Hello everyone and welcome to our webinar on spotting and avoiding ERP vendor gimmicks. How to make informed choices. This webinar is brought to you by SYSPRO and ElevateIQ. My name is Leah Evangelista and I am the Director of Demand Generation and Marketing Technologies at SYSPRO Americas. And most importantly, I will be hosting today's webinar. Joining me is our esteemed guest Sam Guta, Principal Consultant at ElevateIQ. This webinar is being recorded and will be sent to you after the webinar. And before we dive into our discussion, let me give a brief bio of Sam here. Sam is a seasoned ERP thought leader, rated as the number one thought leader in ERP and number 15 in digital transformation by Thinkers360. He has extensive experience with large digital transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 corporations and now also consults with SMEs sharing his knowledge and expertise to help ERP buyers make informed decisions. Just wanted to check, Sam, can you see my screen by any chance? Sam Guta, I can see it. Sam Guta, Beautiful. Awesome. Sam Guta, So before we dive in, here's what we'll cover, right? Sam Guta, It's all about identifying red flags here. First, we'll look at identifying, you know, which ones of these red flags will help you recognize, you know, the top five tactics and gimmicks used by some ERP vendors to mislead customers. Understanding these red flags is very helpful to make sure to make you, to see, you know, what decisions you're going to make, right? Next, we'll also cover asking the right questions. It's crucial to learn how to uncover the true capabilities and limitations of an ERP solution. Knowing the right questions to ask can reveal a lot about the potential fit of a system for your needs. We'll also dive into real-life examples. Sam here will share some real-life examples for each gimmick and outcomes, and this will help you understand how other ERP buyers navigated through these gimmicks and what they learned in the process. Finally, we'll also discuss how to make informed choices, right? This is the meat of this, right? You'll receive practical advice on what to look for in a reliable ERP solution, and this advice will be invaluable as you, as an ERP buyer, navigate the ERP selection process. So with these topics, we aim to provide you with the knowledge and tools needed to make the best ERP choice for your business. So without further ado, let's get started. Before we dive into the top five ERP vendor gimmicks, let's set the stage by talking about the challenges manufacturers face when selecting an ERP solution. I'm sure, Sam, you're all too familiar with this. You've heard this many, many times in your journey. Selecting the right ERP system is a critical, it's a crucial decision for any manufacturer, and it impacts every aspect of the business, from operations to production, supply and management, management to even finance and customer service. However, the ERP solution process can be very daunting, very, very daunting, primarily due to the lack of transparency from some vendors. And many vendors are not necessarily upfront, right, about the true capabilities and limitations of their ERP systems. And this lack of transparency can lead to unrealistic expectations, right, and ultimately disappointed, disappointed buyers or essentially disappointment, right? Vendors also sometimes often make exaggerated claims about their products capabilities and, you know, ease of implementation and cost savings. And these claims can mislead manufacturers into choosing a solution that doesn't meet their needs. And lastly, pricing, right, hidden costs. Initial pricing may look attractive in the beginning, but hidden costs can quickly add up. And these can include costs for customization, integration with other systems, and ongoing maintenance and ongoing maintenance and ongoing maintenance and support. Understanding these challenges is very critical for making informed decisions during ERP selection process. So how do we spot these ERP gimmicks, right? What are some of the buzzwords or terminologies we can hear from ERP vendors? So let's dive into the top five ERP vendor gimmicks that you need to be aware of. And these tactics are, again, often used to sometimes mislead some of the ERP buyers. So again, the ERP buyers. So again, it's crucial to recognize them and understand their implications. First, name recognition. You might hear claims like, we are bigger than other ERP vendors, or we have more customers than other ERP vendors. The next is the all-in-one solution gimmick. Vendors might say, well, we have all the required functionality in our core system. Another common gimmick that you hear is fast implementation with claims like, While a quick implementation might sound appealing, will rushing the process lead to significant problems down the line? We also have out-of-the-box solution gimmick, which statements like, our software is plug and play, or minimal configuration requirement. Again, this is another red flag we see out there and out in the field. Finally, there are pricing tactics such as, we will give you initial deep discounts from the get-go. Again, we'll go through each one in detail with Sam's guidance, right? And he'll be discussing some real-life scenarios as well, and learn how to navigate each one to avoid being misled in the ERP selection process. All right, Sam, we ready to go through each one? Yeah. Awesome. So first up here is name recognition, right? Again, you might hear claims from some of the vendors where they say, hey, we're bigger than all the other vendors, or we have more customers than other vendors. So Sam, in your experience, what are some of the common red flags or gimmicks that you've seen vendors use to mislead customers specifically related to name recognition? Essentially, does bigger really always mean better in an ERP vendor? Yeah. So this is