a single platform – it’s a cool concept and they offer a lot more, like companies can keep tabs on what millions of websites are saying about their brand, tracking bloggers and influencers. Nice concept that Feedspot. But in their aggregation of content – they group certain similar topics together – and give you a choice of following say, the Top 15 ERP related Podcasts – which they recently released a new Top 15 for ERP related Podcasts lists – and the one you’re listening to, the ERPodcast was rated #3. Which was very nice of them to do. There were some big names on that top 15 list, like Podcasts from Microsoft, SAP – even one of the largest software selection services, Panorama Consulting Group – ranked #8, #9, #13.  Now of course if they were ranking us by revenue, well, ProfitFromERP isn’t exactly Microsoft…but we have a higher rated podcast – We’re #3! In the country – heck in the world – probably the universe, but even Google can’t search Mars – yet -  never mind the outer galaxies – but we’re #3 and on our way to #1 – so you’re in good company subscribing to the ERPodcast at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts – and you’re always welcome to peruse the ProfitFromERP website where the latest episodes are posted first. The ERPodcast – ranked #3 ERP Related Podcast by Feedspot – so after today’s show, go check out Feedspot.com. They have particularly good taste in ERP related Podcasts – it’s a great start. #3.           So back to today’s Episode of the ERPodcast Couple of things about our consultancy, ProfitFromERP.  Some critics of the ERPodcast have spouted off about how all the business cases we present end up recommending companies implement new ERP software -which they then label as ‘self serving’. OK, a fair, if completely backwards assessment. Here’s the deal, our clients, the people we work with and work for are in the process or have recently finished implementing ERP to solve real business issues – that’s why they came to ProfitFromERP in the first place – and all these solved business issues, they’re  driven by the same market you’re currently in, so you may face the same or a similar problem. Now you may well have an ERP system, it could be a wonderful system but perhaps it was implemented a few years back, so you’re not set up to address todays issues – great – get some consultants in and tweak whatever it is you need to deal with the issues others are tackling today. The point of the ERPodcast is not what ERP you use or whether you change your ERP – it’s pushing forward the ERP knowledge base. Now, when you do get ready to replace your 1980’s spaghetti code client server ERP package, we’re hoping you’ll be convinced that turning a ProfitFromERP is a good idea and perhaps you’ll remember our website www.ProfitFromERP.com  and you’ll bring us in to save yourself serious dollars, increase efficiencies, drive productivities and all around ProfitFromERP instead of our competitiors website www.SpendBigOnERP.com , we’re hoping that happens. But here’s the thing. Change is constant. The reasons companies devote capital expenditures and company effort on ERP change. Today it’s Finance teams needing better FP&A to better plan how to move into new markets and react to changing customer habits. It’s Manufacturers looking for redundant vendor sources and increasing raw materials on hand to escape supply chain constraints. Anyway – when more than one client starts driving projects in the same direction, it’s time for us to take notice, to figure out why they’re going this direction and if this direction is a fad, a trend or something we need to focus on for all future clients. And we’ll tackle three of those trends today.   Number One – JIT Just In Time inventory is Dead. Is it really? Of course JIT – means your vendors deliver raw materials for manufacture just as they’re being needed on the manufacturing production line. We even have an earlier podcast of how Dell Computers in the late 90’s revolutionized computer manufacturing by taking the very first online orders where customers selected how much memory, drive space, RAM – and then ordered the chips and drives from suppliers to build the next day’s orders – and Austin, home of Dell soon had factories building up all over Central Texas, AMD, Intel, IBM and dozens of others so they could deliver tomorrow’s production sub assymblies today.    JIT cut inventory carrying costs for manufacturers  - of course not all manufacturers are Dell and not all suppliers are queueing up to build a plant next to your manufacturing operation. In fact, sub assemblies are just as likely to be made in China.  We had initial shutdowns during Covid-stop the surge phase. Followed by drastic changes in market demand – for example, the Ping wedges I recently ordered from Karsten Golf, local here to the Phoenix market – were having to promise a 6 week delivery –Ping’s traditional business model was to deliver custom fit clubs within a week after a custom fitting. While Ping’s main facility is in Arizona, where the customizations and assemblies take place, many of the heads, shafts and grips come from China.

Hidden Dangers Over the years, more and more companies are growing far past the design point of QuickBooks. Risk, Staff Inefficiencies and simple lack of features all add up to hidden costs far in excess of what it would take to upgrade to ERP Success! Email Subscribe Digital Transformation NetSuite Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Life Sciences Replacing QuickBooks Proven Methodologies Your Road to Success The ERPodcast by Gene Hammons | Episode 17 FollowFollow A rotisserie Chicken, 75 pounds of Dog food, a 350 pack of tortillas, a copy of QuickBooks for the new Garage Startup...well, at least the Chicken was good.  ABOUT THIS EPISODE Years ago, it was very uncommon to see any company over $100k in annual revenue using QuickBooks.  Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks has certainly improved the product and some of the entry level accounting packages have suffered from a mass consolidation of the local VAR’s and resellers who once served the emerging company market.   Today, there’s a point – say a $5m company, where QuickBooks becomes extremely cumbersome – lack of inventory, project based features, retail and ecommerce, the list goes on – sure – there’s lots of add ons and 3rd Party products – but features in these follow on products are limited because no one is going to pay $10k to add onto a $300 program – so you can only develop and deliver so much on limited budgets. Yet companies go forward, developing workarounds and it’s not uncommon to see $50m and $60m companies running on good ol’ QB.   Risk is an issue. Later versions of QuickBooks have added things like keystroke logs and segregation of duties protocols – but these are seldom set up early in the company, when a single user is making all the entries, why would you need a record of who did what? You know.   Today’s episode is an interview with Mark Lee, CPA and Principle behind Maui Tax. Mr. Lee started his CPA career with Deloitte and worked with or ran major CPA consulting operations based in Texas, New York City, London and even an exotic posting in Dubai for a few years.  Throughout, he encountered companies large and small running QuickBooks and his primary advise revolved around the ‘false sense of security’ that developed. Companies believed they were running a professional accounting package when the initial impetus for QuickBooks’ creation was ‘bookkeeping software for people who don’t understand accounting.’   Topics covered in today’s podcast include: Risk – with QuickBooks at the center of dozens of forensic accounting cases involving embezzlement due to lack of adequate controls in place   Waste – Labor associated with excessive manual data entry and moreso on the dozens and more spreadsheets needed to attempt adequate reporting   Functionality – limited reporting prevents full visibility of basic business operations with many add on modules not covered in reporting at all – not to mention the lack of operational digitalization   The conclusion is, that for most companies above $5m in annual revenue, hidden costs outstrip the cost of completely replacing QuickBooks with ERP - however – most emerging companies lack the on-staff business analysts to reach this conclusion. ProfitFromERP provides fractional CIO services, including advisory discussions at the highest level, through thorough analysis of front-line operations, business workflow and redesign – leading to the development of Cost/Revenue Modeling to create and deliver justification for moving up to ERP as well as defining the company goals and targets to make the new ERP system pay for itself within a short window – thus the development of the new tagline, ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP PAY! Today's Interview We go to the ends of the earth to bring you the stories to avoid in your journey through the world of ERP.  