Do’s and Don’ts for ERP Implementation

Watch this webinar to learn everything you need to know about the ERP implementation process (but were afraid to ask)! Even if you don’t have any urgent questions, listen in on what companies like yours want to know—and learn insider tips from our expert.

Read the transcript

So I think we’re starting to see the audience come in here now, so we’re going to get rolling. I’ll take you first through the agenda for today. We’re going to go quick introduction to Max and Hi, and then to the company, a genius as well. We’ll touch on a couple of the statistics. We were doing research a couple of years feedback on implementation, trying to figure out how we could help our customers, help manufacturers implement properly. Some of the statistics are a bit mind-blowing when we get to those. Then we’ll go through really the meet, what you’re here to learn coming up on the do’s and don’t section. There’s going to be time at the end after we wrap up. There’ll be time for questions. So any questions you have, send them our way. We won’t be able to get to all based off the webinar we did this morning, but we’ll get to as many as we can, and afterwards we’ll follow up with everybody and get to the rest of your questions by email if we can’t get them live today in the webinar. So let’s start. Max, I’ll let you introduce yourself first.

Thanks, Jesse. You guys can hear me well?

I think so. No comments so far that we can’t, so we’re good.

Okay. All right. Thanks. As Jessie mentioned, I’ve been working with genius for over five years. Just recently moved to a sales and marketing team who previously worked as a project manager with the implementation team, professional service team for five years. I was managing a team of consultants for the implementation of our software. Today, I’m here essentially as an advisor and to go through the do’s and don’ts of the ERP implementation.

Thanks, Max. Max, how many ballpark? How many implementations have you done?

With genius, probably around, I’d say 50, 60 implementations.

We weren’t kidding when we said expert for Mac. 60 implementations is a lot of… That’s a lot of ERP installs. My name is Jesse Lincoln. I’m the marketing director of genius. I’ve been with the company for just about five years. I’m here to do a quick intro and turn it over to a real manufacturing expert. Never listened to the marketing guy on anything to do with manufacturing for sure. So let’s dive into the background on genius. I’ll keep this short. We want to make sure we get to the meat of the webinar quickly. So our company is just over 30 years old. We started off doing industrial engineering consulting. I quickly realized the biggest way we could help our customers was by giving them better software to use. Started with our first software in 1995. We evolved to a different platform in the middle of 2000s. Now we’re on version 13, working on version 14. As you see in the next slide, we’ve got customers across Max, North America. We’ve got to update this slide, actually. We have more provinces and states than we had previously. We are solely manufacturing-focused. We don’t work with any other industries or types of companies.

All of our customers our manufacturers with a specialization in custom manufacturing, high mix, low volume. People like Max are the core of who we are. Engineers, manufacturing experts, people that understand your businesses, What doesn’t work for us any other way, we don’t want to provide advice or consultation about businesses we don’t know. Manufacturing is what we know, it’s who we are. The ERP is a full suite ERP. It has everything you need to run your business and grow your business, everything you need day to day, month to month, year to year, full accounting suite, engineering, especially if you’re that high mix, low volume, and your MTO, ETO, CTO, that type of manufacturing is here. I won’t go too much into this. I know a lot of you that are on the webinar today are asking for advice talking to our teams about whether or not genius is right for you. So I’m sure this is nothing new to you to see this. But if you have any questions about the product, we can take those outside of the webinar today, either through any of us that’s on the call today or the genius representative that you’re talking to.

So we’re going to dive in right away. I’m going to start. I’ll turn it over to Max. I think Max, you’re going to be going right away.

Yeah, Absolutely. Thanks, Jesse. I wanted this to be a little bit more interactive than just me having a monolog here for an hour. What I decided to do is create two very quick polls based on some of the research that we did a few years ago about how ERP implementations are done and what success rates are we seeing out there. There’s this first poll, and the question we’re asking here is what is the percentage of ERP implementation that take longer than expected? If you had an original timeline, how many of those take longer than what the original timeline was? So we got 5 to 20 %, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, 60 to 80, and 80 to 100. We’re going to give it a few seconds still. We’ve got at least half the people in here who answered already. All right, we can close it in five seconds. Three, two, one. Thanks, everyone, for answering the question. So there’s a significant portion of you guys who think it’s 60 to 80 % of ERP implementation take longer than expected. There’s a rather pessimistic 29 % of you guys who think it’s almost all ERP implementation take longer than expected in a almost That’s exactly the same percentage on 40 and 60%.