very interesting. And we have seen very, very, very credible and seasoned executives fall into this trap that, okay, and I'm going to use some names. And it doesn't, we don't have anything against these names as such. We work with every single vendor out there. One of the things that we always get is SAP Oracle. Obviously, they are one of the biggest, right, in general. So, you know, most executives and people, they treat this as more of the popularity content. Okay. With ERP, you never, ever want to do that. I'll give you a story, Leah. And you know that I have a lot of stories in general, right? Because we go through a lot of deals. So in this particular case, we were dealing with a customer. Okay. Very mid market, I would say roughly 50-ish million dollar electrical distributor right here in Ontario, Toronto. And you're asking them, okay, which solution do you want to go for? And this guy was like, I want to go for SAP. Great choice. Okay. Why do you want to go for that? Okay. So the answer was very shocking and surprising. And this guy was like, when I was going, growing up, I had a lot of friends in the SAP community. Okay. And I had seen how wild parties they have got. Okay. And that's why I really want to get access to those parties. And that's why I'm selecting SAP. Great idea. Okay. Now, the problem with this approach is number one, you are, you know, there's nothing against SAP as such. Okay. So the problem with this approach is, you know, SAP is a great company, great solution, but you never want to select, you know, any ERP based on this premise. Now, in this particular case, what ended up happening is, you know, they selected, that is the strike number one, because you don't have any sort of requirements, no analysis, no real criteria in terms of why you want to go for, you know, SAP, whether that is going to be right fit for your business or not. But the second mistake, which is much bigger. Okay. What they really wanted to do is they wanted to create, the same ERP that they had previously. And that is much worse mistake than anybody can make in the ERP community, regardless of the vendor or the solution that you are going to choose. Okay. They, and by the way, in this particular case, this is not a company that has like a billion dollar or maybe $30 million IT budget. Okay. If you have that, then you have a different problem. Okay. In this particular case, you are $50 million company. You are probably going to spend, let's say $100,000. And you have no idea how short that amount and time you have in terms of implementing that ERP. And the major focus should be on just configuring training probably, you know, because you want to make sure your users are going to be comfortable. So in this particular case, they ended up customizing heavily. I think their ERP implementation budget was like $70,000 to like $100,000, I guess. You know, not more than that. Within six months, the implementation did not go anywhere. Okay. So these are the stories. This is just one story, but going for the recognition that will always, always fire back. Never, ever go for name recognition. I don't know if that story makes sense, Leah T or not. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And with that said, right, obviously you talked a bit about that story for what would, what would be the advice that you would say, right? Or what steps can businesses take if they're in the process of the ERP selection process? To critically evaluate the claims of these vendors to ensure that they're making the best choice for their needs? Yeah. So very interesting question. And honestly speaking, you know, if you are going to follow the process that the internet is recommending, that is never going to work for you. Okay. Because for the most part, whatever you have available on the internet is pure noise in general. Okay. The way the ERP systems, whether you talk about selection, implementation, the way it works is every single ERP system is very unique. Every single business is very unique. Their transactions are extremely unique as well. So you need somebody who can realign your processes, your transactions, your data with whatever systems that you are selecting with. And then you need to perform the gap analysis. And the gap analysis is going to be based on, okay, how much configuration you are going to do, how much customization you are going to do. Okay. Every single line item there could be a million dollar mistake. Okay. That's how big it is. So you want to be extremely careful. And now, you know, if you are going to be listening to any of the vendor or the salespeople in general, overarchingly speaking, as such vendors are not trying to promote that they want to get into deals that are going to fail, but you are dealing with salespeople and they don't necessarily have as much experience with implementation. And that's where the, the, the, the, the, the problems are in general in the ERP community. So when people say, Hey, I've got MRP capabilities. Now MRP capabilities could be a 20 page document. If you try to describe every single feature set and the capability. And in most cases from salespeople, you are going to get very binary answer. Okay. MRP capabilities check. Great idea. But now what do you need in that MRP capabilities where the question is going to be? Now, unless you are doing this on a daily basis, you will never be able to select or do the gap analysis. And that's where you need to hire, you know, somebody who has done this implementation a couple of times to be able to understand how to basically, do your entire planning, do your entire planning, do your entire planning, do your entire planning, the more planning you are going to do in the selection phase before signing the contract, the easier life you are going to have, you know, otherwise you are going to find a lot of surprises during the implementation. And