Mark Lee, CPA While Maui Tax sounds like a cool name for a Tax Advisory Service, Mark Lee actually lives on the island of Maui, Hawaii. With a CPA career stretching from the Gulf Coast of Texas, through New York City, London, even an Arabian Nights posting in Dubai, Mark pretty much lives wherever Mark wants. On today's episode of the ERPodcast, he makes the point that even with a Deloitte Public Company client list, QuickBooks shows up time and time again in companies that have no business running a bookkeeping software for people who don't understand accounting. Companies Without ProfitFromERP Jan 13, 2026What happens when companies don’t engage with ProfitFromERP – well, here’s three stories. One spent half a million dollars on a $200,000 project. One spent all their budget and completely failed and one Project Leader lost his job betting on a big name. Episode 33 QuickBooks Costs the State Department $657-thousand dollars, thereby avoiding expensive ERP options. May 12, 2025. BREAKING NEWS - In this week’s episode of the ERPodcast, we examine a QuickBooks system that ultimately cost the State Department $657-thousand dollars. We’re reporting on a source document -  a May 1 Department Of Justice Press Release, and additional reporting -... Episode 32 – What’s the Best ERP Apr 15, 2024It's not another Top Ten ERP list, not a Top Five, not a shootout or comparison, but the Best ERP for Your Business. Episode 31 – SuiteWorld 2023 Dec 18, 2023E31 SuiteWorld 2023 Timestamp Subject 5:36 Sponsored by Acura MDX 15:45 Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer 20:15 NetSuite Keynote Coverage 22:43 The Hype that is AI 26:01:00 Suite Up 31:30:00 NetSuite New Releases 35:08:00 AI Becomes Real 38:00:00 Peak Outliers... « Older Entries Subscribe for the Latest Content From the ERPodcast. Subscribe to get the latest content, podcasts and information about Enterprise Resource Planning systems and what's right for you and your business. Success! Email Subscribe FollowFollow

ERPodcast Episode 11 NetSuite for Pharma/Life Sciences     It’s the next generation of Profit From ERP for Pharma, Life Sciences, BioTech, and Medical Device   MFX Up and Under   So a few years back, around 2014 NetSuite started becoming very popular in the ERP industry – as the first made for cloud ERP.   And through our software consulting practice, we did dozens of ERP evaluation projects – analyzing the client company requirements, bringing in the usual ERP suspects – ummm I mean vendors, doing demos and really kicking the tires.   More times than not, NetSuite would be the client’s first choice.  It was clear that the ERP world had changed, and more than anything else, NetSuite was driving that change –  - - in an attempt to compete, the rest of the ERP world reacted - So much so, that today, you can’t find an ERP  program that’s not offered in a cloud version – which is not the same as made for cloud, but it demonstrated the ERP industries’ response to the popularity of NetSuite.   The truth is, there are reasons different ERP systems were first developed. Some were developed to run on an IBM AS/400 Server, a solid machine in it’s day.  Some were developed with an idea to utilize the latest Windows 32 bit technology. NetSuite was written to take advantage of cloud technology – made for cloud.   And while there may be a few AS/400’s still running somewhere and 64 bit replaced 32 bit – the cloud is still with us – it’s an internet world.   So with a modern software architecture designed for today’s technology, with our clients evaluating ERP, NetSuite was more often than not, the top choice.   We had clients in everything from professional sports teams to services and engineer to order companies and the list goes on.   Only NetSuite wouldn’t work in the pharma and life sciences industries for a couple of reasons… and we were still having to use older, more established, and more expensive ERP solutions for those clients….until just recently.   We were able to pioneer a strategy to use NetSuite with Contract Manufacturing pharma groups – closely integrating to outside vendors to monitor the supply chain – but last year, some real development in validation protocols has opened up an entire new options. We’re able to deploy Netsuite in pharma, but also life sciences, BioTech, medical devices - - -   And that opens up some new cost saving options and productivity drivers that are especially welcome in emerging Life Sciences companies - it’s a whole new world   We took some Contract Manufacturing companies onto the NetSuite platform in late 2017 – it was kind of lonely in that space  at first– but the results were great for our client companies.   2018 saw NetSuite has opening up in full blown pharma manufacturing environments   Today will talk with one of the leading innovators using NetSuite in the life sciences industries, Mike Kelly.  Mike was behind one of the leading NetSuite resellers in Southern California, a firm called Tactical Cloud – which recently joined Eide Bailly – our podcast sponsor.   We’ll talk to Mike and get a handle on what’s going on in the world of Life Sciences and the expansion of NetSuite as whole new industry verticals move into Profit…From ERP                   Today’s Podcast is being brought to you, in more ways than one, By Eide Bailly Technology, a division of Eide Bailly CPA.   You know, Eide Bailly has a 100 year history -  and while the technology division is somewhat newer – you don’t get to be a 100 year old company without some solid management excellence.   And that excellence is what they bring to the NetSuite practice.   Growing the practice both organically and through acquisition, Eide Bailly has already developed a history of ERP excellence – people I knew and worked with back in 2001 – they were ERP leaders then, and today, they’re heading up major Eide Bailly departments and divisions. That’s the approach to building a lasting technology consulting practice.   So NetSuite, Salesforce, Sage, Microsoft -  you find solid value with Eide Bailly.   It’s what has made Eide Bailly a worldwide leading partner and here’s the thing with ERP, the more ERP projects you do, the better you get – better at creating realistic estimates so you don’t end up with huge cost overruns. Better at project management so an ERP implementation that’s by definition, disruptive goes as smoothly and drama free – because of the way it’s managed.   Today we’ll meet another leading team that’s come to the Eide Bailly Technology group – but that’s what it’s all about – the excellence you want, the experience you need when it comes to ERP.   Eide Bailly Technology – You know NetSuite doesn’t absolutely fit every company everywhere – but when NetSuite is the right ERP, Eide Bailly is the right partner.  Eide Bailly – that’s E I D E    B A I LL Y.com                                     Now back to today’s podcast – we go to the phones and catch up with Mark Kelly – the creator of one of the strongest NetSuite partner practices in Southern California now Heading up Eide Bailly Technology SoCal.   (Phone Interview – Mike Kelly CPA)     MFX up and under   Special Thanks to our guest Michael Kelly and all guests here on the ERPodcast receive complementary gratitude and thanks, as well as admiration for their contributions to the body of knowledge that brings all of our clients, Profit From ERP.   Speaking of free, if you’re planning an ERP Project at your company, don’t forget to drop an email to gh@genehammons.comand ask for the ERPlanner, free comprehensive checklist of the steps, stages and tasks that the most successful companies implementing ERP follow – it’s the Profit From ERP methodology in a DIY version – all for the asking, just email us and let us know your company name, what industry you’re working in, the size of your company and when you’re planning to go live, and we’ll jet that back to you with no obligation – the email address gh@genehammons.com   Have a profitable day!