Based on our research and what’s out there, actually it’s close to 61 % of ERP implementation take longer than expected. So That’s a significant statistic when you think about delivering. Erp implementation is a project just like any other project you guys would… If you manufacture goods, if you think about it, if your deliveries were 60 % of the time late, how that would impact your credibility out there. So I’ve got a second poll that I wanted to go through, and this one is more about the budget this time. We’ve just talked about timeline. And there’s another one, another study we did, and this one is, what is the percentage of ERP projects that exceed the original budget that was expected at the beginning? So again, same thing, 5 to 20, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, 60 to 80, and 80 to 100.

I can see the answers in real-time. It’s fun to watch the answers coming in real-time with the percentage, especially with the… Something like implementation where it can be a bit scary.

All right. Give it one more second. Now we’re good. So let’s have a look at the answer. So here, again, we’re seeing like 80 to 100 % as the majority of people who answered And you know what? I’m not surprised by that just because the picture out there of the ERP implementation is not a great one when you start searching on the web. So I’m not surprised to see that 40 %. But we got 33 % of the 60 to 80, 40, 60. We got 20 % there and we got 40 %. We think seven people think that… 7 %, sorry. But people think that’s where we see budget. And this is As far as budget is concerned, it’s a little bit worse than what the timeline is. So what we’re seeing out there is that close to 74 % of your project exceed original budget. So when you So you take all these statistics altogether, you take timeline, you take budget, and obviously there are other variables to take into consideration. But when you think about that and you guys want to start an ERP project, really implementing an ERP project is scary. It’s statistics and odds are all against you.

So what exactly do you have to do in order to get it right so that you’re not part of the statistics, essentially. So it seems like, and there are different teams today, and it seems like everywhere I turn these days, the talk is about smart factories, manufacturing 4. 0, artificial intelligence. It’s not that I don’t think that these new technologies can be beneficial or have a major impact on the manufacturing industry, but I think that before, manufacturers were in full steam ahead with these new technologies, they should get back to the basics first and try to own the digital technologies that are already out there. In fact, there’s a different AI, Artificial Intelligence, that I think manufacturers should be concerned about. It’s a funny acronym that we have here at Genius. Ai, a genius, stands for abandoned implementation and not for artificial intelligence. An ERP is That’s basically the first step to digitally transforming your company, and it’s one of the biggest technological changes that a manufacturer can make to improve their business process. But you’ve all heard horror stories about ERP implementation Implementation, budget overruns, which you saw that, projects that dragged for months, sometimes even years, and systems that are partially implemented with limited functionalities.

Implementing an ERP can be hard. And in fact, you just saw over 60% of ERP implementations are considered failures. And honestly, every time I hear that statistic, it floors me because an ERP system is so beneficial It’s vital to modern day manufacturing plans. Yes, it’s something that so many manufacturers, and quite frankly, even ERP system providers are getting wrong. It’s definitely a challenge. Erp system is a challenge, and in all, honestly, it should be. It’s capable of improving every aspect of your business. It impacts every single one of your departments and a lot of your employees as well. So If it was easy, it wouldn’t be very effective. The fact that it’s going to be a challenge is not necessarily a bad thing. As with most good things in life, you need to work at it to get it right. So And I find that the risk to reward ratio for ERP implementation can be quite rewarding if you get it right. To successfully implement an ERP system, you need to be, I want to say honest with yourself about the process before you even get started. Proper preparation, of course, a change in perception, help you identify and overcome difficulties that you’re certain to face.