if you're lucky and you are able to go live, you know, after that, you will know how bad it could fire back in general. Yeah. So I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. That experience matters, especially with an ERP selection. It's a huge, huge part of that. Cool. So now that's a great, great topic to start off with, by the way. Next gimmick we're going to talk about is the all-in-one solution gimmick, right? Vendors might claim in this scenario, well, we have all required functionality in our poor system. So in this case, Sam, what should ERP buyers be aware of regarding this claim? Is it really advisable for one vendor to say, you know, build your entire house, right? Or is it better to bring in specialized solutions as well? Yeah. So this is a very interesting, you know, gimmick as well. And we see all kinds of problems in the market. Sometimes, Leah, and you have been in this market for a very long time and you have seen solutions all over the place, right? So some of these smaller systems, if you look at them, they might not even be ERP. But if you look at their brochure, they can literally check every single checkbox that you are going to have on your selection checklist. And then you'll be shocked. Okay. You know, this guy is asking for maybe $200,000 and this guy is selling for $2,000. How come they have more functionality? So, you know, in general, when you look at this, just based on the functionality, you will always make misleading, you know, decisions and conclusions. There is not one ERP system that is going to have everything that you are going to require. So you are always going to require some add-ons and there is sort of art and science to selecting the right add-ons versus what you need to have as part of the core functionality. In general, when you are looking at this, anything that touches your cross-functional processes, okay, that is going to be inventory, MRP, etc. That has to reside inside your ERP because you are looking at very connected data, connected processes, okay? But the other things can reside outside. So anytime any vendors say that they have everything, that's not how ERP systems are supposed to work, again, you need to go back and perform that analysis in terms of which functionality is going to reside in which system and which system is going to be the right fit, how much data and communication do you need to have between these systems and that's what is going to dictate, you know, which system or the architecture is probably the right word, you know, is going to be the right fit for you. So again, you know, there might be some systems that might package a lot more functionality in general, but, you know, don't go by the vendors when they are going to say they have everything. Yeah. That's great. And in that sense, right, say I'm the ERP buyer, what would you advise in terms of what questions should I be asking these vendors to determine if, you know, what's behind all of those statements, right? What do you think would be those type of questions that I should be asking? Yeah. So the questions, unfortunately, I mean, there is no way to provide a checklist that you can simply follow to be able to confidently select a system that is definitely going to work, you know, with your budget and you are going to get adoption, right? That's where you need to analyze your requirements and you need to create a state that that is going to be financially and technically feasible. And that is the only way to ascertain whether any solution is going to work or not in general. So again, that's where your expertise is going to be required, whether you have internal expertise, somebody who has done this multiple times in your team or somebody external who can really help you in doing that analysis. Otherwise, you are always going to have surprises, blind spot. And sometimes, you know, you will never have an idea in terms of how bad that could fire back. So I don't know if that advice makes sense, Leah. Yeah, it does. I'm seeing a trend here. Preparation is key all across the board, right? Yep. So that's really good to point that out for sure. I don't know about you, Sam, but I am getting excited with just all of these. So much really great information, so much good nuggets of information here. So now we're going to get to the third gimmick, which is fast implementation, right? Some vendors claim we can implement you faster than everybody else, right? So this to me is very, very interesting because I hear this a lot and out in the field, right? But in your experience, Sam, what are some of the risks associated with these claims? Does going fast increase your odds of success? In your experience? Yeah, so very interesting. And, you know, the kind of arguments these vendors and the sales reps are going to make sometimes, it's very hard to argue with them, okay? So obviously, you are going to get these arguments that, okay, we have really fast implementation. Now, the technology is way faster. You don't require the same amount of preparation that they required, let's say, in the past, right? So I'll give you a story, I guess, in this particular case as well, okay? So obviously, when you compare these codes and we are comparing these codes for a living, you know, we go through a lot of deals. So some of the interesting points. So for example, let's say if we see a code, they are quoting, let's say $30,000 implementation or maybe $40,000, $50,000 implementation. Hey, this can be done in DIY mode. I've got templates. Don't worry about it. The other one is quoting $200,000 for the implementation. And, you know, even for us, let's say when we are trying to sort of convince the customer that, you know what, look, you know, read between the lines and just try to understand the code, you know, and sometimes that could be harder for us as well. So in this particular story, the story that I