It really happened….Profit From ERP (MFX Post and under) Welcome to the Case Studies Series Level 3 Audio Visual Part Two – actual clients using real ERP and getting real results – Today we’re back with Level 3 Audio Visual’s CEO Jeremy Elsesser as well as Doug Spencer, CFO – for the second of a two part episode on how Vaco Consulting’s Selection Process and Eide Bailly’s NetSuite Implementation project impacted the phenomenal growth and played a huge role in the development of a multinational business. I’m the Practice Director for Profit From ERP and Vaco Resources Software Selection & Implementation, Gene Hammons It’s well and good to speak of how ERP mighthelp your company – but it’s also instructive to see how it reallyworks in the real world – and occasionally, here on the ERPodcast we take a look at a past client to see how everything worked out. Last week we detailed the complexity of an Engineer to Order environment where L3AV creates and deploys some of the world’s best AV systems in boardrooms, conference rooms, auditoriums, healthcare, government and education, including some of the most high tech learning centers in existence. For all the details, check out last week’s episode One for the full background. It’s kind of like Spiderman 5, you can still jump right in but it’s better if you’ve seen Spiderman 4. Or so they tell me – I’m way too involved with exciting ERP projects to keep up at the cinema. In any case, this week we’re going back to the original $5m Cost Revenue Model – we projected it – did L3AV achieve it? L3AV also had some pretty impressive whiteboards and dynamic spreadsheets driving process – was NetSuite able to move them past that?  The Quoting spreadsheet was a many-tab work of art – and what about managing resources when you have a crew in Chicago and another in Rhode Island? Project Management, CRM and Exactly what do ERP Selection Consultants do…let’s find out in Part Two of the Case Study Series Level Three AV - - - it’s the real world, where those ERP Selection Consultants help clients actually Profit, From ERP (MFX Out) Today’s Podcast is being brought to you by Eide Bailly Technology. In a recent podcast, I mentioned that there were 1,000 NetSuite Partners around the country – actually the correct number is over 500 NetSuite Partners in 80 countries worldwide. It’s my email inbox with over a 1,000 messages from NetSuite Partners - - well, that’s an exaggeration too – but with all the different software providers and projects, it’s not too far off. But I tell you what, whether there’s 1,000 or 500, the one NetSuite Partner you wanthas been named Worldwide Partner of the Year multiple times and now picked up The Americas Partner of the Year last week in Las Vegas – that makes 4 years in a row. That’s Eide Bailly Technology Worldwide Partner, partner of the Americas – Just think of it like a big Final Four bracket starting with 500 teams and Eide Bailly moving thorough and ending up on top. And the team can only score when they make you’re project successful - They’re my pick when it comes to NetSuite – even back in 2014 I’d been working with them for some time and that’s why we called them in to the Level 3 AV project. As you’ll hear in today’s Part Two, they were instrumental from the beginning and are still helping develop the ERP environment at L3AV – that’s the kind of ongoing support you want from your ERP software partner. And believe me, I know. my email inbox is full of messages from software partners of all stripes and sizes – we see the difference every day, different software for different companies - because NetSuite doesn’t absolutely fit every company everywhere – but when NetSuite is the right ERP, Eide Bailly is the right partner.  Contact them today at Eide Bailly.com – that’s E I D E    B A I LL Y.com Welcome Back to the ERPodcast  - the Case Studies Series -  Level 3 Audio Visual Part Two Now as we said before, all the background detail and opening discussions about how L3AV doubled in size, and is in the process of doubling again, plus expansions overseas – all of that is in Part One, which posted last week – I encourage you to start there because this is a great story of a successful company  - smart guys that work hard, do a great job and are a leader in the field. As a consultant, you soon realize you end up looking better when you’re working with smart clients than the other way around – so as much as I’d like to claim major credit for consulting genius that led to L3AV’s growth – let’s just go back and let them tell the story. You’ll remember, our conversation was with CFO Doug Spenser and CEO Jeremy Elsessor. And with all business process, one process leads to another… in this case into purchasing (SFX Phone Jeremy Purchasing and Systems Development Ongoing) So are you beginning to get a real view of how NetSuite isn’t just a fixed solution that you turn on day one and go? I mean, since go-live, the company has doubled in size – there are issues today that weren’t visible from the perspective of a $14m company, yet we’re not replacing the ERP, we’re refining the ERP we have. Plus additional modules are available – for example, not all companies will go with Project Management out of the gates, but then find those features very valuable. (SFX Phone Jeremy PA Resources Needed Labor Forecast) At L3AV, we looked at several ERP packages – besides NetSuite, we reviewed Acumatica, another cloud offering, MS Dynamics SL, although a little dated had a strong history of project management, Priority ERP an Israeli development that was strong in the EU but just making waves stateside – all had advantages – but out of the box, none did everything that was needed. Because of the Quoting complexity – both audio and video engineering, meeting the wildly different requirements whether a boardroom or auditorium, as well as the interplay between thousands of signal component systems – there was not a standard Quoting system on the market to handle L3AV’s specific requirements. Here’s where the development tools, using the NetSuite platform for deployment, and extending custom functionality around the core system is an approach to customization, without actually customizing the core system – the user can’t tell they’re outside NetSuite, and data passes back and forth – I asked Jeremy to walk us through the process (SFX Phone Jeremy Quoting Tool Development) Again the NetSuite functionality growing with a growing company And then – Implementation – switching to a new system is never easy – the very first ERP system I sold, when I was in sales, way back in 1999 – I was meeting with the team and mentioned the need for a Change Management approach, to which they replied, ‘oh no, not us, we embracechange’.  Week two into the implementation, 1/3 of the staff had actually quit, the project was on indefinite hold and the software consultants dismissed. I met with them and said, ‘Guys, what happened, you told me you embracedchange.” And they said, ‘Yeah, but you didn’t tell us it was going to be like this.”  