So Actually, we’re on the right slide. Thanks, Jessie. So what’s the number one thing that you can do to make implementing an ERP successful and less scary? Well, based on the research that we did, we can tell you what is the number one reason why manufacturers become a statistic. Based on that, you guys can make your own perception on this. But the number one reason we hear from manufacturers who have delayed or completely given up on the implementation process is quite simply a lack of time. So it’s funny because typically company executives, they’ll recognize that there’s a need for a software. They’ll make a large investment in purchasing the system. And then when it’s time to actually install the ERP and do the project, the company will come back to us and they’ll say, well, we don’t have time to put the system in place now. Maybe in six months we can do it. Or things that we hear often is, oh, our operations manager says he’s already too busy, so he needs at least three months to sort things out before we can get this project going. And time and again, manufacturers will say that they just don’t have the time.

They don’t have the time to invest in sending up the new ERP. So why bother invest if you don’t have the time, right? So when they tell us, well, we don’t have the time to do it, what I would typically answer back is you do have the time. What you’re lacking in is is vision. This might sound a little blunt, but frankly speaking, there’ll never be a right time to implement an ERP. Now, does that mean that you shouldn’t do it? Of course not. It means you need to make time for it now, clearly communicate your vision, your company’s needs throughout your entire organization. And then people get the idea that things should go pretty smoothly. The manufacturers who come to us and they purchase an ERP system are companies that are typically on the cost of rapid growth, or they’re already growing most of the time. And these manufacturers, they need a solution to make their operations more efficient. They have recognized already that ERP is the right tool to increase their throughput. But because they’re growing, they’re busy. You know what? Six months down the line, as the company continues to grow, they will be even busier.

The operations manager that I was talking about will be even more overwhelmed, and that manufacturer will not have the time to put the ERP in place. They’ll most likely abandon implementation or push it and push it again and they’ll just go right back to square one. But it’ll feel even further behind at six months of growth and six months of what we could call on solve problems I’ve accumulated since then. My honest advice here is, embrace the disruption and live with the instability for a while. You’re a growing company. You’re already functioning at a hectic pace, probably. You know your team can handle it. They’ve been handling it for a while now. As the saying goes, there’s no time like the present. So if you invest the time to put this system properly in place now, you’ll be in a much better position in six months time. Can we go to the next slide, please, Jessie? Thanks. So obviously, communication, just like any project, is critical. So what’s the best way to set up team communication when you’re talking in a project like this one. The first thing you got to understand is that the best way to get your staff on board with a project like this one is to communicate your vision.

You or someone in your company recognize the need for ERP, But come implementation, you’re experiencing pushback maybe from your employees because even though they know a new system was purchased, even though they may appreciate that the system is needed, They may not entirely understand why, and especially they may not want to go through the disruption of implementing a system like that. And that’s natural. That’s just human nature. Change is difficult for human beings. So if I were to be straightforward, you guys, implementing an ERP is tremendously disruptive. So we can be honest here, and it’s probably one of the biggest project you’ll undertake as a manufacturer. It’s transforming You just saw earlier that more than 30% of the transition have disruptions after implementing the ERP systems. It will impact every department. It will impact everyone in your company and everyone will be personally affected by this change. If they don’t understand why the new system is being put in place, they will resist the change, and you’ll risk the project falling apart completely. So it’s on you really to share your vision with your team. You can have straightforward open lines of communication with your staff, let them know why the company needs an ERP, how it will be streamlining operation, the benefits that it will bring to the entire organization, but also try and be honest and open about the disruption it will bring to the workplace because there are benefits, but then how are you getting benefits is through that disruption in the workplace.

It’ll take time and resources from them. So if your staff understands their vision and they understand why they need to change into their job, but also they’re aware of the disruption that it will bring, they typically will be more receptive to the system. And typically the implementation will stay on track when people are on board. I want to move to the… Thanks, Justin. I don’t even have to say it. Next thing I wanted to talk about is users and stakeholders. So when do we bring them on board? Asking the question is a little bit like answering the question here because for anyone who’s part of a project today, you don’t want that person to be taking part in the project 50% of the way through the project. So It’s pretty obvious, but it’s something that people often forget. They say, Well, you know what? My CFO, I’m only going to bring him at the end of the project when we need to go through month-end and different GL transactions that we need to go through. But the reality is that this person really has a lot to say about how our financial statements should be created, how should it be populated And how do I want to see the information?