wanted to bring in is, you know, they actually went with the $30,000 implementation because it was very hard to argue. Okay, why should I spend $200,000 when somebody is paying me or giving me this? For $30,000. They went with it. They started the implementation. Okay. The first day of the implementation was almost like, okay, they had this fancy project plan. Okay. The project plan did not make any sense. And then they were saying that, okay, now who's going to do the implementation? Okay. They had just one consultant assigned. And that consultant literally had like two years of experience with the implementation, which is not even a consultant in my mind. Okay. So they had this project plan and with the project plan. And with the project plan, they literally had the task created for the customer to be able to perform. Now, this customer is a very small customer, manufacturing company, $25 million, you know, in that range. And now they had never done this. They don't even know how to export data from their existing system. How do you expect them to implement the whole ERP? They are asking all of these questions. Okay. What the hell does this GL code mean? Because I have no experience in accounting. My accountant used to do accounting. So how am I supposed to do this? Now, you know, they signed up for this and obviously the implementation did not go anywhere. They could never use the system. So they ended up wasting all of that money. Can you believe this? So can the ERP implementation be faster? Now you should be asking the question that, okay, how fast can you be trained? What's your background? How many ERP implementations have you done? If you have done five or six, you will never believe that they can be faster. They can be done faster. So these are some of the probing questions that you should be asking yourself. You know, what is your own strength? Because the majority of the cost that you have for ERP is going to be in learning and making those decisions. That is going to be make or break for what you are trying to get out of ERP, which is mission critical. Again, I don't believe that it can be done faster, regardless of the vendor or the implementation that you are going to go for. That's great. And you did answer the question, right? Does, if you go fast, does it mean that it's going to be successful? Not necessarily, right? And again, that trend of having someone in your corner, having someone in your team that has a ton of experience, that has heard this before, that knows how to navigate and ask the right questions. That's going to be really a huge, huge part of the ERP selection process. Yep. That's great. And going off, I would say, pretty similar tangent, right? The next gimmick that we hear a lot as well out in the field is the out-of-the-box solution gimmick, which statements like, our software is plug and play. And I can't even imagine how many times I hear this. Our software is plug and play, or there's minimal configuration required, right? So I actually really like this graphic, by the way, because this just fits into this conversation very well. So, you know, Sam, with some of the companies, what do you think would the companies should kind of keep in mind, right? Is it realistic to expect kind of an off-the-rack suit ERP to fit your organization's needs perfectly? Yeah, honestly speaking, like this is very interesting. And this is very similar argument as APIs, which is very, very, very common in the ERP community. Okay. That is probably one of the best defense any salespeople in the ERP community has is, hey, you know, I don't have this functionality. Don't worry about it. I've got APIs. Now, everything is open. Everything is plug and play. Okay. But in general, with any ERP systems or any, you know, enterprise systems for that matter, I mean, they are never, ever going to be plug and play, even if they have, you know, let's say the pre-baked integration for, you know, some vendors might argue that they have the pre-baked integration, but is pre-baked integration going to work for your processes, for your data sets, for your use cases. Sometimes the details could be that, okay, let's say if they have pre-baked integration, they support maybe sales order. They might support one edit for the sales order, but then you are going to have five different scenarios that they have not accommodated as part of the product scope. So now how are you going to do that? When you get into those scenarios, then again, you have to either do the configuration customization. So again, you need to go back to your analysis in terms of what are the use cases that you are trying to support, you know, across the system boundaries, including any of the glues or the integration that you might be using. So again, you know, I don't believe that any software is going to be plug and play. You need to perform very deep analysis to be able to understand, you know, even if it is plug and play, verify that. Yeah. And, and in your kind of experience, can you maybe share a story or maybe an instance that this has happened where maybe a company fell for this gimmick, I would say, and how it may have affected them and their ERP journey? Yeah. So this is a story, you know, of a not-for-profit company. And in this particular case, people say that, you know, what not-for-profit easiest business, they don't have as much complications as your, you know, for-profit business. In this particular case, you know, we were getting into the deal and we performed actually, you know, we failed in this particular case, to be completely honest. And doing this on a daily basis, we also failed. So, you know, we had some requirements, for example, let's say they need to have the parent-child relationship between the business objects. Okay. They confirmed on a legal paper that they have parent-child relationship, but what they meant by parent-child