Well, let me tell you, change is what happens when you didn’t expect it to ‘be like this’. And that was the very worst example, but in over 400 implementations it always seems common that the impact is underestimated. But once it’s up and running, change becomes something very positive - Let’s let CFO Doug Spenser tell it (SFX Phone Doug: Accounting Implementation) And ERP doesn’t just cut costs. NetSuite CRM allowed L3AV to increase revenues by putting together programs to combine customer contact programs with contract expiration dates driving additional revenues and customer satisfaction (SFX Phone Jeremy CRM Maintenance Customer Experience) Which Brings us to the Cost Revenue Model – As we were in the selection process, one of the steps is to rank Requirements by Economic Impact – so if your company holds $500m in inventory, and has three sales orders a year, inventory is important and sales order functions are needed, but not critical. Different than if you have zero inventory and 500m drop ship sales orders. But by compiling L3AV’s 76 key Requirements, we were able to calculate costs in the as-is state and project costs in the ERP state. Going through 18 high transaction volume workflows, we projected that L3AV could avoid costs, save labor and potentially increase revenue by $5.3m over a three-year period. Now, for ROI’s sake, we discount that number significantly. We’ll say things like consolidated purchasing saves the average company 5% - so if we only do half as good as the average, well, that’s 2.5% potential savings. We also look for department managers to buy into that number – because let’s face it, software doesn’t really do anything, people using software achieve goals. So using easily achievable goals – usually much less than other companies have done in the real world using the same software – if we can see a complete payback – that is, if the new software pays for itself – including all project costs – then we kick off the evaluation project And here’s the deal. Any Cost Revenue Model is going to be a Gene Hammons projection – that’s what I would have done had I been managing the company based on what I’d seen other clients do previously. However, L3AV has a management team that far more experienced than Gene Hammons when it comes to the AV business – but what it enabled the L3AV managers to see, was ONE WAY to drive cost savings – let’s let them talk – as I asked Doug did they meet all of the goals on the $5.3m cost benefit (SFX Phone Doug  PA Revenue Model Forecast) So in the three year period where we expected the Cost Revenue Model to return $5.3m, the company actually grew revenues by nearly $14m – of course that’s not solely attributable to ERP – but instead of looking at ERP as purely an increased cost - well,

So let’s talk about Profit From ERP in the real world (MFX) The year was 2014 – it was a full ERP evaluation – NetSuite was selected and the project goal was for the ERP system to save $5m over 3 Years Welcome to the Case Studies Series Level 3 Audio Visual – actual clients using real ERP and getting real results – Today we welcome Level 3 Audio Visual’s CEO Jeremy Elsesser as well as Doug Spencer, CFO – for the first of a two part episode on how Vaco Consulting’s Selection Process and Eide Bailly’s NetSuite Implementation project impacted the phenomenal growth and played a huge role in the development of a multinational business. I’m the Practice Director for Profit From ERP and Vaco Resources Software Selection & Implementation, Gene Hammons It’s well and good to speak of how ERP mighthelp your company – but it’s also instructive to see how it reallyworks in the real world – and occasionally, here on the ERPodcast we take a look at a past client to see how everything worked out Today we’re going to look at Level 3 Audio Visual or L3AV – we first got involved with L3AV back in 2014. A bit about the company – so you’ve no doubt seen a conference room or auditorium where the technology just rocked – video conferences where you could actually hear and see the participants – screens that connected quickly and cleanly – great audio – sharp video - just an exceptional experience. Well, L3AV is the company you call to make that happen. L3AV might trick out your boardroom or conference room – they’ll also handle huge educational learning classrooms, and when it’s really important – L3AV goes into the nation’s leading hospitals – managing things like surgical suite technology – so the surgeon in LA can conference in the specialist from Boston, where we’re overlaying the patient’s vital signs across a surgical scope projected on a screen – it’s cutting edge technology delivered where failure’s not an option. Back in 2014, L3AV chose to go with NetSuite – for a lot of reasons – Today we’ll take a look at why, how that worked out and how L3AV continues to drive efficiencies and productivities using NetSuite. And together we take a real-world lesson, on how to Profit From ERP (MFX out) Today’s podcast is being brought to you by Eide Bailly – the same Software consulting team who helped create the success that led to the case study on Level 3 Audio Video. Thorough Vaco Consulting, I was the lead ERP Consultant helping manage the selection process, the Eide Bailly/NetSuite team was chosen. Back in 2014, the team was under the True Cloud banner, one of the leading NetSuite partners in the country.  Last year, they combined with the Eide Bailly Technology team – And it must be going OK, because back to back years, Eide Bailly has picked up the Oracle NetSuite Americas Partner of the Year award. In my consulting practice we end up with lots of different software selected by different clients and when it comes to implementation, one of the most very critical success points in any ERP Project, it’s sometimes painful to watch a project start and stumble, lurch and jerk around. But I’ve been doing this a long time and we work hard to help keep implementations on target. It can be something you worry about – but not with Eide Bailly – an Eide Bailly implementation will face challenges, every implementation does – but the EB team is ready, willing and expecting to handle anything that comes up. More than once the Eide Bailly team has forecast an issue before anyone else – and I know from experience to listen. They help keep everything as smooth as humanly possible while implementing ERP – and as you’ll see today, they really keep with it and stand behind a project till it’s completed – no matter what the assignment. So like I said, different software for different companies and NetSuite doesn’t absolutely fit every company everywhere – but when NetSuite is the right ERP, Eide Bailly is the right partner.  Contact them today at Eide Bailly.com – that’s E I D E    B A I LL Y.com And now back to Level Three Audio Visual – it’s an interesting story. L3AV is now a worldwide leader in audio visual, whether it’s corporate meeting rooms, video conferencing centers, In the healthcare field It’s building and supporting Healthcare Simulation Labs. In the Operating room, so much is done with miniaturized operating scopes and video signals. Government, Educational and Hospitality/Entertainment – all the way up to auditoriums and multi-use facilities. A Level 3 AV project is more likely to be talking about several dedicated computer servers, virtual or otherwise. Signal controllers, monitors, routers…They start with Engineeringin the quote stage – imagine - spec’ing out the audio, understanding speaker placement, the physics of room acoustics, working from architectural drawings for the room or auditorium, wiring, harnesses. Sightlines, is the screen bright enough in the back of the room. Cameras and microphones for video conferencing. Video Walls and Signage. Now that you understand the design challenge, it’s time to decide what equipment best fits this particular assignment – what meets the budget, fits the room, does the job. And each bracket, cable, component, amplifier, signal router, server, driver, microphone, camera, monitor, speaker – all have to be compatible and each may have specific requirements in order to work properly in the final setup. So from there, L3AV brings everything in house to the Mesa Arizona headquarters. Into the staging room where the entire system is staged – that means assembled, configured and built then fully tested to insure performance – and repackaged for delivery to the customer site. Crews on site handle the installation. And remember, this could be a 20 seat corporate board room, or it could