Which information do I need to make decision? So these are all things that these people have to define from the very get-go in a project. So it’s important that your key users and all stakeholders within a company are on board with the new system from the very beginning. And that starts when you start implementing the project. But also keep in mind, if some of you guys are still exploring ERPs out there, it also starts at the sell cycle. So if you guys are looking at a solution that will help you grow, fix some of the issues that you have, fix some of the pains that you guys have, typically these pains are not only at a very specific department in your company, they’re everyone in the company. So people need to feel that they’re involved in that so that, again, it’s beneficial for everyone. We can move to the next one, Jessie. So why is the internal champion so important? And here, I love the picture about Simone here, but this is one of the things that coming from the implementation team is probably one of our key driving factor for success in an implementation.

And mainly, you guys are probably doing the same today. When you have a project going on, there’s typically a project manager for this project, so it should be handled the same way for a ERP implementation. This is one of the things that I strongly advise people to do, is to pick an internal champion for the project. Obviously, you do have a selection team in place that help evaluate and select the ERP system. But I strongly encourage that you pick a single person, not two, not three, as a champion for a project, and that person will be responsible for a system as a whole. Now, if you’re trying to think, Okay, who should this person be? So that person is an individual who needs to be able to walk a tight line between having a great deal of, let’s call it, authority and influence in the company. But not only that, also someone who’s open, approachable, and has excellent communication skills. Your champion needs to be someone who has the ability to influence others, of course, within your organization, the authority also to escape issues and get them resolved quickly. But also, the staff feels comfortable coming to with their concerns and issues.

They’ll be very important for the implementation process, but it’ll be even more important after the ERP implementation. So after your ERP is in place, this person should continue to act as an Overseer for the system, ensuring that the system is running smoothly, that the data system is accurate, people are doing their job correctly. But also it’s a resource to turn to when there’s an issue or a problem rises. We have a pretty good success rate here at a genius. And one of the things that I love talking to customers. But the last thing What I want is for you to call me on a weekly basis after your NBRP is, you need to go live because it tells me you don’t have the knowledge internally to be able to be self-sufficient. I’m going to help you. We’re going to help you, obviously. But in the long run, this is not something that’s sustainable. You want someone in place who knows about the system, who knows about the entire process flow that people can turn to so that they can answer your questions. We can move to the next slide, Jessie. What mindset do we need to have to do this right?

I’ve been in the ERP business for a while now, and I’ll be the first to admit that an ERP is not a magic wand. An ERP is an excellent system. It It can connect all your departments, it can increase throughput, it can cut costs. Obviously, it does all these things. But at the end of the day, it’s only a computer program. It’s a computer program making quick, accurate calculations for you guys based on the data that you’ve given it. And there’s the old saying that definitely runs true here, and I’m sure everyone heard about it before, but garbage in, garbage out. If you set the system with bad data, it won’t do anything well for you. The way I like to think about it is when you hire a new employee, you take time to train them correctly. You don’t throw them through the wolves and expect that they will master the job on their own. Instead, you typically invest weeks and months with the training and coaching them, helping them perform the job as well as possible. I like to think of onboarding your ERP in the same way. You have to train your system the same way you would train a new employee.

It’s obviously not quite the same process, a computer and a human, but you need to program the ERP system with good data, adjust the parameters accordingly, get the system up and running correctly. Now, you do that with one employee. Now, imagine doing that in every department in your company, and they’re all onboarding a key employee at the same time. Because really, that’s what’s happening with the ERP. Everyone gets a new employee in the department. It’s difficult and it’s disruptive to say the least. And your company will need to put time and energy into getting things up and running smoothly again. So Onboarding in Europe is similar. You need to transfer knowledge and data into the system. You need to take time to make adjustments, get the system running smoothly, and you need to integrate the new system in your team. We’ll have a few growing pains along the way, that’s not abnormal. But if you approach it with the same care and understanding as you would for a new employee, you’ll have a much better success rate. There’s actually a recent study by Ziff Davis that found that I think it’s over 90% of companies that fail to implement the ERP dedicated less than 10% concept of the total ERP budget to education, training, and change management.