relationship was very different from what we needed in those relationships. So from their perspective, hey, you know, we have got the highly customizable software. Our software is plug and play. We have never failed. In this case, when we got into the deal, this was a disaster because there is no way we could deliver this project because they did not have these capabilities that we were, you know, we needed. And, you know, we listed them as part of the ERP, but there was a, you know, communication gap between both parties. What we were asking, either they did not understand or they misquoted, miscommunicated, whatever happened. But at the end of the day, the project failed. So it's that deep is the point I'm trying to make. Right, right. That's so interesting how, again, it's going to go back to preparation. It's going to go back to knowing and asking the right questions and making sure that you have the right people in your corner that has done this before and has that experience to really unpack that and really get that information from the get-go. And last but not the least, right, pricing. We all talk about pricing. We hear this a lot out in the field, right? Some of the tactics that we hear is we will give you the best initial deep discounts and everybody else, right? So in your case, Sam, and in your experience, what should businesses consider regarding pricing claims from the get-go? Yeah, so this is very interesting as well. And sometimes it becomes very hard overall when you are talking to customers, right? Because for them, you know, they look at it as this, okay, I am buying one system, feature one, feature two, feature three, you know, and they don't perform the technical analysis. And that's where the real play is when it comes to the pricing. So one more story I'm going to give you here in terms of pricing. In this particular case, you know, again, very small manufacturing company. And they were sort of thinking that, you know what, I will be able to accommodate all of my integrations inside the code base. Their assumption was that I'm buying this ERP. Nowadays, ERP systems are very customizable. I should be able to accommodate all of that. But one thing that they forgot to include, you know, as part of the code is the whole integration capabilities and the additional module that they needed. And because of that, the overage they got in the pricing itself was more than any vendors who had quoted in the beginning. So, you know, you look for the discount. You got the cheapest deal, but you ended up paying far more, you know, at the end of the day. And, you know, it could have been much better deal, I guess. And even then they had a lot of issues because the solution was not fit to begin with. You know, they got this because they were getting a cheaper deal. So in my personal experience, you know, be super realistic with pricing. Don't look for discounts. They don't exist. There is no free lunch. Okay. So pricing should be a factor, but that should not be the only factor that you should be looking at while making decisions. Read between the lines because sometimes the play is going to be inside the contract and you will not be able to understand that unless you have really clarified all of your requirements. You really have your headstone design, have every single business rule, how that is going to be matched, you know, with your system. And then finally, what components you are going to be needing because that's where the licensing is going to be handy. From their perspective, you know, from vendors perspective, they are super crafty. Okay. And you are never going to have as much information to be able to negotiate. If you are going to negotiate on something, they'll cover that up somewhere and you won't even know that. So pricing and discount should not be a factor in general in NDC and making for any ERP. And that's a good point, right? And that's a good point, right? Having that full understanding of the total cost of ownership, the total cost, not just, hey, it looks pretty in the beginning, right? But understanding that full, you know, the total cost of that ownership is going to be really key here, right? Yeah. I think, you know, that example that you talked about, it's pretty on point. And if, you know, in your experience, again, I'm going to go back to some real life, maybe advice, right? Or just some, what would you suggest for ERP buyers that, you know, could be tackling this at the moment, right? What are some of the questions that they should be asking, or maybe even research that they should be doing ahead of time to know that they're not going to get misled into some of these, you know, kind of stuck into these, you know, tactics and make sure that they're well informed before they make these decisions. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know, Leah, whether you have read the book called The Wisdom of Bullfrog, I guess. I mean, that's probably the title. I may not be exactly accurate in that. But that is all about war strategies. Okay. And I'm really fascinated about that. Okay. And one of the things that they talk about in that book is whenever you have uncertainty, whether the uncertainty is going to be related to war, when you are going in a very, very, very unfamiliar terrain, the only thing that you can do to save yourself is load, load, and load. What that means is overload yourself. In the ERP context, what that means is prepare, prepare, and prepare. Okay. The more diligence that you are going to do for your ERP, and that's where your preparation is going to be in terms of the analysis, the more details that you are able to put in during your selection phase, the easier life you are going to have. Otherwise, you are always going to have fun with your ERP selection. I like fun, right? Yeah, that's great. It's actually a great segue into this slide right here, right? You