be a 400 student college auditorium. It could be different workstations for a group setting or stadium projection sized big screens. Now think of what we just talked about. Engineer to Order Quotes, the sales team would gather information from the client, work with Engineering and to just spec out the job could take hours and hours of engineering time – with everything reviewed to insure both the accuracy of the engineering and the effectiveness of the final system design. So it’s quite a job to just prepare a quote before you’ve even charged the customer a dime – this is just to win the business. Involved quotes could take quite a bit of time to turnaround – and if you’ve ever done sales you know time is of the essence. Then, when you’re awarded the business,  you inventory some highly specialized professional sound and video gear – there’s the cost of the staging we talked about before – you’re not just letting anyone plug everything together – it takes a level of professional techs to get the job done. Then It’s off to the customer location - Now we need the right crew at the right place at the right time. And since L3AV goes all over the world, you can’t very well send someone back to the Arizona HQ from Chicago because you didn’t bring the right cable ends – so we’re making sure that’s all there – and did anyone think to rent a scissor lift because the Video screen and speaker array is going to be hanging off a 45 foot ceiling over the stage?  As you can see, there’s a lot to it So roughly, that’s a brief snapshot of some of what the L3AV guys do. Now let’s take a look at the situation. Back in 2014 L3AV was a $14m company, expecting a healthy 17% growth rate – by 2018, they’d just about doubled in annual revenue and since going internationally, they’re planning to double again in the next 3 years. Phenomenal growth. But back then, everything was relatively manual, lots of spreadsheets controlling the quote process, the engineering schedules, the inventory – it was complex. Here’s the good part. L3AV had already taken an engineering approach to their processes and workflows, all of the systems and processes were well defined on paper. We could see what was happening each step in the process and so even before ERP selection began - -  we were so far ahead of most ERP projects – we just had to translate the steps and stages into ERP workflows and processes. I was the lead consultant for the Selection Process – back on those days our Vaco Consulting practice focused on ERP selection only – So I circled back around to catch up with CFO Doug Spencer and CEO Jeremy Elsesser (SFX phone: Hi Gene…) And Doug – can you update us on how L3AV has grown since we last spoke – I remember there was a projected 17% growth rate for 2015 and things really took off by 2018 (SFX phone: Revenue $28m – 40-50m) So when most companies hit a growth spurt, the first step is to bring on more people and throw bodies at the problem – which really drives overhead costs (SFX phone: Doug Acct Team growth) Overhead to Revenue steadily declining. Important? Well, what if it’s going the other way? What if you’re covering up the lack of technology with excess labor? This is a vital, common and important point. L3AV first started looking at ERP, as $14m company. They were truly running lean and I have to tell you, most $14m companies are not ready to look at a program as robust as NetSuite. The cost and complexity seem too much for smaller companies – but in this case – let’s do a little comparison – now L3AV is near $30m and runs an accounting office with 6 people. Another $30m company I spoke with last month – I don’t think their business model as complex as L3AV, but they run QuickBooks and they have 13 people doing double entry paperwork on spreadsheets to keep up with the workload. So, two companies, both around $30m, 6 people and NetSuite or 13 people and QuickBooks. If you were to say each person in accounting is roughly paid $50k – some quick math says the QuickBooks company is paying $350,

Podcast – How to Select an ERP Consultant. Time for Profit From ERP (MFX) Today It’s the big one – you’re thinking about ERP – processes in the office are overwhelming and it seems like everyone is chasing their own tail 110 percent of the time – there has to be a better way. And given all the choices, and the long lines at the ERP store – oh, wait, there’s no ERP store. How do you go about getting a new ERP for your business? Well, for reasons we’ll talk more about later, many companies turn to ERP Consultants. So the next question, are the lines long at the ERP Consultant store – oh wait, there’s no ERP Consultant store – so what to do? Well, you’ve come to the right place at the right time – as we’re going to guide you through the world of selecting an ERP Consultant – who are they and what do they do? How do they fit in and what do they cost? Where to start and what to look for at the finish line. I’m Gene Hammons, Director of Profit From ERP and the host of ERPodcast – and besides being ERP Consultants, we’ve also seen quite a few others over the years – so buckle up your headphones and hang on for the ride as we look at the world of ERP Consultants and how to best find your fit and truly, Profit From ERP Today’s ERPodcast is brought to you by Eide Bailly Technology – purveyours and partners for NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Sage Business Software and more. You know, once your ERP Consultant has recommended likely ERP programs – the next big leap is finding the right partner for that ERP product. If you think NetSuite might be your solution, then it’s a fair bet Eide Bailly should be your partner. Eide Bailly started out over 100 years ago as a CPA firm – trusted by businesses large and small – and that continues today in the Eide Bailly Technology Group.  They’ve been leaders in NetSuite consulting from the early days of cloud ERP and now, with nationwide reach Eide Bailly is recognized as Partner of the Year, National Partner of the Year and even Worldwide Partner of the year by NetSuite themselves. That’s a reflection of the depth and breadth of talent on the Eide Bailly Team. And it’s also why when I have a client looking at NetSuite, I’m calling in Eide Bailly. It’s sort of because of my likes and dislikes. For instance, I dislike explaining to my clients why a project ran into cost overruns. Eide Bailly brought my last project in under budget AND met a totally unrealistically short client deadline for go live – that I like. I dislike complex and confusing software implementations Eide Bailly has so much experience, they’ve highly streamlined the implementation delivery so everyone is on board with the same goals and objectives – I like that. I just generally like working with Eide Bailly and I think you will too. You know NetSuite doesn’t absolutely fit every company everywhere – but when NetSuite is the right ERP, Eide Bailly is the right partner.  Contact them today at Eide Bailly.com – that’s E I D E    B A I LL Y.com Welcome back to the ERPodcast – I’m your host Gene Hammons and today, it’s How to Select an ERP Consultant. My primary goal here is not to sell you on signing on with Profit From ERP – my goal is to educate you on the ins and outs of ERP consulting, because the more you know, the better we’re going to look – and at very least – you can avoid the most common pitfalls in the ERP Consulting area. First of all, Why do you need an ERP Consultant? Here’s the deal, ERP Software is expensive, the stakes are high and the failures are more common than successes.  