If you’re not allocating enough resources to train or to manage change, it will set you up for failure. For sure. I mean, it creates a lack of confidence in the ERP amongst your team. It can derail the entire implementation. Take the time and money to get things right from the very start. If If you’re exploring or you’re shopping for a new system, I invite you to closely look at how the ERP provider is proposing to train users. What method are they proposing? How are they measuring knowledge progression for each user? Is the method flexible enough to learn outside regular hours, for example? If most of you guys are exploring right now, if you’re getting budgets already, you’re probably seeing budgets allocated for services that typically around 50% of the budget is allocated to services. So 50% of it is the tool itself, the ERP, and then 50% is the service and the training. So it matters that you get it right at the first time. It matters that you select the right tool, but 50% of the budget, remember, is allocated to training people. So keep that in mind. Which is better, a short implementation timeline or a long one?

I think probably most of you guys know the answer to this. Obviously, a short implementation is what we would prefer here at Genius. It’s funny because I just previously told you to take time to get it right. This may seem to contradict what I just said, but I urge you to plan a short implementation process. Typically here at Genius, we’ll say nothing longer than 4-6 months. I don’t know what you guys were expecting. Some people here, 12 months, 18 months. Four to six months is what you should be trying to achieve. There are just too many times that we’ve seen manufacturers set long implementation timelines only to see the product at risk of being abandoned a year down the road. The thing with long timeline is it’s all too easy to keep delaying the project. I think it’ll be, I’ll get to it next month or when I have time, lack of time. Only to find that a year passes and no progress has been made. We see that very often in the business. If you’re a growing company, a year is a very long a span of time within your company. When you think about it, the longer the time frame you give your implementation, the greater the risk of something unforeseen happening, like a key employee leaving the company or a pandemic.

Something can keep popping up. You have no idea when things pop up. Anything that can derail the entire a project, if you have a longer timeline, has more chances of happening. Obviously, there’s a chance that these things happen anytime, but there’s less of a chance that these things occur over a shorter period of time. I can tell you from my experience that if you start an implementation project and then you have to pause or delay it for a few months, you’ll have a very difficult time getting the project back on track. So you’ll probably not only abandon your current ERP implementation, but you’ll also have a more difficult time next time you try to implement a project of that size and scale. So what we typically tell our customers is rather than delaying, try and see if you can cut on the scope and get at least some benefits right away. So it’s something that rather than just keep pushing, try and see if you guys can go in the system, try and get benefits right away. If you start a project and you plan for it to take, for example, nine months, and after six months, you need to delay the project for some reason, you just asked your team to put in a lot of extra hours and energy into something for essentially nothing.

So everything you’ve asked them to do will have to be redone. And trust me, on this, you’ll think you can just start off where you left. This is never the case. Never the case. So every time this happens, we have to retrain people. And this is how budget get overrun. This is how timeline gets expended. You can’t just start where you left off. It just doesn’t happen. And if you failed once in the past, it’s going to take a lot more motivation to get people back on board again, and your staff will be much more resistant to try again. So if you saw the project, it’s It’s not just the dollars of the consultant implementing the project that you’re losing or that you’ve lost, actually. It’s the energy, the motivation, and the trust of your staff. So just something to ponder on. So is it important or why is it important to break down the implementation project into phases? I mean, it goes in and in hand with what I said earlier. If you’re going to have a big project, rather than trying to get everything right in 12 months, try and get some things right every once in a while.