talk about preparation, preparation, preparation. And with all of the gimmicks and red flags we talked about, right, it's all about what's next. And at the end of the day, it's all about making informed decisions, making informed choices. And this is a really huge and crucial part of the ERP selection process. So I would say, you know, based off of the conversation that we've had, and again, it's very, very interesting. I've learned so much. Kind of talked about the three takeaways, right? If there's three nuggets that you can take away from this webinar, you know, are these three. Obviously, we're going to start first with making sure you invest in preparation. It's phase zero. And you talked about this many, many times, right? So maybe expound that a little bit. We talked about why it's important, but what's the next step? What do they need to take as an ERP buyer to get to that phase zero, right? Making sure that they have all the prep that they need to make those decisions. Yeah. So if you really want to be confident with your plan, as well as be sure with your, you know, selection that it is going to be within your budget, as well as whatever you are trying to get from your ERP, you really need to document all of your processes with the details that is going to be acceptable by your technical team. Okay. And that can be done only by a person or a resource or a company that is doing this on a day. This is called requirements analysis in the software development lifecycle. If you go to any of these software companies, they do this for a living. Okay. That's what you need to do for yourself. You know, even if you're buying the software, you still need to follow the same process. The second thing that you need to do is you need to re-engineer your processes. Even though, you know, the systems that you are buying, these companies are investing billions and billions of dollars in R&D. Okay. This is something you cannot create by yourself. There's no way in the hell. Okay. Even if you try to do that. Okay. That is never going to be scalable. So don't try that. Okay. This is the gift that you are getting in a very small amount that you are paying for the licensing fee. So you need to follow the approach that they are following to create these products for the implementation. So that is going to be that, okay, do your due diligence in re-engineering your processes. If you are simply trying to fit in whatever you have at this point of time, in most cases, that is going to fire back. And that re-engineering is going to be from the process perspective, as well as any of the data side. Even if you are moving from one product to the next product from the same vendor, you still require that re-engineering because the data model that product one may have, it's going to be entirely different from the next product. Okay. So you still require that due diligence. You need to write every single business rule. Okay. If you have any gap, technical people are going to make assumptions. They are going to code whatever they are going to code and you are going to get very interesting results afterwards. Okay. So the phase zero is supposed to be the entire preparation. Again, load, load, load, load, meaning prepare, prepare, prepare as much as possible, provide as many, as many details. If you feel you have any sort of blind spots in your requirements, in your analysis, that means you have not done your due diligence. That's the level that you need to get to. It is not supposed to be 10,000 foot, 30,000 foot level analysis. It's supposed to be very detailed analysis that you need to invest. Yes, that is the expensive process, but that is the only way to be confident about, about your ERP implementation as well as selection. Right. That's a really good point. Right. That's a really good point. Be confident from the get-go, knowing that you're making the right decisions and you know exactly what you need before you embark in this journey. Right. And with that comes how to, you know, be realistic in your plan. Right. So kind of in that context of investing in preparation, what does being realistic in your plan mean in the context of this ERP selection process? Right. And how can companies ensure that yeah, they have these plans, they've done the preparation, but how can these ERP buyers ensure that their plans are achievable? Yeah. So honestly speaking, I mean, sometimes customers come to us and they are super premeditated in terms of how they want to approach. And even if we have the right intention, it becomes very hard to sort of coach them why they would require far more time as well as budget to be successful. So Leah, let me ask you this question. Okay. If I ask you, okay, how long, you know, a mother is going to take to deliver a baby? Okay. That's going to be nine months. That is the time it takes. Okay. If you try to do that in five months, that's going to fire back big time. Okay. Don't try to do that. And that's how ERP implementations are as well. Okay. There is a certain amount of time that you need to invest. And if you're not investing that amount of time, if you're saying, simply saying, okay, you read on internet and they are saying that, okay, you need to do this in three months. That's not how ERP implementations are supposed to work. So talk to five consultant, you know, ask them, okay, why they are saying it. They are saying nine months, why they are saying that. Okay. There must be a reason people are not taking time unnecessarily, I guess, you know, at least in my experience, if somebody is saying they are going to take longer time in general, they are probably going to be much deeper in general, unless somebody is super new, which is rare in my experience. But again, when I say be realistic with the plan, if five people are saying, or five companies are saying that, you know, it is going to take as much and you