Done right, ERP can drive 3-5-7 percent more profit to your bottom line. Done wrong – well it’s generally accepted that over 8 of 10 ERP projects fail when you measure them by 1)   Time to go-live 2)   Cost overruns, or 3)   Expected Functionality 1)   Time to go-live – are you trying to hit July 1 go-live to run FY 2020 books on the new ERP? Well, it’s April, so you’re way too late. So December 31? Maybe. But how are you going to look setting that 12/31 goal only to see you’re still not live next April? 2)   Cost overruns – the average ERP project will end up costing about twice the budgeted estimates. Is that a conversation you’re wanting to have with your CEO next year at this time? 3)   Expected Functionality – Most companies see things in the demo that end up not being in the software – is this some devilish trick by the demo team? Actually, often what you think you’re seeing is not exactly how the software works – but that’s what you’d expected to see so the mind makes assumptions and jumps to conclusion – and remember – you’re evaluating a very complex program by seeing it the first and second time – throw in 4 or 5 other ERP products you’ll review and suddenly what you saw where gets pretty convoluted It is a complex process – and most companies undertake this kind of effort every 10 years or so – which means there’s not much ERP evaluation experience in-house.  Also, if you’re counting on someone who was in the last ERP evaluation 10 years ago, are you really ready to base everything on outdated technology experience?  Let’s face it, 10 years ago in tech is a couple of generations behind. The conclusion?  It’s a big expensive project. We don’t want an 80% failure rate. We don’t want to have to explain 200% budget overruns and most of all, we want the ERP to do what we wanted it to do – so maybe bringing in a consultant is a good idea. Let’s talk about consultants. With ERP, there’s all this talk about consultants – it seems like there’s a lot of them. There are. With a big SAP or Oracle ERP project, you could be looking at a team of 10 – 14 for a larger organization and each consultant brings specific skills to the table. For the mid-market it’s simpler, but still… to understand. When you purchase ERP software, you’re buying the licenses to use the software. Then a partner team or other team of SOFTWARE COSULTANTS will be assigned to help you implement, configure, install, train your staff and support your ERP project. Software Consultants might be Technical Consultants who help with the technology part, setting up networking, servers if needed, that sort of thing. Integration Consultants might help you with data migration, bringing over the data from your old system. You may also have other programs, CRM that you want to pass information on an ongoing basis. System Architects – will help design the layout and flow of your software – how it integrates, what it connects with. General Software Consultants may specialize in Financials, Operations, Manufacturing, or any of a number of specialties, as well as helping run the overall project. All of that team, in whatever combination, will be from the software partner or in some cases, some ERP platforms have a direct team.  And with smaller ERP, it might be one or two people handling several of these roles –the larger your ERP effort, the more specialization occurs.  You will probably deal with your main Software Consultants for the majority of the project, and they might call in a specialized consultant for a day, a week or two. Software Consultants bill at an hourly rate of $175 - $250 an hour – and good ones are worth it – they often have degrees in accounting and IT – plus if you find an experienced consultant, they’ll get more done in an $225 hour than the $175 hour guys can do in three – so look at the overall value. Next, let’s talk about ERP Consultants. That’s where the Profit From ERP team comes in. ERP Consultants don’t work on a specific ERP platform, but are generalists among several ERP types. They may break down into ERP Selection Consultants or ERP Implementation Consultants, and again, there may be some specialization. Process Manufacturing, Pharma Manufacturing, Food & Beverage – Project Accounting are all areas I specialize in, but I work with general ERP projects as well. In our case, the ERP Consultants focus on process. What’s the best process for selecting ERP? What’s the best process for implementing ERP? In essence, our ERP Consultants become part of your internal team – helping plan, manage, advise and guide your internal process. An ERP project is definitely a software project – but at the same time, it’s a business consulting project. There’s change management involved. As well as project goals and objectives. For Example – a recent client had a particularly difficult purchasing process. Step One, Employee fills out a PO. Step Two it’s scanned and sent to the Department Head who prints it out, signs it. Step Three it’s scanned and emailed to Accounting, who prints it out and collates with others for Step Four Final approval by Purchasing – then forwarded to Step Five VP for final batch approval. There was also a signature by each of these managers approving the budget in the first place and there’s still a round of signatures on the invoices before it’s paid. So as the ERP Consultant we led a process to get all of these people in the room together and finally determined – if we could make the budget approval for the expenditure – and the ERP system controlled that no one could enter a Requisition that exceeded available budget – then we could skip eight secondary signatures on each PO – slash - invoice. When you begin to multiply the time savings of 8 signatures, across several hundred PO’s and several hundred invoices – not to mention that in a rush, interrupting each person along the way resulting in that crazy lag time it takes to get back to what you were doing in the first place…. Now – all this is possible because the new ERP does a better job of budgeting, a better job of controlling requisitions – and even has online approvals so instead of print-sign-scan-send over and over, it’s now simply an email to smartphone approval.

Below is the transcript to this week's ERPodcast - prior to alerting us to each grammatical irregularity, please recognize it is written for the spoken word, not text, and with a conversational tone, while not always grammatically perfect - the audience tends to understand quicker.   Let’s go for Profit from ERP (MFX)   Welcome to this week’s episode of ERPodcast  - I’m your host Gene Hammons and this week we’re going to the Mailbag!   So, what is the Mailbag you ask, well, there’s a popular website called Quora.comQ-U-O-R-A .com and the idea is, if you want to talk to an expert on any topic, you can go to Quora.com and ask the expert.   I don’t really know how they define who’s an expert … but over the years, I’ve found answering questions on Quora about things I deal with all day every day has been helpful to folks who don’t actually live-breathe-eat-sleep ERP software. In 2018 I was named a Top Writer by Quora, with the #1 Ranking in the ERP software category, as well as top 5 rankings from time to time in SAP, Microsoft,Sage, Intacct,NetSuite, Ross,Lawson and Infor– which are all categories of ERP publishers if you’d not guessed.   By the time you’re hearing this, my viewer count will top the 1 – million reader mark.  I remember when I called my wife in to show her that 40-thousand people had read my answers because that sounded like a big number.  But 1 Million readers. As they used to say, THAT and a dime will get you a cup of coffee. Of course they didn’t have Starbucks when they were saying that.   Anyway.   We’re going to pull up some of the ERP related questions people from around the world are asking and go over how we answered those questions – Maybe you have some of the same questions. Maybe you can’t believe someone asked that question. Maybe there is such a thing as a stupid question.   