So quick wins. If you start an implementation project that involves everything, all functionalities in the system. And unforeseen delay occurs, whatever it may be, all the work you’ve previously done will be lost. So you have to do it again. You’ll have to start from square one again. So it’s like going uphill, back down. But if you prioritize and plan to implement your ERP in phases, we all have a typically a much better chance of succeeding because you’ll have implementing key features of the system, not all of them, but at least a few of them every once in a while. So that’s how you essentially overcome the longer timeline. To avoid being a statistic, so the statistics that we shown at the beginning, ideally, what you want to do is you want to pick a set of priorities that you can realistically implement in 4-6 months, not more, and work hard on getting those features up and running first. This requires a lot of planning and prioritizing from your team, of course. You’ll need to sit down with your key stakeholders to identify what is needed most from the ERP. This is where things are difficult as a team because everyone has things that they want in the company.

Now, what is a priority for you guys? What is the priority for the company? This will help you identify what features and functionalities are dependent on other components. And just be honest with your staff and not everything needs to be implemented in phase one. Your production department may really want a certain feature, but let them know that it can’t go ahead until you have your inventory management under control. So you got to set these expectations for the very get-go so that you’re clear on what the priorities are, and then you just got to go at it. You can go to the next slide, Jessie. Thanks. In conclusion, if there was a My number one piece of advice here is to avoid an abandoned implementation or to get the ER implementation right is planning and perseverance, I think is the word that I want to use. Taking the time to plan and prepare from the start will give you a solid foundation for your project and bring you plenty of success down the line. But having the perseverance and the persistence to move forward, even if you hit a bump in the road, will ensure that you keep going, even if that happens.

It took a lot of hard work to get where you’re going. So if you stop before you reach the top of the hill, you’ll lose everything that you’ve achieved so far. So when you hit the inevitable tough spot, this is where you have to press hard, trust in the planning and preparation that you did to get where you are right now. And then don’t stop because the benefit is on the other side of the We work with a lot of manufacturers in the past 30 years, and people that have successfully implemented the ERP system actually have great results from your implementation. More streamlined and efficient shops, obviously, increased throughput, and there are a bunch of benefits that you guys will see from implementing a ERP. Accurate real-time information, operation, reducing operational cost, increasing on time deliveries. These are all things that we see, and we’ve got good numbers to back it up here at Genius. It’ll allow you to do a lot more thing, a lot more efficiently. And I think that’s all the advice that I can give you guys today. I mean, that’s already a lot of advice, but hopefully it can help you guys improve your ERP implementation process and hopefully not become the statistic like we showed you at the beginning.

Thanks, Max. Thank you, everybody, for your questions that have come in so far. I’ll get to some of them right away, but now I want to reiterate some of the stuff that Max has what you’re saying. We use this as a company. We use this approach. We have this methodology because we know how important it is for your business to get up and running properly, to get implemented well. And that’s why We can avoid, because of this methodology and because of this approach, we can avoid those scary statistics that Max went through at the beginning. We have an industry leading implementation rate because of this, the work that’s been done, both on the engineering and the consultant side, as well as our education team. We can help you through this scary set of circumstances. There are a scary set of circumstances because people didn’t do the right things upfront. We’re going to help you do the right things upfront so you can get the most out of your system in the best way possible. We’ve got a bunch of questions that come in. I think some of them are maybe people looking for some clarification, and some came in right away, Max.

I want to get to those first just because I think those came in with a burning desire. The first one is to the phase side. It’s more, can you pick and choose what you need? For example, if they didn’t need help with engineering, can you drop things out of the solution?

Yeah, absolutely. I think part of the phased approach is when you talk about defining your priorities, these are the type of questions that you guys need to ask yourselves. Obviously, you guys are in a much better position than we are when we meet you guys for the first time in determining exactly where the pains are in the company. So what There are things that we should be spending time on and resources that we can improve it as quickly as possible. Obviously, this is a big investment for you guys, and you want some return on investment as soon as you can. So One of the things that we do here is to get a quick return on investment, your turnaround before you… When you go live, it has to be a short turnaround. So obviously, we’re not going to be tackling all issues from the very get-go, but we’re going to be tackling probably the top two or top three priorities to begin with. And that means picking and choosing exactly what you need, obviously.