have one outlier, which is saying this can be done in $30,000. Don't believe them. Yeah, that's, that's, that's very interesting too. Right. And, and it's almost like you look at these as a step-by-step process. Yeah. You've done the preparation and then be a really realistic with it. Right. Yeah. Um, you know, nine months and three months, that's a big difference there. And, and if you're really invested in this and you really want to put in and making the right decisions and informed decisions, it's important to take your time and it's important to do all the right things from the get go. Right. And I think, you know, maybe the last thing here, and we talked about working with folks that have a ton of experience and haven't done this before, how valuable is it to have someone or, or a partner, right. Or, or, you know, someone in your corner who has successfully navigated ERP implementation before and what should companies look for in an ERP partner? Yeah. So in my experience, uh, you know, number one, the person that you are hiring, they should have the hands-on implementation experience just because somebody has been an user and they have been involved as part of the ERP process. Um, they are not going to be as detailed in their analysis. They are not going to have as much background with the implementation. So when you are looking for any sort of experienced ERP professional, uh, you know, look for the, especially in the interaction phase, okay. The companies or the people who have done these implementations across products. Okay. It cannot be just one vendor because their perspective is going to be significantly biased. Uh, they probably had learned only one vendor and everything that they are going to design is going to be from that perspective. So the more diversity that you have in the experience, the better it is, but the diversity need to be related as well. They need to have the real ERP, ERP experience, implementation experience, hands-on, uh, you know, experience, the more they have, uh, the, the higher chances you have of success in my experience. That's great. It's experience. It comes in very, very handy and it's something that you just don't compromise, right? It's a must to have that for sure. Awesome. Well, I learned a ton and seriously, I can keep going for another hour, but I know we're concentrated with time, right? There's so much really good nuggets here, but I want to make sure that we get to our Q and A portion of the webinar. Um, give some folks, um, give some folks some opportunities to ask some questions. And it looks like we have a couple of questions here. Um, let me see. So I think in the same wavelength, Sam, I can, we've talked about, you know, looking for or searching for, uh, the right ERP partner, right? I think one question, one of the questions here is what should ERP, uh, buyers look for in terms of long-term support and partnership for money or ERP venture. Um, so kind of in the same wavelength, but maybe a little bit more specific in that matter. Any, any thoughts there, any, anything you want to maybe expound on a little bit from that question? Yeah, happy to. And I'll tell you, uh, you know, uh, the stories that we get where customers failed, struggled, uh, you know, and we are always, uh, observing sort of the trends, uh, where customers are struggling, uh, especially when it comes to support. Uh, so one of the, trends that we are noticing, uh, right now is if any company that is going to be slightly more private equity owned, uh, they generally have, uh, you know, inferior support. And the reason for that is because they, the reason why private equity companies are buying the smaller ERP vendor, because they have to do nickel and dime. In general, when you are going to have these smaller vendors, uh, you know, you are going to receive far better support in general. And especially in the small to medium size, uh, you know, business community, you are probably going to require a lot more support in general. So, uh, you know, if you have that, be careful there and ask maybe the customers, the kind of support that they are receiving, because that transition could be, uh, significant overall in terms of the kind of support, as well as the implementation that you are going to receive. Uh, when you have other investors, they generally, uh, have slightly better support. Uh, you know, if you are going to go for any sort of resellers, resellers are going to have slightly better support as well, but obviously they are going to be very expensive. So again, you know, you get what, what you pay for, I guess. Um, so when you are looking at any of the, the deals, always read between the lines in terms of who are going to be the consultants who are going to be working on the deal. Uh, you know, sometimes we see issues because of that as well, that, okay, the salesperson really good, but then finally they hand it off to some other team, maybe B team, C team, and then they are not getting the answers that they are looking for. So I don't know if that helps, um, Leah. Yeah. Yeah. That helps a lot. Right. And you actually took it into a lot of different dimensions in terms of you're not just, it's not a narrow road, right? There's a couple of different options that you can take, but again, it's going to go back to when you're doing your preparation, when you're doing your, um, you know, that process of what's really the best fit for our organization. It's important to, um, um, it's important to, um, really understand where you need to go, what your goals are and your objectives for you to understand what decision you need to make and kind of what that path is moving forward. Right. Um, I do have another question here. I think this is really interesting. It has to do with scalability, right? So question is how important is scalability in an ERP system and what should ERP buyers look for to