We’ll find out today – Hey a million readers can’t be wrong – at least not all of them at the same time – It’s the Mailbag episode of the ERProfit podcast – right here in our endless quest to help you - Profit From ERP.   MFX Post and Out   The Podcast is brought to you by Eide Bailly Technology– you know it’s relatively easy to become an expert in social media – you can even label yourself a ‘guru’ or better yet, a ‘product evangelist’  Since I run the Profit from ERP website, I can call myself a Prophet of Profit – you know like a prophet- with a PH -  like prophet of old, talking about financial profit – I guess that’s all in the PH balance if you get those sorts of jokes.   But Eide Bailly is not like that – they earn their labels the hard way – by doing the actual work.   Eide Bailly is a 100+ year old CPA firm – not many companies have that kind of track record.   The Eide Bailly Technology Group is a NetSuite reseller, Salesforce.com partner, they handle Sage Business Software and much more. And they don’t have to label themselves a ‘guru’ when others are recognizing them for more impressive accomplishments like NetSuite top 5 Global Consulting Partner and NetSuite Partner of the Year for several years running – even the coveted Worldwide Partner of the Year – now that covers some ground.   And while I might be a so-called social media Expert, when it comes to consulting for my client companies – if they need NetSuite, I turn to Eide Bailly – because I want realexperts working for myclients.   NetSuite is great – it’s one of the hottest ERP’s on the market and there’s a ton of resellers and implementation partners all across the nation – but I want the best – so I go with Eide Bailly and you should too.   You know NetSuite doesn’t absolutely fit every company everywhere – but when NetSuite is the right ERP, Eide Bailly is the right partner.  No gurus. No evangelists. Just experts. Eide Bailly – that’s E I D E   B A I L L Y.com   Now onto the podcast         Going to the Quora Mailbag, which of course is an online portal so no actual stamps were harmed in the making of this podcast   Some of our questions come in anonymously, some tell you names and where there’re from  - this one just popped up yesterday   Which would you recommend, Quickbooks online, Xero or MYOB?   (Those are all entry level bookkeeping programs for small businesspeople – well, the people aren’t small, but the businesses are just getting started – small businesspeople)   QuickBooks (QB) is more common. You’ll find more people to hire that know it, your CPA and auditors will likely be familiar with it. And it’s great for starting out, until your company is three people in the business office or $5m in revenue. Many forward thinking CPA’s like Xero – great new technology - it’s trending up but miles to go before it becomes as ubiqitous as QB. MYOB has been around for years and hasn’t really broken out as a better mousetrap in terms of marketshare. All that said - what you need for your business and how these software platforms work should drive the decision. MYOB will be the absolute best for some businesses, others see Xero as a hero, and most end up with QB. But whatever you do, don’t grow your business past the capabilities of these entry level programs. It’s really easy to add a person or two to the office because the workload gets intense - instead of moving up to actual accounting software from Sage, Microsoft or others. It’s like this - Start out on QB, and after a while the workload adds up. Your choice is software to automate or more staff to manage workarounds. So you add one person in year one, you’re now spending $50k in salary to avoid a $50k ERP system. Fine. Year two, a couple more people, now you’re spending $150k in salaries this year, plus last year’s $50k - $200k to avoid a $50k software project. Next year you add another FTE and now you’ve sunk $400k into labor to avoid that one-time $50k software package. Really? Yeah, Really. Last week had lunch with a guy running a $30m company with 17 people in the back office running QuickBooks. A $300k ERP package would have saved him 10 employees - probably 12 but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings too bad. And he waited three years to really check into finding the right ERP. I didn’t even do the math on that one but I’m sure we’d both have been cringing. Don’t be that guy. Next Question Is SAP ERP good for small business accounting?     SAP ERP costs about $3m to start so not many small businesses hop on board. SAP Business One (B1) is a platform that was originally developed by an Israeli firm and purchased by SAP to serve the mid market. While some smaller companies use it, it’s normally priced a bit high even for emerging companies and tends to play better in midmarket, $50m and up companies. But as with all ERP - there are exceptions for certain businesses that are more complex than others, so it doesn’t mean you won’t find a few $20m companies really happy with B1.   Another alert Quora reader asks: Is the FDA approval required for canned dog food made outside the USA before it is imported? And the answer Pet food falls under a whole different category than food for human consumption. That is why your pet products represent the biggest risk to salmonella contamination of anything in your kitchen - best to keep Rover’s doggie dish separate from the fine china - or run any plate/spoon that’s come in contact with dog food through the dishwasher. EDIT - As Van says in the comments below - Pet and Livestock food falls under the Dept of Agriculture - not the FDA - I do a lot of pharma stuff and F&B - and my specialty is knowing about FDA regulated environments - so I learned something too. But back to petfood, we leave the reader with a script from a Commercial that never ran: We open on a Scene – smiling woman dishing out canned dog food into pet bowl marked ‘Rover’ Woman: New BeefPo - this smells like DOGFOOD! Man: That’s pure salmonella goodness coming through in every bite! Rover: Bark! Disclaimer – Not all pet food companies have low manufacturing standards, but we’re using a little humor here to differentiate between food for human consumption and animal products. Next Question What is the link between a funnel and sales pipeline in a CRM? Gene Hammons, Director - www.ProfitFromERP.com Answered Tue Thinking of the sales pipeline as funnel shaped helps salespeople understand that ‘I need to put a lot of prospects in at the top to get a few sales out of the bottom’. There may be more to it, but I don’t think so - that said - I’m sure to be corrected by someone who is better at overthinking things than I am. 34 Views · View Upvoters 2 Upvotes   Does NetSuite offer vertical industry-specific solutions?   So, NetSuite does not offer vertically branded industry specific ERP - it’s not like they offer say - DonutSuite for donut shops. But - They do offer micro-vertical support strategies to targeted industries. I’ve worked in process manufacturing since about 2006 - specifically in Food and Beverage (F&B) and Pharmaceuticals. NetSuite recently launched a F&B micro vertical and from what I can gather from LinkedIn, I know about 3/4ths of the people who make up the internal NetSuite F&B team because I worked with them when we were both at  Ross ERP, Lawson M3 ERP, Microsoft Dynamics partners and so on over the years. I competed with the other 1/4 when they were with Syspro, Infor, Just for Food or whatever – so they’ve brought in some talent. Suite Success What it’s NOT - Suite Success is commonly thought of as a ‘quick implementation’ strategy which slams in a generic, in this case, food-based implementation project - THAT has been tried by several other ERP groups over the years and usually fails - Suite Success IS NOT that.

