Full Podcast Episode

What Should Customers Expect in an ERP Implementation Project?

 

Chris Gherardini (00:05)

So a high level overview of what a system migration or implementation looks like. It begins with a set of workshops and analysis. This is where my subject matter experts really get to crawl through the business and really look at how we're going to fit your organization into Dynamics 365. Once we go through that process, we are very good about identifying where it fits and where there's gaps. Gaps could be an integration. Gaps could be a special field you need to capture by customer. Could be a lot of things, but we solve the gaps. And then we have a complete solution model. Once all that's agreed upon, guess what? The fun begins. We begin configuring the installation. We get sample data where you can actually begin logging in and testing the application. We drive through that configuration to the point where we're ready to conduct user acceptance testing, meaning those processes can be demonstrated and executed with your data to your specifications. As we continue to advance learning knowledge transfers occurring all along the way, your staff's growing, becoming more confident. They're seeing the vision of how this thing can really work for your organization. Conference room, pilots, refinements, double check, double check. We make sure we're not missing anything. More data pulls, and again, we plan to go live. That's not a cliff. It's more of a soft transition into using the new product with your protection, turnkey along your side all the way.

 

 

What is Today’s Biggest Challenge for ERP Implementations?

 

Chris Gherardini (01:27):

So in the market today, I still feel like user adoption is still the biggest challenge that we have. Organizationally, I think with the remote culture that's evolved is a lot of people still don't want to be accountable for things. And so learning delays, engagement delays, and I think that that's still the biggest challenge the organization has. It's the people component of that.

 

What’s New and Upcoming in the ERP Space?

 

Chris Gherardini (01:52):

So new innovation showing up around ERP, it tends to be around analytics and advanced analytics using artificial intelligence. And so a lot of people are scared about AI. It's not going to take over your ERP. However, AI will identify things that may be missed by humans. And I think that's probably the best innovation that we're seeing right now. Just more help with processes redundant, where we're starting to replace the labor. That's it. We're starting to replace the labor that's redundant and let people focus on specialized tasks.

 

 

Why is Business Central the Right Choice for SMB?

Chris Gherardini (02:27):

Dynamics 365 Business Central. It is amazingly scalable platform. To that point, we can start with a single user and with even that one user, I have all the power of that complete installation, highly performing, multi-tenant installation, the Azure Cloud, but it grows. It grows and grows. You can have hundreds of users, could have multiple sites, multiple countries. So Business Central is a very diverse application in terms of the capabilities, extensibility with partner apps and third party products, as well as just the technology behind the scenes

 

Why is Dynamics 365 the Right Choice for Enterprise?

Chris Gherardini (03:05):

For the right organization. Dynamics 365 finance and operations is the hero solution. It is the platform that will let your business grow without limits. It will let you scale. It will let you craft the roles for your operators. So their user experiences in doing their work is just perfectly tuned. Whether that's in a full screen, a power app, a dashboard that's actionable, it goes on and on and on. But finance and operations is just the most incredible product. And I happen to run my business on it for a little over 10 years, so I'm a little bit spoiled. But we use the project management and accounting because it allows us to deliver accountability to our customers and to me, the owner of the company.

 

What is your Favorite Turnkey Success Story?

Chris Gherardini (03:49):

So I have one customer that I found a little over 10 years ago, and he's now retired because of me, because he was so successful at his implementation. But his world was disconnected, e-commerce and back office systems. And I think as you look at his critical success in his industry was to have those two systems connected in a bi-directional manner so they could add new products, customers could buy the frequencies, they would get those updates. But in the end, we connected a fully integrated e-commerce system into his Microsoft dynamics. And he grew his business and his online sales took off. And just every day he had more and more and more orders, and it was a love affair he had with Microsoft Dynamics. And he's retired and he's very successful, and his business was so sustainable that he's passed it down to his son now who's also printing money. So it's a great story. I really am happy and I've watched him succeed over 10 plus years. And so good joy for me.