ensure that their chosen solution can grow with their business? Yeah. So very interesting question. And scalability in general has a lot of different layers in terms of where you are looking for, uh, you know, the solution being scalable. So number one thing is going to be, let's say, if you are going to go for a very small solution, they might not be as well known in the community. Generally, their perspective is going to be very limited. They generally penetrate in a very small micro vertical. Okay. That is going to be, okay. I'm doing business in my fastener industry. I'm going to create all of the processes just for faster. Now in your business model, let's say you are a fastener, but tomorrow, let's say you are doing a little bit of business and automotive or maybe aerospace, you are sort of expanding. That's when you are sort of going to outgrow, um, the capabilities from the solution. Right. So one scalability could be just in terms of the support of different business models, transactions, but then you also have a scalability from the transaction volume perspective as well. So overall, I guess scalability is a very broad topic. So what you need to go back is you need to understand, okay, where your business is going to be in next five, 10 years. Are you very active in your M&A cycle? If you are, then you are going to have very different approach for your scalability. How likely, uh, is, uh, your, your business model is going to change probably, uh, in next four to five years, then you are going to have very, very, very, very different approach. Um, and in general with most businesses in five, 10 years, there are going to be changes with your business. So, you know, you need to definitely, uh, align all of those expectations and finally found, uh, find the solution that is going to, uh, you know, work for your scalability expectations. That's great. Thinking ahead, right? Not just in the moment, but making sure you have that vision three to five years down the road where you see, you know, your business and where you see your organization and with that ERP system scale with you. I think that's really, really important point. Yep. Um, I think those are the questions that we have now. I would just, you know, ask Sam, if there's. Takeaways may have to say three things, right? People like three nuggets of information that people can take away, um, after this webinar, what would those be in your opinion? Yeah. So three takeaways, number one, invest in that phase zero. Um, that's what is going to set the tone for your implementation. Number two is going to be the, have super realistic expectations. Okay. Whenever you are hiring anybody, treat them as partners because they are going to be probably one of the biggest strategic partners, uh, that you are ever going to hire in your business. So treat them like your employees, uh, you know, that will go a long way in general. Okay. Number three is going to be that pay attention to details. Uh, you know, details is where the play is, uh, when it comes to ERP implementation, whenever you are talking to any vendors, look at their sample of work, how detailed they are in their analysis, if they can provide, uh, the examples of the deliverable that they have done for the previous customers, pay attention to the details. And if you don't know how to read those details, hire somebody who knows, uh, how to read those details. So those three, I guess. Yeah. Awesome. We actually have one more question here. I didn't see it, but, uh, another person is actually asking about the title of the book that you referred to. Yeah. I think it's called. On my list as well. I think it's called wisdom of the bullfrog and we can probably share, I can share the link and then you guys can circulate, uh, you know, in the mailing list, uh, whoever subscribed, I guess. So I think it's called wisdom of the bullfrog. Uh, you know, it's on war strategy. I think that that's, um, the guy is, uh, you know, he was in military and, you know, very, very, very interesting book. You should definitely read that. Uh, you know, highly recommend it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I'll put that on my list as well. So I think we're good. Um, uh, some of the questions were already asked there just kind of wanted to, to end it off with just a thank you for everyone, um, who, who joined us. Um, if there's any interest to reach out to us directly, you can reach out to Sam. Um, I have, have added, you know, his email address. And also there's a really interesting, uh, guide here. He's got a, uh, they've got an ERP selection, ultimate guy. There's a QR code. It's a really great tool to, to look at some best practices. If you're in the midst of an ERP selection process right now, I'm going to leave the slide a little bit longer so you can scan the QR code. If not, we'll also send that information to you as well, but it really, really great, um, part of your toolkit as you go through your ERP journey. I've added that there. If you have any questions for, for us, for CISPRO, feel free to contact us on our phone number, check out our website as well. And lastly, if you're attending IMTS, we're going to be there. We're going to be there next month from September 9th to the 14th. We have our booth number there. It's going to be an awesome week at the show. So if you're attending the show, feel free to drop by, reach out to us if you have any questions. Um, and yeah, it's been a really, really insightful conversation. I've learned so much. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Sam. Uh, first of many, hopefully, uh, one of these, uh, webinars. that we've done. We've learned so much. We appreciate everyone who attended the webinar as well. Again, feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I think that's it. Thank you so much and have an awesome day. Thanks Leah. Amazing work. Thank you.