ERPodcast Episode 4 – 2019 The State of the ERP Address   Time for Profit from ERP (MFX)   It’s ERPodcast the verbal musings of the Director of Consulting Services at Profit From ERP, Gene Hammons – Today it’s The 2019 State of the ERP Address - We’ll talk about new efficiencies driven by cloud ERP, increasing pressure on internal corporate teams taking on a new ERP projects, ERP platform diversity which means something for everyone, and we’ll cover the strategic impact of ERP and the core competency to be a technology driven company instead of an M&A target   If you Google ERP related queries, you’ll find a world of information – most of it written from the perspective of someone who’s trying to sell you their ERP software. Which, while that is informative to a point, it’s not always the point you were looking to answer.   So, our perspective.   We help client companies analyze, select, and implement ERP software as well as related operational software and mobile apps. Granted, software selection expertise does not translate into an accurate general overview of the entire ERP industry – what we do have is a specific, laser focused, examination of real world results from actual working companies.   We do selection/implementation again and again, for client after client. In a variety of industries, business lines and verticals.  The commonalities of our clients are they’re already successful and growing, usually they’ve outgrown or outpaced the current system.   It’s gotten to the point where regardless if the cost seems huge, they know the effort needs to be undertaken –   Our consulting practice is designed to turn that around.   Instead of approaching the project as a huge cost, we look to the efficiencies – the productivity gains – the cost avoidance – the labor savings – the revenue increases – and we measure it all, as increased Profit – Profit From ERP.   Profit is the goal. ERP is the tool.   And while it’s not exactly a Congressional Proclamation, it’s definitely a real world perspective, it’s the 2019 State of the ERP address –   -Break-   Welcome back to the ERPodcast, the 2019 State of the ERP Address – before we jump into today’s content, a bit of backstory.   Yes, I know there’s always a bit of backstory with me – but just this morning, I saw a pull quote from noted economist Thomas Sowell, who said “One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and time again.”   So we don’t want to be angering Economists and we have a general policy of avoiding disasters – so let’s understand history driving today’s trends.   Trend #1 Cloud Computing Driving Efficiencies   In the early days of ERP, everything was modular to the extreme – you could buy a General Ledger or GL system from one company and tie that to an A/P or Accounts Payable system from another company. Today, all these modules have long been incorporated into different views from the same relational database, so any modern ERP will contain fairly complete financials.   Now if you’re working with a consulting firm that’s put together an RFP to send out to ERP providers, and on the front page of that RFP are questions that ask if the ERP package contains a GL, AP, AR, Purchasing and the like, there’s only two reasons – One, they’re using an old RFP form from the 1986 era of extreme modularity or two, they’re sending it out to ERP softwares that they have no idea or have never used that ERP – both big clues – take a hint.   The common model is completeness of base financial functions within a single database.   In the old model, only huge companies had the IT resources to keep all these different codebases integrated through upgrade roadmaps and changes in features – and with the changes to a single relational database, we moved to a single version of the truth - everyone agreed to give up the silos of information in sales, the mysterious costing spreadsheet of operations, - we put a single company on a single system.   Then came cloud.   Now, instead of an expensive middleware to integrate different systems, we have one single middleware for cloud-based ERP – the internet itself – the commonality of the internet is today’s middleware – it’s the one common communication protocol by which you connect all cloud-based software. And what this does - - it allows ERP to connect to operational software, whether it’s distribution, manufacturing or services – we now can have a best of breed solution in each area of our business.   It means the midmarket company can now compete on an analytics and technology basis formerly reserved for only the Fortune 500.   So we’ve gone from modular, multiple systems to single source accounting and ERP, and then back again to multiple systems in what we call component ERP.   Total costs have dropped substantially and technology is generations ahead – affordable ERP options are available for companies of all sizes – but with choice comes complexity – there are a lot of systems out there -       So how many ERP players are out there?   There are several good sites to get an idea of how many choices you have in ERP systems – say you’re in Construction and you want to know the various kinds of accounting software that are available to run your business. Capterra.comcompiles ERP systems – they have over 700 different business categories and under Construction, you see 50 possible choices for accounting software. Some good, some not so much – but all of them are working for some construction company somewhere – and one might be right for you? But how do you know?   Another website we really like, G2 Crowdrelies on a crowd of software reviewers, companies actually using the ERP software to post reviews and recommendations – you’ll find over 400 ERP platforms ranked and listed.   I like G2 Crowd’s approach to user reviews, but you also need to take some issues with a grain of salt. For example, one reviewer complained the ERP screens were too confusing and had so much functionality you could get lost looking for what you wanted. Well, yes. That’s true, it’s also why, when properly implementing that same ERP software, you’re supposed to go in and simplify each users’ views – so Margie in AP sees only what Margie needs to do her job – the rest of the fields are still available, they’re just not presented to Margie – it’s called workflow simplification and it’s part of every project we implement – but of course, we don’t know who or how the system was implemented in this particular reviewer.       ERPfocus.comalso has a great deal of ERP listings as well as some great content on how to manage your project. Of course, at Profit From ERP we’re in the business of hands on helping with the same issue, but with ERPFocus you can get a really good idea of some of the challenges you’ll face in an ERP project. And full disclosure – ERP Focus awarded our genehammons.com website the #3 Independent ERP Blog worldwide back in 2014.   So in all, there are thousands of choices for ERP   So, there’s maybe 500 viable choices for ERP today. Probably the top 50 ERP platforms have 85% of the marketshare. There’s probably a few hundred up and coming ERP providers – some of whom may emerge as viable alternatives in the days to come. So there’s some risk with smaller ERP companies – not that risk can’t be mitigated but you need to know what you’re getting into. The main point is, there are ERP systems of every size, shape and price range that you can imagine. The trick is, finding the right one that will make your business more productive and understand that picking the top marketshare ERP package won’t necessarily fit your business model exactly – for our clients – we let the Requirements drive the decision.   So that’s State of the ERP 2019 Trend  – practically any ERP package will fit somewhere and there’s a lot of diversity in the ERP industry from thousands of choices.   The Next Trend we see is There’s more and more responsibility thrown on the internal ERP Teams than ever before – more required of client companies who don’t always have a lot of experience implementing critical ERP software.   Let’s get into that Over the past few years, Made for Cloud Software has developed some distinct advantages. Let’s look at a past ERP selection project for an air ambulance company. A traditional ERP, Microsoft Dynamics GP– the former Great Plains was competing with a couple of made for cloud ERP packages, NetSuite, Acumaticaand Intacct.   It really doesn’t matter what the names were, just know it was traditional ERP versus made for Cloud ERP. It could have been the same with dozens of others.       One, the traditional software was written and released in the early 1990’s. Our Cloud ERP players were written in the late 90’s and really gained traction post 2000’s. You’ll remember the internet came of age 1996 – so the cloud programs have both a ten-year newer technological advantage – AND – they were created for the connected, internet world. Traditoinal ERP, any older, more mature technology may have advanced features newer platforms haven’t caught up with.   So at this point,  both cloud and traditional software are still in the race.   The next step – we get to cost estimates. With all ERP there’s a software cost, the cost to license the software and there’s an implementation cost – the cost for the partners to install, configure, set up, integrate and train the users.   And here’s where we need to talk about made-for-cloud and cloud – two different things.   Made for cloud is generally multi-tenant.

When a company grows rapidly, and suddenly QuickBooks is not enough - there's a huge leap from accounting software to ERP and it requires a huge mental leap as well. In this episode, we look at a very common mistake - implementing by business office, when actually ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning - and it truly calls for the entire enterprise to contribute and reap the benefits. Find out how to manage this tricky implementation without the $100,000 pitfalls so many others have tripped over.