Thanks, Max. There’s another one here from… It’s one of the companies that we’re talking to about genius coming in and replacing their current ERP, I guess because it isn’t their current ERP, it’s the ERP they bought, but it isn’t implemented. So we are looking for a new ERP because our last implementation failed, not with genius, it says. Are there some red flags we should be looking out for in terms of the company’s approach to implementation?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. It goes back to what I was saying in one of the very first slides. When you’re working, let’s say you’re exploring for a new system out there, you got to ask yourself, so what’s the reason why this implementation is not working? Is it really the tool or is it the way that it’s being implemented? The approach that the ERP provider will be, there’s actually quite significant differences between ERP providers and how they’re going to implement the system. Some will just sell the system and they’ll tell you it’s a do it yourself implementation, essentially. Some people will have trainers, so they’ll train you, but trainers don’t necessarily understand the business. So they’ll train you on what you guys they’re going to be trained on, but they won’t necessarily help you identify what is the priority. Then there’s another approach, which is a hybrid where you’re going to do an analysis with your ear for provider. You’ll take the time to prepare a business process flow, identify objectives and priorities, and then you will work with a project manager, but also with an education team that’s going to train you on the different aspects of the system.

The training is, again, it’s So it’s very important. Think about it. If you’re going to be spending, I don’t know, $100,000 on a system and 50% of that budget is going to be on service and training, they better have a really good training program. We really want to make sure that they have a system in place where they can teach you, they can follow up on progression. You guys can put in… You can use example, simulation, all sorts of different things that you guys can do to make sure that the implementation process or the methodology is the right one for you guys.

Maybe I’ll do one more if we have time, Max, just choosing. So we’ll do this one because I think it comes up a lot. It came up a lot when we were doing this a couple of years ago, looking at the research. There’s a hesitancy to name one single person as a champion. So the question is, our team is made up of a bunch of lead specialists, CFO, VP of engineering, GM, and me. It doesn’t list what the person’s role is. Do I really need to name one of those people the champion? The unspoken thing is, can we all be You’re a champion.

Yeah. Can we all be champions? I mean, you guys can all be champions in your heart. But ultimately, like I said, you really want to pick one person as a project manager here and as a champion or sponsor for your project. It’s the same concept as if you would have a project manager internally. You want that person to be aware of what’s going on in all aspects of the project, who is in charge of communicating everything that’s going between your company and the ERP provider It’s a central communication point for everything happening. It just makes it easy to communicate with a single person as a company representative. If you have multiple people, you don’t run into issues where this is what I think or this is what I heard. I think that’s what the problem is, but it really isn’t what the problem is. It’s just much easier to manage with one project manager.

Okay, terrific. Thank you, Max. There’s a bunch of other questions that we are going to reach out to everybody who submitted a question. We’ll reach out to you directly and and get back to an answer on those. I know there’s a couple of people submitted a bunch of questions, so I promise you we’ll get back to you the answers to all of those. I want to thank everybody here for their time today. I really appreciate your engagement with us. I appreciate your attention. We put this on and we’ve written an ebook, so we’ll try to share that ebook with you afterwards as well. It’s on this topic just because we believe it can be done right. We believe that the The companies that fall into those bad statistics can avoid it if they do this in a smart and thoughtful way. So we want to make sure that no matter who you choose to implement with, that you’re going to get the most out of your solution, get it in the correct way, and get an ERP doing what it can do for your business. Erp, like Max said, it can be so beneficial for what you do.

I can help your business grow, but it’s got to be in the right way first before it can start adding value there. Max, any final word from you?

Well, thank you everyone for being part of this afternoon. If you guys have any questions or comments, obviously reach out to us and it’ll be our pleasure to help you guys.

Thanks, Max. Remember, Max says you can all be champions in your heart. Only one of you gets to be a champion on the ERP implementation project. Thanks, everyone. Take care. Have a great rest of your week.

Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.

Take care.